Rob Renzetti Interview Transcript

This is a very rough (non-proofread) version of the transcript for the Rob Renzetti Interview. There are likely very many typos, and it isn't the cleanest formatting, but it is what I have for now. I will edit this over the next week and clean it up. Unfortunately, closed captions are not working on the YouTube video, and so this is the most accessible version. Apologies for the delay, and for the inconvenience. 

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Hana: Rob, thank you so much for joining me today! I mentioned this to you already when I interviewed Alex Hirsch,  but I got to say I'm a little bit more excited to be talking to you. 

Rob: Oh no! Now I might disappoint you.

Hana: Oh you absolutely won't don't worry about it um I'm just so excited 

Rob: please tell me why I'm better than Alex Hirsch I want to hear all about it 

Hana: Uh, absolutely, I think throughout uh the DVD commentary of Gravity Falls and also with my own conversation with Alex um Alex made it very clear that you were behind a lot of what Ford - Stanford Pines -  ended up being, especially with Journal 3.

And I have a very extremely healthy 10-year obsession with Gravity Falls. 

None of my none of my mental health providers are worried about it, don't worry. 

And Ford is a big source of that obsession. So, I have come prepared with about a million questions about it. 

Rob: Alright, I'm, I hope I'm prepared. I looked through Journal 3 for about 40 minutes before this, trying to revive my memories of writing what I wrote along with Alex. 

Hana: No worries 

Rob: if I uh if I blank on anything, I apologize ahead of time!  

Hana: that's fine we had a few questions for Alex, and a lot of his answers were, “well, Rob might have tha”t and so I knew I had to talk.

Rob: We'll see, we'll see if I do

Hana: but I also really wanted to talk to you about horrible bag of terrible things because I read it and it is um it's

incredible I love it uh it's like uh I I don't know how you feel about people

comparing your work to others but it did come across as like um f-cked up Narnia

meets Coraline with all the wit of Lemony Snicket. It was remarkable, I love it!  

Rob: Thank you, those are huge compliments, thank you! Lemony Snicket was definitely-  I mean I'm familiar with all those texts and they are all influences!

I made my way through A Series of Unfortunate Events kind of as a prelude to writing this book.

Not because it was like “oh now I'll rip it off” but just because I knew it was like a big text that had come out in kind of the genre that I was hoping to pursue a while back.

I'm nothing if not behind on all pop culture by about five-to-10 years, um, but I listened to the audio books which are mostly read by Tim Curry, which was a real pleasure! 

So that was definitely a touchstone when I started the book and, in fact, I even had uh kind of a narrator at the start who was like breaking the fourth wall, but um as I started that lasted for like a chapter and a half, and then I kind of just dropped that, and kind of went  with the narrator who kind of like isn't all knowing, but kind of mostly knowing. and kind of is very close to Zenith in

terms of his perspective but not it's not first person. It's not Zenith’s, you know, Zenith isn't writing it. Some other force is. But Tim Curry as doing the Lemony Snicket books was definitely in my mind as a touchstone, so thank you! I appreciate the compliment. 

Hana: Yeah! I'll just say one of my questions is actually about the narration because, um,  I don't usually listen to audio books, but this was - and I think it was, Jay Myers? Incredible work! It was one of my only audiobook experiences, but by far the best! But also just on its own phenomenal! I was curious what kind of process goes into picking a VA for something like that, and how involved were you?

Rob: I was involved very involved in the picking of it, I was not involved in the recording of it, which is remarkable because with very few exceptions, he got everything right, which is no small task!  But, you know, I basically I was giving … they did auditions in New York. The Listening Library Penguin audio people sent me a bunch of finalists and then I listen to those and my wife is like my first reader and my sounding board (and co-writer, really, in some

regard sometimes). So we listened to him together. I had some strong opinions but I didn't want to tell her what I thought and we kind of both zeroed in on a few people, and Jay was among them and then you know listening again a few days later, I definitely decided, like, it was really his Narrator voice that really sold me on it. Like, he got the Narrator - what I wanted for the Narrator closer than anybody else, by far. 

So it's like ‘this is it! I want him! He's the narrator! He sounds just like how I want the Narrator to sound!’ And then I was kind of like ‘I hope he's versatile, because there's lots of characters. Is he going to do the voices and whatever?’

I didn't know how much I could ask for, because I'm used to going to records with animation

where you're you're in the booth with the people and you're like, if they if you've got a new voice you got to come up with, if it's a major character, like you do auditions the same way - like you get you do like a a day of auditions. So like for Gravity Falls or for the stuff I've worked on, Teenage Robot and Mina, like I would listen to like 15 Minas or 15 Jennys or whatever, and think about it and ruminate on it and then come up with it. But like when you're in the

middle of a series and it's just like we need a new character who's only going to show up once usually you audition the person there. Like, you pick someone who's versatile and then you say this is the kind of voice we need. Then you find the voice together, and then as you're recording you can make adjusts. But since I was just doing this remote and wasn't going to be there for the records, I kind of had to kind of guess. But gratefully like he started sending in voices of the other characters. Like there was a text that they did as an audition, where I heard the Narrator I heard his voice for Zenith, I heard his voice for Apogee -  and like, sometimes the straight human characters are the hardest thing for someone to get right because there's no

pushing, right? You can't push those characters as far. So I was really impressed with what he did with Zenith and Apogee because they're close, but you can tell the difference, just in the voices, right? And he had a really hard time, we had a really hard time (I don’t think I'm speaking out of school saying this) we had a hard time finding Kreeble, who was really important to me. And like his initial - that was the only time where his initial take was off. It was still good, but it wasn't quite what I had imagined, and we like - but he was so generous in that like he kept sending in versions, and I think on the third version, well I kept giving him

notes like ‘Oh over here, over there,” but it was like you know was like playing - it wasn't as direct as it would be in the booth. So eventually he came up with something and when he got it, I was in love with it! So like when we finally found it, I was like, “Now this is my favorite voice that he's doing.” So, it was a joy working with him, but it was a little different than what I'm used to in animation, which was very immediate. Like, it's immediate, it's the day-of. That's all you have. You know  if you choose the person who's going to do the voice, they may not hit it out of the park, but he hit everything out of the park! I’m super, super excited and stoked about what he's done with that and excited to hear the sequels as well.

Hana: I am so excited for the sequel. 

Rob: Sorry I ramble there I tend to ramble!

Hana: it's that's fine I do too. I'm glad I'm asking you the questions because then I would be the one rambling and everyone would judge me. 

I'll say, the performance of I think Muncie the Scribe was my favorite. He just absolutely killed it! He gave me such, um, Ian McKellen Vibes, it was great. 

Rob: Nothing I had in mind but like just fell in love with it. 

Hana: Amazing! I'll also say so in the book for like you know, from the Shlurp to the Great and Holy Worm, to every variance of creature in the [SPOILERS] in the end, the Eldritch abominations in this story have stuck with me for way longer than I thought that they would, and I'm a full grown man! Did you have any difficulties in calibrating this story for the intended audience of (I assume) children and preteens? 

Rob: Yeah and I mean it's supposed to be kind of the same target audience that I've been writing cartoons for, which is like that 8 to 11 middle grade. That… It's categorized as a middle grade book. I just kind of wrote what I wanted to write and not worry about whether I'd hit the target or not I kind of left it up to the people that have more experience, which is my literary agent, and then when we went out to publishers, the publishers.

And Penguin [Publishing House], you know I'd written a whole version of the book by the time I went to my literary agent and showed and got him based on the book. I think that was maybe draft four or five? And then he had me do another draft. So, by the time Penguin saw it, it was like draft six. So, pretty much the book existed, and they could decide whether they liked it or not and they pretty much they loved it I didn't have any real notes! There's, no, I mean I

don't know what the equivalent of “standards and practices” which we deal with in TV all the time would be for a book, but I didn't really have - there's no separate set of people. I just have my editors and primarily my main editor is a woman named Alex Wolf. She goes through, she gives me notes on everything. I's going to be a trilogy, so on the two seq-  I got notes on the first book. They give you like an editorial letter where they kind of type up a few things, and then they go into the manuscript and do track changes and say “What about this here, what about that there”, but they loved the book from the beginning so like it was kind of like, I kind of set the

tone that I wanted to set, and they said “Yeah we love it!” And so they seem to think it was appropriate for the age as pretty-much written. 

I didn't really have to take anything out.  And, in fact, in the sequels she's made a point saying

it needs to be a little scarier here so, I love it, you know? What else- what else could you ask for from an editor, like, except to, like, make it scarier!  

Hana: That sounds great! And I bet it’s a breath of fresh air since working in children's animation for so long with the “Standards and Practices Committee”. 

And I know that the majority of my fans are Gravity Falls fans but I'm telling you definitely don't skip the first few questions because because even if you

haven't read Horrible Bag of Terrible Things, Rob Renzetti goes into a lot of detail on the writing process, the publishing process, the process behind choosing a VA for narration for audio books, the process of finding inspiration for the cover design, for the art for the ideas, for the characters, etc. 

And honestly if you're just someone who's interested in writing or writing a book of your own (which I IN THEORY am, if I ever get 10 goddamn minutes to myself I might actually finish a book) 

but if you're someone who has any interest in literature at all, or in that process I definitely recommend listening to those questions because Rob gave some really insightful answers and they were just really interesting. 

The last thing I'll note is that Rob Renzetti was possibly the kindest man on Earth. He was just an absolute joy to sit down with. He answered all of my questions to the best of his ability and it was just really nice to chat with him and talk about Stanford Pines. 

Rob thank you very much for your patience, both with my fanboying, and also with my delay in getting this video released. I interviewed him in March!

And this was supposed to be out by April! 

Obviously that didn't happen. I got to say even, though the interview itself is a few months old the actual video being released was delayed to now because of a number of factors 

(some family emergencies some persona emergencies, uh, I needed to do some traveling and also of course I work a lot -  I have three job,s so you know stuff just gets delayed)

So  I am sorry to Rob for this video taking so long but I'm especially sorry to y'all that you had to wait so long for these answers. 

The only good news about it coming out now is that I get to release it as part of Project 618, which is my annual Gravity Falls video series, including videos that are just slightly shorter than

 My typical two-hour+ Gravity Falls videos. 

These videos are a bit more on the low-production end, so if you want to see things like, I don't know, cool black light effects, costuming, lighting, etc.,puppetry, uh, I don't know, check out the longer videos on my channel. They'll probably have something interesting in there. 

And without further ado, let's jump in. 

Here is my interview with animation icon Rob Renzetti.

Hana: Rob, thank you so much for joining me today! I mentioned this to you already when I interviewed Alex Hirsch,  but I got to say I'm a little bit more excited to be talking to you. 

Rob: Oh no! Now I might disappoint you.

Hana: Oh you absolutely won't don't worry about it um I'm just so excited 

Rob: please tell me why I'm better than Alex Hirsch I want to hear all about it 

Hana: Uh, absolutely, I think throughout uh the DVD commentary of Gravity Falls and also with my own conversation with Alex um Alex made it very clear that you were behind a lot of what Ford - Stanford Pines -  ended up being, especially with Journal 3.

And I have a very extremely healthy 10-year obsession with Gravity Falls. 

None of my none of my mental health providers are worried about it, don't worry. 

And Ford is a big source of that obsession. So, I have come prepared with about a million questions about it. 

Rob: Alright, I'm, I hope I'm prepared. I looked through Journal 3 for about 40 minutes before this, trying to revive my memories of writing what I wrote along with Alex. 

Hana: No worries 

Rob: if I uh if I blank on anything, I apologize ahead of time!  

Hana: that's fine we had a few questions for Alex, and a lot of his answers were, “well, Rob might have tha”t and so I knew I had to talk.

Rob: We'll see, we'll see if I do

Hana: but I also really wanted to talk to you about horrible bag of terrible things because I read it and it is um it's

incredible I love it uh it's like uh I I don't know how you feel about people

comparing your work to others but it did come across as like um f-cked up Narnia

meets Coraline with all the wit of Lemony Snicket. It was remarkable, I love it!  

Rob: Thank you, those are huge compliments, thank you! Lemony Snicket was definitely-  I mean I'm familiar with all those texts and they are all influences!

I made my way through A Series of Unfortunate Events kind of as a prelude to writing this book.

Not because it was like “oh now I'll rip it off” but just because I knew it was like a big text that had come out in kind of the genre that I was hoping to pursue a while back.

I'm nothing if not behind on all pop culture by about five-to-10 years, um, but I listened to the audio books which are mostly read by Tim Curry, which was a real pleasure! 

So that was definitely a touchstone when I started the book and, in fact, I even had uh kind of a narrator at the start who was like breaking the fourth wall, but um as I started that lasted for like a chapter and a half, and then I kind of just dropped that, and kind of went  with the narrator who kind of like isn't all knowing, but kind of mostly knowing. and kind of is very close to Zenith in

terms of his perspective but not it's not first person. It's not Zenith’s, you know, Zenith isn't writing it. Some other force is. But Tim Curry as doing the Lemony Snicket books was definitely in my mind as a touchstone, so thank you! I appreciate the compliment. 

Hana: Yeah! I'll just say one of my questions is actually about the narration because, um,  I don't usually listen to audio books, but this was - and I think it was, Jay Myers? Incredible work! It was one of my only audiobook experiences, but by far the best! But also just on its own phenomenal! I was curious what kind of process goes into picking a VA for something like that, and how involved were you?

Rob: I was involved very involved in the picking of it, I was not involved in the recording of it, which is remarkable because with very few exceptions, he got everything right, which is no small task!  But, you know, I basically I was giving … they did auditions in New York. The Listening Library Penguin audio people sent me a bunch of finalists and then I listen to those and my wife is like my first reader and my sounding board (and co-writer, really, in some

regard sometimes). So we listened to him together. I had some strong opinions but I didn't want to tell her what I thought and we kind of both zeroed in on a few people, and Jay was among them and then you know listening again a few days later, I definitely decided, like, it was really his Narrator voice that really sold me on it. Like, he got the Narrator - what I wanted for the Narrator closer than anybody else, by far. 

So it's like ‘this is it! I want him! He's the narrator! He sounds just like how I want the Narrator to sound!’ And then I was kind of like ‘I hope he's versatile, because there's lots of characters. Is he going to do the voices and whatever?’

I didn't know how much I could ask for, because I'm used to going to records with animation

where you're you're in the booth with the people and you're like, if they if you've got a new voice you got to come up with, if it's a major character, like you do auditions the same way - like you get you do like a a day of auditions. So like for Gravity Falls or for the stuff I've worked on, Teenage Robot and Mina, like I would listen to like 15 Minas or 15 Jennys or whatever, and think about it and ruminate on it and then come up with it. But like when you're in the

middle of a series and it's just like we need a new character who's only going to show up once usually you audition the person there. Like, you pick someone who's versatile and then you say this is the kind of voice we need. Then you find the voice together, and then as you're recording you can make adjusts. But since I was just doing this remote and wasn't going to be there for the records, I kind of had to kind of guess. But gratefully like he started sending in voices of the other characters. Like there was a text that they did as an audition, where I heard the Narrator I heard his voice for Zenith, I heard his voice for Apogee -  and like, sometimes the straight human characters are the hardest thing for someone to get right because there's no

pushing, right? You can't push those characters as far. So I was really impressed with what he did with Zenith and Apogee because they're close, but you can tell the difference, just in the voices, right? And he had a really hard time, we had a really hard time (I don’t think I'm speaking out of school saying this) we had a hard time finding Kreeble, who was really important to me. And like his initial - that was the only time where his initial take was off. It was still good, but it wasn't quite what I had imagined, and we like - but he was so generous in that like he kept sending in versions, and I think on the third version, well I kept giving him

notes like ‘Oh over here, over there,” but it was like you know was like playing - it wasn't as direct as it would be in the booth. So eventually he came up with something and when he got it, I was in love with it! So like when we finally found it, I was like, “Now this is my favorite voice that he's doing.” So, it was a joy working with him, but it was a little different than what I'm used to in animation, which was very immediate. Like, it's immediate, it's the day-of. That's all you have. You know  if you choose the person who's going to do the voice, they may not hit it out of the park, but he hit everything out of the park! I’m super, super excited and stoked about what he's done with that and excited to hear the sequels as well.

Hana: I am so excited for the sequel. 

Rob: Sorry I ramble there I tend to ramble!

Hana: it's that's fine I do too. I'm glad I'm asking you the questions because then I would be the one rambling and everyone would judge me. 

I'll say, the performance of I think Muncie the Scribe was my favorite. He just absolutely killed it! He gave me such, um, Ian McKellen Vibes, it was great. 

Rob: Nothing I had in mind but like just fell in love with it. 

Hana: Amazing! I'll also say so in the book for like you know, from the Shlurp to the Great and Holy Worm, to every variance of creature in the [SPOILERS] in the end, the Eldritch abominations in this story have stuck with me for way longer than I thought that they would, and I'm a full grown man! Did you have any difficulties in calibrating this story for the intended audience of (I assume) children and preteens? 

Rob: Yeah and I mean it's supposed to be kind of the same target audience that I've been writing cartoons for, which is like that 8 to 11 middle grade. That… It's categorized as a middle grade book. I just kind of wrote what I wanted to write and not worry about whether I'd hit the target or not I kind of left it up to the people that have more experience, which is my literary agent, and then when we went out to publishers, the publishers.

And Penguin [Publishing House], you know I'd written a whole version of the book by the time I went to my literary agent and showed and got him based on the book. I think that was maybe draft four or five? And then he had me do another draft. So, by the time Penguin saw it, it was like draft six. So, pretty much the book existed, and they could decide whether they liked it or not and they pretty much they loved it I didn't have any real notes! There's, no, I mean I

don't know what the equivalent of “standards and practices” which we deal with in TV all the time would be for a book, but I didn't really have - there's no separate set of people. I just have my editors and primarily my main editor is a woman named Alex Wolf. She goes through, she gives me notes on everything. I's going to be a trilogy, so on the two seq-  I got notes on the first book. They give you like an editorial letter where they kind of type up a few things, and then they go into the manuscript and do track changes and say “What about this here, what about that there”, but they loved the book from the beginning so like it was kind of like, I kind of set the

tone that I wanted to set, and they said “Yeah we love it!” And so they seem to think it was appropriate for the age as pretty-much written. 

I didn't really have to take anything out.  And, in fact, in the sequels she's made a point saying

it needs to be a little scarier here so, I love it, you know? What else- what else could you ask for from an editor, like, except to, like, make it scarier!  

Hana: That sounds great! And I bet it’s a breath of fresh air since working in children's animation for so long with the “Standards and Practices Committee”. 

Rob: I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to write the book

was that I was like I've done everything- I've collaborated with so much on-

everything in my life has been a collaboration in terms of entertainment for children and I was like I want to just kind of do this on my own and see

what I can do and see if it is viable. So, I was very pleased I was happy with

how it came out. I was happy it got me a literary agent and thrilled that it was published. It was just kind of all

done on my own speculation, I just want to do this I said it as a personal goal because I've been writing

Journal 3 and the other books I've written for Disney it was kind of like my idea was like want to have kind of a

second career as a writer. You know I've been writing my whole career for animation but that writing is

kind of hidden behind the scenes, right. It's kind of- it's not as front and center like it is in a book. So, I was very

thrilled to do the books with Disney very thrilled to do Journal 3 and wanted to continue

that kind of second career I'd set up for myself. 

Hana: You know even with all of the Eldritch Abominations and all the horrible-

there were a lot of terrible things in that horrible bag. I got to let you know. The thing that was possibly the most

interesting to me and the most terrifying was Muncie the Scribe and Hugh the Sseeker and the permanence of the

things that they wrote and the things that were remembered. I found it particularly touching because in my day job

I'm a journalist. When you were writing that section were you thinking about the way history is documented the

way journalism is documented or any modern institutions of Education 

Rob: Well,

I can't say that I was. Though of course as a reader you're welcome to interpret it that way. I believe that the reader

creates the story as well as the writer does and that things that- You

know, that- For me personally it was about, that idea was about how

we create our own narrative of our own life and how we think we remember everything but what we really are doing

is constantly rewriting the story of our own life. And that memory is a tricky thing and without spoiling the book for

anybody who hasn't read it that is a theme in the book that is like,

Zenith thinks he remembers things a certain way, he's off in that in that regard, so that was a

theme- that there's a theme and it's something that I've as a- Personally it’s something that I've been very much aware

I'm very self-aware of myself I have been ever since I was a kid. I always felt a little bit different I was not

good at sports. I was not what you can traditionally would think of as

masculine, back when masculine and feminine were much more rigorously

defined and you know, that's a whole issue we're all going through now and people try to take us

back to those rigid definitions. Which I'm not in favor of because I personally never fit them I was

not interested in- I thought I should want to be good at sports. I was not.

I thought I should know all about cars because, my dad was a huge car fanatic. I did not they remain a mystery to me to

this day. I could tell you maybe one thing about an internal combustion engine I'd probably get that wrong.

I enjoyed being outside with my friends but if I walked down the street and saw that they were playing softball I was more than likely to turn around and go

back to my house and spend a day playing with my Legos or drawing. That kind of

introverted side of me was what made me- led me to draw at a very young age.

So, I've been kind of drawing and creating characters and writing stories for the characters for a very long time.

And now I've forgotten what the question actually was, perhaps I've answered some- but no, the idea that

like, because I had those moments alone I thought about what I who I was how what I was in

relation to the other boys I saw around me how I was different. What that would mean when it came time to fall in

love with someone to go out into the world. I've been thinking about that kind of stuff all my life and realizing that

you kind of define yourself in your own head and you look back as you age and

stuff and you have more to look back at. You know, I've been with

my wife for 30 years so we have memories together and she remembers things better than I do and so I have someone

telling me “no you're misremembering that, that didn't happen that way”. So, I know that memory is

not, it's not a book, it's not something you can just flip back to the page and see exactly what happened. It is

always something that we are adjusting and rewriting in our head.

Hana: I will say, I know you probably left it

unanswered and a little bit vague on purpose but it is killing me. Was the third baby a

ghost? 

Rob: I don't know probably, probably not. I think Muncieprobably

knows his brother well enough and I don't think- Hugh does not- Hugh doesn't seem like- I believe what

what Munciesaid about Hugh is probably correct. 

Hana: Okay. 

Rob: That Hugh was not really- did not get a firsthand account of

those things. I won't say that ghosts and spirits don't exist

in the world of GrahBhag, they do, but not quite in the way that Hugh is presenting it in

this story of the triplets that he- That's why Munciedecides it doesn't belong in the collectory Hana: That's

fascinating. I thought it was so ambiguous and the concept of the entire

existence of someone being erased just because it was written a specific way was very striking to me but

that to me was the idea of it and perhaps I was thinking about it with my specific context and my specific lens

but that to me was horrifying I was like how could you do that Muncie?! You killed that ghost

baby! 

Rob: Yeah, you can rest assured, I don't think that baby actually existed so- 

Hana: Okay, that that gives me ease 

Rob: That doesn't mean

that people that don't do actually exist can't get erased, you know, so, spoiler alert for book

two. I mean coming this July. 

Hana: Can I put that spoiler in. 

Rob: Sure, of course,

I gotta tease people get them interested in- 

Hana: Of course! Yeah, then you'll get all their money! 

Rob: That's right 

Hana: so I

know that the “Twisted Tower of Endless Torment” has elements inspired by M.C. Escher. I

think that is so cool. I think it's also interesting because I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't M.C. Escher's

relativity the inspiration behind the quadrilateral confusion in Journal 3

Rob: I mean yeah a little bit yes. I mean I'm a huge Escher fan and I love his

stuff. I could- it blows my mind. It's one of those things that you look at where- you know sometimes I'll look at another

artist or read another writer and be jealous that I didn't come up with that idea and be like- cuz I feel like it's maybe within my grasp. I've never

thought that Escher’s artwork was anywhere within my grasp either on a technical level or a mental level. He's just

one of those people that I think is so- He's such a unique mind behind a unique hand right. So, 

I love his stuff. So, yeah, the quadrangle of confusion is definitely

inspired by M. C. Escher as well the idea that like there'd be weird perspective stuff in the nether realm and the

nightmare realms is something- I think that was one of my pages. I remember

specific sections that I definitely wrote and there's others that I'm like did I write that or was that Hirsch?

Hana: I believe in the interview the Mystery Shack Lookback podcast interview that he did he

mentioned that the whole Ford in a Multiverse section was yours, that you did that.

 Rob: Yes I did all that

and got to- and actually got a text one weekend after Hirsch had read it

and I saved that text because he was like “I love it! This is amazing! you did a great job!” I'm like thank you

Hana: Amazing! 

Rob: I mean Alex was very generous with compliments it's not like it was-

you know during during the front of Gravity Falls the series I didn't- I never wrote it, I never wrote a script, I was

behind the scenes on a lot of stuff and a lot of the ideas were mine but it was always the writers and then Hirsch

who would put the final words on it and so you know occasionally a line or two that I came up with would get in but I

never really wrote anything. I never generated anything and wrote it down in that way. I would generate ideas but I

never followed them up. So, you know him seeing me write was really in Dipper and

Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun, which I wrote with Shane Houghton and then this which we wrote together. So, you

know, I was pleased that he liked what I was writing. So, it was big deal that he liked that section but it was- I love

that idea, I love the jumping around in different dimensions that my mind definitely goes in that way

obviously. With A Horrible Bag I've created another dimension, I like other dimensions and weird worlds that have different rules. So, I loved doing

that section, I loved coming up with silly stupid Fun Worlds that could frustrate Ford and

annoy the crap out of him. 

Hana: Yes, I also noticed that, was it Raggedy Albert is

that the name of the one who tries to turn Zenith into a doll….. Spoilers

sorry I'll try not to give too much away and we'll move on to Journal 3

questions in a bit I just really wanted to give. 

Rob: I'm very pleased that you're talking about Horrible Bag first, thank you. 

Hana: Yeah absolutely! It's fantastic so I

want to- I need my friends to read it so I could talk to them about it and they haven't

read it yet so this is gonna motivate them. I noticed that raggedy Albert

spoke in Caesar cipher or at least I believe it was I didn't double check but I noticed it because I could

read part of it you see Gravity Falls rotted my brain.

 Rob: I I've heard people say the same thing like that people can

read Caesar cipher, they can just make it out which is crazy to me.

Hana: It takes me hours to do my taxes but oh I got that on lock. 

Rob: I didn't do my taxes I pay someone to do my taxes but

it would take me a while to do Caesar cipher. That was definitely Hirsch's influence on me. I'm not a big code guy that was all Hirsch-like. He did all the code stuff in

Journal 3 I left that all to him but I mean I knew having worked on the show how the codes worked and

when I got to writing Horrible Bag I knew like, well I want- not

everybody's going to speak English in GrahBhag

a lot of creatures do because there has been interaction between the two worlds for a very long time.

So, they are familiar with english as well as other Firman languages, but I didn't want- I wanted Albert to

just not be comprehensible. So, I thought like “well, we'll do a very simple code and code switching, Caesar

being the simplest of codes and also I have Kreeble translate. So, if you don't want to you don't have to go and

stop your reading the book to know what's going on, but I thought it would be a fun nod to Gravity Falls and a fun

thing for the readers who are into that kind of thing to have like a little bit of a code to

decipher and look up. Kreeble basically gives you the cheat codes, he gives you

all the answers for Zenith and the reader’s sake. 

Hana: I read it like after I was focusing on it staring at it

trying to read it in my own brain and then a second later I was like oh I don't got to do this. With

Raggedy Albert, with that whole sequence of the concept of him turning someone into a doll, Alex Hirsch mentioned in my

interview with him and I believe also in the New York ComiCon 2016 that there was a scrapped tail of a doll collector

turning Gideon into a doll. I also am reminded of the doll skin in season one

in My Life as a Teenage Robot. I feel like that's a through line that's followed you creatively

Were you happy to fully realize that concept finally in this

Book.

Rob: Yes. 

Hana: I love that! How long has that been in your head?

Rob: Since I was a kid.

Hold on a minute, you may want to edit this part out, I'm gonna walk away from camera unless everybody wants to see my,

the lower body that I'm about to show you, hold on. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to

find it but I did. So, this was in my home when I was a kid.

This is not my book, this is my mom's book. My mom got this book as a kid and this is one of the few things from my

mom's own childhood. This was on display in my home my whole childhood, but these-

I was sickly fascinated by these characters by Raggedy Ann and Andrew because they're both cute and horrifying

at the same time, right? I find that to be the case and I never really read the book I just um look at the

illustrations here. Here's here's the inscription to my mom from her parents. It reads to our little Sue from

Mother and Daddy, Christmas 1940. So- and it's weird because this

handwriting very much looks like my mom's handwriting. I'm guessing this is her mom she wrote just like her mom

did. But I just would flip through this and look at the weird illustrations and I just was, you

know, I was just fascinated by this book, but I was too creeped out to ever read the stories. Here's some

giant rat people obviously. 

Hana: Yeah. 

Rob: You know, so this was kind of always in

my head. So, I always- the idea of ragdolls, I've always been attracted to them and freaked out by them. So, yeah we did

that you know in Teenage Robot it was inspired both by Venom from Spider-Man and from this stuff.

So I knew, you know, when I was just trying to think about things that could appear in GrahBhag this just popped into my head again and I knew that I could

take it to a more horrifying level than I was able ever to do on Teenage Robot. Yeah, you know, and also because of

GrahBhag is inside of a bag there was definitely like tailoring and

sewing all those things are themes, you know, because it's a bag that's patched together from different

skins of different creatures. And then in GrahBhag there's actually seams in the world that's kind of a patch together

seam so having a ragdoll seemed like a natural extension of that. So,

yeah that's- this has been with me forever. It's been with me forever and I'm so happy that it still

existed. All that stuff from my childhood like just was gone when I would go back to my childhood home as

an adult and my parents are both passed away now my dad passed away two years ago. So, I gotta thank you. I got this-

I got this a while back, but after my mom passed away, but I'm just so happy to have this. This is a very- this is one of

my most prized possessions. Also, this is a kickass- look at this kickass

cover. This is beautifully done. This black behind it and the strong-

it's like this is very well, this is a very well directed little book. I love this cover

Hana: Good composition! Yeah! 

Rob: It's amazing, this amazingly strong composition and everything about it, I just love it.

I love it- but yeah, that's where Raggedy Albert comes from. 

Hana: Amazing. I will say your books, the

imagery in it lends itself so well to Artistic renderings like after reading

the description of the namesake, “The Horrible Bag”, the main character I wanted

to make my own. I want to go to Goodwill and find different Fabrics different gnarly [ __ ] up fabrics and just sew

them together into a sack. I thought it was incredible. I think my favorite

piece of imagery was the- God I'm gonna forget the name of it and everyone's gonna know I'm a fake fan-

the collectory, the tree like structure, center, it- I thought it

was just incredible. I wanted to visualize it. Did you have any concept

artwork while you were making it that you sketched out and drew yourself or was it all just written down. 

Rob: The only

concept artwork I did was a sketch of Raggedy Albert and a sketch of Kreeble and those were more to

help sell the book. I submitted those with the manuscript when my

literary agent sent it out. So, those are- I did do a lot of

sketching but I didn't- I'm a horrible background artist I can't draw background so to draw the collectory would be like- it would look

very bad but, you know, I'm basically- I think very visually. So, I think that comes across in the

way I write things and sometimes I have to pull back on that. I'm also used to, you know, writing scripts for cartoons

where you have to like, if you have like- Well, the characters you want the characters not just to be standing and

talking you want them to be up some up to some sort of business. So, I often find in my writing that I'm talking about

like how they turn around and do all this it's like, when I go through and do like a second pass, like I'm doing on the

the third book right now, a lot of that stuff just gets taken out because it's, like, that was just my thought process but you really don't need to

know that Zenith has turned his head from this direction to that direction. In the book it's just like he's

talking just put the dialogue in you can eliminate a few words and get

closer to the word count that your publisher wants you at. Right now I have to cut about 10,000 words out of the

third book so I'm doing a lot of that right now. 

Hana: I see. I would be obsessed

with an illustrated version of this book. I would sell my soul for that.

It's so- The imagery you've provided just with your writing is so fantastic and I would love to see it fully rendered by

someone. 

Rob:  I'm hoping there'll be some sort of visual version of it at some point either animated- I can see it being

a very good animated miniseries, you know, because, it's- The book is set up to have some sort of

cliffhanger at the end of most chapters. Or a series of movies,

of course, and- But, you know, even Illustrated books I would love M.S. Corley, the guy who does the illustration

on the covers. I love his interpretation of the characters and what he's done with them. So, you

know, I would love to see more of his artwork but, you know, any kind of Illustrated version I would love to

have it. 

Hana: So, I understand, of course, that you might not want to give away any spoilers or any more spoilers than

we already have but, is there anything about “Twisted Tower of Endless Torment” that you want to share.

Rob: I'm sure. I mean, you know, the Twisted Tower is in the title so you were going to go to a tower at some point.

You know, It's called Eternity Tower. It's- It is a prison. I will say one

or more of our main characters ends up there. I don't think it'll be surprised who probably ends up there but the

the reason they end up there is because they’re- Zenith when he returns to GrahBhag is shocked to learn

that he is now a wanted criminal. He is wanted dead or alive or eaten as the signs around GrahBhag indicate

because, of what has happened in book one, without spoiling book one. So,he is a fugitive from justice,

such as it is in GrahBhag. Which justice in GrahBhag is as distorted as you might imagine. I touched on, there's

a- one of my favorite scenes in the in the book is a courtroom scene and that is very much inspired by Alice in Wonderland

and the the crazy nonsensical courtroom scene in

that book. So, that is a little bit of a taste of what goes on. There's lots of other stuff that happens but

that is, that's a little bit of a taste of what it means to have a twisted Tower in the title.

So,  we we see some of our favorites, we see a bunch of new characters, especially in the tower,

there's a bunch of interesting prisoners, that Zenith encounters.

So, I love it. I really enjoyed writing it. It's a- I think

it's a worthy extension of the first book and the third book will be coming the year after this, so-

I'm in the middle of writing that right now and enjoying that quite a bit as well I think. 

Hana: And you wouldn't be willing

to share the title of the third book would you? 

Rob: I can actually, well, I don't know, I don't know if I

can. We just decided on what the title is so I don't know if I'm allowed to and I

think Penguin wants to have some sort of announcement for it. So, I cannot

tell you I'm very tempted to tell you but I should, I shall not. 

Hana: You can, I won't stop you. 

Rob: I know you won't that's

why I've got to stop myself. 

Hana: Amazing. Well, thank you so much. So, I'm

gonna move on to some questions about Gravity Falls and specifically about Ford, Ford's character. I remember

hearing you say in a different interview that you were table cast as Ford when you were going through the script. The

nerdy scientist brother to Alex's counterpart I believe you said, and

I know that there were a million iterations before reaching the Canon design and characterization of Ford. I know

there was like a stuffy scientist type, a more hippie-esque type, from all of

those different iterations what was your favorite? What was your favorite Ford that never was?

Rob: I mean, I don’t know. Those Fords were also just basically left on the you

know, they never really got off the drawing board. They didn't really speak to me. I mean, I think, I can't say. I don't think I have a

favorite of those. My favorite is the one that exists maybe because so much of me is in it and let's just say I have no

scientific ability whatsoever. Science was my worst subject in school. I'm not a good scientist but that kind of-

the kind of persnickety accuracy before tax is a phrase that comes up lot

in my household. That's something that is a fault or a feature

of mine, whether, however you want to look at it. That kind of aspect of things.

The idea that Ford would ruin everything by having to correct

Stanley's grammar in the middle of, you know,

Hana: The Apocalypse. 

Rob: Yeah. That is

very much- I very much connect to that

Hana: UM! To be fair his grammar was wrong!

Rob: That's true! It is! Ford was right! 

Hana: YAS! 

Rob: Ford's usually right. The question is, is being right the most important thing at all times. And it’s hard for me to realize that sometimes that isn’t the most important thing.

But no, I don’t really - Hirsch has probably got, you know he has got a million versions of everything in his mins. For me, I consider the possibilities and then decide on something, and I leave the things that have not been used on the cutting - I discard them. Not that they go away forever, because they can always be reused for something else, but I kind of - I don’t worry about them in the way that Hirsch does.

Hirsch  worries about the path not taken all the time.

Hana: Alex has brought up that there were a lot of different versions and sometimes in his head 

that there were a lot of different versions and sometimes in his head they get a bit muddled together um and there was something I talked to him about that I would love to talk to you about.

 In the DVD commentary there is a

moment in Dungeons, Dungeons and more Dungeons, when Ford says something along

the lines of “this Infinity dice is incredibly dangerous; that's why I keep it in a cheap plastic case.” 

And Alex says, “Um, I actually don't know about that line, because I think Ford is more practical than that and I believe you say, “No, he would absolutely do that!”

While watching I found myself very much agreeing with you like yeah of course Alex what are you talking about and I brought this up with Alex, 

Alex said that um he remembers all the different various versions of Ford, and the one that they landed on. That was essentially what he said, That you are Ford rationalizing things in that, and that's what Ford does: he rationalizes things.”

So I guess I wanted to ask a double-question here: I would love to hear more about your thoughts on Ford’s recklessness, Fords rationality when it comes to the reckless things that he does.

Because we don't even see this guy use any - there wasn't even like a fence up in front of

the portal. I don't think this man ever used lab safety equipment.

But also, did you and any of the other writers or Alex ever disagree about aspects of

Fords character ,either while writing the journal or while writing the show.

Rob:  To answer your first question - Or your second question first, not really.

I don't remember a lot of arguments when it came to writing the journal at all. Part of the joy I had of writing journal is I could write anything and I know Hirsch was going to do was going to take his pass at it and change things if he wasn't pleased with it so part of my joy is

that a lot of the stuff that I wrote appears intact in the journal. 

Like, he shifted very little. He usually would just add extra jokes or add extra things into my pages, but very little got  changed so that's joy for me, as, you know,  I like to get the compliment of getting seeing my stuff go all the way to print.

In the show I'm sure there were - I mean these discussions are a long time ago now and I don't remember exactly, but I think that's the case with any characters. You're kind of finding

them. You find them in the circumstance you're putting them into, right? 

So every show starts - Ford wouldn't have been in the Bible but there was a Bible for Gravity Falls.

-------------------------------------

41:05

Rob: But there was a bible for Gravity Falls, there was a bible for my show these things exist before you actually put these  characters in motion so you say like you tell in order to sell the show you're telling execs like  hey there's this character over here and they're kind of like this and they got this friend and  they are kind of like this and they butt heads in this way and blah blah blah and it's all  not bs but it's all theoretical right it's all like i think this is the way it will work and  then writing an actual episode putting them in the specific circumstances or it's completely  a different thing usually your character is not going to change and go 180 degrees in a  different direction but sometimes they do look like when i wrote uh when i first came up with  tuck for teenage robot in the in the pilot he has he's kind of fearful and whatever  so i was like oh he'll have all these phobias and whatever in the first episode for the show he's  like he's afraid of affairs wheels like right or whatever but like those phobias kind of just fell  to the wayside and what ended up happening is like he's just kind of like he's the wild card weirdo  funny character and you never know how he's going to react to something sometimes he'll be very  brave sometimes he'll be a total scaredy cat that's what that ended up being right once we  start putting the character through his paces so i'm sure on the page and in alex's head ford was  one thing and when we started actually  putting them into circumstances and having him react against the other characters he became  something else i think at first he was just like he's in opposition to stanley he's in opposition  to everything that stan is you know he is not he doesn't like stan's lying he doesn't like stan  stan cutting corners so he wouldn't do those things and i still think in ford's head he never  cut corners all the thing that's all the things that are reckless that's based out of his own ego  which is in his head he's like  i'm the smartest person i know i'm probably one of the stars people on the planet i've got this  stuff under control i've got it handled i'm never going to abuse the the the 14-sided dice or  whatever you know what i mean like i don't have to worry about it i don't have to put it away and  lock it away because i know how to handle it and i'm not going to let anybody else handle it because  why i don't trust anybody else yeah right like i i only have to take certain i don't have to  take certain precautions because i'm the only one who's going to be involved with the portal um you  okay fiddleford's going to be there too but like he's my assistant you know i i i control him you  know in the in the story in the journal is the fact that like you you're not gonna he's another  person he's got his own he's got his own agenda and stuff and you can't control him and then some  you know ford pushes him away because of that instead of trusting him because he doesn't trust  anybody right that's his that's his issue is trust he he trusted his brother when he was a kid and  that fell apart and he's never trusted anybody in the same way since billford's come the closest but  even there there's a break in there yeah there's a break in there but you know there's no there's no  breaking point like no you know like the minute fiddle Ford challenges him it's that's it's over  you know it's like you don't challenge me like and that's because he thinks he's right about  everything which is you know one of his flaws is like he can't see that he is fallible um because  he hates the fallibility he's seen in his brother growing up he can't stand how fallible Stan is  he doesn't want to see that in himself even though it's there something that I thought was done very

00:44:16 [Hana  Hyperfixates]

very well um and you know this is one of my favorite parts of the show was everything related  to Ford I'll just say that um everything that Ford did every mistake he made uh you could string it  to something that he experienced that made me go I feel like I'll say this I feel like in similar  situations to what Ford went through I very well might make a lot of the same mistakes um of course  um you know the the idea of not trusting anyone stemming back to um his teenagers with Stan um  because if I was in Ford's shoes and I had told Stan yeah I have this big opportunity and Stan was  like I don't know but you're saying that if it doesn't work out we'll be okay um and then it  doesn't work out yeah I would also think the exact same thing that Ford did um and I could  also understand how that could shatter something because they really only seem to have each other  growing up that they were each other's only connection you and Alex used word ego a lot and I  would say that to some extent it definitely was ego but I also think that um this is in-depth character  analysis uh with a subjective point of view yeah of course um yeah I I think that what we see of  Ford growing up in a low-income neighborhood without a lot of opportunities and then he finally  gets an opportunity and it gets kind of snatched away so he has to work twice as hard in a low  income college trying to make it um  in you know the late 60s early 70s um and we'll talk about the timeline I have so many thoughts  about the timeline uh you know um about getting you know getting PhDs uh or at least one PhD uh  in itself is difficult uh all of that um I like personally when I was in college when I was in  University I had a job I had two internships and I had full-time classes at the same time  of course I I feel like um the idea of not trusting anyone and of really being ambitious  and wanting this project with the portal to work out wanting Glory I don't think it's just ego I  think it's also this um this ambition this need to succeed because you had to work so hard for those  opportunities yeah I found it so relatable on that level I thought it was absolutely fascinating I  love the way that you could find through  lines intended or otherwise um in in Ford's character and the way that he acts in future

00:46:52 [Rob Renzetti]

well I mean I thank you there's not a really question there so I'll just say that like just  uh and that's fine I I enjoyed listening to you and I think you're very intelligent yeah I read I  saw a little bit of one of your other videos I thought your analysis was great uh and uh  this is what you hopefully do when you write something or create something is that you leave  it um universal enough that people can see their own lives in it and and draw their own  conclusions and and draw conclusions that you didn't you help yourself have in mind um I think  all that's valid and I I don't disagree with you um I will say like yeah like I think I think Ford  thinks like well what was all that hard work for if not this right if this doesn't come to fruition  yeah and the dance I mean the answer I would give them is like the work is the work is the reward  itself you know what I mean like uh I I remember I remember um early in my career when I was I was  talking  I was talking to Gandy Tartakovsky my my friend we went to school together and you know when  when um you know we when Dexter became a series and then you know that series led to another  series for Gendy and I saw him I saw him work his ass off and work late every night and I said you  know the the reward for hard work is more hard work you know what I mean for good or for ill  the work is the work is the reward itself like so you know if it's if you're not enjoying it good to  enjoy it you know what I mean like um you know the the accolades if they come they're way down the line  and so um and they may not come um so oh here we have a cat cat cat will humble you I don't know  I'm full of someone when they're getting verbose but anyways yeah no I think I think uh board is  thinking like what is the point of all the stuff I've done if it doesn't lead to something grand  um end up I think that you know there's validity there yes

00:48:46 [Hana  Hyperfixates]

with an actual question i need to ask um uh i asked alex if there were any excerpts or cryptids  that got cut from journal three and he said that there were probably around 12 pages that were cut  first for space and that he didn't have those but that you might oh i might i don't have them i can't

00:49:05 [Rob Renzetti]

i can't i can't quote from them but i can i'll be happy to send you a message and tell and give you  some information on them if i can find them if i do have them i should i probably do i have i mean  i have i've kept a lot of them the process documents um on all this stuff somewhere so  i'll try and hunt them down for you but i don't the the all the cryptids was that was definitely  um that was more of hersha's domain i did some of that stuff but he like you know he's the one  who came up with them the platypus and all the other uh all the other crazy characters those

00:49:36 [Hana  Hyperfixates]

are mostly uh his doing um uh i'm just gonna jump in right here and say  that  Rob did email me back and while he did check and he did look for those pages  he wasn't able to find them it is yet another gravity falls mystery even though he didn't find  them and that is a bit of a bummer uh thank you so much for checking rob seriously i appreciate it  and who knows maybe one day they'll turn up somewhere uh you mentioned that alex was the one  who came up with all the codes um but i guess my question is do you know who specifically was  behind any of the illustrative codes or illustrative little details like the symbols  or the red rectangles uh i know that you had illustrators like andy gonzalez stephanie ramirez  do you know who specifically might have been behind some of those elements because i mean i

00:50:29 [Rob Renzetti]

know that andy andy andy andy andy is the one that set the look of the journal for the show  so okay i need the pages that you see that are like from the show those are definitely  andy generated that stuff got it um  yeah  think stephanie followed him up and might have done that kind of similar stuff on the pages she  she did um i don't know i don't remember how the extra illustrations were divvied up i think they  were just kind of spread between the two of them so i don't i don't know but andy is the one who  who evolved the initial look of the journal along with um ian world the art director i think he  probably had some input into that but um it was mostly andy's baby and um andy's superstar um  so yeah it would have been andy who generated that kind of general look of the show and it  would have been me uh going through those pages and going looking at like the version of the you  know of zombies or gnomes and going like okay what do i do with that little red squiggle in the  corner okay that could be text i guess what should it say yeah i did a lot of that work on the  existing pages where i'm like okay it's gonna there's gonna be a bit of a narrative but some  of this stuff's just gonna  be random and random jokes and like okay what do i have i write okay i'll figure that you know i'll  i'll i'll make that squiggle into this this this joke was um were there any pages that were from

00:51:54 [Hana  Hyperfixates]

the uh actual series that were a particular struggle to work into the uh the actual book  uh anything that tripped you up the mostly it was about where they should go um

00:52:08 [Rob Renzetti]

because i don't know i've told this to alex i don't know if he would have  it with you but what i did initially when we got the the gig to write the journal um  was i went through every episode and screenshot where whenever their journal appeared and i put  it up on a board yes and i like figured out like where in the book is the zombie page that we see  in the first episode where is you know where's the you know we know what the first pages are but  after that it gets ambiguous and thank god it gets quite ambiguous and there are like  does because our own inconsistency gave us a degree of freedom when we constructed the journal  that we could like roughly put the zombie page somewhere in the first half of the book you know  we the first pages dipper opens the journal and flips through the first pages those got to be the  first pages but then he starts flipping beyond it and we're like we can we can get away with that  stuff uh so the ambiguity and like there's there's some there's some pages like the the  zombie page shows up many times and sometimes it seems like it's like two pages in and sometimes  it seems like it's like 20 pages in so like that was what we needed to shift things around as far  as the text goes like the grim lob the grim loblin page was a problem because there had we had a joke  where there's this dumb water joke and a page turn so yeah um i i think i'm i think i'm the  one who figured that out and now that would fit into a larger narrative but like um alex  did like how we led into the grandma loblin page like how it was part of this journey that  fiddleford and ford took and like how they encountered the grim loblin he did those  pages then i took over the actual pages that appear in that in that episode and wrote wrote  some of how that would work and how we would make that that transition work but um you know that  otherwise it was just kind of like what's the narrative going to be because we wanted to tell  a story because one version of the journal would just be like here's a page about no  it's talking about gnomes there's a page about zombies it's talking about zombies but alex didn't  want that from the start when we first started talking about disney publishing he wanted to tell  you want to tell more of ford's story than we could tell in in in this series so we very much  had in mind that we were going to tell a story about ford and i made a point when i was doing  like when i was doing anything with the pages that existed i wanted to make sure if ford was  in there as a character that it wasn't just like and now ford's going to tell you about ghosts  it was about ford interacting with ghosts i did the ghost section like where we went through all  the different ghosts those are the characters i i came up those are the like the biggest intensity  the biggest concentration of characters that i came up with i came up with what you know that  ghost one was a casper ghost that ghost level two was basically the nasty ghost that used to torment  casper and that you know there's going to be a freddy ghost there's going to be you know ghosts  from ghostbusters they're going to make an appearance phantom buster fires that was that  was alex's joke he added that in  added that into my text but otherwise i wrote that wrote that page that's what he would do he  would like add add the dumb the dumb the dumb puns and dumb uh dumb fake movie titles into things  um but like uh you know the i made it a i made it a narrative about ford and like him going away to  um you know manly dan's cabin or whatever um and you know making it a story making it into a story  not just a list of different creatures yes um that was kind of our goal for the journal and i think  it's a really kind of a really interesting experience for the reader this also makes the

00:55:44 [Hana  Hyperfixates]

text really small because we both over-wrote small and in person a dyslexic person's nightmare

00:55:50 [Rob Renzetti]

i know it wasn't really like you really got to love the show to read this during this book but  yeah we know the fans are out there they would go through they would suffer through

Hana: Uh, I- So. Uh- what you said is interesting

Because there are pages of, um, journal 3, that don’t even work unless you assume that they were written on some level out of order

Uh, for example, the um, the- the Bill Cipher page over here 

Rob: Mhm

Where he’s like, “Bill is the most trusting, great guy ever” and then he scribbles it out and is like “Bill can’t be trusted, he sucks!”

Um, that only works in the page that it is, because it’s after Bill’s betrayal, if hypothetically he wrote out the sentence “Bill is wonderful”  just so he could cross it out for dramatic effect.

Uh, which uh, one, is a fun interpretation, I almost wanna believe that that’s the case

But it makes more sense, I think, for some pages, that he just opened to a random page and wrote something down. 

Um, at least for a couple of these excerpts. So you guys definitely had some wiggle room

Um, I had um- one of my videos was going through, um, like-

All of these post-its that you see here-

Rob: Wow

Hana: - are things that have some kind of date associated with them

Rob: right

Like “Phantom Bustifiers,” that would be Ghostbusters, what year did that come out, etcetera

Um, and trying to come up with, um, essentially a- a- find what year this took place, um, as well as a few other things.

And um, there are some- I- I told Alex this. There are some places where I could tell that you intentionally really had an idea of where you wanted it to be, and when you wanted things to be

And there are some elements where I’m sure they were accidental

For example, um, when Dipper is describing Stan and–Stan and Ford’s–but Stan’s Bar Mitzvah, he specifically says “Stan’s Bar Mitzvah when he was 12”

And in the Hebrew calendar, most Bar Mitzvahs happen when you’re- when uh, you’re 13

[Always Sunny Theme] 

 just happens to work where they would be 12 in 1964, when Sharpies are invented–I know y’all really thought about that [laughs]

[Always Sunny Theme] 

I’m glad it all worked out. [laughs]

Yes! And I told Alex this, and he looked stunned, so I’m sure it was intentional, completely, y’all really thought that through, I’m glad y’all busted out the Hebrew calendar for this, that’s amazing!

[laughter] Uh, I-

I will say, the only thing that I contributed was that I knew that it had to be a certain- there had to be- it had to be during certain years in the ‘80s that the events took place.

Hana: Yes

In the early ‘80s. And uh, that was as close as- and I was the only one who got it that specific.

And I don’t remember the details now, I know back at the time I was telling them, this happens now, this has to happen-

Hana: Yes

This has to happen- in- within this time period, because this happened in this time period, and this is how it all works.

Um, but that was the only thing I zeroed in on. I’m not here- I’m not- I’m not Jewish, I don’t know anything about the Hebrew calendar, so-

Hana: I’m not either, I just did a lot of googling

Well yeah, I mean yeah, you- you did it. I didn’t do the- I didn’t do the work.

Hana: Yes

Or, nobody did.

Hana: I did

We’re very- we’re very lucky on that show, we did a lot of stuff by the seat of our pants that we were actually able to make work.

Hana: Yes, uh,

Rob: So, I dunno.

Hana: I thought it was-

Rob: Bill was smiling down on us, is all I’ll say

Hana: Absolutely. Uh

Something that did strike me as very intentional was that the great flood that killed the lumberjacks happened in 1863

um, which if you go forward 150 years, when the curse of the lumberjacks was set in place, sets the show in 2013, and that was really one of the things that I really clung to, it made sense

Um, uh, so, uh, we get this vague timeline and I think that part of why it worked was because y’all had a very strong sense of, uh, of setting, and of the characters

and I think that when you have a strong sense of these things, other elements fall into place

Uh, and I just, uh, I just wanted to commend you on that, and tell you that it was just incredible to go through

Uh, I will say it only makes sense if I ignore some of the jokes

Like, Phantom Bustifiers makes no sense because that would’ve been well after 1983, um, you know-

Maybe, well I don’t know what movie you’re talking about in the real world

Hana: Exactly!

But Phantom Bustifiers can come out any time we want it to

Exactly! That was the rule I set, was if an actual name- like if Ronald Reagan is mentioned hypothetically, then I stick to that 

Rob: Yes

Hana: Um, if Carl Sagan is mentioned and Cosmos is referenced, I stick to that

Um, but if Phantom- uh, I don’t know when Phantom Bustifiers came out, I have no idea what you’re talking about

Rob: That’s right

And so I was able to have a lot of wiggle room

The thing that actually helped set it in um- in my- in my timeline, uh, the events happening after- right after January, or during January 1983, was um

1, the January 17th page when Fiddleford is like “please, stop this project, um, I’m begging you”

um, and also the fact that Ford mentions the song, um, in the blacklight edition he mentions the song “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” by The Eurythmics, which came out early January 1983

Um, and I know you didn’t do the blacklight edition, but it- it all makes sense, I connected the dots

Um, it was- it was great. Um, so

Rob: I’m glad. I’m glad it all worked out.

Hana: Um, when figuring out the- um, the “present day,” the 2013, like the Dipper and Mabel pages, um

The- the timeline needs to be stretched in some places, a lot of fans have noticed that

For example, Soos’s birthday doesn’t land where it is in the show, like in the show it’s shown to be, I believe, July 13th, and the way that it’s written chronologically, it can’t land on that page

Uh, did you have more difficulties because you had some set-in-stone idea-

because you only had 3 months to work with instead of all of the early ‘80s

Did you have more difficulties with timing out and spacing out the Dipper and Mabel pages?

A little bit, I mean we tried to keep things roughly how we showed them on the show, but I think we- you know, we fudged some stuff and wiggled around a little bit.

It was less difficult- it was more um- the biggest challenge on that section was just like changing the tone

And like uh, going from this kind of super serious–uh, but while still being funny–like this person who takes themself-

I mean, Dipper takes himself too seriously too, so- right, so right? So there’s the- there’s the link

But Ford is like, you know, inviv- involved in all this operatic stuff, and the adventures of the kids are necessarily sillier.

But I thought it would be a nice break for the reader to kind of take a breather from all that, and go and-

and kind of just give them different angles and different views of stuff that they saw, you know, you saw most of these adventures, and give them a little extra stuff, like-

Um, the whole experience with the- the Larry King wax head, in- in the um, you know, in the bowels of the Mystery Shack [Hana: Yes]

That was something I wrote, and I thought like, I think it was something Hirsch had- Hirsch had thought about it and like, wanting- wanting to have done that in the show, and not being able to figure out how to fit it in

And I’m like, well I think that would be great- that’ll be a great few pages in the journal, so let’s do it.

Um, because the other thing about this, or the other thing that gave us freedom but which also was a huge challenge was that like

We knew the journal- the printed journal was going to be so much larger, and though we had the pages from the show, there was so much more to do, and so much more to fill in.

Um, so we had a lot of room, and there was some points where I was like, we just need to come up with ideas to fill these- the number of pages we have.

Um, and that was the challenge. But like, there was- that was also the opportunity to do fun stuff, like an extra adventure with Larry King’s head [Hana: Yes]

Hana: Was there ever anything that you wanted to put into Journal 3 that didn’t quite fit because of the audience, or because of Disney standards and practices?

Uh, the- the sequences I’m thinking about specifically are like, the multiverse sequences, because uh

Rob: Mhm

Hana: Before Journal 3 came out, I always figured they were- I- maybe this is just the fan in me wanting things to be specifically dramatic for fanfiction and things like that

But I pictured what Ford going through would be so much more of a torment

Um, especially because we know he was being hunted down by Bill and Bill’s goons that entire time 

Rob: right

Hana: Um, so uh, was there ever anything that you wanted to put in that you ultimately pulled back on because of the intended audience?

Rob:Um, I don’t think so, but I mean I’ll definitely look back at the un- the unfinished versions of things to see.

Um, I think we’re- I mean, again, like um… we wanted things to be fun, so like, I think those- there are definitely more traumatic worlds that Ford visited, we just didn’t put those in.

I would’ve loved- I mean, I could’ve done a whole book on- we could’ve done a whole series on Ford’s adventures in the multiverse, like-

in fact I think we actually talked about it at some point. You know, doing a spin-off- do could do a spin-off- we could do a spin-off series of Ford- of Ford’s adventures in the multiverse.

Um, and you know, this was back before multiverses were like, “everybody let’s all do multiverse- let’s have- everybody’s gonna have their multiverse now!”

You invented- you guys inspired Marvel, I think that’s great [laughs]

Maybe, who knows [laughs]

But you know, like, multiverses are a concept we didn’t come up with, but like- I love- I mean, I love doing that stuff.

I mean, the whole M dimension  was gonna be uh, you know, it was a dumb joke that we were gonna try and make a whole episode out of and it just never- it just didn’t work out

So like, I was like, I’m not letting that, you know, go to the wayside, I wanna do some version of that.

Um, you know, I wanna do some version of- it was gonna be Mabel going to the M dimension, but I wanted to do something like that.

You know, uh, I really did enjoy writing those pages, ‘cause it was just like- it was like a free pass

You know, like, come up with some stuff, it’s nothing- it’s nothing that we would experience in the show, so it’s just expanding the- expanding um, the canon, and- and- and doing stuff that’s just like, whatever you know

And I was like, if Hirsch doesn’t like it he’ll cut it out, you know, and so when he was really pleased with that section, I was very gratified, and it was very exciting to see all that stuff 

Um, ‘cause again, like, the thrill of this kind of book, um, even though we’re linking everything together, like, the concept only has to hold up for a few pages, you know what I mean?

Like, you don’t have to dive deep into the logic of the M universe and find how it doesn’t work, it’s just a series of dumb gags, and you will be through it in a couple of pages, so don’t worry- don’t think too hard about it [laughs] just move on.

And- and I definitely loved having Ford be frustrated at how stupid some of these places were, and be like, “this doesn’t make an- why does this universe exist, it doesn’t make sense”

Hana:  Absolutely. I- I absolutely love that section. Something that uh, a lot of the fandom found some level of fascination with was the Oracle, and uh- um, the lore behind the Axolotl- I feel like I’m not pronouncing that right. Um-

I think that’s the old pronunciation, I don’t know what the new pronunciation is. 

Hana: Ooh man, I gotta figure that out. 

Rob: It was like, someone else was like, “this is how you pronounce it now, and I’m like, okay but I’ll never remember that.”

Hana: Fair. Something interesting about the Oracle- um, you–and I believe Alex has also mentioned that the Oracle is intended as kind of, um, lost love possible, like a romance thing 

Rob: yeah

Hana: I- I hate to break it to y’all, but there are thousands of shipping fanfictions for Gravity Falls on Archiveofourown, the biggest fanfiction website uh, on- on the internet right now, and of those thousands of shipping Gravity Falls fics, exactly 2 of them are Ford x Oracle. This is not a ship that caught on.

Rob: [laughs] that’s alright

People- I- I feel like the majority of-

Hana: Rob: it caught on in my head.

[Laughter]

Hana: You wrote those 2.

Rob: That’s right. It’s good, I- I mean look, Ford could have multiple loves, it doesn’t have- he’s gone to multiple universes [Hana: of course] this is just one that might have been simpler- might have been someone he could’ve been happy with. But please, tell me more.

 It’s fascinating because um, uh, like, there are more ship fics for- there’s a one a- there’s a one-off joke in uh, the comics about Ford–and I know you didn’t write the comics–but when Ford mentions that he dated a siren once, there’s a lot of fics about Ford x Siren 

Rob: I bet. Sure

Hana: and all of those siren fics, by the way, are- he’s a male siren, and Ford is gay, and- all of them

I think that Ford fans, um, we tend to fixate on the elements of Ford of feeling ostracized, not really part of society, feeling on the outskirts

it’s- it’s the X-men idea, you know, where um, these differences are representative of um, something that we find relatable, and in this case queerness, being part of the LGBTQIA+ community 

Rob: sure

Hana: Uh, which I- I know wasn’t necessarily intended, but uh, I do find it fascinating- this is the only instance I can think of in any of the fandoms I’ve interacted with where a ship was proposed by uh, the writers, um, and completely ignored. Just completely sidelined.

Rob: And I’m not- I’m not hurt. I’m not hurt by it, that’s okay.

Hana: I think that’s so funny. I wanted to bring that up because uh, uh, I’ve never seen it happen before, uh, and [laughs] I just wanted to let you know that that’s an anomaly.

That- what you’ve done, I’ve never seen before in anything-

Rob: I’m glad I’ve done something so unpopular. [laughs]

Hana: Was the Oracle page yours, or was it Hirsch, or was it a combination? 

No, it was- I think it was- I think I- I started that page, and I think he probably came in and wrote some stuff in there, I haven’t read it in a long time

But um, there was- I mean there was also the idea that- the idea that originated with Alex was the idea that um, you know, Ford- Ford had the opportunity to live a more normal or regular life, and he const- uh, you know, a life where he did trust somebody, where he made a connection, and he was constantly turning away from that.

Um, so you know, what he did with his brother, what he did with Fiddleford, he did multi- probably did multiple times in the multiverse.

Where there were places he could’ve settled down and lived a legitimate life, um, but he was too set on the- the fact that Bill had thrown him off course, that Bill had betrayed him, that was something that he couldn’t let go.

Um, and that he was going to have to, you know, he was- that was his whole direction, was to get back there and- and fix things.

For selfish and non-selfish reasons. He didn’t want Bill to be unleashed, and he didn’t- and he didn’t want Bill to get the better of him.

Hana: His relationship with Bill is so interesting, because um, it has a lot of the hallmarks of uh, of like an abusive partner in a way where Bill was telling him like, you know, “Fiddleford, um, I don’t think you can trust him anymore”

and eventually that seed kind of sits in Ford’s brain, where uh, he writes it in code a few times, “My Muse thinks that F can’t be trusted with this” or “My Muse thinks that F can’t quite handle the truth”

And it begins kind of um, seeping in there 

And it very much read to me, uh, almost like an abusive friend, or an abusive partner in a way, where, um, Bill is purposefully having Ford distance people 

Rob: Oh for sure.

Hana: Which is already falling- like, it falls in line with Ford’s own proclivities since what happened with Stan, like he already has that proclivity to do it

But Bill, uh- like, I think abusive friends or partners or any kind of abusive person in one’s life kind of plays on those insecurities and it really emphasizes them

And um, you know, despite, I think- now, this isn’t a question, I’m just rambling now, but-

Rob: Ramble away. I mean, I’ve done my share, and it’s your turn

Hana: It’s my turn! [laughs]

Uh, despite um, Ford’s, I think, you know, maybe- righteous cause of wanting to rid the universe of Bill, uh, I think in a way, uh, Bill has in a way, so much emphasized that proclivity for unhelpful behavior, it’s self-destructive, uh, and- 

I think that that’s so cool. It-  did y’all have any thoughts of making Bill kind of like this abusive friend, abusive- abusive mentor, uh, when y’all were writing it?

I don’t know, I mean I think that was always- that’s probably- you know, that’s there, I mean, nobody j- um, when we see Bill in this series he’s never really trusted by anybody, right? 

You know, he’s not trusted the way that Ford trusted him. You know, for all of Dipper’s inferior- inferiority complex when it comes to Ford, like, he never fell for Bill’s BS. 

Um, and I think again, it goes- it relates to Ford’s ego, that he thinks like, he’s so special that some- an interdimensional muse is gonna pick him out of humanity to mentor, and to give the secr- to help him discover the secrets of the universe, and the secret to his, you know, grand theory- grand unified theory of weirdness, all that kind of pretentious stuff

Um, you know, like, Ford hasn’t trusted anybody and yet he trusts this crazy interdimensional being, maybe because he’s, you know, he’s not human, you know, he’s something that um, Ford can look at as somehow superior, beyond man, he strives himself to be beyond man, to be more than man is, because of his extra finger and the fact that he is an outsider and strange.

Um, so I think it’s there, I don’t think it was ever s- like, really um… uh, talked about out loud or anything like that, but uh, it definitely factors into things

And yeah, the- I mean, one of the biggest conundrums in the journal as it’s written is how do we- how can we write these pages and still have Dipper read this book, and like, not know all this stuff

and the fact that we, you know, we’d say like, “oh some of the pages were gone and now they’re restored”

Like, uh, again, like, magic can- magic comes to the rescue, and- and saves us.

Um, but yeah no, that’s one of my favorite parts of the book, that the- the- extrapolating the relationship between um… Bill and Ford, and getting to see more insight into that, and how it all works.

I love the- I love the pages after um, he’s realized that Bill’s betrayed him, and he’s kind of just paranoid 

Hana: Like this one.

Rob: Yeah, well that’s amazing, right?

But the idea of when he- I think I wrote these pages when he goes to the diner, and he’s like, seeing- he seems to be seeing Bill everywhere

That is my favorite section. The paranoid era of Ford. It’s- it’s my favorite. Um, I love the way it’s written, I-

oh, I’m curious, who wrote the scribble page? Who wrote- who drew, I guess, this page out?

Uh, that was- I think that was- I think that was Hirsch, and I think he might’ve actually sketched that.

Hana: That’s amazing

Yeah, that was uh, that was uh, that was uh, yeah, we wanted to kind of blow the- blow things out in the middle and kind of make it-

you know, everything’s been so controlled, right, and Ford’s so- like, you’ve got this miniature- like, sometimes too small cursive writing, and all the very, you know, and then to get to that page, you can see like, the- the- the- you can kind of read the emotions on the page, like that’s just like, rage, right, like that’s just like rage and sorrow and betrayal and everything. It’s great. It’s a great page.

Hana:  Speaking of Ford’s, um, paranoid descent. Um, uh-

So I know you did not work on the blacklight edition, that you didn’t work on the special edition

I wish I had, but no.

I- that’s what I was gonna ask! I wanted to ask, if you had worked on the blacklight edition, um, is there anything that you would include, in your fan- in your fan canon of the blacklight

No yeah I can’t- I- I would be bringing- I would be making it up here if I said there was.

‘Cause again, I knew I wasn’t gonna be working on it, so I didn’t really think beyond that

And I was curious to see it as mu- as much as anybody else, and really enjoyed going through it of course

And I enjoyed seeing the caricature of me as well [laughs]

Hana: Yes! Yes, the grim reaper!

I am the grim reaper, you didn’t know but I am- I am the- I am the angel of death

Hana: That’s how I know you [laughs]

Rob: Well, you’ll be visited- you’ll see me soon enough.

Hana: I believe it.

Rob: In that incarnation.

Hana: I’m stressed enough, I believe it.

Rob: Um, but no, I don’t- I can’t say that I do have anything in mind for that.

But yeah I mean that’s tricky right, because you can only do so much in trying to fit it in and all that kind of stuff.

Um, yeah, you know- again, I’m just thrilled there’s a blacklight edition and that I actually got to have a couple of ‘em.

Hana:  I- oh my gosh, I- it’s one of- it’s my prized possession. 

Rob: Mine’s on display, I have- I have a shelf with all all- one copy of all the books I’ve written, and that one’s um-

That- the- you’re just seeing the spines of most of them, and in the corner I have it facing forward so you get to see the fancy cover and all that.

I’d be terrified of my cats ruining it. They- they- this one tends to just get his claws on everything I love.

I hear, I’ve got a pet rabbit and he eats everything. But this is too far up for him to reach.

I- oh, I used to have a pet rabbit- he passed away a few years ago, his name was Chiyami, and uh, he was- he was my baby boy. Uh, so, yeah no I hear you.

I’ve had three rabbits and they’ve all been delightful pets, I love them. I love love love rabbits.

Hana: He loved chewing.

My wife had a rabbit as a kid. Oh yeah they love chewing, you’ve gotta give them stuff to chew.

Hana: Yeah, or else-

If you don’t give them stuff they can chew, they’re gonna chew stuff you don’t want them to.

Yeah, like- like computer cords, or my clothing.

My rabbits have all been pretty good about cords, we keep them away as much as possible, but they’re not too bad.

But we give ‘em- we give ‘em good stuff they’re supposed to chew.

This current one, our current rabbit, Digby Flopball, he eats the- he will start eating the living room carpet

you’ve gotta watch him for that, cause uh, that’s not good for him. But uh, generally he’s a pretty well-behaved boy.

My uh, our first- our first rabbit- girl rabbit Angel, she- she had a pair of jeans which were our art project, and she just chewed little holes. By the time she’d passed away, they were like-

They were like a new- a new creation. The pair of jeans just like- little- little diamond-shaped holes all running up all and down them.

I see, yes. Put that- put that in a frame. It’s art. It’s constellations. [Rob: exactly]

Um, so- back to my questions. Especially because we have thirty minutes left. [Rob: oh right]

I’m really glad I moved the meeting.

Um, uh, I’ll try to be very choosy about the- about the last few.

Um- oh, uh, did you ever put thought- um, did you ever put thought behind what Stan would have thought reading parts of the journal?

I know that- you know, we have this blanket of “well, some parts are ruined, some parts are faded”

But Ford says some things in here about Stan specifically, and I’m wondering if you ever thought “what would Stan think when he reads this?” if he did.

Yeah, you know, that’s a good question, and it’s not something I thought about. I’d be curious- I mean I dunno if Stan-

Stan only has- how long has he had Journal 3 for? Cause he grabs it from- he grabs it from Dipper [Hana: Yeah]

I mean, you know better than me ‘cause you’ve done a lot of this timeline stuff

I dunno how long he has- has to read it, or how much- how often he would’ve had a chance to dig into it

I think he’s probably very paranoid about having it, and afraid that Dipper’s gonna see, uh, you know

Like, I don’t think he’s um, I don’t know if he really had a chance to dig into it.

I think he’d be… I mean I think it would just be- it would just confirm all the things he thinks about his- his brother, right, all the…

That his brother didn’t really respect him, and that his brother thought he was nothing more than a, you know, um, you know, a schlub, a conman. You know, not worthy.

Um, to me that’s why I love the end of the journal, and them reconciling.

Um, and- all that stuff that we didn’t have a chance to fit into the end of the show.

Again, like we had the opportunity in the journal to kind of, linger on those moments more, and have the two brothers, um, reconciled in a more full manner.

Um, I mean to me that’s- I mean, really, Stan- Stan’s life has been… it’s been… sad, and lonely, since- he really…

his brother was his best friend, and he loved him so, and I don’t think, you know, I don’t think any other relationship ever worked out for him, because of what happened between him and his brother.

Um, and uh, he’s lucky that Dipper and Mabel came to visit him for the summer, because they are instrumental in healing his life, and bringing him and his brother back together.

Um, but you know, those- some of those- yeah, some of those- some of those entries by Ford talking about his brother… Stan wouldn’t- Stan would probably be- he would be pissed off, angry, curse his brother, and then, you know-

Hana: Continue trying to save him, yeah.

Well, and then- but then and then- but then in like a- in a- in a silent moment, being like, “eh, that’s fair.”

Like, he’d be like, yeah that’s right. You know, he’s not wrong, he’s not- he’s not wrong about me.

He didn’t have to write it, he didn’t have to write it down, but he’s not wrong.

He didn’t need to write it in his scientific journal/diary.

Yeah, I mean, why is that in here? I mean what- and like, you know.

Hana: I do love that this is like-

It’s like saying I have excessive body odor, what- who needs to know that? Just keep it to yourself.

Hana: Yes. I do love that Journal 3 is equal parts diary and scientific journal.

Um, one of the- something that uh, me and- a couple of my friends had clocked, is that-

There are parts of it that are very much like, emulating a scientific journal, like they- they say “figure c” next to an image or something.

But there is oftentimes not a “figure a” or a “figure b,” so it’s just a figure c?

Rob: That’s right.

Hana: Um, and also like he talks about his childhood crush on uh, I think it was Cathy Crenshaw, uh, you know, like

This is- this is- this is his diary, and it’s my favorite thing.

Rob: I think if you saw Journal 1 and Journal 2 they’d be more together. [laughs] They’d be more- they’d be more straight.

But um, at this point he’s just relaxed into it, and is kind of like, just using it for whatever occurs to him.

I mean yeah, I’m not surprised that like- there’s not like a grocery list on one of the pages or something, you know what I mean? Like there’s probably-

I mean he does have a reminder to return a library book

Yeah, I mean exactly, right? So like you know, like, “pick up your laundry,” like that kind of stuff. He’s just using this for everything.

Hana: Yeah. There is a couple of specific lines I wanted to ask you about, and actually, speaking of the library book, the date- I’m trying to find the exact- I’m trying to- yes!

So it says on one page, “return library book, 8/11” The date is different in the show. Was there a reason for that?
I don’t know. No, probably not. [laughs]

I love that. Okay.

I don’t know why that changed, I don’t remember that- I don’t think I had anything to do with-

I didn’t have anything to do with that. That’s Hirsch, he made the mistake.

Uh, no, I don’t really remember that.

[laughter]

Hana: That’s perfectly fair. Um, and-

Rob:There was no reason for that- no, yeah, like-

That’s the thing about Alex and all his codes and secret hints and messages and whatever, you think everything means something.\

And that’s the beauty of setting up your fans to think everything means something, is like some things just don’t mean anything.

Rob: That’s the thing that makes me so annoyed when someone’s like “you’re overanalyzing a children’s cartoon”

I’m like “no, they want me to, they asked me to, they put backwards messages in there.” 

Rob: Well yeah, we do, we’re inviting you to overanalyze.

Hana: Yes

Rob: Yeah, I mean that was Hirsch’s genius, to get the kids- to get the fans involved in the show to that extent.

Tag yourself, I’m one of the kids.

Yeah! Yeah. I mean, I get it.

I- if the show had come along when I was a kid, I would’ve been so… consumed by it, of course.

The joke is I was eighteen. I was fully grown when I fell into it.

I mean, you know. Look, one of the reasons I wanted to work on the show was because I saw the pilot and fell in love with the- the characters and the idea

And thought like, Hirsch has got… he’s got… this is gonna be great, he’s got… this is gonna be a great show, I wanna be a part of it.

Hana: Yeah. It has the same fan-fueled mystery elements that Lost did, only the ending is better.

[laughter]

Well thank you. I mean that’s- that’s damning us with [fake] praise, but no uh, y’know, uh, yeah, Lost kinda fell apart there didn’t it.

Hana: A little bit. 

Rob: I was hugely- I love- I loved Lost. 

Hana: I loved it too. I’m still an apologist for the ending, I don’t think it’s as bad as people think it is, uh-

Well you know, the- I think the problem was- is like, they felt like they had an ending, and people figured it out, so they had to change it

Like, we knew where we were going with Journal- with the ending, if people figured it out-

we did everything we could to like, you know, including the whole Fiddleford fake-out, like, to push people off the scent

But like, if people figure it out they figure it out, we’re not gonna- we know the story we wanna tell, we’re not gonna change it ‘cause some fan somewhere figures it out.

Like, twenty years ago we would’ve never known that, and nobody else would know it either, ‘cause the internet didn’t exist

and like people couldn’t talk to themselves- to each-other the way they do now.

And like, you know, so what if someone figures it out?

Like, there’s other smart people in the world, it’s like, that’s like the whole thing is like- that’s becoming like Stanford, like being like “I’m the best, and nobody can approach me”

Like yeah no, there’s lots of people that know story and understand how things work, and they may-

They may figure it out. But like, some people it’s gonna be a huge surprise.

And for the people who figured it out, they’ll still enjoy it. Like, they’ll enjoy being right.

So like, don’t change the story you’re gonna tell because some people figured it out and you’ve gotta be the cleverest kid in class

Just tell the story you wanna tell, tell the story that’s right for your characters

Like, if someone discovers- figures out the ending, so be it.

Like I’ve got- there are- there are- there are things that will be revealed in book two and book three in my series, and if someone figured it out

One, I’ll probably never know about it, and two, good for you!

I ga- I gave you clues, the clues are there, you can figure it out, if you know-

It’s a stretch, but you- the clues are laid there, so you can figure out the twist if you want to,

but, um, you know, if you think about it deeply enough, but if you do, kudos.

Hana: Part of the traveling through the multiverse section was the “better world AU” where Ford realizes that he’s become a huge, um- a huge science superstar, everything he’s ever wanted to be.

Um, I have a few questions about this world.

I asked Alex Hirsch for his headcanon, there was a section of our interview, uh, you’ll see, where I ask him headcanons.

Not canon, headcanons. That way he felt less pressure in saying something, [Rob: laughs] uh, and also it gave some leeway to fandom, because I do think sometimes fans get very stuck on what the creators have to say, and it-

At the risk of ruining their own fun in the sandbox. So um, this is also-

By the way, anything I ask you as well, like, feel free to consider it a headcanon.

So- So I guess I wanted to know what headcanons you had about the Better World AU, and also, what happened to Stan in that universe after he took Journal 3 and hid it somewhere in the far reaches of this world?

Good question, I don’t know. Um, I don’t think about these things.

[Hana: laughs]

Um, you know, I write what- I read- I write what needs to be written, and then like, you know, it’s not that I don’t- I wouldn’t enjoy thinking about it, but like, you know… that I move on to the next show and I use my creative energy to come up with stuff for that. 

But I like the stuff you’re talking about with it. I mean yeah, it’d be- I think it’d be really interesting to pursue that.

Like, would Stan- is Stan- I think maybe… I like to think that Stan, um, gets his shit together.

Not that he comes back and he and Ford are rec- reconciled, probably that never can happen

But probably that he extracts some price from his brother, especially when his brother becomes a success, that like, Stan gets set up in some way.

Like, in that Ford is maybe happy to do it. Like, you know, like, it’s more transnational, like, “well, you- you hid the journal for me” and Stan’s like [Stan voice] “unless you want me to bring that back and unearth that thing, how about a little- how about a little daily allowance for your brother here”

That’s a pretty good Stan

Well it’s- you know, I used to- I used to read Stan sometimes in the scripts too.

Amazing.

So, y’know, uh- yeah, why not, like you know, like, maybe Stan opens his own uh, Myster- uh, a different Mystery Shack somewhere else, who knows?

Or the- or he, you know, he open- he um, y’know I was uh- uh, y’know, I don’t- I’m trying to remember how much of this is headcanon and how much actually exists-

Like, there’s part of me that like, but like, he was a rival to Bobby Renzobbi, like he became like a successful ri- rival to Bobby Renzobbi and started his own kind of like, you know um

you know uh, “buy this- buy this through my television commercial,” like, a successful venture like Bobby Renzobbi is doing, with lots of different products sold through the television.

Um, you know, uh… I dunno. I think Stan- I think Stan in that world is probably doing better than Stan in- in our world does, until they’re reconciled. 

You know, because- because he- because he can hold something over his brother’s head.

Uh, um… okay. Um, so this is related to “My Life as a Teenage Robot,” which I’ve been rewatching.

I’ve only got through season one of my rewatch before this uh, before this interview, but I wanted to re-immerse myself into the world 

Rob: oh, thank you

Hana:  I somehow got- like, halfway through the theme song I realized, “I know this song!”

Um, and I didn’t even think I remembered the theme song, ‘cause I haven’t really en-

I’m not gonna pretend I’ve engaged with it completely over the years ‘cause I haven’t. 

That’s fine, it was not a success when it was on the air, so I don’t expect people- a lot of people are familiar with it.

It should’ve been! It’s incredible!

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Uh, it’s incredible. Uh, I will say though– and I know that you’ve talked about this a little bit on twitter-

Um, uh, I was struck by how many um, how many elements of trans subtext could be found in Jenny.

Uh, like literally the first thing she says to her mom is, “I changed my name to Jenny, it’s not XJ9, call me by the name I choose.”

Uh, you know, um, there’s… attempting throughout to pass as a real girl.

Um, and how people respond to that based on the varying levels of success that she has with it, especially with that like- with that doll suit that uh, she puts on.

Um, uh, and seeing the way society interacts with her as a result.

It is- it’s fascinating. It’s- especially cool considering I know that you’ve said on twitter

that while you welcome those trans headcanons, they weren’t intentional, and you don’t wanna pretend that they were. [Rob: right]

Uh, between Jenny and also Stanford, um, Stanford Pines, uh, there’s so many elements where fans pick up on it and go “this feels like a nugget of truth is in there, a nugget of trans or queer or gay experiences in this”

Um, the queer-coding, incidental or not, is… off the charts. Um, and I guess I wanted to ask you, as the artist behind- or at least partially behind these characterizations, um, how much of that do you think-

Or rather, do you think that this is just a new part of fandom where teens and people who grew up without this representation are seeking it in the things that they love, or do you think that there is… how do I phrase this… 

Do you think that there is something about the characters that you like to write, um, that lends itself to these kinds of headcanons?

I mean, uh, I- well let’s say ye- let’s say yes to the second part of the question. 

Um yeah, well here’s the thing. I already talked about like, how I struggled with my identity as a- as a kid, as a- as a- as a boy, and what it meant to be masculine back then

and what you were supposed to be knowledgeable about what you’re supposed to be good at.

And um… I mean, I think that generally you’re just- you’re talking about the struggle with identity, right?

Which you know, I’m- I’m- I’m straight, I’m cis, I’m white, I don’t- I’ve- I’ve had it easier than anybody in our culture that struggles with identity, and yet I still struggled, y’know, growing up.

And uh, y’know, that struggle- the struggles I went through gave me a strong sense of who I am, and I’ve had that strong sense for a very long time.

Um, but, I can’t imagine what it would be like to bring um, gender, and- and all the things that go along with it into the mix, because that was never- that was never a struggle for me.

I always knew I was straight, I never- it never- I never thought like, “maybe I’m gay, maybe I’m bi, maybe I’m in the wrong y’know, my body is, I’ve been identified wrong and I’m trans” 

And then- not that those concepts- those concepts- some of those concepts were up that I can’t say that trans was out there when I was a kid, um, but you know, at least I didn’t encounter it.

Um, but uh- but still, identity, like the- every- every adult that’s- every human that’s worth their salt, that I would want to know, struggles with their identity. 

And struggl- on some level. And like I said, it’s much easier than- than- than the LGBTQ community.

Um, you know, but those- to me those are universal- that’s a universal struggle, like, “who am I? How do I fit into the world? Who do I want to be with, who do I want to love, who are my people?”

All these are questions that people struggle with.

So, and- you- it really comes to a fore in your teen years, right? It really comes- that’s like-

you are literally changing, you see yourself changing, like, yeah when you’re a kid and you go like, “I’m five and now I’m six and I’m so much taller than I was when I was five!” like, but then when like, it’s like, “why is there hair down there, why is this- what’s happening to my voice? Why has this part of my body gotten huge, and the other parts- like, what- I’m becoming this weird monster,” in the middle of pubert- like you know, when you’re struggling with all that.

So that’s what- that’s where Jenny is located, right? She’s been designed to be a teenager. How horrible for her [laughs]

Like, you know what I mean? How horrible to be stuck in those years, and have to struggle with all that stuff 

Hana: it’s a shame, yeah

Rob: So… I never- trans never entered my head. It- I can’t say that it did. But I’m not surprised that it did.

It’s something that is there, that’s coded into the character, that people- that trans people see. That they see- that they see that representation.

Now are people- so in my case yeah, that representation wasn’t meant to be there, but it’s there.

You know what I mean? It’s not- I created it, that doesn’t matter what I intended. I don’t- I never- and this is what I said on twitter, I don’t subscri- I don’t subscribe to the idea that as the creator of something you are the final interpreter of what it means.

The whole point of creating something and putting it out into the world is you want other people to interact with it and engage with it.

Enjoy it, see something of themselves in it, see something valid in it, see- not that you’re telling lessons, it’s mostly meant as entertainment, but like, entertainment resonates and means something to some people if it’s relatable, if you get into-

Like, you can tell- there’s plenty of shows out there that are fun to watch and you never really care about the characters, or you never identify with the characters

but to me, the things that I have enjoyed the most, are all character-based, that- meaning that like, the humor, the stories, they- they precede from who the characters are. 

So in that kind of entertainment, you want the audience to be invested in the characters.

So yeah, I’m very pleased that the trans community has embraced Jenny as a character, and that they see themselves in her

Because it means they’ve enjoyed the show and they’ve- they’ve- and I’ve had some level of success in- commuting something that can be universally identified as part of the human experience.

Hana:  Absolutely. I think- it kind of stunned me upon rewatch how um, I would say stronger and more positive the representation, however unintentional it is, is a lot better than a lot of canonically trans characters and queer characters that I’ve interacted with, um, in my time of consuming television.

And so uh, that struck me as really interesting, and I think that’s fascinating. 

Rob: thank you.

Hana: Well I mean here’s the thing- here’s the thing about the show. 

Jenny’s awesome. She doesn’t realize it, she doesn’t realize how cool she is. And the fact that she’s different from everybody is the source of her strength.

And part of her journey is supposed to be that she- she becomes comfortable with who she is and what she is.

And- not that she’s- not that like, it’s not valid to try to change yourself or to- to move- she- she grows the way that- just the way that she grows is she grows to realize that she’s got some great stuff about her.

And you know, the Escape From Cluster Prime movie was kind of like, that’s kind of like her, that’s where she realizes

Like, you are now in a world where you can blend in, you can be just like everybody else

You’re a robot, everybody else in this world is a robot, you can live a normal- “normal” life here, you can be normal. And she still chooses to be a superhero.

She- she still chooses to go out of her way to help people, to save the other robots when they’re in trouble.

She becomes a super on cluster prime. Like, this is who you were meant to be, this is not only who you were designed to be, it’s who you want to be.

You are, you are given the freedom to be something else and you still choose to be this.

So this is part of who you are, Jenny, and she, you know, she comes to realize that.

Um, so you know, that’s the show- from the show’s perspective, my perspective, characters in the show’s perspective, Brad and Tuck, they- they think she’s awesome.

Sheldon thinks she’s awesome. Her mom thinks she’s awesome, even though she- she, you know, she criticizes her all the time, but she’s criticizing her for falling short of what she’s capable of.

Yeah. Okay, I’m gonna try to do some speedrun yes or no questions.

Okay. I’ll be quie- I’ll be quick. Not quiet, but quick.

[Laughs] Um, this is absolutely fine. I’ve loved the answers I’ve gotten so far, thank you so much.

You’re very welcome.

Um, for um, the search for the blind eye website that launched between season one and season two, do you know anything about that?

I mean no, that was mostly- that was Hirsch’s baby, but it was um-

Hirsch did- was behind it. I don’t think that’s ever been-

I think- I think- oh maybe I- maybe I- I dunno. I assume he would be behind it.

[laughs] the instant backtrack of [I dunno sound]

Honestly, I assumed it was something- I don’t really know- I know nothing about it is what I should say. [Hana: I see]

But I think- I think that was- I think that might’ve been generated by- by Hirsch.

That was one of the questions we didn’t get a chance to ask because of time.

If he dis- if he dis- if he disavows it then I disavow it on his behalf, but I think- I think that was probably meant to um, meant to just keep interest up, because we knew we were gonna have a long time between season one and season two ‘cause it took us so long to create these shows.

Amazing. Um, thank you.

Uh, for Journal- uh, I mentioned Journal 3 cut pages or cut concepts. Do you have any similar concepts for Dipper and Mabel’s Guide to Mystery and Non-Stop Fun?

Yeah, yeah but those were- I mean, those were pretty silly. It’s- it’s a much lighter book, and nothing- nothing so crazy great that it’s worth talking about. And I can’t remember it, honestly.

But again, I had the rough pages for all that stuff, and I would know what the outcome- out concepts were.

They were- they were- they were- they were pretty um- they were pretty silly. Most- probably most of them were just like, dupes of ideas that we did.

Hana: Down the line.

Rob: Yeah, um, you know, yeah.

Or in the actual book itself, like “ehh, these kind of pages are both similar, and this is a better version, so let’s cut the other one.”

Okay. Alright, thanks. Um, did you-

I don’t keep all this stuff in my head, I can’t remember it all.

That’s fair. Um, for um. I know that the Book of Bill is coming out.

Um, and I know that there’s going to be, at least advertised, some lost Journal 3 pages.\

Oh, I didn’t- haven’t heard that.

So if you’re asking me a question about it, I have no idea about it.

Yeah, I thought I saw it in the, um, description. I think on Barnes & Noble. Um, uh, so. 

That’s a cool idea.

Yeah, uh. [laughs] Well my question was going to be, did you have any involvement at all in Book of Bill, and if not, is there anything you wanna see in it?

I mean uh, I- there’s plenty I wanna see in it. I only am involved in that I was- Hirsch um, I was among the people that Hirsch turned to to bounce concepts off of. 

In terms of basically the general concept for the book. Um, and he- this is- this is typical of Alex, he had like five different kinds of beginnings, like, you know

When we were doing the show, I don’t know how much he talked about this with you, but like, he’d often come to like- he’d often be like, “okay Alex your version of the script is ready,”

and he’d show up to like, the plat- the part where we’re supposed to read the script together, and he’d be like, “well here’s script A, and at this point we go into alternate script B,” and he would be like “I don’t know which direction to go,” and he’d like, he- he could nev- he- you had to really like hold his feet to the fire for him to ever settle on anything

He’d be like “well I really like this about this, but this has got this” and we’d be like “we have to produce the show, we have to decide, which one do you like better, we need to decide”

And he’d be like “uh…” and you know, so… so he did the same thing with the Book of Bill, like,

“Well there’s this- this direction, and there’s that direction, and there’s this,” and I’m like,

“I know I’m not gonna be able to tell you ‘go with this’ so I’m gonna, like, this is what I like from this version, this is what I like from here, this is what I think is strongest”

So, the version he came up with, I don’t know. I’m- I’m the same as any other fan, I’ll be reading it, uh, and discovering it along the side with the rest of you.

But he did- I did talk to him about some concepts to begin- I would love to have been involved with it, but it didn’t- he- he wrote this one on his own, so I have no idea what- what- what actually ended up on the page.

Hana: I see. Um, is- I- I assume the answer is no, so I don’t wanna push it, but is there anything you wanna share about Book of Bill that Alex might have bounced off of you?

Oh, no, I mean, like I said, if I shared anything it might not be there, it would be- it could be a lie.

I see, that’s fair.

Everything I saw was- was um, was um, potential, it was all the potential Book of Bill, so what of it ended up on the page? Perhaps none of it, I don’t know.

I see. Uh-

Bill Cipher will appear. I will- I’ll share that.

Hana: Wow. You heard it here folks, um [laughs]

Rob: The Book of Bill, that refers to Bill Cipher.

Woah! [laughs]

You might not know that

Amazing.

My next question is, uh, 

Rob: you’re welcome]

Hana: [laughs] thank you so much for the scoop.

Okay. Um, I’ve noticed that on twitter, you’re a lot more accessible to fans, like when fans have questions you’re always happy to answer them if you see it

You’ve actually answered a couple of my questions before on twitter, I’ve asked you about various codes! Um, my question is, do you find it more difficult, or increasingly more difficult, to be that accessible in the online climate that we have on twitter these days?

Um, are you a little bit more hesitant to have that interaction these days?

No, I’m not hesitant- my twitter exp- I know twitter has become horr-uh, worse, but my experience, my curated version of twitter is still very pleasant.

Um, if I- you know, I dip into the politics there, I don’t- I don’t involve myself in the politics, I figure, you know

I got my opinions, and I keep them mostly to myself, but like- I dip into politics on twitter, and if I see people that I don’t like, I- I get a real joy out of blocking the assholes on twitter.

Um, but I mostly follow artists and writers, and those people are great. [laughs] for the most part.

So my version of twitter is very nice. And yes, I interact with the fans of mostly, you know, mostly- some Gravity Falls fans, mostly Teenage Robot fans, uh, in fact I’m telling a new teen- Teenage Robot story

In your newsletter, right?

In my newsletter. So I often am promoting that on there, and promote The Horrible Bag and stuff.

So, my version of twitter is still very pleasant, so um, you know.

And I have the freedom- and I have the freedom to not answer questions if I don’t feel like it.

Uh, nobody knows which- whose tweets or questions I’m seeing, you know

so when I have them open and when I feel like it, or if I feel like I have some value to add, I’ll answ- I’ll interact with the fans.

But I don’t um, I don’t make it a duty to answer every fan’s question, or to always reply.

But I do want to- it gives me joy. So I’ve uh- I still have a- a good time on twitter

Though generally I know it’s gone downhill, and I hope Elon Musk will sell it soon, and get the hell out of everybody’s way, and- and- and make it a better place again.

Um, but you know, I’m there til it go- I’m, uh, I’ve imagined this before, um, I’m the last person on the Titanic, I’m there til it goes all the way underground.

Uh, ‘cause it’s the only social media I’m any good at, and uh, I’m- I’m not gonna give up the skills I’ve acquired [laughs]

‘Cause I’ve- I’m no good at instagram, I’m certainly not gonna- I don’t see myself tiktoking anytime soon- again, by the time I get around to something it’s way way out of- it’s nowhere near the cutting edge

[Hana: makes sense]

So, um, uh, I know- I know how to do twitter, and I’m gonna keep doing it as long as I can.

Awesome. Yes, I’m glad. It’s- it always makes me happy to see your input on these things, and I’m very happy that I follow you.

[Rob: thank you.]

Uh, last question. Uh, which, just kind of a wrap-up question.

Do you have any questions for me? Or, is there anything you are begging someone to ask you about so you can talk about it?

No- I mean, no. I don’t, I’m sorry to say. 

That’s fine.

Um, uh, you know. I’m very pleased that stuff that I’ve worked on, my own stuff, Gravity Falls, other stuff, that people are still interested and want to talk to me about it.

Um, it’s- you know, it’s a joy- joy for me that Teenage Robot isn’t completely forgotten 

Because, you know, the world I lived in when it was on the air, this kind of stuff had just started, and it would- any- any show that doesn’t do well, just falls into obscurity

And now, obscure is- is- is stay- is is is more current than it should be, in terms of um-

Because we have this won- sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrific world of the internet

Um, where we can interact in a way we never could before.

So, for me it’s been a- it’s been a joy to uh, talk with fans about the stuff I’ve worked on in the past

Um, as- you know, as well as I can remember it, without prompting, without going back into the files and uh, remembering all the stuff that I’ve forgotten.

Uh, it’s just a joy to interact with someone like you, and uh, and someone who’s knowledgeable and who loves this stuff enough to really dive into and to investigate it on a- on a mac- a macro and a micro level, like you have

So uh, it’s just been fun talking with you about it, and I’m- I’m pleased to do it

If you want to talk to me again in the future I’d be happy to come back and talk about some other aspect of Gravity Falls, or Horrible Bag, or Teenage Robot, or whatever you’d like.

Um, um, usually I have a good time, and you can see I have no problem talking [laughs]

Absolutely, thank you so much.

I’ll let you get to your other meeting, but thank you so much for you time, this has been amazing.

You’re very welcome, thanks- thanks for having me on.

Absolutely. Have a good one, bye

Bye