Speaker 1: We've traveled through gravity falls.
Speaker 2: Journeyed into the unknown, and.
Speaker 3: Now we need a vacation.
Speaker 1: Join us as we travel to Beach City for rejumbering
Speaker 1: and all new Stephen Universe rewatch podcast exclusively on our Patreon.
Speaker 3: Every month, hear us, hang out and discuss two episodes
Speaker 3: of Stephen Universe at patreon dot com slash mystery Shack
Speaker 3: for as little as three dollars a month. Also at
Speaker 3: that tier, you can receive an ad free cut of
Speaker 3: this very Book of Bill podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm just happy we get to sit back and relax.
Speaker 2: Nothing weird ever happens in Beach City right now.
Speaker 3: I don't think somber show. Well, yeah, that sounds accurate.
Speaker 2: Sign up at patreon dot com slash mystery Shack exclamation bar.
Speaker 3: Do take without that because it is at url.
Speaker 2: Okay, sign up at patreon dot com slash mystery Shack.
Speaker 4: Hey, if you're listening to this the day it came
Speaker 4: out December twenty second, Tonight in the Mystery Shack, look
Speaker 4: back discord server, your curators are going to be doing
Speaker 4: a reading of the Muppet Christmas Carol. That's at ten
Speaker 4: pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific. We're also going to have
Speaker 4: David Gansel aka Doggins guesting as Scrooge and Adam Knew
Speaker 4: the Spittleman guessing. Is a whole bunch of characters. Ashall oah,
Speaker 4: bless us. Everyone, enjoy the podcast.
Speaker 5: Take me back to the place sign know with the
Speaker 5: Mystery Shack and the Forest Gnomes. I'm already back, so
Speaker 5: come on, let's go. Don't get me started. My heart's
Speaker 5: in gravity Falls.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Mystery Shack, look back, a nostalgic time capsule
Speaker 1: and a what's a weapon consisting of a book tied
Speaker 1: to a club of the current Gravity Falls fandom. We
Speaker 1: are your curators.
Speaker 3: I'm Ella, I'm Charlie.
Speaker 2: And I'm Shelby. We got a new iTunes review.
Speaker 3: That's true. Please rate us five stars on iTunes and Spotify.
Speaker 3: It is the best way for people to discover our
Speaker 3: podcast and.
Speaker 2: For me to feel good and to let us know
Speaker 2: you want more Gravity Falls podcast.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: We're gonna to be doing a kind of listener mail
Speaker 3: episode coming up soon. Yeah, yeah, anything in the iTunes
Speaker 3: reviews there we'll read. We'll read emails at Mystery Shack
Speaker 3: look back at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Right because there are there are a few we haven't
Speaker 1: gotten to.
Speaker 3: Yet, but this review, it is a five star review.
Speaker 3: That's good bye. You've got to be kitten.
Speaker 2: This is from Mabel herself, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I probably is.
Speaker 3: And it's titled Book of Bill and the text just reads,
Speaker 3: are y'all kind of review the Book of Bill?
Speaker 4: To which we could say.
Speaker 6: Uh no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: So what are we talking about today?
Speaker 2: The Book of Bill?
Speaker 1: You know, I guess we were kitten.
Speaker 3: They were right, they had us packed. Yeah, what is
Speaker 3: the Book of Bill? Why?
Speaker 1: The Book of Bill is a Gravity Falls book that
Speaker 1: released on July twenty third, twenty twenty four. It follows
Speaker 1: series antagonist Bill Cipher as he tells the story from
Speaker 1: his perspective. So you know, it is very much a
Speaker 1: book written by Bill.
Speaker 3: Okay that okay, I probably could have parsed that together.
Speaker 1: At least it's not as confusing as the Gravity Falls
Speaker 1: vinyl soundtrack. I really needed that broken down for me.
Speaker 3: Thank you for breaking that down for us? Of course. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: So when we did Journal three and Dipper and Mabel's
Speaker 3: Guide to Mystery and NonStop Fun, we had the author
Speaker 3: of those journals, Rob Brenzettion.
Speaker 4: So if Bill Cipher wrote this book.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, we must still, we should probably reach out, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Does anybody have his contact info?
Speaker 1: I got I think I got it. The old rolla
Speaker 1: dix ah okay, Angulum intangulum, vinny forrest Dominus mentium, vinny
Speaker 1: boris by that disomnia sick yep, thank yep, gil sec
Speaker 1: yepil sick yepksack yep, dooksack yep, bilk sack yep.
Speaker 7: Oh geez, every time I go into my blood baths,
Speaker 7: somebody tries to give me a phone call.
Speaker 2: What do you want it worked, Ladies and gentlemen and
Speaker 2: non binary pals. Welcome to the show. New York Times
Speaker 2: best selling author Bill Cipher here.
Speaker 7: Oh, we're talking about how great I am. Okay, I
Speaker 7: guess that's worth getting out of the top four.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Your recent release, the Book of Bill uh rocket
Speaker 3: into the top of the best seller list. It's been
Speaker 3: sold out everywhere for half a year.
Speaker 4: I know Shelby had to drive quite a distance.
Speaker 1: I went to US one, which is probably the best
Speaker 1: place to get the book of Bill. Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the lizard man rang me up and.
Speaker 3: First name, last name, and occupation. Yeah, we were hoping
Speaker 3: to interview you more about your writing process.
Speaker 7: Writing is just like lying but on paper, Libel, do
Speaker 7: that voice again, and I strip your flesh from your bone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not dangerous anyway.
Speaker 3: They tried to censor my book.
Speaker 7: But guess where the censors are now, I tell you,
Speaker 7: But they'd censor it.
Speaker 8: Okay, they're at hell.
Speaker 7: The only thing more fun than publishing whatever I want
Speaker 7: is hearing jokers like you. Believe it, and this little
Speaker 7: retrospective comedy avoids your life.
Speaker 8: Variety Hour has been great.
Speaker 9: Pr for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, we usually just usually just talk about what
Speaker 1: a terrible person you are most of the time.
Speaker 7: Oh there you go again, you dickens. I'm blushing. You
Speaker 7: can't tell I'm made of light anyway. Nobody can possibly
Speaker 7: stop me, not you, not the publishers, not Alex Thirsch,
Speaker 7: because nobody at all of oz, no wizard that there
Speaker 7: is or was, is ever gonna bring me down. Sorry,
Speaker 7: these are the wrong cute cards. Wait, it's feeling?
Speaker 3: Am I being possessed?
Speaker 9: How is that possible?
Speaker 3: What being in the multiverse could be powerful?
Speaker 1: Not to?
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, it can't be.
Speaker 9: All right, Okay, I'm back, that's right. Oh I possessed? Bill,
Speaker 9: You're hey here? I am, let's do it. Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well everybody, welcome back to the show. Creator of
Speaker 1: Gravity follows Alex Hirsh.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. You were previously on our
Speaker 3: episode on Cipher him.
Speaker 9: Don't I always love to return to a podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're right, it's like returning home.
Speaker 1: It is you next summer.
Speaker 9: As they say, I feel great in front of a microphone,
Speaker 9: a touch tool adopter, a touch too, al laptop with audasstady.
Speaker 2: Open attached the internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've scheduled this interview twice because what you said
Speaker 3: to me was this book performed way better than anyone expected.
Speaker 4: Yes, how has that been for you?
Speaker 9: Journal three was the sort of evergreen bestseller. It did
Speaker 9: so well, and it continued to perform extraordinarily well for
Speaker 9: I mean, it's a monster manual for a show that
Speaker 9: ended eight years ago, and you know, people are still
Speaker 9: buying it. And so Disney had asked me in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 9: I believe they said, oh my god, Journal three did
Speaker 9: so well. Will you do Journal two? Will you do
Speaker 9: Journal one? And I said, that doesn't really make sense narratively.
Speaker 9: I feel like the most interesting stuff happens, you know,
Speaker 9: when the other pines show up and I just I don't.
Speaker 9: I don't have a whole book. The reason Journal three
Speaker 9: is interesting is because it's a companion piece to the
Speaker 9: series and it sort of answers those questions. I don't
Speaker 9: think that's interesting. I was like, you know, but what
Speaker 9: I would do for you is like a cursed evil
Speaker 9: Bible by Bill telling kids to like, you know, burn
Speaker 9: down churches and stuff. And they said no, what, absolutely not.
Speaker 9: And I said, yeah, no that's fair. It's that that
Speaker 9: is a terrible idea. Okay, bye. And then years later
Speaker 9: a new department said, hey, you remember that idea about
Speaker 9: a cursed evil Bill Cipher book. Do you really will
Speaker 9: you do that for us? And I was like, you
Speaker 9: said before that that was a bad idea to give
Speaker 9: a evil bible the children. And they're like, yeah, but
Speaker 9: we want content. So I was like, okay, if you
Speaker 9: really want it. And you know, so this was literally
Speaker 9: just what would be fun for me.
Speaker 3: Was that new department. Was that related to it being
Speaker 3: published under Hyperion and when Westa instead of Disney precisely?
Speaker 9: Yeah, So the Hyperion Buenev people reached out to me
Speaker 9: and I said, yeah, I mean, if you'll let me
Speaker 9: just make it completely chicking bugnuts crazy. Sure, yeah, I'll
Speaker 9: do it. And so I was thinking of it almost
Speaker 9: like a you know, an anniversary present to the fans
Speaker 9: that continue to show up, and I say, oh, I, hey,
Speaker 9: happy anniversary, honey, here's a little gift for you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being there for me.
Speaker 3: This is flat word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's the fact that especially that you know,
Speaker 1: kids that grew up with it who weren't on the
Speaker 1: internet as it was airing, are now on the Internet.
Speaker 9: There's sort of like a generational ven Diagram thing happening
Speaker 9: right now where people who were yes, twelve when the
Speaker 9: show premiered are twenty now and people who were twenty
Speaker 9: when the show premiered are twenty eight now. And so
Speaker 9: you've got you know, fans that now have kids and
Speaker 9: kids that are discovering it at the same time. And
Speaker 9: so there's suddenly this kind of like maximum four quadrant
Speaker 9: engagement and sort of cross generational appeal resulting in just
Speaker 9: this explosion of content and fandom and old fans and
Speaker 9: new fans and yeah, oh I remember you should have
Speaker 9: been there for the Tumblr days.
Speaker 1: You have no idea that's what this podcast, Yeah, I mean, that's.
Speaker 3: Our podcast I know, but it's like your podcast.
Speaker 9: I mean, I assume probably more people have been downloading it.
Speaker 4: Oh for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, So I have a lot of like popular
Speaker 3: gravity Falls videos on YouTube. I sent like a screenshot
Speaker 3: of like my views over the past year to people,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, hey, just look at this graph and
Speaker 3: just try to guess when Book of Bill dropped, because
Speaker 3: it's like everything else is flat by comparison, because a
Speaker 3: line graph could only show so much because there's just
Speaker 3: a giant mountain there.
Speaker 9: That mountain is across all metrics. The show's being watched,
Speaker 9: you know, three times four times what it was being watched,
Speaker 9: you know before the book came out. I mean it's recently.
Speaker 9: It was just in the like top ten most watched
Speaker 9: things on Disney Plus, and that includes the Simpsons and
Speaker 9: the Avengers and Frozen.
Speaker 3: Yeah I am doctor who. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So I'm still wrapping my head around it. I'm grateful
Speaker 9: that the fans remember the anniversary too.
Speaker 3: So where does all of this Book of Bill history start?
Speaker 1: Now? I guess we'd have to go to the Oregon
Speaker 1: Parks Department Twitter account created in March twenty sixteen to
Speaker 1: promote journal three.
Speaker 3: Right the first page in Journal three specifically is by
Speaker 3: Gus Burnside, the park Ranger. The kind of narrative of
Speaker 3: Journal three is that the Oregon Parks Department found this
Speaker 3: and is putting it up for auction, and the character
Speaker 3: from that first page had an in character arg Twitter account.
Speaker 3: It also was involved in puzzling Pines, which we talked
Speaker 3: about during Lost Legends. Yes, it was one of the
Speaker 3: places where the puzzle pieces was tweeted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it is very much like it is the
Speaker 1: link between the Gravity Falls world and our world. Like
Speaker 1: if something is going to manifest in our world, Gus
Speaker 1: Burnside seems to be the first to know.
Speaker 3: On December fourteenth, twenty twenty three, the account posted for
Speaker 3: the first time in four years and tweeted a black
Speaker 3: and white image of a road with a yellow triangular
Speaker 3: sign about slippery conditions.
Speaker 2: From there, it tweeted picks of a brimstone moth, a
Speaker 2: dorito chip, and redwood tree rings with Bill's hat visible.
Speaker 2: This would be explained in the Book of Bill to
Speaker 2: indicate whenever Bill would visit the Gravity Falls Valley.
Speaker 1: The account then tweeted an image and a video of
Speaker 1: a Bill Cipher shaped popsicle, which was crafted by Aaron Boffman,
Speaker 1: which is melting and covered with ants. What a great image.
Speaker 2: Delicious.
Speaker 3: I love that. So yeah, though we kind of knew
Speaker 3: something was coming at this point, although no one knew
Speaker 3: quite what it was. Obviously there were clamors of season three.
Speaker 1: I mean that's people will say that with no evidence,
Speaker 1: so give them evidence, and it's.
Speaker 4: I remember, this was very exciting.
Speaker 3: Our server kind of started to we have a discord
Speaker 3: every by the way, you could find it in the
Speaker 3: description wherever you're listening to the podcast or on pipe
Speaker 3: period podcast dot com kind of came back to life,
Speaker 3: been like, hey, what what what the chick is happening?
Speaker 9: When it rewards the biggest freaks, it's more fun, right,
Speaker 9: So when it's somebody's saying, hey, everybody, the Oregon Parks
Speaker 9: twitter hasn't updated in six years or whatever, and it
Speaker 9: just did. Do you think that means something's coming? And
Speaker 9: then people say, no, what are you talking about? Who cares?
Speaker 9: And then there's another tweet They're like, all I think
Speaker 9: And suddenly it starts to build and so it's like
Speaker 9: it the folks who are most tuned into the most
Speaker 9: esoteric corners of it are getting the greatest sense of
Speaker 9: satisfaction when they get to say, hey, I.
Speaker 1: Told you so, well, yeah, you want to appeal to
Speaker 1: the people wearing the sandwich boards with greg with messages
Speaker 1: on them, are are the ones that will be the
Speaker 1: first to know.
Speaker 9: And they will be my best advertisers. No one will
Speaker 9: get the book better than the passionate evangelists to see
Speaker 9: the signs and the tea leaves that say it's returning
Speaker 9: because then thought they were right. They will be shouting
Speaker 9: it from the rooftops, and they will be more effective
Speaker 9: than any campaign that Disney could possibly come for.
Speaker 1: Now all of China knows you're bad.
Speaker 3: The last tweet on December fourteenth said, finally turning in
Speaker 3: for the night will be up bright and early tomorrow.
Speaker 4: According to the.
Speaker 3: Weather, it's gonna be some sunny day hashtag always check
Speaker 3: the weather.
Speaker 2: The next day, the account tweeted a picture of Crater
Speaker 2: Lake in Oregon with the caption boy, I love lakes.
Speaker 2: It's so calming, outstanding magnificence in nature, gus.
Speaker 3: And the first letter of each word of that sent
Speaker 3: spells out Bill is coming.
Speaker 1: And then Alex you tweeted getting a headache, Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: feel better if I close one eye, which is how
Speaker 1: I believe the announcement of the Bill Cipher Ama has
Speaker 1: started as well. That's sort of lets you know that
Speaker 1: a possession is coming on. And then after that you
Speaker 1: tweeted against all laws of physics, logic and good taste,
Speaker 1: Bill Cipher has somehow managed to write a book. This
Speaker 1: can't be good. The Book of Bill invades bookstores this July.
Speaker 1: And then there's a video of the book itself rotating
Speaker 1: and sort of glitching out, and there's an eyeball on
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden and things like that.
Speaker 3: The University of Oregon tweeted Friday fit check and they
Speaker 3: were holding up their their hands in the sign of
Speaker 3: an O to represent Oregon, the two girls in the photo,
Speaker 3: and then Gus quote tweeted.
Speaker 2: And said, go Oregon, you am I doing this right?
Speaker 2: And it's a picture of supposedly of Gus making a
Speaker 2: triangle with his hands.
Speaker 1: Alex are you Gus? Are those your hands?
Speaker 9: Those are not my hands? Actually those are Jeffrey Thompson's hands.
Speaker 9: I said, hey, people are gonna people are gonna notice
Speaker 9: that they're my hands because my fans are so psycho.
Speaker 9: Could could you please use your mandling masculine hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: But then then later other videos, it's my hands, Like
Speaker 9: I just stopped care because I was we're running out
Speaker 9: of time. I was like, oh, I just I was just,
Speaker 9: you know, Gus, I was just having fun.
Speaker 3: Now, you had announced that the book was coming out
Speaker 3: in July, and then the Oregon Parts Department starts tweeting
Speaker 3: again in July.
Speaker 1: In July.
Speaker 3: In July, make.
Speaker 9: Cheese for him.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of shit, do you know that?
Speaker 3: And the first return tweet was careful campers. When that
Speaker 3: arrow points to that yellow triangle, it means things are
Speaker 3: about to heat up. This weekend could be a scorcher.
Speaker 3: There are so many creative ways to post. Hey, Bill
Speaker 3: Zipher's releasing a book. As a park stranger who was
Speaker 3: unknowing to any of this going on.
Speaker 1: All you need to do is incorporate a yellow triangle,
Speaker 1: and there are so many ways to do that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen some creative tweets with the yellow
Speaker 2: triangle formulations from some of the artists.
Speaker 1: That's also true. Yeah. And then on July fourteenth, it
Speaker 1: tweeted an image of bones found by scouts that were
Speaker 1: left by a coyote and the bones spelled out nine days.
Speaker 2: The next day, it tweeted a roadside sign that read
Speaker 2: he is coming eh days. This was an edited public
Speaker 2: domain image of a FEMA sign from twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: It was like one of those like electrical signs you'd
Speaker 1: see on the highway, like buckle up or something.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, And the image also contained a code that
Speaker 2: was previously unknown runes.
Speaker 1: And well we'll get in more into that later in
Speaker 1: our hall of conspiracy, speaking of which I think we
Speaker 1: have like a mouse or something.
Speaker 3: I have been hearing some sounds. We haven't been in
Speaker 3: there in two years.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2: I mean I go down there periodically, but my food
Speaker 2: is always missing. Like I put my lunch down there,
Speaker 2: and when I come back, it's gone. So I've had
Speaker 2: a door doash Are you accusing.
Speaker 3: Me of something? You can just you could just say
Speaker 3: my name.
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just saying a statement. I mean, like
Speaker 2: you've accused me of taking your food, but well.
Speaker 3: My food is going okay, And you just said you
Speaker 3: went down there a lot.
Speaker 2: A break in the case would eventually come.
Speaker 1: This is referring to I think it's the I think.
Speaker 2: That's the ones who who cracked the runes at Trick
Speaker 2: and Gravity Falls and at jim Bag Underscore seven seven seven.
Speaker 3: Cracked They cracked to the ruins that we didn't know
Speaker 3: about yet.
Speaker 1: Well there's they only got some of the letters though,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, how no idea.
Speaker 3: The next image, July sixteenth, was a Bill Cipher cup
Speaker 3: in a pile of litter. Poster nearby said limited offer
Speaker 3: only seven days and a small paper that says runs
Speaker 3: for beginners, likely a nod to the then yet to
Speaker 3: be cracked code in the last image.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's how Okay. They noticed a recurring symbol in
Speaker 4: every image minus the eighth day one. They figured out
Speaker 4: the signature of the artists who created the image and
Speaker 4: figure out some symbols from that's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I always say that, you know that fans are always
Speaker 9: you know, they're ten times better at decoding the shit
Speaker 9: than I even think they're gonna be. And then I
Speaker 9: try to, you know, raise the bar, and it's always
Speaker 9: even more than I say.
Speaker 1: The July seventeenth image was of a Neon sign pointing
Speaker 1: to a motel six. Due to the various lights being out,
Speaker 1: read will meet as in like lunch meet again six.
Speaker 4: Days again two separate words.
Speaker 1: Again, yes, that's true. The moon in the sky also
Speaker 1: was shining on the clouds in a way that formed
Speaker 1: a triangle. They're being real subtle.
Speaker 2: So for the fifth day, it was an image of
Speaker 2: a huge murmuration of rare yellow throated sterlings, and they
Speaker 2: formed in the sky to say five days.
Speaker 3: Then July nineteenth had a photo of Gus showing mosquito
Speaker 3: bites on him that spelled out four daye. This was
Speaker 3: a nod to the mosquitoes in the show that spelled
Speaker 3: out bewarb on Dipper's arm revealed to be soothsquitos in
Speaker 3: Journal three who give poorly spelled warnings. In the background,
Speaker 3: the Bill Cipher statue was visible.
Speaker 1: On July twentieth, Gus instead tweeted that he found something
Speaker 1: strange in the woods while out for a walk. He
Speaker 1: then said he would post a video.
Speaker 2: It was a TikTok.
Speaker 10: Litter is the worst thing to see in our national parks.
Speaker 10: But I found something strange today. Does anyone know someone
Speaker 10: named Bill comment if this book is yours?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: That was the book of Bill Goes Well the Boogaboo.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, they had a TikTok account.
Speaker 3: Gus is really doing his part to make the Oregon
Speaker 3: Parks Department hit for the gen z h Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could call him out of touch all
Speaker 1: you want, but he's trying.
Speaker 9: I was never on TikTok. I didn't know anything about TikTok.
Speaker 9: I only made a TikTok account for the organ Parks
Speaker 9: to sort of just like post some content there because
Speaker 9: I just was sort of trying to put stuff wherever
Speaker 9: I could. My TikTok feed the like maybe eleven days
Speaker 9: thirteen days after the book came out, and I was
Speaker 9: just like scrolling and I was like I could scroll
Speaker 9: for hours, and every time I swipe my finger up,
Speaker 9: it's people in well produced videos, dancing and singing and
Speaker 9: pantomiming and creating and cosplaying. Like you know, the difference
Speaker 9: between this and the Tumbler generations. Like Tumbler, you see
Speaker 9: somebody's word post or their drawing post every now and
Speaker 9: then you see, you know, a costume, but TikTok is
Speaker 9: just the humans reacting, which you just don't normally get
Speaker 9: to see. And it's sort of overwhelming, but it does
Speaker 9: a little bit feel like this is like a black
Speaker 9: mirror episode where like I got hit by a bus
Speaker 9: on the way to deliver the manuscript to Disney, and
Speaker 9: I'm in a coma and I'm imagining a world where
Speaker 9: everyone is everyone is pantomiming to voices that I did
Speaker 9: when I was twenty seven. Like my whole feed is
Speaker 9: like people building monuments of this cartoon. I'm like, this
Speaker 9: is not real. This is an Yeah, like none of
Speaker 9: this makes any sense, Like what is going on here? Yeah? Exactly,
Speaker 9: I'm having a stroke.
Speaker 3: Then, on both the Twitter and the TikTok, he posted
Speaker 3: a video showing the book raining teeth.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, what is going on?
Speaker 10: Teeth? Teeth, teeth, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And on July twenty first, after a longer than normal weight,
Speaker 1: Oregon Parks Department tweeted, there's something wrong with this book,
Speaker 1: followed by it hasn't been acting the way books are
Speaker 1: supposed to act.
Speaker 3: How a book acts is a pretty recognized behavior that
Speaker 3: a deviation from might be necessity.
Speaker 1: I think we have a very rigid social expectation for
Speaker 1: how books should act, and don't. I don't think that's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I had a nickel for each time
Speaker 2: a book range teeth, I would have two Nikels.
Speaker 1: And if I had a nipple for each time of
Speaker 1: book Green Teeth, I'd have two nipples, which is how
Speaker 1: many I have.
Speaker 4: It must have happened.
Speaker 2: Gus mentions that the pages are changing and glitching, with
Speaker 2: photos to show the book glitching out and even doing
Speaker 2: a blue screen of.
Speaker 3: Death, and then he tweets a pick of a page
Speaker 3: not in the regular book with a message directly to
Speaker 3: him from Bill Ah, I guess I'll read this. Well, well, well,
Speaker 3: here we are at last. I was wondering when I'd
Speaker 3: finally get a chance to meet the famous ranger Gus Burnside,
Speaker 3: big fan of all long, droning speeches you give to
Speaker 3: the boy scouts about tick safety, by the way, and
Speaker 3: your elk facts. Brother, don't get you started. Look, Khaki's
Speaker 3: you've never been the life of the party. What might
Speaker 3: say that's why you left your hometown and everyone you
Speaker 3: knew behind to start a new life in the middle
Speaker 3: of nowhere. Cataloging bark, we both know your cutout for
Speaker 3: something more. You've got a hell of a moral compass, buddy,
Speaker 3: gets a bit tedious, doesn't it. How'd you like to
Speaker 3: take that compass for a spin? The Dorris who litter
Speaker 3: your parks, those teens who make out buying the puma
Speaker 3: taxidermy and the gift shop. That one coworker who never
Speaker 3: stops doing bird calls. Wouldn't it be nice to make
Speaker 3: all those voices go away peace quiet. That's why you
Speaker 3: came to the woods, isn't it? Gus? Was that a
Speaker 3: reference to your bird call video that you caught on
Speaker 3: Letterman before as a teenager?
Speaker 9: You know, I one time ask career Al why the
Speaker 9: number twenty seven appears in all of his songs, and
Speaker 9: he said, Oh, I don't know. I just think it's
Speaker 9: a funny number. So I think I just have You know,
Speaker 9: that's just if I'm reaching for a dumb thing for
Speaker 9: a part ranger to do, bird calls will be on
Speaker 9: the mind. But it was conscious thought. Although I did
Speaker 9: recently go back to people want to judge the bird
Speaker 9: calling contest that was that was a amazing I was
Speaker 9: the celebrity judge. It was actually really lovely to go
Speaker 9: back to high school and be kind of a local celebrity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was the best bird call?
Speaker 9: Look, I'm no ornithologist. The kids who seem to have
Speaker 9: the most passion they got the.
Speaker 1: Points Okay, it's about what's in your heart.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Gus then tweets the next day that he got terrible
Speaker 1: headaches and nightmares and had locked the book in the basement.
Speaker 1: He then goes to check it again smart.
Speaker 2: He then tweets a video showing it infecting other books
Speaker 2: with this strange stringy things attaching to the books as
Speaker 2: the Book of Bill gets closer to it.
Speaker 3: Eventually, he has had enough and says he's gonna get
Speaker 3: rid of it.
Speaker 1: He tweets another video showing him burying the book and
Speaker 1: on TikTok. The video has the AI voice.
Speaker 10: Saying there you go back to hell.
Speaker 2: Gus then returns to have a drink and posts a
Speaker 2: video showing the book has returned and is now resting
Speaker 2: behind several drinks in his cabinet.
Speaker 3: He then decides he's going to burn the book, tweeting
Speaker 3: simply fire.
Speaker 1: After four whiskies, Gus goes to a Smoky the Bear
Speaker 1: cut out and apologizes to him for what he is
Speaker 1: about to do, holding the Book of Villain hand.
Speaker 2: After which he tweets a video showing the Book of
Speaker 2: Bill being burned.
Speaker 3: Seeming happy it's over, Gus tweets a pick of him
Speaker 3: cleaning the ashes within them, the burn paper spells out
Speaker 3: you shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about what it insane marketing tactic? It
Speaker 1: is to show the book that you want people to
Speaker 1: buy being burned.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean that. The key to this is that
Speaker 9: I did not run it by anybody.
Speaker 1: The key to yes, you got it.
Speaker 9: Every single thing that you saw was a thing that
Speaker 9: I did on my own time. I was just like, look,
Speaker 9: I know what is the thing, So I'm just gonna
Speaker 9: do it. And nobody's gonna play when they look at
Speaker 9: those sales numbers. So I had, you know, I had
Speaker 9: so many mad dreams where I'm like, oh, you know,
Speaker 9: this is a big company. We got a marketing department,
Speaker 9: you know, can we actually get a billboard?
Speaker 3: Can we do all this stuff?
Speaker 9: And very quickly it becomes like no, like we're in
Speaker 9: a recession. Even companies like Disney are tightening their belt.
Speaker 9: The billboard is a metaphor anyway, right exactly, if it's
Speaker 9: not gonna get me excited, it's not gonna get anybody
Speaker 9: else excited. So I have to follow those crazy, stupid whims,
Speaker 9: even if they don't make sense, even if my friends
Speaker 9: at work are like, but what were you doing this weekend?
Speaker 9: And I was like, oh, I was burning a book
Speaker 9: on my roof. But then uh, like the fire got
Speaker 9: out of hand, and now did that really happen? Yes,
Speaker 9: And they're like, why were you doing? I'm like, you
Speaker 9: just got to listen to what the demon says. Man like,
Speaker 9: the demon knows the answers. I just got to follow
Speaker 9: those weird hunches, you know.
Speaker 3: Gus supposedly goes to sleep after that, with one last
Speaker 3: tweet being made of just a black rectangle with no caption.
Speaker 1: Who would care about rectangles? That feels pretty meaningless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the black rectangles really feels like everything is said
Speaker 3: and done and there's nothing there. And I don't really
Speaker 3: know who would read too much into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Two days after, on July twenty fourth, Oregon Parks Department
Speaker 3: under a supposedly new Rangers Control tweet saying Gus is
Speaker 3: God missing. There's a missing poster with an image of
Speaker 3: Gus and a goat. His face is ripped off so
Speaker 3: we can't see it. It also says on the poster
Speaker 3: that he was less seen near the Ranger station on
Speaker 3: July twenty second at eleven thirty pm, and that he
Speaker 3: is fifty three years old, five foot ten and one
Speaker 3: hundred and ninety pounds.
Speaker 1: The next day, Alex You tweeted a pick with a
Speaker 1: number two Bill Seipher's Personal Injury Hotline, Hi, and.
Speaker 11: Welcome to the Bill Seiper Personal Injury Hotline. Billzeipher will
Speaker 11: assist you in a moment, But first, are you in pain?
Speaker 11: Pres one? Before you get I am in pain?
Speaker 1: If you call it, Press one very good.
Speaker 11: If you've been hit by a buzz Rets one currently
Speaker 11: being torn apart by wolves, Press two, being fit slowly
Speaker 11: into a buz saw, Press three, are you currently on fire? Four?
Speaker 1: And then press four it plays up sorry God, which
Speaker 1: seems to indicate that Bill had something to do with
Speaker 1: Gus's disappearance and that it was not good.
Speaker 2: The last tweet from the Oregon's Park Department was on
Speaker 2: July thirty first, as a quote retweet from the Joshua
Speaker 2: Tree National Park Service to Marked World Ranger Day. It
Speaker 2: read if you knew him, either from his tick safety
Speaker 2: workshops or his famous pine cone collection, please say a
Speaker 2: prayer for our lost ranger, Gus M. Burnside.
Speaker 12: Your words of encouragement would mean a lot to his family.
Speaker 12: While local law enforcement continues the search hashtag come back Gus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we don't know anything. The Oregon Parks Department
Speaker 3: Twitter has not tweeted since July thirty. First, we don't
Speaker 3: know the ultimate fate of Gus byrdside on less you
Speaker 3: wanted to say a little piece on that here.
Speaker 1: Or at least a prayer and a eulogy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, you know, Gus is kind of like
Speaker 9: he's sort of like a Hank Hill kind of a character,
Speaker 9: just like, you know, he's just he's a fourth right,
Speaker 9: earnest kind of guy who really cares about nature. It's
Speaker 9: sort of like if Hankhill went to Twin Peaks is
Speaker 9: sort of the Gus bird Side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, universe, what the hell is a bomb? Real shock for?
Speaker 9: He bought a dobbible.
Speaker 3: We're talking backwards.
Speaker 9: I got a talk backwards day I saw from TV.
Speaker 9: I love this character. You know the Simpsons writers Josh Weinstein,
Speaker 9: Herron and Gravit Falls. He's a Simpsons, amazing Simpsons writer. Sure,
Speaker 9: his favorite character, right was Principal Skinner because there's just
Speaker 9: something very funny about you know, a Bart Simpson plays
Speaker 9: great against a Principal Skinner. Bill sihera great against characters.
Speaker 9: That's sort of kind of stuffy, out of touch, and
Speaker 9: you know, don't really care for cartoons. They angry up
Speaker 9: the blood, you know. And I can't say anything about
Speaker 9: Gus's fate, but I will say that I am deeply
Speaker 9: invested in the world of Gus Burnside, even though it
Speaker 9: is a completely bizarre, ancillary thing to the Bill Cipher
Speaker 9: Gravity Falls Universe.
Speaker 3: Do you want to just real quick, hkaka that GFN
Speaker 3: our guest in the previous episode. Our guest in the
Speaker 3: previous episode did all the research.
Speaker 2: For this segment? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Please, please please If you haven't heard the previous episode
Speaker 3: where we covered the Gravity Falls final soundtrack with him,
Speaker 3: do that. I know it's not as enticing as the
Speaker 3: Book of Bill, but that's what Bill wants you to think. Yes,
Speaker 3: the image of the other books being infected. It is
Speaker 3: illustrated in the book on one of the first pages
Speaker 3: by Ford trawn Bon.
Speaker 2: This one is done by Emmy Cesarieika.
Speaker 3: You also paid out of your own pocket for a
Speaker 3: display at Barnes and Noble of the Book of Bill
Speaker 3: infecting other books? What How?
Speaker 9: Did?
Speaker 13: How?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 9: The very first idea, literally the first email I sent
Speaker 9: to Disney after we started talking about doing the Book
Speaker 9: of Bill. I was like, I'll do it if I
Speaker 9: can do this stand and I just drew it on
Speaker 9: like a little sticky note like it's going to be
Speaker 9: in the center, it's going to possess the books. And
Speaker 9: they're like, yes, yes, yes, okay, we'll do it. We'll
Speaker 9: do it. When it finally came down to there, like
Speaker 9: we're out of budget, and I was like, okay, how
Speaker 9: much does it cost. I'll pay for the damn thing myself,
Speaker 9: like I wanted to see it so badly. And the
Speaker 9: thing is like it paid off times a thousand because
Speaker 9: I posted a TikTok video of that and it's got
Speaker 9: seventeen point five million views, which is like, I mean,
Speaker 9: you think about how many views that is, Like the
Speaker 9: gravity of this finale was maybe seen, you know, on
Speaker 9: air when it aired, like five million consecutive views, Like
Speaker 9: that's an unbelievably viral TikTok video for an account that
Speaker 9: only existed four days prior to it being posted.
Speaker 3: Take that, Nielsen writings, and it really, you know, it
Speaker 3: really helped.
Speaker 9: So I mean, I just try to make the stuff
Speaker 9: that would get me excited, and I just I think
Speaker 9: we're so used to, especially with like there's just constant
Speaker 9: promotions for everything all the time. We're inundated with it,
Speaker 9: and most of it is sort of without a lot
Speaker 9: of thought or creativity or interactivity, and it's like the
Speaker 9: only way to punch through and this attention economy is
Speaker 9: to create stuff that gets me excited.
Speaker 2: I feel like you're constantly reinventing like ways to create
Speaker 2: new things for this. Yeah, it's like, it's really amazing
Speaker 2: how inventive you are with this book, with the social
Speaker 2: media campaign. You're a legend.
Speaker 9: Man, Oh thank you. It's making TV is really really hard.
Speaker 9: Making a book is pretty hard. Making a ad campaign
Speaker 9: is fun and easy. So it's sort of the same
Speaker 9: thing that I said, you know, in our last podcast
Speaker 9: about being a professional goblin or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's like a worldwide treasure hut is so much easier
Speaker 3: than making one episode of a cartoon.
Speaker 9: Infinitely infinitely easier, and creating websites and codes and billboards
Speaker 9: and secret stuff like is just pure joy. It's just
Speaker 9: a delight.
Speaker 3: So I was.
Speaker 9: I found it to be very rewarding, and I'm so
Speaker 9: happy that people have been enjoying it.
Speaker 1: Speaking more on the budgetary limitations kind of affecting what
Speaker 1: you can do with the company itself, which again I
Speaker 1: think speaks to this weird new media landscape where the
Speaker 1: DIY stuff does exponentially better than what you could accomplish
Speaker 1: with Like you know, you've compared working with Disney to
Speaker 1: like it's like having a pet dinosaur, Like sometimes it'll
Speaker 1: lumber around, it might knock stuff over. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of too powerful for its own good. But you know,
Speaker 1: you can also accomplish things on the ground in smaller
Speaker 1: scale that end up snowballing better. But more specifically, you
Speaker 1: said you wanted to incorporate a lot of like multimedia
Speaker 1: like physical props like in the book, you know, talking
Speaker 1: more facetiously, you know, you said like in a perfect
Speaker 1: world to be live bees. But were there other specific
Speaker 1: things that you wanted to include in the book, like
Speaker 1: in terms of tax tile features that were out of
Speaker 1: the question.
Speaker 9: I mean, yeah, I mean the thing is like, you know,
Speaker 9: Bill is an incredibly visual character. He's you know, transforming,
Speaker 9: and it's like if the genie from a Laddin wrote
Speaker 9: a book, you'd be like, why am I looking at text?
Speaker 9: I want to see this guy transforming? Yeah, And so
Speaker 9: it's it's sort of impossible to do a book that
Speaker 9: is as chaotic as Bill would really be. So it's like,
Speaker 9: you know, I did everything I could within the media
Speaker 9: to try to communicate that chaos. But you know, of
Speaker 9: course I asked the company for everything you can imagine.
Speaker 9: I was like, you know, can we have you know,
Speaker 9: I wanted there to be this bookmark that had like
Speaker 9: sort of three D glasses material that would like reveal
Speaker 9: certain colors I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 9: I remember having like activity books when I was a
Speaker 9: kid that would come with magnets or like wheels that
Speaker 9: you can turn with decoder stuff in them, or that
Speaker 9: would have like you know plastic you know layers where
Speaker 9: it's like the human body and you're removing the lungs
Speaker 9: and you're removing the skin and like and I had
Speaker 9: so many I remember, you know, early Internet, like angel
Speaker 9: Fire website, days like you got your infrom as like
Speaker 9: a kid from like all these kind of cool interactive
Speaker 9: sort of like fun like science books. And I just
Speaker 9: wanted to have like the most amount of optical illusions,
Speaker 9: the most amount of crazy things you could possibly I mean,
Speaker 9: the other thing I really wanted to do, like should
Speaker 9: I say this now I can. I wanted to put
Speaker 9: in randomized differences. I wanted there to be like five
Speaker 9: variations of the book with certain particular randomized differences, that
Speaker 9: people would discover those differences and then realized that they
Speaker 9: had almost been sorted into different categories, almost like Harry Potterhouses.
Speaker 3: Like or like the three endings of Clue.
Speaker 9: It wasn't going to be like major stuff like an
Speaker 9: ending change or whatever. It was going to be more
Speaker 9: like Bill Seifer has sort of designated you the reader
Speaker 9: in a certain way that is randomized by the book
Speaker 9: that you happen to pick up. You know, they just
Speaker 9: said that, like if you print variations of a book,
Speaker 9: it has different ISDN numbers, which means that won't tally
Speaker 9: the New York Times list as one book, it'll tally
Speaker 9: as five.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, you could have gotten.
Speaker 3: Five New York Times best sellers for one book.
Speaker 4: With how big this has been.
Speaker 9: I'm not the kind of guy who believes that the
Speaker 9: stove is hot until I touch it, So like I'm
Speaker 9: constantly testing to see, like can we do this? Can
Speaker 9: we can we encourage a book that you rip in half?
Speaker 9: Can we have a book that's ten books, and you know,
Speaker 9: like out of every thirty questions you ask, you know,
Speaker 9: like one of them, they're like, we can do that.
Speaker 1: So there's the about the author section sort of.
Speaker 3: For you on the book jacket there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nazzy jacket, I must say, hmm, not a sweater. No,
Speaker 1: but it does similar to Journal three's jacket having sort
Speaker 1: of a secret on the inside with the blueprint of
Speaker 1: the shack Tron. This gives us the paper that was
Speaker 1: in the last Maple Corn where it's sort of a
Speaker 1: diagram of our world, the mind scape and then the
Speaker 1: Nightmare Realm. And then four does like that evil version
Speaker 1: of the Mad magazine fold in where you know, the
Speaker 1: Nightmare Realm comes to our world.
Speaker 3: And if you're interested in dust I also have a
Speaker 3: dust Buster.
Speaker 1: That's true. It's a quaint little piece from the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: We're curious if you would give us a reading on
Speaker 3: your own a bio.
Speaker 9: Sure you just want me to read the author bio. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: as as Bill Cipher or as myself.
Speaker 4: Use your judgment of how it sounds in your head.
Speaker 9: Sorry, one moment, let me grab a book. I think
Speaker 9: I got one near Fire.
Speaker 2: You got twenty of them.
Speaker 1: Built your house out of them.
Speaker 7: Hi friends, I'm Alex Hirst, creator of Gravity Town, and
Speaker 7: I'm definitely not possessed by a demon. Right now, I'm
Speaker 7: using my normal human hands to write a message in
Speaker 7: stupid human letters commanding you.
Speaker 9: To buy the Book of Bill immediately.
Speaker 7: This book contains the never before revealed true story of
Speaker 7: Bill Cipher, his most cryptic riddles, darkest deals, and great
Speaker 7: advice for what to do with your sad, pathetic life.
Speaker 7: And it's written by the greatest writer of all time, Callibserb.
Speaker 7: The human, a regular man made of meat and goo.
Speaker 3: Alex isn't dead.
Speaker 2: He's fine.
Speaker 8: He's fine.
Speaker 9: He's fine, He's fine.
Speaker 8: I'm fine.
Speaker 1: Hell, they perfect, amazing.
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: What was it like to be possessed?
Speaker 9: There?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Was great?
Speaker 9: God, just five minutes outside of my own brain was
Speaker 9: a lovely vacation, my blessing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have adhd as well. I catch you.
Speaker 1: And then The back cover contains a few review quotes.
Speaker 1: This one is from the artist formerly known as Weird
Speaker 1: al Yankovic. I thought I liked things that were weird,
Speaker 1: but I was wrong. This book was too weird for me.
Speaker 1: I feel maucious just thinking about the horrifying psychosis contained within.
Speaker 1: I'm legally changing my name to normal Al now and
Speaker 1: pushing all my Hawaiian shirts out to sea on a barge.
Speaker 1: I'll avoid this book at all costs.
Speaker 3: Ella, you announced in our discord server that now that
Speaker 3: the name is open.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, Yes, I'm weird Al Now.
Speaker 3: I decided there wasn't another one out there. There can
Speaker 3: only be one. Yes, it's like the Santa Claus. You
Speaker 3: put on the Hawaiian shirt. You're the weird guy, the weird.
Speaker 1: Clause the night the Santa Claus went crazy.
Speaker 2: The second quote on the back is I found this
Speaker 2: arcane volume in a musty isle oft the most accursed
Speaker 2: of libraries. Nightly visitations by foul spirits commenced most immediately.
Speaker 2: It has infected my mind and my dreams, and it
Speaker 2: will destroy your sanity for all that is good and holy.
Speaker 2: Stay away from it, and whatever you do, do not
Speaker 2: read it. Attributed to Guiermo del Toro.
Speaker 1: These are not encouraging reviews, but I guess maybe the
Speaker 1: last one will well now.
Speaker 3: So the last one says, look, I hate to disagree
Speaker 3: with Giermo and normal Al, but I love this thing
Speaker 3: ever since I read it, I keep hearing this screaming
Speaker 3: in my plain that won't stop and buy the GotY
Speaker 3: for everyone I know. We love Bell, we love Bell,
Speaker 3: we love.
Speaker 4: Bell, and that is by Charlie Day. You're welcome for
Speaker 4: that impression.
Speaker 1: Charlie, what the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 2: So the book itself is a beautiful feat of multimedia
Speaker 2: and inventive storytelling. A lot of the writers and board
Speaker 2: artists from the show itself did return to create pieces
Speaker 2: of photography and illustrate some pieces, even being three D
Speaker 2: modeled and printed to create the art. I'll say that,
Speaker 2: like on the subject of the artists, there are several
Speaker 2: artists that came in, Like the powerhouses are definitely Emmy
Speaker 2: ceciriega Ian Worrel and Joe Pitt, And I know that
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Thompson worked on the show, and there are a
Speaker 2: few other artists. But there's a ton of brand new artists.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about how you
Speaker 2: found those artists.
Speaker 9: I mean, the you know, extraordinary thing about Gravity Falls
Speaker 9: is enduring legacy is that all these incredible new people
Speaker 9: are always finding it, and so many amazing artists that
Speaker 9: I love and respect. Since the series has concluded. You know,
Speaker 9: they follow me, they're fans, they do fan art, or
Speaker 9: I just dig their stuff. And so the sort of
Speaker 9: high profileness of Gravity Falls allowed me to kind of
Speaker 9: just message anybody whose stuff I thought looked awesome on
Speaker 9: Instagram or Twitter and just say like, hey, any chance
Speaker 9: you'd be down, And they were always down. So it
Speaker 9: really was the sort of this great chance to sort
Speaker 9: of old artists new artists, people who were fans when
Speaker 9: the show was airing that are now artists that were
Speaker 9: inspired by the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the description for this podcast, we will
Speaker 2: have links to the artist master doc which includes links
Speaker 2: to all of the tweets and Instagram posts that we
Speaker 2: are going to talk about in this It'll also have
Speaker 2: a link to the artist page Comparison, which has the
Speaker 2: listing of the pages in the regular edition and the
Speaker 2: limited edition Barnes and Noble edition, so that you can
Speaker 2: figure out like the artists conglomerated on each page. So
Speaker 2: the premise of the book is that the reader makes
Speaker 2: a contract with William the Spooky Pyramid himself to gain
Speaker 2: access to unlimited weirdness and knowledge by feeding the book
Speaker 2: with their own blood.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one would would actually do that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that would be painful and terrifying.
Speaker 2: Yes, well he.
Speaker 3: Did say paper cuts would be awarded to special listeners,
Speaker 3: so some of it might be unintentional.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're going to get into kind of bit
Speaker 3: by bit in a second. But I just I love
Speaker 3: this book.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, Like.
Speaker 4: I definitely got the vibe Alex.
Speaker 3: You're in your element in this kind of stream of
Speaker 3: consciousness sort of writing, because it's constantly shifting genres and
Speaker 3: sometimes it's historical trivia and sometimes it's weird parodies and
Speaker 3: every page looks different from the last, but it's all
Speaker 3: one cohesive narrative.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we'll get into it later, but I
Speaker 1: think I was really struck by, particularly the strength of character,
Speaker 1: even in something as chaotic as this.
Speaker 4: I love this book.
Speaker 3: I like I was going in as someone who was
Speaker 3: a YouTuber when Billzeipher was popular, doing Billzeipher voices, just
Speaker 3: getting annoyed with my child audience, thinking I was a
Speaker 3: real demon, and I was like going in like, ah,
Speaker 3: this book's not going to win me over, and it's
Speaker 3: just I love it so much. I reread it right
Speaker 3: before the recording, and there were lines that I had
Speaker 3: forgotten about that made me like laugh out loud. And
Speaker 3: I was reading this on the beach of the Black Sea,
Speaker 3: and there was a couple of Russians partying a few
Speaker 3: feet for me, and that kept like staring at me
Speaker 3: when I was laughing alone with a book.
Speaker 1: That is one of the side effects of the book Avilion.
Speaker 3: You know, it begins with Ford telling us, hey, don't
Speaker 3: read this book. He's a bit of a grover here,
Speaker 3: isn't it there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a monster at the Yeah.
Speaker 3: A monster in this book. Yes, And so then there's
Speaker 3: a page to write your name like the Golden books
Speaker 3: would have at the beginning. But it's creepy. And then uh,
Speaker 3: Bill laughs for I think three four straight pages.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's two full spreads, yes, including a very creepy
Speaker 1: like It reminds me of that gift of SpongeBob bursting
Speaker 1: through the wall of the Krusty Krab where it's cg
Speaker 1: until he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because each page it progresses with him bursting through
Speaker 3: the paper of the book.
Speaker 1: Credibly unsettling.
Speaker 2: And this particular image was done by Ian Worrel, of
Speaker 2: course it was, of course it was.
Speaker 3: He's a Swiss army knife and Ron Swanson and won
Speaker 3: He's made out of Swiss army knives and he could
Speaker 3: do anything.
Speaker 2: So he posted this on August fourteenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: and it says more work from the hashtag Book of Bill,
Speaker 2: hashtag blender saving me from painting folds. Character assists from
Speaker 2: my bud at pitt Win, which is Joe pitt And
Speaker 2: the post includes several three D models of Bill in motion,
Speaker 2: and it also includes the slot machine, stand pick and
Speaker 2: the therapy pick from later in the book.
Speaker 1: So then sort of the plot of the book really
Speaker 1: takes off with Bill directly engaging with you where you
Speaker 1: are a character in this book. The book is constantly
Speaker 1: at interplay with you, the reader, kind of like Journal three,
Speaker 1: but definitely goes further.
Speaker 2: I mean like Journal three and the NonStop Fun Book.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a mix of those but dark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also true and Alex was that always a goal
Speaker 1: to sort of make it an active conversation with the
Speaker 1: reader and sort of with the fans.
Speaker 9: By extension, Bill does not have the attention span to
Speaker 9: write a book. I don't think he could sustain the
Speaker 9: third person for very long. He would constantly be breaking
Speaker 9: and arguing with you and with himself. I mean, I
Speaker 9: think that is something I learned very quickly when I
Speaker 9: started writing. Bill is most interesting when he's in a
Speaker 9: dialogue with somebody, when there's somebody to push back against
Speaker 9: him and Ruffly's feathers and make him sort of contradict
Speaker 9: himself and telling himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I want to go over this page.
Speaker 3: It's like a mock of the copyright page at the
Speaker 3: beginning of a book, and it says published by Bill
Speaker 3: Cipher Press and imprint of Bill Ceipher Books. No part
Speaker 3: or form of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
Speaker 3: in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical,
Speaker 3: including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system
Speaker 3: unless you really want to you can. Who cares, right,
Speaker 3: It's just a book. Have fun with it, knock.
Speaker 4: Yourself out, nothing matters.
Speaker 3: We're all gonna die anyway. Go on copy this book.
Speaker 3: I dare you. There's obviously a lot of not TV
Speaker 3: y seven stuff in here.
Speaker 4: And I know that was, you know, your.
Speaker 3: Initial pitch for the book. But the one that drove
Speaker 3: me the absolute craziest was the permission to commit piracy
Speaker 3: in the copyright page, I'm like, I can't imagine a
Speaker 3: universe of a version of Disney that okayed that.
Speaker 9: I mean, the thing is, originally it was a lot
Speaker 9: worse than that. It was. At the bottom of it,
Speaker 9: he said.
Speaker 7: For more good advice, take all the bottles of chemicals
Speaker 7: under your sync, put them into a jug down.
Speaker 3: The hatch, enjoy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 9: And They're like, maybe we should't encourage the readers to
Speaker 9: literally drink poison. I was like, you know what, Disney,
Speaker 9: You're right, You're right.
Speaker 1: The piracy part seemed acceptable by comparison.
Speaker 9: I mean for the part for the truth is. I'm like,
Speaker 9: I'm never really trying to get away with anything. I'm
Speaker 9: just trying. I'm just trying to be Bill, and like
Speaker 9: whatever Bill says, I write down, and then yeah, we
Speaker 9: see what they have a problem with.
Speaker 2: You're just living the truth. You're living Bill's truth.
Speaker 9: There's a few situations where I very much, you know,
Speaker 9: would write something and then just not even send it
Speaker 9: to Disney because I'm like, oh, this is too insane,
Speaker 9: because like, you know, if it really was Bill, he
Speaker 9: would just the entire book be telling people explicitly how
Speaker 9: to commit acts of stochastic terrorism. Like it would be
Speaker 9: a full on instruction to incite a riot. So you know,
Speaker 9: you have to find a version of Bill that is
Speaker 9: true to the voice of the show, but also isn't
Speaker 9: getting me liable for lawsuits everywhere.
Speaker 1: So on that page, also at the bottom, there is
Speaker 1: the sentence for more Bill Cipher press fun. This is
Speaker 1: not a website dot com, dot com.
Speaker 3: So the Book of Bill, obviously a lot of work
Speaker 3: went into it.
Speaker 4: This is not a website dot com.
Speaker 3: Seems like there's an equal amount of work put into it.
Speaker 3: And I can't imagine producing those simultaneously.
Speaker 4: Like what was that?
Speaker 9: Like I realized while I was writing the book, Oh no,
Speaker 9: oh crap. Bill and his energy and his vibe do
Speaker 9: not lend themselves best to a book, nor do they
Speaker 9: lend themselves best to a TV show. They lend themselves
Speaker 9: best to some kind of interactive medium like an escape
Speaker 9: room or a mio wolf or a video game or
Speaker 9: a magic show. And a book can't do that. And
Speaker 9: a lot of the things that I wanted to do,
Speaker 9: you know, I was like, I want to create a
Speaker 9: weird song. I want to have something that is you
Speaker 9: know that you can click on an interact with mult
Speaker 9: was impossible. So I started creating all these parts of
Speaker 9: the book that then I was like, this doesn't work
Speaker 9: as a book. And so I had all this kind
Speaker 9: of like additional ideas and stuff that I didn't know
Speaker 9: what to do with. And then I was like, oh, oh, okay.
Speaker 9: You know. I did the schmebe Unlocked website for Lost Legends,
Speaker 9: and I was like, what's the bill version of that.
Speaker 9: I was like, oh, it would be infinitely more. And
Speaker 9: I've never made like a point and click adventure or
Speaker 9: whatever before, but I just like, I have to entertain myself,
Speaker 9: you know, you got to follow the weird impulse where
Speaker 9: it goes. And it's the most I honestly, it's the
Speaker 9: most one I've had since the Cipher Hunt putting that together,
Speaker 9: and I was so thrilled watching fantastic experience it and
Speaker 9: going on TikTok and seeing people you know, live typing
Speaker 9: stuff in and arguing with each other and so much fun. Yeah,
Speaker 9: professional goblin, man, that's the way to go.
Speaker 2: And I know that the screen was it's a Lip
Speaker 2: Camarello design, right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Lip crushed it, man, And thank goodness, because that
Speaker 9: was a favor. I was like, Lip, can you can
Speaker 9: you please help me out with this, because if you don't,
Speaker 9: it's just gonna be my drawing sharpie on paper. And
Speaker 9: he's like, I got your brother. I was like, we
Speaker 9: got three days to get this thing done.
Speaker 3: Man, let's move And it is wonderful. It has tunes, games, characters, downloads, email.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 9: Actually, I will admit that I reached out to Matt
Speaker 9: Chatman when I was working on the website and said,
Speaker 9: do you have any suggestions, And it was his idea
Speaker 9: to have entering Giffanny corrupt your computer and download files.
Speaker 3: Is your pomp Pom in there?
Speaker 9: I wish? I wish there was a pompom in there.
Speaker 3: Oh, I heard that there's a bubbling sound. That's like
Speaker 3: that was just a bubble. Bubbling sounds can only sound
Speaker 3: like bubbles.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 9: I do believe the nicker Man is in there somewhere
Speaker 9: if you look hard enough. Really, No, that wouldn't that
Speaker 9: be amazing?
Speaker 3: You're lying to the Alex would you do that?
Speaker 4: Just tell a fandom lies?
Speaker 3: But I think for the most part, we want to
Speaker 3: save discussion of the this is not a website website
Speaker 3: for another podcast. Maybe put a hidden link to it
Speaker 3: in this podcast, like a secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if it's a secret, then why are we
Speaker 2: telling them.
Speaker 1: That's that's true? Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Go back, I'll say that again. Okay, codes, there are
Speaker 3: no codes in this podcast one?
Speaker 1: Why would you even think of that there were?
Speaker 3: Don't look at the podcast thumbnail too closely, though, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, admire the beautiful artwork, of course, yes, but you know,
Speaker 1: no further than that.
Speaker 3: You'll strain your eyes, you know, And if you strain
Speaker 3: your eyes you'll have to call the eyeball doc.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no one really knows what that guy's name is.
Speaker 1: Who can even remember?
Speaker 3: After this is great? There's a parody covers of a
Speaker 3: bunch of different genres of books.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so the book covers were done by Emmy,
Speaker 2: Joe and Ian. I know for sure that Emmy's book
Speaker 2: covers were the Spookums.
Speaker 3: Spook Spook Them Ups, the.
Speaker 2: Spook Them Ups, and the Love Triangle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Gee, I couldn't have I couldn't tell who did
Speaker 1: the Love Triangle one? Wow, that was really.
Speaker 3: A signature on that art would be redundant. But she
Speaker 3: did her own series of Disney parody comics, including one
Speaker 3: where Grandmother Willow starts climbing out.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh my gosh, yes, I forgot about that one.
Speaker 3: It's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 2: In her tweet on August twentieth, she revealed that those
Speaker 2: are the two that she did.
Speaker 1: I also love on the next page, the photoshop parody toolbars.
Speaker 3: Yes, do you want to read us the toolbar there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So our options include free, trans form, scale, rotate, skew,
Speaker 1: torture physically, torture, mentally, removing testines, stab vertically, stab, horizontally,
Speaker 1: chop into pieces, put in garbage bag, wash hands. Put
Speaker 1: garbage bag in river. The river is quiet, The river
Speaker 1: keeps its secrets. No one will know. Rotate one to eighty,
Speaker 1: rotate eighteen thousand, rotate until time reverses to a backflip way.
Speaker 2: So there's a portal in the top and a portal
Speaker 2: down at the bottom.
Speaker 1: Oh there is okay, Yes, yes, that is portal. Okay.
Speaker 9: I did a lot of drawing and editing on this book.
Speaker 9: I taught myself in design. There's a lot of work
Speaker 9: to do, and so I taught myself how to do
Speaker 9: a number of things together.
Speaker 1: Seeing you in design and form that parody photoshop tool bar, Yes,
Speaker 1: one hundred, very alive.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I made that. I made all those those
Speaker 9: icons for the for the fake photog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're so good. I personally really like the rat,
Speaker 2: but that's very odd brand for me.
Speaker 3: Here's one of the instances where you have to give
Speaker 3: your blood to Bill.
Speaker 1: He's always asking for eighties, like, always soliciting those donations.
Speaker 3: If you for just for just a quart of blood.
Speaker 1: To day, democracy is at stake.
Speaker 2: We need your book, all right. So the next part
Speaker 2: is the sort of like the anatomy of a book,
Speaker 2: which is probably one of my favorite pictures in this
Speaker 2: segment where.
Speaker 3: The spine contains a literal spine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the capture the captua I am not Dipper Pines.
Speaker 1: I love that he specifically like hates Dipper like probably
Speaker 1: more than anyone in the Pines family.
Speaker 2: I think Stanley probably takes the cake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he would, he would, he would take he would
Speaker 3: take forty.
Speaker 1: Kiss as many as four tens.
Speaker 9: That's terrible.
Speaker 1: I'm also thinking about in the Reddit ama that Bill
Speaker 1: did responding to a user called not Dipper Pines. He
Speaker 1: just encourages him to rub alifanio peppers into his eyes.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed with the shirt on the next page, that
Speaker 3: says I'm a little different.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be wearing that shirt on Sunday.
Speaker 4: You made that shirt?
Speaker 2: No, my friend made it for me.
Speaker 1: That's a yes. Then we get into this like Gossip Magazine.
Speaker 4: The Bill size side for show.
Speaker 1: But he's on like this parody Ellen set.
Speaker 2: Like yes, and I like the the how do you
Speaker 2: wear pants? The toxic Gossip train?
Speaker 1: No, the toxic gossip train reference is insane to me.
Speaker 9: I mean, I just you know, I think there was
Speaker 9: a because that section was an interview, right, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 9: what would you say to Bill if he was alive?
Speaker 9: You know, do you have any regrets? You know, was
Speaker 9: weird to get a mistake? And you know, the idea
Speaker 9: of at first it was, you know, Bill being like,
Speaker 9: you're lucky it happened. It's the most interesting thing that
Speaker 9: happened to your dimensions, Like no, no, no, no, no, what
Speaker 9: is the funnier thing? A funny thing is for the
Speaker 9: celebrity to be like I already addressed that in my apology. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and to be like the most like rinky dank stupid
Speaker 9: video like with the xylophone, humanly possible. Yeah, I was
Speaker 9: not expecting that particular gag to pop off as much
Speaker 9: as it did, and people were losing their minds over it.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it happened in real life. There really
Speaker 3: was an apology video song.
Speaker 9: I mean it's sort of a trope now, the celebrity
Speaker 9: apology video I did write. I wrote a couple of
Speaker 9: different Bill interviews, and like that section was the one
Speaker 9: that I ended up putting in the book, But I
Speaker 9: wrote one that was like I thought I nailed it.
Speaker 9: It was like a parody of like a sort of
Speaker 9: GQ interview with like a kind of cool older celebrity,
Speaker 9: like a, oh, we sat down with George Clooney and
Speaker 9: his Brownstone to discuss his new brand of mescal and
Speaker 9: also does he think he made any missteps in his career?
Speaker 9: You know, describing like, oh, you know Bill Sipher in
Speaker 9: person is every every but the triangle demon, you thing,
Speaker 9: but he's got a few tricks up his sleeve. Would
Speaker 9: you do anything differently?
Speaker 7: And it's oh, yes, of course, you know that was
Speaker 7: you know, I was in my early twenty billions when
Speaker 7: I did that.
Speaker 9: You know, I've broken laugh And it was like describing
Speaker 9: him having like two little Pomeranians and like a pickleball Court,
Speaker 9: and it was like everything about it was like completely
Speaker 9: off cannon and insane, and it was like I thought
Speaker 9: it would be really funny to include something that was
Speaker 9: so incorrect, but then I read it in context, I
Speaker 9: was like, this is gonna make people furious, like suggesting
Speaker 9: that like like Bill is living in some apartment in
Speaker 9: New York, like for the gag.
Speaker 1: Right, that's his dream retire. Then we start to get
Speaker 1: some live action photo incorporation on the the Icy All
Speaker 1: page done by Ian Worrell.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a lot of that. I think even
Speaker 1: in the series proper, there's a few moments of live
Speaker 1: action footage associated with Bill as this like unsettling. Uh,
Speaker 1: when you're doing animation or you know, just two D characters,
Speaker 1: like live action footage is gonna be either hilarious or horrifying,
Speaker 1: Like SpongeBob is a great example of like live action
Speaker 1: footage for comedy, but then they also use it for
Speaker 1: horror at some points, like with Wormy.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I think they did it on Flapjack
Speaker 2: a few times too, and for sure on Gumball, and
Speaker 2: it's unsettling every time.
Speaker 1: But I mean I want to I do want to
Speaker 1: mention Cherna Bill.
Speaker 3: Yes, so there is a reference to Fantasia Night on
Speaker 3: Bald Mountain.
Speaker 2: This is a Joe Pitt illustration, And he said on
Speaker 2: August twenty seven, four layout illustration for Alex Hirsch at
Speaker 2: Disney Books. Hashtag Book of Bill. We weren't allowed to
Speaker 2: use direct in a bog reference. Swipe right to see
Speaker 2: the original hashtag gravity falls, hashtag Bill Siper, hashtag Fantasia,
Speaker 2: hashtag churnabog. And the original image that they were going
Speaker 2: to use was a yellow version with spirits instead of
Speaker 2: the symbols.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could have fooled me, not that I'm
Speaker 1: always watching Fantasia, but I assumed it was, you know,
Speaker 1: an edit of.
Speaker 4: I Try to spend my nights off Bald Mountain personally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a page where Bill is starting
Speaker 1: to talk about his weaknesses and then he kind of
Speaker 1: like Emperor's New Groove style, pushes the paija yeah and
Speaker 1: interrupts himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Bill, getting self conscious that you're reading about his weaknesses,
Speaker 3: decides that the Book of Bill is canceled and you're
Speaker 3: reading Great Gatsby instead. And we had talked before about
Speaker 3: in Boss Mabel, when Stan is in his Hawaiian shirt.
Speaker 3: It is absurdly specifically the exact outfit that is seen
Speaker 3: in My Breakfast with Blass, the film by Andy Kauffman.
Speaker 9: That's fine, So it's.
Speaker 3: Worth pointing out that during Andy Kaufman's shows, when he
Speaker 3: felt the audience was not responding well to them, he
Speaker 3: would start reading Great Gatsby to them instead. Once they
Speaker 3: were clearly bored of it, go do you want me
Speaker 3: to keep reading? Or would you want me to just
Speaker 3: put on a record for you guys? Instead, they would
Speaker 3: say put on a rocker because they just wanted him
Speaker 3: to stop, and then he's record would just be a
Speaker 3: record of him reading Great gats We started get the
Speaker 3: exact sentence he stopped on. But I obviously want to
Speaker 3: ask about your fandom of Andy Kaufman, because it's something
Speaker 3: no one ever has asked you about to the best
Speaker 3: of my knowledge.
Speaker 9: I mean, Andy Coffin's like, you know, he's the original
Speaker 9: Bill Cipher Man. I mean, like getting a laugh was
Speaker 9: not nearly as important to him as doing something that
Speaker 9: you're not supposed to do to see people furious and leave,
Speaker 9: you know. I mean it's sort of like Norm McDonald's
Speaker 9: roast of Bob Saggett, where he tells jokes that are
Speaker 9: intentionally unfunny to see how long he can make other
Speaker 9: comedians endure jokes that aren't funny because like they're saying
Speaker 9: the most offensive things they could say, and they're all laughing,
Speaker 9: and then it starts being like, you know, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 9: he's got the eyes of an eagle. This man's for
Speaker 9: the birds, and like it's like not a joke, and
Speaker 9: you feel everyone's summing. So of course you love Neil Hamburger.
Speaker 9: Oh yes, of course, Oh my god, no, Neil Hamburger.
Speaker 9: I remember seeing him. Some of his jokes live. I
Speaker 9: can't even say them. They're so offensive, but they're like
Speaker 9: anti comedy, they're you know, I mean the first time
Speaker 9: I saw Neil Hamburger live, he came out and he
Speaker 9: coughed and cleared his throat for like five whole minutes.
Speaker 1: Excuse me.
Speaker 9: One more moment, my apologies. I was like, this is
Speaker 9: so funny. So, I mean, like, Bill has that spirit
Speaker 9: of anarchy, and I was like that was another one
Speaker 9: of the first gags that came up with was like, oh,
Speaker 9: Bill should briefly decide to make this a different book.
Speaker 9: You know, I wish, I wish that the book was
Speaker 9: an edition fifty pages, so that fifty pages of the
Speaker 9: book could have been Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: It is an absurd amount of Gatsby, because like you
Speaker 3: turn the page and you're like, oh, great Matsky on
Speaker 3: one page, Great Gatsby on the other. Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: turn the page and I won't be looking at great
Speaker 3: Gatsby anymore. Then there's two more pages.
Speaker 9: I wish I could have done more, honestly, but you know,
Speaker 9: you only get so.
Speaker 3: Many pages of the There's an interesting observation I had
Speaker 3: about the selection because you start with chapter two instead
Speaker 3: of chapter one. The very beginning of chapter two is
Speaker 3: a description of the all seeing eyes that watch over
Speaker 3: the impoverished neighborhood.
Speaker 9: Yes, all seeing eyes, an optometrist, a valley of ashes, yes,
Speaker 9: one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: So obviously Bill is trying to make the comparison of
Speaker 3: himself with tj Eckelberg. But you continually kept linking people
Speaker 3: the rest of the book.
Speaker 4: Throughout this process.
Speaker 3: So I have to ask Bill chose a chapter that
Speaker 3: the title character is not in.
Speaker 4: Was that omission because.
Speaker 3: He did not want to invite comparisons is Bill Gatsby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we were talking about it and I kind
Speaker 1: of was like, well, you know, hedonism and not admitting
Speaker 1: your faults, you know.
Speaker 9: Let me put it this way. People say that, like
Speaker 9: all art is in some degree autobiographical, and oftentimes an
Speaker 9: artists will create a work that they don't even recognize
Speaker 9: that the themes in parallels to their own life until
Speaker 9: years and years later they look back and they say,
Speaker 9: oh my god, that movie was actually about I thought
Speaker 9: I thought it was about anome. It's actually about my
Speaker 9: divorce or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So imagine if you will, that you were Bill
Speaker 9: Cipher and you had magic powers. I imagine projecting a
Speaker 9: book for a reader, and then you briefly got paranoid
Speaker 9: that the reader was turning against you, and you're like you,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna replace this with the Great Gatsby, eat it,
Speaker 9: and then poof, you just flung your hand, you pointed
Speaker 9: the book and it turned to Great Gatsby. And the
Speaker 9: same way with an an artist might not be cognizant
Speaker 9: of the autobiographical telling on yourself themes inside the art
Speaker 9: they create. I think a demon constantly conjuring things might
Speaker 9: not even be consciously aware of which pages he's conjuring
Speaker 9: they just right in the moment. Bill, in his constant
Speaker 9: sort of creating things on the fly, parallels maybe something
Speaker 9: that we pick apart or notice, but he's not as
Speaker 9: in control of it as he would like you to believe.
Speaker 9: And so I think there's lots of moments where Bill
Speaker 9: is sort of comparing or telling on himself, or verbalizing
Speaker 9: a subconscious thought without even noticing that's what he's doing.
Speaker 3: And was that you unintentionally driving that parallel or Bill?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 9: I mean like I chose those pages specifically, but I'm
Speaker 9: not sure Bill, did you know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have Ford coming back interjecting, being like, oh
Speaker 3: you didn't you turned me page, but then admits that
Speaker 3: even though he told you there's no circumstances where you
Speaker 3: should be reading this, he is reading this as well,
Speaker 3: kind of him falling back into his old patterns, like
Speaker 3: a relapse story from Ford's part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think what's also important to mention is
Speaker 1: that chronologically these Ford pages are taking place still sort
Speaker 1: of in the wrap up in the denumat of season
Speaker 1: two of Gravity Falls.
Speaker 3: Why did they call it that? D?
Speaker 1: Mal Shall, Yeah, well, sort of taking place concurrently with
Speaker 1: don't dimention it the comic from Lost Legends, and just
Speaker 1: sort of the general wrap up of fixing the last
Speaker 1: bits of Weird Mageddon. Dipper and Mabel are preparing to
Speaker 1: go home to celebrate their birthday and.
Speaker 3: The cutaway in Weird mcgeddon Part three slash Part four
Speaker 3: where Stanley's mind is being recovered for a week, and
Speaker 3: that both of those things, both of those events, the
Speaker 3: recovery of Stanley's mind, and and.
Speaker 1: Ford also planning this trip that he's going to take
Speaker 1: with his brother.
Speaker 3: He mentions, yes, so it all kind of places. It's
Speaker 3: not really a sequel to Gravity Falls. It's I was
Speaker 3: talking to a friend about this who said, there's a
Speaker 3: there's a time skip in Dragon Ball Z and they
Speaker 3: every time there needs to be a new story, it
Speaker 3: takes place in that time skip.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of just.
Speaker 3: Funny to imagine that over the course of a week,
Speaker 3: the Pines family has to deal with Weird Mageddon, then
Speaker 3: Mabel gets trapped in another dimension of Mabels, then the
Speaker 3: Book of Bill shows up, and then the their birthday
Speaker 3: party where they have to go away and say goodbye
Speaker 3: to everyone.
Speaker 1: It's kind of out every New Star Wars thing is like,
Speaker 1: and it takes place between episodes three and four.
Speaker 3: Okay, you gotta do gravity falls machety order here, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: Pause when they start reading the scrap book to Grugglestad.
Speaker 3: Then you have to read both Don't Dimension It and
Speaker 3: the Book of Bill.
Speaker 1: Well, it's relevant to place it chronologically. The idea that
Speaker 1: he's relapsing, right, that this is all so fresh for him.
Speaker 3: Yes, but also it's a little funny to think about
Speaker 3: that time skip kind of feeling of that episode, Like
Speaker 3: then they just focused on recovering Stan's mind for a week.
Speaker 3: Nothing to talk about there. Well, okay, there was a
Speaker 3: dimensional Okay, Bill return.
Speaker 1: But as we will see later though, this book clearly
Speaker 1: was not a big deal to anyone except for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then we come to this sequence of pages called
Speaker 1: the One True intel Leigence Test, which is this like
Speaker 1: standardized test told by Bill. So all the questions are
Speaker 1: trick questions basically, But what I'm really interested in is
Speaker 1: the disclaimer at the top where it sort of does
Speaker 1: the like, you have ten minutes to complete the quiz,
Speaker 1: use number thirty seven, pencil only, et cetera. Toward the
Speaker 1: end it kind of devolves into this rant. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could. I'll read the whole thing. If stuck on
Speaker 1: a question, you may feel an overwhelming sense that you're
Speaker 1: falling behind, that all the other students are smarter than you,
Speaker 1: and that your life is over before it's even begun.
Speaker 1: You may conclude that the universe is fundamentally unfair and
Speaker 1: designed only for your suffering. Lean into this feeling, Let
Speaker 1: it fester and grow until you're glowing with incandescent theory,
Speaker 1: a flame with an unquenchable yearning for vengeance. They thought
Speaker 1: they were smarter than you, Well, you'll show them, You'll
Speaker 1: show them all. And I know that Dippers and Mabel's
Speaker 1: Guide to Mystery NonStop fund was written by Robert Eddie
Speaker 1: and Chane Houghton, but it really brought to mind the
Speaker 1: fine print on the certificate of like certified Mystery Solver
Speaker 1: that Dipper makes for you. There's moments where Dipper says,
Speaker 1: other people will realize they should have been nicer to us,
Speaker 1: and it gets vaguely megalomaniacal, And I just think that's
Speaker 1: a fascinating like parallel between Bill and Dipper. And similarly,
Speaker 1: as well as on the morality page, there's oh, We're
Speaker 1: never wrong, right, and then all the other Bills are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, Bill, which is brought to my mind the
Speaker 1: last Mapelcorn with Dipper kind of being like, I'm really
Speaker 1: good at rationalizing in his own thoughts, being like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are, not necessarily whether it was intentional, but just
Speaker 1: sort of to get your take on like the Pines
Speaker 1: family members obviously Ford, but you know other Pines family
Speaker 1: members having shades of Bill in themselves, and Bill like
Speaker 1: reflecting the darker aspects or letting their flaws kind of
Speaker 1: guide them.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, all these characters are sort of like
Speaker 9: a prismatic splitting of the aspects of my psyche. As
Speaker 9: a writer, that's sort of what you do is you
Speaker 9: sort of split your brain into different voices than you
Speaker 9: have the margue with each other, and Bill is the
Speaker 9: voice whispering in your head to grab whatever makes you
Speaker 9: feel good, and you know, damn the consequences of damn
Speaker 9: other people around you. So you know, whenever a character
Speaker 9: is being impatient or ego maniacal, they are sort of
Speaker 9: closer to Bill. There's never really a conscious attempt to
Speaker 9: make any of these characters like directly a parallel to Bill,
Speaker 9: so to speak, but sort of it's all coming from
Speaker 9: the same soup of my brain. So these things are
Speaker 9: gonna sort of it's like poetry.
Speaker 4: They rhyme, every stands us there. Bill is the key
Speaker 4: to all of this.
Speaker 3: Bill, and I also want to say to anyone listening
Speaker 3: who is a student presently and might be struggling with
Speaker 3: similar thoughts to the ones that Bill stated at the
Speaker 3: beginning of this test. I am thirty one. I last
Speaker 3: attended a school when I was eighteen. That is, Ella,
Speaker 3: do some math for me.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't been to school in a long time either.
Speaker 3: Well, so that's exactly it, though is I used to
Speaker 3: get so so upset, cry when I got bad or
Speaker 3: when I couldn't figure out a specific course or class,
Speaker 3: and all these years later, over a decade later, Oh wait,
Speaker 3: I got it, thirteen years later. I have no idea
Speaker 3: which classes I.
Speaker 1: Did well, yeah or poorly.
Speaker 3: I don't think about those things. They don't come up
Speaker 3: in your life. And school is if you don't attend.
Speaker 3: College is something you do from age five to age eighteen,
Speaker 3: and as an eighteen year old, that's a large percentage
Speaker 3: of your life and possibly all of your life that
Speaker 3: you hold memories for and it feels like the world
Speaker 3: is going to be like this forever, and I just
Speaker 3: want to let our listeners know it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, about the pages, I will say that one
Speaker 2: interesting difference between the limited edition and the regular edition
Speaker 2: is the regular edition has a coffee stain at the
Speaker 2: top of the page, and the limited edition does not.
Speaker 1: Well, the coffee stains. I'm sure they're just illustrations, right,
Speaker 1: they don't.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm sure they're just illustrations.
Speaker 1: There's that mouse again.
Speaker 2: But it's definitely interesting to note that that is there
Speaker 2: in one edition and not the other. And then Emmy
Speaker 2: also said that the little image that she has the
Speaker 2: devious illustration, she was told that she had to do
Speaker 2: a simpler version because her original image was deemed too
Speaker 2: hard to look at.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that it's just it's just a mash up
Speaker 1: of every optical illusion.
Speaker 2: It's truly beautiful.
Speaker 1: I also am a big fan of the surface area
Speaker 1: of Sous drawing, where he's just like, hold on, I
Speaker 1: got here, and I was genuinely curious what the surface
Speaker 1: area of SEUs is. I don't think we ever found
Speaker 1: that out forty.
Speaker 3: Two Oh, that's what the question.
Speaker 1: Was Oh, that marks much more sense.
Speaker 3: I understand that book.
Speaker 1: Now that's a deep thought though too.
Speaker 3: Slarty bart fast.
Speaker 2: But as you will learn, if you actually did any
Speaker 2: work trying to find the surface area of SEUs, you
Speaker 2: failed the tests because the answer key is right over here.
Speaker 2: And if you did no work, you passed.
Speaker 1: That's right. So Bill does then confirm two things and
Speaker 1: go into more detail, which is that reality is indeed
Speaker 1: an illusion, and the universe is indeed a hologram. Specifically,
Speaker 1: it's a hologram like Pokemon.
Speaker 4: Card, a holographic Pokemon card.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not the same word as holograund no, but
Speaker 3: it's not. And it almost seems like you don't really
Speaker 3: know what a hologram is. But you know what a
Speaker 3: holographic Pokemon card.
Speaker 1: I mean, Alex, I know you're obviously a big Pokemon fans.
Speaker 4: You just pronounce it Pokemon.
Speaker 2: Look whose work is the hologram card?
Speaker 9: The little illustration on the card of like Bill inside
Speaker 9: a sort of roiling, massive black tendrils and sort of
Speaker 9: chaos blobs. That illustration inside is Ian and then the
Speaker 9: rest of the card I make, oh cools.
Speaker 3: So much like a Pokemon card.
Speaker 9: Oh, thank you I did a lot of drawing and
Speaker 9: editing on this book, and.
Speaker 1: Then we get into this this all very edgy, like
Speaker 1: you know, hot topic, like your body's just disgusting, You're
Speaker 1: just a meat puppet like And I love that we're
Speaker 1: obviously seeing it from Bill's perspective right now, where he's
Speaker 1: the only one talking, so it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of although I will say I love the bones filled
Speaker 2: with tinier bones.
Speaker 1: Yes, and the colors that you can't see, including ultra violet,
Speaker 1: extra turquoise, megagenta, insaniteal, hyper beige, and brown two Brown two.
Speaker 3: I gotta tell you, guys, I can see it insaniteal,
Speaker 3: I actually can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't see the normal colors.
Speaker 2: So no, can you see brown too?
Speaker 3: Though only exclusively?
Speaker 2: Exclusively brown too.
Speaker 3: Ella's never seen brown.
Speaker 2: You've never seen brown one, only Brown two.
Speaker 1: Do I need to see brown one for context before
Speaker 1: I see brown two?
Speaker 3: Where?
Speaker 2: And this juicy eye down here was made by Emmy Cisariega.
Speaker 4: I hate that picture.
Speaker 1: There's a form ranking with silhouettes going from a shrimp
Speaker 1: all the way down to Toby determined, and I, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, you could say that Bill is ranking
Speaker 1: humans in general, as worse. But I think he's putting
Speaker 1: specifically Toby determined down there.
Speaker 3: Well, we learn later Toby determines probably from the mirror dimension,
Speaker 3: at least in Bill's opinion.
Speaker 2: Good for him.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Bodacious Tea, Bodacious Ta. Sorry, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: Like when we see Bodacious Tea at his youngest, he
Speaker 2: is in front of mirrors dancing, So that makes sense.
Speaker 1: That's very true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tap dance his way into our dimension. That's how
Speaker 2: he got here.
Speaker 3: I also love directly. Middle on this list is the
Speaker 3: Dodo when extinct, for being the most average life form. Yes,
Speaker 3: not either be better or worse than this to survive.
Speaker 3: And then we also learn that the ultimate stage of
Speaker 3: wrinkliness is known as.
Speaker 1: Larry Yes, when your skin reaches peak wrinkle, with just.
Speaker 3: An actual photo of Larry kinget here labeled it is inevitable.
Speaker 1: Yes. This page also has the fine print that says help.
Speaker 1: This is not Bill Sleipher. My name is Grebley hemberdrak
Speaker 1: of Zimtrex five. I'm one of thousands of beings Bill
Speaker 1: is devoured over trillions of years, whose souls are now
Speaker 1: trapped inside him. You have to free me. It's horrible
Speaker 1: in here he just keeps playing the song good Vibrations
Speaker 1: by Marky Mark on an endless loop. Please please, this
Speaker 1: is not a joke. The Semtrexians. Oran's a proud and
Speaker 1: mighty people. But now our spirit's long for release from
Speaker 1: this yellow prison. If there are any gods not yet
Speaker 1: dead by Cipher's wicked hand, here are prayers you can't imagine.
Speaker 1: And then it cuts off.
Speaker 3: Is that on a special edition because mine cuts off
Speaker 3: on release from this?
Speaker 2: No, it's in both editions.
Speaker 1: Like that last line. I'm only I'm only reading the
Speaker 1: top half of that line under sort of action, both.
Speaker 3: Editions, but I only I only see the top half
Speaker 3: of but now our spirits long for release from this
Speaker 3: and nothing below that in my own okay regular.
Speaker 2: Edition, Yeah, No, it's you can see like the ghost
Speaker 2: of Yellow Prison and onwards.
Speaker 3: I cannot in the original edition. In your original edition, surely, yes.
Speaker 1: In my original edition, I think it's just a it's
Speaker 1: just a printing.
Speaker 2: I think it's just a printing error.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, though.
Speaker 2: In my regular edition it's you can still see it
Speaker 2: down at the bottom, but it's less than is in
Speaker 2: my original edition.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in my original edition you could see the Ghost
Speaker 3: of the Zimtrexians were once a proud and mighty people,
Speaker 3: but now our spirits long for release from this.
Speaker 1: I think most of the time, when you when you're
Speaker 1: making a book image, there's like a safe zone where
Speaker 1: you want all your text to be in. And I
Speaker 1: imagine they just went all the way to the bleed
Speaker 1: edge for that one, just because it didn't, yeah matter
Speaker 1: where that it was cut.
Speaker 2: Off, because it's a joke. It's all a joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And Emmy Csirigo made these tattoos right.
Speaker 2: This page is attributed to Emmy, Joe and Ian, but
Speaker 2: Emmy Cesaraega on August twentieth did like put out her
Speaker 2: little drawings of a couple of ones that were cut,
Speaker 2: which does include like booty Bill and Realistic feet Bill,
Speaker 2: which are my two personal favorites of this Those are
Speaker 2: the ones you're gonna get well.
Speaker 3: That is linked in the dock in the description. If
Speaker 3: you want to see what booty Bill and Realistic feet Bill.
Speaker 1: Mean, yes, I don't, you might get put on a list.
Speaker 2: And then she said these were cut from the tattoo page.
Speaker 2: Someone was looking out for you.
Speaker 1: I think my favorite is probably the one that did
Speaker 1: end up in the book, which was surfing Bill because
Speaker 1: he just looks so uncharacteristically chill.
Speaker 4: That's Chill Cipher, you might be confused.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that is that's Chill Cipher. Yeah, he's hanging
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty degrees.
Speaker 3: There's another Night of the Hunter reference were tattoos on
Speaker 3: the knuckles.
Speaker 1: So then we come to a spread where Bill Cipher
Speaker 1: is talking about love, you know, above anything else that
Speaker 1: they get away with saying in this book. What really
Speaker 1: shocked me the most is reading Bill Cipher say the
Speaker 1: word polycule. That's not something I ever expected to lay
Speaker 1: eyes on.
Speaker 3: In response to the word me thinks, which, like, I
Speaker 3: remember I worked at a New York Renaissance fair, and
Speaker 3: I know you have to come out as monogamous at
Speaker 3: the New York Renaissance Fair.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: How did Bill know about this connection that that was.
Speaker 1: Must explained to my children that you only desire one partner?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, no, I had a friend who is like
Speaker 3: a boy was trying to hook up with her and
Speaker 3: she was super into it.
Speaker 4: And then at one point he mentions his girlfriend.
Speaker 3: And she's like, excuse me, did you not think that
Speaker 3: was worth mentioning up until now, and he was like no.
Speaker 3: She's like, well, I'm not okay with that, and he's like, huh.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well didn't you think you should have mentioned.
Speaker 2: That up front?
Speaker 3: That sounds more like a you thing and Bill knows somehow.
Speaker 3: That's the one time it's felt like Bill's like getting
Speaker 3: in my noggin. Usually he doesn't do me too good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the second instance of Bill big avoidant at
Speaker 3: his own questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, giving himself interview.
Speaker 3: An interview that he doesn't want to do.
Speaker 9: It's just sort of a necessity for Bill to be
Speaker 9: bouncing off of some voice. And he's got a lot
Speaker 9: of voices in his head.
Speaker 1: I mean, he craves attention, you know, even if that's
Speaker 1: around himself.
Speaker 3: He absorbed a lot of people as well.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and he has consumed a lot of souls. So
Speaker 9: I think even Bill couldn't tell you exactly who all
Speaker 9: the voices are that he's arguing with a at a
Speaker 9: given moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love Princess Romance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure that that's the movie where the guy
Speaker 1: is like, whatever you want and that means I love you.
Speaker 3: Well, so the title sounds like Princess Bride. But it
Speaker 3: looks like a Disney nineties VHS.
Speaker 2: It looks like The Little Mermaid. It looks like Ariel
Speaker 2: and Eric.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as well as the end of Beauty and
Speaker 3: the Beast. And it says inkwell on.
Speaker 4: Top, which is that's true?
Speaker 3: Shadowing is a literary device, it is.
Speaker 1: So this definitely is an animated movie.
Speaker 3: How are things animated in gravity falls the world? How
Speaker 3: do you tell the difference?
Speaker 2: And they're just realistic human features. So like this heart
Speaker 2: down here at the bottom, that's an animated heart, not
Speaker 2: a realistic human right, Like.
Speaker 1: Stan would look at that and it's obviously fake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously, yeah, I generated that's.
Speaker 1: Not even an outline.
Speaker 3: I love boy Kissing Mix.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 3: What would be on your boy Kissing Mix? Right in,
Speaker 3: mister Shag lookback at gmail dot com please.
Speaker 1: Oh and also, the vampire romance novel The Taste of
Speaker 1: You is written by one K Visionaire.
Speaker 3: Isn't that a stage name?
Speaker 1: Nick Hofferman? Yeah, N wrote this. The audiobook is great.
Speaker 1: He took me in his cold, pale arms.
Speaker 3: I think you should get Meghan to do it. You
Speaker 3: should get his wife to do it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, you have Megan Malali reading k Visionaire.
Speaker 3: Will you turn me immortal like you?
Speaker 2: And then continuing the love on the next page.
Speaker 3: I love that at the next page is titled how
Speaker 3: to trick everyone to love you.
Speaker 2: Tell her you want to eat her hair.
Speaker 1: I think the sculpture of a person made of teeth
Speaker 1: is the worst image in this book.
Speaker 3: No, I just pretend there are chicklets.
Speaker 1: M okay, okay.
Speaker 2: I know that this page is Emmy and Ian, and
Speaker 2: it does have that very Emmy cursed flare to a
Speaker 2: lot of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Emmy is good at the Both of the Csirigas
Speaker 3: are good at drawing things that you somehow think they
Speaker 3: don't realize our cursed Yes, like they're able to put
Speaker 3: in this energy of like I've made this normal drawing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh yeah. And I think that that Bill in
Speaker 2: the pocket that is a very Emmy image too.
Speaker 3: I'm the next page here he compares giving out Valentines
Speaker 3: like a cat leaving a dead mouse.
Speaker 4: Yes, and then says, just leave real dead mice.
Speaker 3: And that is referenced again later because apparently Bill has
Speaker 3: tried that before.
Speaker 2: Are we talking about the Valentines? Yeah, so all the
Speaker 2: Valentines are done by Joe Pitt and I know that
Speaker 2: we've seen these before because you, Alex, have published this
Speaker 2: on your Twitter a couple of times on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 2: Were the Valentin's some that you included because they were
Speaker 2: already made by Joe Pitt? Or is it something that
Speaker 2: you made with the idea that it might end up
Speaker 2: in another Gravity Falls property?
Speaker 9: Oh well, so the Valentine's cards were made for the
Speaker 9: Book of Bill. They were just part of the romance section,
Speaker 9: and then you know, we announced the book, and then
Speaker 9: I just wanted to have, you know, one or two
Speaker 9: little tweets that were sort of Bill forward to kind
Speaker 9: of keep people vaguely alert that it existed before it
Speaker 9: came out. So that I was looking for. I was
Speaker 9: just like, Oh, what's a random image from the book
Speaker 9: that I can use that doesn't really spoiler anything or
Speaker 9: telling anybody about the shape of it. So I decided
Speaker 9: to use a page as a promo. You know. That's
Speaker 9: another thing where I was like, Disney, can we please,
Speaker 9: you know, can we print this on card stock that
Speaker 9: can be removed. I wanted to have like a fold out,
Speaker 9: like a centerfold image. There's so many things I wanted
Speaker 9: to do.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: I love a good chant words together.
Speaker 1: Word. Yeah, that's true. Ready, everybody, because this page is
Speaker 1: how will you dud?
Speaker 2: This page is done by Ian worrel A three D
Speaker 2: and blender awesome. I love the plaid tweet coat that
Speaker 2: he's wearing. It's so good.
Speaker 3: So Bill has you select a number from one to
Speaker 3: twenty three, and that number correlates to how you will.
Speaker 1: Die, and the wheel is marked by various symbols, including
Speaker 1: just a gun, straight up, a regular gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you picked number four, Wow, we didn't
Speaker 3: realize you were a fan of the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because apparently there's only one person in history who
Speaker 1: has picked number four, because the number four will say
Speaker 1: that you were shockingly assassinated while simply trying to ride
Speaker 1: in your motorcade through Dallas with the roof down in
Speaker 1: the year nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 4: I hate when that happens.
Speaker 1: Well, good thing, it's only happened the one.
Speaker 3: I'm just assuming he's listening, so I'm trying to be
Speaker 3: relatable to him, that's fair. I hate when that happens.
Speaker 1: I hate when my head pops off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and my other favorite one here is oops at
Speaker 3: the sugary cereal factory, you will accidentally pull the lever
Speaker 3: that releases all berries. Your final words as your crush
Speaker 3: to death will be this is very painful.
Speaker 4: I love a good oops all berries joke.
Speaker 1: I picked the one that trapped me inside of a
Speaker 1: glass box at a construction site, and everyone thought I
Speaker 1: was a mime as I ran out of oxygen. But
Speaker 1: I did make two seventy five in chips.
Speaker 3: So the next pitch, the next, the next pitches has
Speaker 3: a mouth that's drooling blood.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 4: Just a funny show with silly jokes for kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the terrifying mouth is lip camarilla.
Speaker 3: He puts the lip in lip camorilla.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is kind of Bill talking about the afterlife
Speaker 1: and how to cheat death and sort of dancing around
Speaker 1: answering the question of how he's able to communicate with us.
Speaker 3: Here's also a reference to the Michael Keaton film Jack Frost.
Speaker 1: That's also Oh my gosh, get your it's so good,
Speaker 1: the body of a snowman and still have to pay
Speaker 1: child support.
Speaker 2: I always love a good reference to that movie. And
Speaker 2: then the beautiful zomb Bill that is like taking over
Speaker 2: the entire page. That's Joe Pitt and he published a
Speaker 2: full digital version of that on Instagram on the seventeenth
Speaker 2: of August.
Speaker 1: I do like the snazzy jacket that Bill gets as
Speaker 1: a zombie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a nice jacket.
Speaker 4: Did he steal that from mister Watts's face?
Speaker 1: Could have?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I also love the vulture stealing the eye, as though,
Speaker 1: like Bill fancies himself a Prometheus type.
Speaker 3: I also love the transition into the next page, where
Speaker 3: it says Heaven is a real place because with infinite worlds,
Speaker 3: there are infinite possibilities, and there is a paradise tailor
Speaker 3: to your whims and he will explain how to get there,
Speaker 3: but the ink will be invisible if you've ever had
Speaker 3: a perverted thought. And then you turn the page and
Speaker 3: for me, I don't know, very very full page, you know, right, guys, Wow,
Speaker 3: so much to read here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of I mean that probably was
Speaker 1: the most expensive page to print with all the stuff.
Speaker 3: That we see on there. Shelby, do you have notes
Speaker 3: on the art?
Speaker 2: The art are so The art on both of these
Speaker 2: two pages are done by Joe Pitt. So and Joe
Speaker 2: Pitt did not publish a full version of the How
Speaker 2: to Get into Heaven unfortunately, or the Morality page on
Speaker 2: but I do know that the credit on both pages
Speaker 2: is too Joe Pitt.
Speaker 3: Wow, beautiful, wautiful, great job, Joe Pitt.
Speaker 1: It looks I mean the way that the line gorgeous
Speaker 1: and the colors, the colors.
Speaker 2: I know that normally Ian does a lot of the
Speaker 2: coloring for for Joe, but I think Joe did the
Speaker 2: coloring on this one.
Speaker 1: I'm saying the coloring and.
Speaker 3: The coloring and this picture that's here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's honestly, it's transcending. Its absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker 3: Transcend it. We shouldn't even you should see it for yourself.
Speaker 2: You have to see it for yourself to really experience it.
Speaker 2: And then, I know we talked about the Morality page
Speaker 2: a little bit earlier. You referenced it when you were talking.
Speaker 1: In terms of the character. Yeah. Yeah, but I also
Speaker 1: love the illustration of Bill throwing a paper airplane into
Speaker 1: his own eye.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, He finds a text that says morality, decides it's
Speaker 3: better as a paper airplane, throws it, and then later
Speaker 3: saying he doesn't believe what goes around can really come around.
Speaker 3: He gets interrupted by being hit in the eye with
Speaker 3: the paper airplane that he made of morality.
Speaker 2: I love that his hat has bones.
Speaker 4: He's had as flesh when Ford shoots through it.
Speaker 1: This is also the part where Bill makes us commit
Speaker 1: a murder.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the little elf guy down at the bottom
Speaker 2: was done by Emmy Cesaraega and she tweeted on August
Speaker 2: twentieth life Form not found.
Speaker 3: That's, of course the late Great Scrimbles the Alf unless
Speaker 3: you stopped reading here, which case there's spoilers in the
Speaker 3: rest of the podcast.
Speaker 4: But enjoy your life with scrim You have a book Elf.
Speaker 3: Now this is a lower question that you might not
Speaker 3: have an answer to about this next page, But it
Speaker 3: says Dipper and Mabel were the only Dipper and Mabel
Speaker 3: to make it through the summer. How does that coexist
Speaker 3: with don't dimension it where we see many many alive Mabels.
Speaker 1: I mean, my interpretation of that would just be that
Speaker 1: Bill is an unreliable narrator and we'll not admit that
Speaker 1: there were other timelines where he could have lost He's like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is the one time that it also.
Speaker 3: Could mean that they didn't necessarily die as much as
Speaker 3: get sucked into another dimension. And never get out. I
Speaker 3: guess yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also we only see Mabel, so it could be
Speaker 2: that only Mabel survived in a lot of timeline.
Speaker 1: That would also make.
Speaker 2: Sense all of their difference died except for Flame Dipper
Speaker 2: because she specifically mentions wanting to.
Speaker 3: Get back to I think that's actually Dripper, Flamebele and Dripper.
Speaker 1: This is definitely one of the spreads that created the
Speaker 1: most Who did this one?
Speaker 2: So this is Ian Worrel did the parallel dimensions page,
Speaker 2: Joe Pitt did the alternate timelines, and that was colored
Speaker 2: by Ian Warrel.
Speaker 1: This is definitely one of the spreads that created the
Speaker 1: most discussion, I think in the fandom, where it's just
Speaker 1: showing all of the timelines from various episodes where they
Speaker 1: didn't make it out, the darkest of which is probably
Speaker 1: the Hand of the Rocks, the Mabel one where we
Speaker 1: see that Mabel still has that kind of aur around
Speaker 1: her from the Psychic Amulet, while Dipper has the lamb
Speaker 1: Shears in his back.
Speaker 3: There's also one here where Mabel became a smile dip junkie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I personally love nome Queen Mabel.
Speaker 1: Nome Queen Mabel is very good.
Speaker 4: We have Bipper here, who's still Bipper.
Speaker 2: We have Bipper, and we have Maybell in the court
Speaker 2: like over behind um, yes, no Mabel.
Speaker 1: There's also one that I don't super recognize, which is
Speaker 1: on the left in front of Society of the Blind
Speaker 1: by Dipper. It's like they've been turned to stone or something,
Speaker 1: but I don't really know exactly. But that's referencing.
Speaker 2: Well. I know that because we have the petrified Dipper,
Speaker 2: but it's in a different post, so you would think
Speaker 2: that they would have done the petrified post and that's
Speaker 2: a different texture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's from the timeline where they tried to give
Speaker 3: Medusa a makeover.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like it. I like it.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't believe it, though I think Mabel
Speaker 1: to be successful with it.
Speaker 3: Well, the problem was that she made her too beautiful
Speaker 3: to look at, so it kind of just kind of
Speaker 3: went in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: I like that we have zombie Mabel and zombie Dipper.
Speaker 2: Like I like that they're in different places so you
Speaker 2: can't even necessarily tell which one.
Speaker 1: I think it's because there's probably one timeline where one
Speaker 1: twin sacrificed themselves to the zombies for the other.
Speaker 4: Twin I didn't spend too long looking at this spread.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that these all correlate, almost all correlate
Speaker 3: too episodes they avoided in an episode. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: It's a really nice touch. I love the devious looks
Speaker 2: on Little Dipper and Little Mabel.
Speaker 3: Well they're little scamps, aren't they.
Speaker 2: They are a little skye.
Speaker 1: So we're definitely gonna want to hear about the artists
Speaker 1: for these pages because we get into urban legends and
Speaker 1: the mirror realm.
Speaker 2: So there's only one artist on this page. Actually, it's
Speaker 2: Trevor Henderson.
Speaker 1: Horrifying job, Trevor Horrify.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so this page and the next page are
Speaker 2: all Trevor Henderson. And what Trevor said on Instagram on
Speaker 2: August first was, as a big fan of Alex Hirsch
Speaker 2: and Gravity Falls, I was delighted to be asked to
Speaker 2: contribute a bunch of different pieces of art to the
Speaker 2: newly released book of Bill alongside other incredible artists. It
Speaker 2: is in stores now and you should absolutely run out
Speaker 2: and get a copy.
Speaker 3: These are in the style of creepy pasta and SCP.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the Internet tries to make their own cryptids, and
Speaker 3: this is usually kind of the style that images of
Speaker 3: them take.
Speaker 2: Trevor does a lot of sep stuff and a lot
Speaker 2: of like horrific monsters like that. That's kind of his bag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he created siren Head right, Yes.
Speaker 2: That is correct, as well as cartoon Cat and.
Speaker 1: Long Scamel Del Torso is great.
Speaker 4: This next page gives me a headache.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's hear it for headaches.
Speaker 2: I read all this without a mirror. It's much easier
Speaker 2: with than mirror.
Speaker 1: If you're taking a picture of it with your phone
Speaker 1: and flipping the image, you're not doing it right. You
Speaker 1: gotta go up to an actual mirror. Kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these images are also done by Trevor.
Speaker 1: My favorite reveal on the on the spread is that
Speaker 1: David Lynch is from the Mirror dimension.
Speaker 3: Which has been a joke on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that he is. Yeah, that his his weird
Speaker 1: turns of phrase. I assume that the joke about not
Speaker 1: returning calls this is just referencing the fact that he
Speaker 1: never got back to you about voicing.
Speaker 3: Bill a very persistent agent.
Speaker 2: And then, as we stated earlier, Toby determined you can't
Speaker 2: prove he's from here, but it tracks.
Speaker 1: So the next couple spreads. I mean, there's really not
Speaker 1: much to talk about. The Silly Straws page is it's
Speaker 1: just silly straws.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this page is done by Louis Zong of
Speaker 2: Louis Song Fame, of Louis Song Fame. Every day, Louise,
Speaker 2: I literally watch Ratititu to like at least once.
Speaker 1: And also just associate them with a Wee bear Bear
Speaker 1: since they boarded on that show.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love Schmorby's Guide to the Internet.
Speaker 1: Yes, I hate that, but I accept that as part
Speaker 1: of the Internet.
Speaker 3: I associate them a lot with the mclaroys. They do
Speaker 3: a lot of cover art for their stuff, like Carboys.
Speaker 2: A ton of animatic Griffin was the voice of Shwarby, right, Yes,
Speaker 2: Griffin was Shmorby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, Louisong I think is directing a Pixar movie. It's
Speaker 1: coming out in the next few years.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Lily, that's gonna be great.
Speaker 2: I can't wait. I'm so excited. I love Louise's style
Speaker 2: and like just humor. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: The Silly Stress is specifically the only numbered page because
Speaker 3: that's what you are asked to turn to if you.
Speaker 1: Don't shake his hand at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, I had to use this page specifically
Speaker 2: to anchor the numbering system to make.
Speaker 3: Sure you had the numbers right correct well.
Speaker 1: And it's also we're about to get into the section
Speaker 1: we'rey divergent of exclusive Barnes and Noble pages.
Speaker 2: This is the part where the Barnes and Noble limited
Speaker 2: edition has things that the regular copy does not have.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Was that a Barnes and Noble suggestion to like,
Speaker 1: we want some exclusive pages or were you like, what
Speaker 1: if we had these exclusive pages? Or were those pages
Speaker 1: like you didn't have room for them in a regular
Speaker 1: allotted space.
Speaker 9: It was one hundred percent of Barnes and Nobles thing
Speaker 9: that they said, you know, we will in exchange for
Speaker 9: promoting the hell out of your book, we want a
Speaker 9: special Barnes and Nobles version to encourage people to do
Speaker 9: store okay, and we want, you know, they said specifically
Speaker 9: sixteen pages of additional content.
Speaker 1: Wow, all right.
Speaker 9: I thought, was all right, let's just have some kind
Speaker 9: of goofy, non essential but fun content that can sort
Speaker 9: of slot into somewhere in the book to create this
Speaker 9: exclusive edition. But it's like, yeah, like the thing is
Speaker 9: it's very fun to surround from the perspective of Bill,
Speaker 9: and if they had said we need fifty extra pages,
Speaker 9: that would not have been too difficult.
Speaker 1: I think my favorite of these bonus pages is probably
Speaker 1: the moral Dilemmas, where it's just.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't have the Barnes and Noble addition, so
Speaker 3: I had to just quickly read these bonus pages right
Speaker 3: now before we could discuss them. I read better when
Speaker 3: I read out loud, and when I was reading more
Speaker 3: of the lemmas, I literally had to take a break
Speaker 3: because my cheeks hurt for laughing. A sick Lamborghini.
Speaker 2: Is that a picture of Yuskee reading.
Speaker 3: Sick Clamborghini's Tokyo drifting toward a bunch of people at
Speaker 3: a cool as Elle street race That will determine he
Speaker 3: was kick in the streets. You could pull a lever
Speaker 3: saving the people, but this will end the race. And
Speaker 3: but Diese will never learn a lesson about family. I
Speaker 3: love how shy even Diesel.
Speaker 2: See. This is why I was so sad you didn't
Speaker 2: get to see these like you were like, I didn't
Speaker 2: read this. I was like, oh no, the only fast
Speaker 2: and the furious references are here.
Speaker 3: Trolley is going to run you over it anywhere from
Speaker 3: seconds to ninety years. There's no way to stop it
Speaker 3: or predict when my cheeks hurt her, and you just
Speaker 3: take a break.
Speaker 9: For breathing this.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. I think that my favorite illustration in
Speaker 2: here is probably the Wija board, which I know, Alex
Speaker 2: you have that as a prize for the New York
Speaker 2: Comic Con costume contest that's coming up.
Speaker 3: Which will be long over by the time this is released.
Speaker 2: That is true. That is true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you you at home listening might have one
Speaker 1: of these physically who knows.
Speaker 3: And you will mail it to Mystery Shock.
Speaker 2: Look fuck yes, we will use the later page to
Speaker 2: help with that.
Speaker 1: Bill describes the spirit board. How to use it is
Speaker 1: just invite over someone you've been looking for an excuse
Speaker 1: to touch hands with, which of course that's you know,
Speaker 1: standard Ouija board procedure. But I remember there's a clip
Speaker 1: from the Next Time on Gravity Falls stuff from the
Speaker 1: pilot that iteration of Wendy. There's a clip of her
Speaker 1: using one of these with Dipper and then Dipper kind
Speaker 1: of blushing when they touch hands, and I just thought
Speaker 1: that was an interesting parallel, Like always kind of in
Speaker 1: the back of your mind, like, oh yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the real reason that kids speech reports. It's just an
Speaker 1: excuse to old hands.
Speaker 2: I love the holidays page with my whole heart.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the holidays page is definitely one of
Speaker 1: my favorites as well. I mean, we we all got
Speaker 1: a kick out of hit your boss for the car day.
Speaker 3: I wonder what you're supposed to do on that day
Speaker 3: they won't say in the book.
Speaker 2: I think you have to read between the lines on
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 1: You have to really analyze it.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's something for the haulic asparracies. Then, because I can't,
Speaker 3: I probably yeah, heads or tails of it.
Speaker 2: And then I know that. On the cult page, Louis
Speaker 2: Zong did the brain seismograph meter and the cult flyer
Speaker 2: at the yard sale that was done by Emmy Cesaraega
Speaker 2: and on August twentieth she actually tweeted a picture of
Speaker 2: the larger setup so you can see the other things
Speaker 2: on her fake yard sale table, which include there appears
Speaker 2: to be a clock, a goat or possibly a bison,
Speaker 2: a turtle, to kissing statues that might be salt and
Speaker 2: pepper shakers, a necklace, a crab, what looks like a
Speaker 2: little lantern necklace, and she's got it from a couple
Speaker 2: different angles, and then it looks like just bones maybe antlers,
Speaker 2: um maybe hog bones maybe hog bones.
Speaker 3: I love on the messages on your TV section. MasterCard
Speaker 3: is spoofed as plastic card, but Visa is just.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: All Ford letters of visa have been replaced with the
Speaker 3: final A.
Speaker 1: Oh, and they take cipher pay.
Speaker 2: Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1: So we start to get into back into the pages
Speaker 1: that are in both versions.
Speaker 2: This is where it sinks back up.
Speaker 1: Yes, we get into dream dream, which is where we
Speaker 1: really start to explore characters that we know. In addition
Speaker 1: to Bill himself, rather than just talking about the extended
Speaker 1: lore of the universe, we're actually talking about our familiar cast.
Speaker 3: Also Ford confirmed plan sexual.
Speaker 2: Yes, lgbt q U I A P.
Speaker 3: I said plan sexual.
Speaker 2: Yes it's it's I thought you said plant sexual and
Speaker 2: was starting to go into like the adventure zone. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: plan sexual. I think I might be plant sexual.
Speaker 3: I also love blobs. Only dreams about Darlin. Darlin only
Speaker 3: dreams about blobs, like they are literally incapable of having
Speaker 3: other dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sweet babies.
Speaker 1: Some of the saddest ones are Wendy almost always dreams
Speaker 1: about her mom. Mabel has constant nightmares about being unable
Speaker 1: to save a dying pig, and Dipper has recurring nightmares
Speaker 1: about overhearing a fight between his parents he wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to hear. Why do you think they were in such
Speaker 1: a rush to get the kids out the door for
Speaker 1: the summer?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, which is a big yeah, the biggest Laura reveal.
Speaker 4: It reframes what the entire series says about.
Speaker 9: Uh, I mean it could. I mean, let me ask you,
Speaker 9: would you send your kids off to stay with an
Speaker 9: uncle who no one has seen in years and years,
Speaker 9: who you don't even check in on, except for like
Speaker 9: maybe one phone call just to.
Speaker 1: Get some fresh air.
Speaker 9: Something is going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, oh my gosh. Then Bill, of course, uh
Speaker 1: diffold just more embarrassing memories from Dipper, one of his
Speaker 1: favorite pastimes. And this is probably where I laughed out
Speaker 1: loud the hardest at this book, which is that Bill
Speaker 1: inserted fake spoilers of the author's identity into his head
Speaker 1: every night, and he fell for every one of them.
Speaker 1: And they're all reimaginings of the fake mcgugget author. Leak
Speaker 1: one is of Tyler cute Bicker writing the journal.
Speaker 3: And his pen has a little fuzzy ball on the
Speaker 3: end of it.
Speaker 1: One is of Wattles with the peendust in his mouth,
Speaker 1: and one is of Gourney, who has written all.
Speaker 3: Over himself with crayons, and.
Speaker 1: They're all framed exactly like that. The fake leaked image
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible.
Speaker 3: Which also implies that Bill is the canon reason for
Speaker 3: the leaked McGucket picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's another one I have to point out about
Speaker 3: this page. We see Dipper a picture of him on
Speaker 3: the World TV, but we see a Super Nintendo on
Speaker 3: top of it, and instead of like making a fake
Speaker 3: parody game label that is just the Donkey Kong Country
Speaker 3: or possibly don Kyng Country two label scaled down enough
Speaker 3: that it will probably avoid copyright.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and congratulations. You get a high five from
Speaker 2: Joe Pitt because he posted this on August nineteenth and
Speaker 2: said if any of you can guess what game is
Speaker 2: loaded into the s NES, then you get a high
Speaker 2: five and a reminder that it's probably time to start
Speaker 2: getting colonoscopies. That is true, I should I love the
Speaker 2: mind of the people that make this show incredible. And
Speaker 2: then the Dipper search history over here was made by
Speaker 2: Emmy Cesaraega and it said I got to make a
Speaker 2: little fake web browser and funny search goof poor Dipper.
Speaker 3: Which is styled after the Windows ninety eight version of
Speaker 3: Internet Explorer.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, I love the stream of consciousness
Speaker 2: that is the search history so much.
Speaker 3: This actually okay. So Neil Cissi or Riga made a
Speaker 3: famous image that went around Tumblr called Google Image Search
Speaker 3: not working watermelons or something like that, where it was
Speaker 3: the autocomplete just suggesting the weirdest possible things for several pages,
Speaker 3: like size eight flizz bits and dumps that require you
Speaker 3: to fail drug test.
Speaker 2: I really love the attracted to green eminem. Unhealthy green
Speaker 2: eminem is smiling at me. Oh vest Rash, fighting best Rash,
Speaker 2: living with best Rash, the.
Speaker 3: Journey of these stages of grief there. Yeah, we seem
Speaker 3: to for accept that this is just a part of
Speaker 3: who he is from now on.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, this is so beautiful. The more I
Speaker 2: look at this, the more I love.
Speaker 1: Throw extra finger impress uncle.
Speaker 3: I love also the reveal on the next page that
Speaker 3: the process of using blending to trick Mabel would not
Speaker 3: like plan.
Speaker 2: A right, yes, ye.
Speaker 3: This plan took some reconnaissance. There's some other attempts mentioned elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean throughout this book we get the notion
Speaker 1: that like what Bill ultimately went with for for his
Speaker 1: plan was like that, not even plans z it was
Speaker 1: it was. He was several alphabets worth of plans in
Speaker 1: before he landed on the one that actually worked.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 4: His plan literally begun sixty five.
Speaker 3: Million years ago, Yeah, when the dinosaur extinct. Yes, but
Speaker 3: I love on this page there's a bunch of references
Speaker 3: to fantasy and then it reveels they mean fantasy by
Speaker 3: Mariah Carey. And then at one point one of the
Speaker 3: radical men, the dream Boys says that would be Mariah Scary.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this whole this whole page was emmy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is where Bill kind of threw Xyler
Speaker 1: and kraz. Bill gets the inkling that Mabel has this
Speaker 1: anxiety about summer ending and childhood ending by extension.
Speaker 3: And not an instant Yes, no question, it took him
Speaker 3: a bit to coax that out of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what gives may may these aforementioned sads. Oh, and
Speaker 1: you're right he did take the form of Chill Cipher,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chill Cipher absolutely beautiful disguise unrecognizable from William and.
Speaker 3: Then his puka shell necklace burnt burnt into. He also
Speaker 3: mentions that he enjoys having two eyes, but does not
Speaker 3: include a second eye as part of his disguise.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I think to him, the right amount of
Speaker 1: eyes is what he Also he also calls Zyler and
Speaker 1: Kras himbos.
Speaker 2: I love it, they really are. They're so sweet.
Speaker 1: Oh and we get their full names, we get kras
Speaker 1: Zazzler and Zyler q Blaze cras Zazzler.
Speaker 2: It's such a good it feels good in the mouth.
Speaker 1: Oh. And then this is the saddest spread in the
Speaker 1: entire book. He goes into McGucket's mind as well to
Speaker 1: kind of suss things out before weird mgeddon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in this page is Ian and Joe. There's the
Speaker 2: raccoon wife, raccoon wife. I love the mountain don't though.
Speaker 3: The mountain don't That is like almost exact to the
Speaker 3: original label of mountain Dew when it was first released. Yes,
Speaker 3: and then right above it is moonshine. The term mountain
Speaker 3: dew originated as a slang for moonshine. The specific flavor
Speaker 3: of mountain dew was designed as a mixer for moonshine.
Speaker 3: So having the mountain Dew and the moonshine right next
Speaker 3: to each other, ah means he's using that. He's the
Speaker 3: one person still using mountain dew correctly. Yes, well, him
Speaker 3: and a bunch of college kids, I guess.
Speaker 2: And I like that they have the cuckoo clock from
Speaker 2: earlier in the book animated into the book two. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Bill discovers that mcguckett's mind is just a whirlwind
Speaker 1: of the minder racing ray, and he also points out
Speaker 1: that as a spark from the memory inferno hits him,
Speaker 1: he feels a kind of pain that isn't hilarious, which
Speaker 1: is kind of foreshadowing that that's what destroys him.
Speaker 2: And then we are onto the popsicle that Aaron Bothman
Speaker 2: made that was earlier in the Gus saga. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: we also have on the next page that my story
Speaker 2: page like a redraping of the earlier image of Bill
Speaker 2: from the haha page, but with wallpaper this time.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, and cigarettes.
Speaker 2: And cigarettes and this is a Ian world drawing again.
Speaker 1: I think that's Susa's house.
Speaker 2: Might be Susan's house.
Speaker 3: The painting of the ducks.
Speaker 2: Because life is like a hurricane. So we're going into
Speaker 2: William the Spooky Pyramid's life story.
Speaker 1: Now, that's true, including baby Bill, who really took off
Speaker 1: on TikTok for some reason.
Speaker 3: You actually predicted that back in our DreamScapers episode I did,
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 1: You know? I remember it like it was just last week.
Speaker 2: See Okay. The whole time I was like, okay, don't
Speaker 2: call him mister Peanut triangle, don't do it.
Speaker 8: And then I that's all I could think of the
Speaker 8: entire time.
Speaker 2: When I saw him and I saw him die, it
Speaker 2: was like mister Peanut died all over again.
Speaker 1: So now there's going to be a baby baby.
Speaker 2: Yes, And this is a Joe Pitt drawing, and it
Speaker 2: says here he is giving the fans what they wanted
Speaker 2: for over a decade. Comment below if you want to
Speaker 2: spin off series, I have no power to do.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: This is pretty much just a tie down of an
Speaker 2: Alex Hurst sketch.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's great.
Speaker 2: So basically I guess you just designed this Alex and
Speaker 2: then Ian drew it.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's so perfect.
Speaker 4: It does put to one interesting detail.
Speaker 3: His arms are yellow here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which many
Speaker 3: have taken.
Speaker 2: To mean that he wears gloves.
Speaker 3: He is wearing long black gloves at all times.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've gotten hints at this. He talked about Flatland
Speaker 3: in the billsipher Ama.
Speaker 1: User archive mod asked, do you know what spawned your existence? Bill?
Speaker 1: Says Edwin Abbott. Abbott has a decent idea, and Edwin A.
Speaker 1: Abbott is the author of Flatland, which is a book
Speaker 1: series about a world populated by geometric shapes.
Speaker 3: It is really and where Mageddon.
Speaker 7: He says, imagine living in the second dimension, flat minds,
Speaker 7: in a flat world with flat dreams. I liberated my dimension, Stanford,
Speaker 7: and I'm here to liberate yours.
Speaker 3: The destruction of his homeworld might not have been as
Speaker 3: intentional as we have been led to believe up to
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, And I think that later in the book
Speaker 2: it does confirm that, I would say, with the like
Speaker 2: quietness of his answer of how everything went down.
Speaker 3: And also we learned that basically he just got his
Speaker 3: start as a conspiracy theorist from Euclidia, from flat Land, Yes,
Speaker 3: who believed in a third dimension.
Speaker 4: And something about episodes of Family Matters.
Speaker 2: Something about episodes of family matters.
Speaker 1: Well, that he was born with the ability to see
Speaker 1: past the second dimension into the third dimension, and no
Speaker 1: one truly believed him.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's where Steve Verkle lives. That's Steve Verkle's domain
Speaker 3: of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I think implies that either the other members
Speaker 2: of Euclidia either have eyes facing the other sides, or
Speaker 2: if they even have eyes at all. But Bill's eye
Speaker 2: is facing upward, which means that he can see that
Speaker 2: third dimension as well as.
Speaker 3: When we see his mugshot on the time Baby page.
Speaker 3: His eye is the only part of him that is
Speaker 3: three dimensional.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And I don't think that he was the
Speaker 2: first to be able to see it because it was outlawed,
Speaker 2: because it was outlawed. So he's not the first to
Speaker 2: have had this eye, but he is the most recent
Speaker 2: and the last.
Speaker 3: Actually, this is a potentially a reference to a bit
Speaker 3: by Carl Sagan in his demonstration of what the fourth
Speaker 3: dimension would be.
Speaker 14: Let's imagine that we live in Flatland, a land designed
Speaker 14: and named by Edwin Abbott, a Shakespearean scholar who lived
Speaker 14: in Victorian England. Everybody in Flatland is, of course exceptionally
Speaker 14: flatt We have squares circles, triangles. We have width and
Speaker 14: length but no height at all.
Speaker 11: And the poor.
Speaker 8: Square has to say, well, I was in some.
Speaker 14: Other mystic dimension called up and they will pat him
Speaker 14: on his side and comfort him, or else ask, well,
Speaker 14: show us where is that third dimension? Point to it,
Speaker 14: and the poor square will be unable to comply.
Speaker 3: And there's another more overt Carl Sagan reference later in
Speaker 3: order to create an apple pie from scratch, who must
Speaker 3: first invent the universe, which makes me believe how intentional
Speaker 3: was this?
Speaker 4: And on the next page, Bill calls himself a pirate cake.
Speaker 1: Right, because without a dimension, he's just in the nightmare realm,
Speaker 1: the space between spaces that is not truly a home.
Speaker 3: Which hearkens back to the original when you were looking
Speaker 3: for a crew for gravity falls.
Speaker 9: There's an old drawing I did. I could probably find
Speaker 9: it if I looked hard enough, where it was a
Speaker 9: drawing of myself as a pirate standing on.
Speaker 2: The prow of a pirate ship.
Speaker 9: And it was like, you know TV show ahoy, need
Speaker 9: to crue pirate King boo.
Speaker 1: I love this stupid family photo with the friends font.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm picturing like a weird Magetdon version of the
Speaker 3: Friends theme, and then the.
Speaker 4: Clapping never stops. Why won't it stop?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no one ever told you life was gonna be
Speaker 3: this week.
Speaker 1: Your life's a joke.
Speaker 3: Then then she's dads, and then the clapping continues for days.
Speaker 2: And I always love a good like family picture where
Speaker 2: everybody's wearing matching sweaters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and putting their hands on each other's shoulders. Who
Speaker 1: does that in real life?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean awkward family photos had a couple like this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I just mean like, why where did that
Speaker 1: get started?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Who was like, you know what looks really naturalistic? Yes?
Speaker 2: When did this trend become reality?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It's so beautiful though, And I love the way Keyhole
Speaker 2: is just touching Ironica's Ironica's booty because he can't hit
Speaker 2: her shoulders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the way eight Ball's just holding up Hector
Speaker 1: Gunn who doesn't have arms for the lease.
Speaker 2: Yes. Oh, I love it so much, and we.
Speaker 3: Get a fall bios.
Speaker 1: I'm a hench maniacs. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also love the well seduce Smokey Bear for the
Speaker 3: sick thrill of it is great. He hates fires, she
Speaker 3: is fired.
Speaker 1: I bet Gus Burnside would have a lot to say
Speaker 1: to Pironica as.
Speaker 4: Well as there's a Breaking Bad reference here.
Speaker 2: Oh we love Breaking Bad references here on the pod.
Speaker 3: Otro Loco is a character in season one of Breaking Bad.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, oh we get another reference to Watacron nine,
Speaker 1: the Casino dimension from Journal three, which is where eight
Speaker 1: ball was found.
Speaker 3: He's from everywhere from he heard a lot of Crown nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah that too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Third dimension, third mention, I mean a lot of cross
Speaker 3: don't dimension it.
Speaker 2: I think my favorite crew member is probably Dan Krableman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: It's just a photo of the crab.
Speaker 1: I'm just happy to be part of the team.
Speaker 3: Next page has Pironica flashing her breast.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is done by Joe Pitt. On the
Speaker 2: fourteenth he does confirm that this is a loop in
Speaker 2: the third reference lupon reference.
Speaker 1: I love that Bill discovered a chemical element that makes
Speaker 1: dimensional authorities explode and it's called no Pigium. Releasing my
Speaker 1: Christmas album it was bad.
Speaker 3: I want to hear his Christmas album. I need to
Speaker 3: hear it. Love bad Christmas albums.
Speaker 15: I'm giving Centa a Polis Christmas Wow, just like the
Speaker 15: one you gave to me.
Speaker 1: That's right, So Then Bill goes on to talk about
Speaker 1: his dealings with the Time Baby, which sort of sheds
Speaker 1: more light on Time Baby's backstory and how the glacier
Speaker 1: aspect of it fits in with the Time Traveler's pig
Speaker 1: information and how all that kind of puzzle fits together.
Speaker 3: So your people killed the dinosaurs?
Speaker 8: Are you saying your people kill the dinosaurs? Technically the
Speaker 8: old people interesting?
Speaker 1: I'm more like a dog than a human.
Speaker 2: I love the Barbie Ken mugshot.
Speaker 1: Bill over there, Yes the mugshot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, criminal, sadistic, yellow guilty becomes I'm selling guy.
Speaker 2: I love that Time Baby knows what Coca melon is.
Speaker 9: It's so good.
Speaker 1: Buco melon was good today.
Speaker 3: I shall take this dok secret to my grave. The
Speaker 3: Baby comedy with Time Traveler comedy.
Speaker 1: It's a great combination.
Speaker 3: I need you to support our empire, like how my
Speaker 3: neck barely supports my massive heads.
Speaker 1: Then we get to Bill's reasoning for selecting Earth as
Speaker 1: sort of the new home that he would weak himself into,
Speaker 1: and then we get a picture of the fresh crash
Speaker 1: site through the cliffs of Gravity Falls, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: That's gorgeous, and how it's sort of just the natural
Speaker 1: weirdness attracting properties of gravity falls that sort of caught
Speaker 1: Bill's attention in the first place.
Speaker 2: Most of these images are Ian worrel. That land OrCAD
Speaker 2: down at the bottom is Eduardo Valdez. Eduardo Valdez heavier.
Speaker 1: And then we get the redwood rings again from the
Speaker 1: Parks Department Twitter.
Speaker 2: I personally love the gnome skull.
Speaker 1: The Noome skull is fantastic. The affirming as are part
Speaker 1: of their bodies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, lot of hat bones in this book.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of hat bones.
Speaker 1: Unsurprisingly, well, the skull bones connected to the hat bone
Speaker 1: after all.
Speaker 3: Wow, they're good. I got to wreak this down.
Speaker 2: And then we've got the Shawman over here, which is
Speaker 2: the first contact on Earth right.
Speaker 3: Which was also mentioned in Journal three.
Speaker 1: Yes, we had a little more detail about the prophecy
Speaker 1: and the symbols and how Bill initially is just like, ah,
Speaker 1: doesn't really mean anything, or you know, he's not worried
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: Do you want to build a portal?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty much The next several centuries of Bill's
Speaker 1: life is just going around to various time periods and
Speaker 1: figures within and trying and failing to get them to
Speaker 1: build his portal.
Speaker 2: And this history book page has like so many different
Speaker 2: artists on it. This is Ian, Emmy Louis and Eduardo,
Speaker 2: so it's like a ton of collaborative work for this
Speaker 2: specific page.
Speaker 1: And I love the Egyptians didn't just mummify humans. They
Speaker 1: mummified cats, hawks, ferrets, even bears. They use a special
Speaker 1: kind of sap from a rubber tree to allow these
Speaker 1: mummy bears to bounce here and there and everywhere. It was, frankly,
Speaker 1: in an adventure that was beyond compare. I guess you
Speaker 1: gotta patribute to your Disney TVA ancestor.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the very great granddaddy.
Speaker 1: That's the first exactly exactly. Then we go into the
Speaker 1: illuminated manuscript of Bill's time in the Dark Ages.
Speaker 2: Which has a couple of owl house like obvious owl
Speaker 2: house references. Whod he's there? There's the tight.
Speaker 3: Ball yeah, and as well as this is clearly like
Speaker 3: a stylistic homage to Monty pay in The Holy Grail,
Speaker 3: and Bill directly calls this out by saying, Yeah, what
Speaker 3: I'm looking for is by DVD of Monty Python and
Speaker 3: the Holy Yes. This is probably one of my favorite
Speaker 3: parts to the book. It's just my vibe.
Speaker 2: I love the illustrations on this page, like I want
Speaker 2: this hung up on my wall. I love this.
Speaker 3: Who drew this one?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: This is actually a collaborative. This is Ian Joe and
Speaker 2: Gore and Gligovak.
Speaker 3: You should contact them see if you could get the original.
Speaker 3: I resolution.
Speaker 2: I might see if Mystery of Gravity Falls is thinking
Speaker 2: about doing this as a poster, because if he is,
Speaker 2: I would very much like to get one.
Speaker 3: You should tell him he should.
Speaker 1: If he isn't, I'll talk with my friend jess Oooh yeah.
Speaker 2: Jessica's the one that usually mocks up designs with him,
Speaker 2: So I'll see if that's something they're thinking of.
Speaker 1: To quote the cut song, It's gonna get weird, where
Speaker 1: Bill says.
Speaker 3: Throughout history, could you miss me? Seriously, I'm a little
Speaker 3: the place.
Speaker 1: This is basically this entire section where he talks about
Speaker 1: how there was a Bill panic throughout history, where Russian
Speaker 1: mothers warned that Sifrashka would steal the dreams of children
Speaker 1: who didn't finish their borsch and King Henry the eighth.
Speaker 1: It was so paranoid about Bill visiting the dreams of
Speaker 1: his wives that he started chopping off their heads just
Speaker 1: to kick him out of their brains. Yes, that was
Speaker 1: the real reason. He quickly ran out of options except
Speaker 1: for the continent that had previously spurned him, Wacky Land,
Speaker 1: or as it was later renamed, America.
Speaker 11: I was heading to a bomben land of opportunity, a
Speaker 11: land with a pioneering spirit which welcomed misfits like me.
Speaker 1: But I ended up an American.
Speaker 3: Stand on this witchcraft page. Oh my god, wait, I
Speaker 3: just caught this. I didn't catch this until now. Ella,
Speaker 3: you're a prophet. Remember the drawing of Bill facing forward
Speaker 3: with the sideways bird costume from what probably happened to
Speaker 3: gravity falls zippik fiach foxo weird be Getting Part one
Speaker 3: on my Youtubely look closely at the witch, the silhouette
Speaker 3: of the witch in the background under Witch's rebellion.
Speaker 2: Ela, you are a prophet.
Speaker 3: That's Bill facing forward with a profile witch costume.
Speaker 1: Huh amazing? I guess I doubled my profits there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is going on in your No? Did you was?
Speaker 1: I guess? I don't know if I have it anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, let's try. Let's try. Let's try, Ella, Elle, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's try. Okay, what will be.
Speaker 4: The next gravity Falls release.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm seeing gummy bears, Okay, shaped like SEUs.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll check back on in about six years. Because
Speaker 2: it's this page, Emmy Sesaraega used a little tiny, three
Speaker 2: day printed bill from Mystery of Gravity Falls to make
Speaker 2: the wax seal on that, and I think she might
Speaker 2: have treated the pages because she was tea dying pages
Speaker 2: for a scroll, so I think this might have been
Speaker 2: the scroll that she t died.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, the page about Bill possessing a goat is a
Speaker 3: reference to the twenty fifteen horror film The the Vich
Speaker 3: or possibly I'm supposed to read that as the Witch,
Speaker 3: but if you type in the Witch on Netflix, it
Speaker 3: won't come up.
Speaker 4: As we learned last night when I watched it.
Speaker 1: That's clearly two v's.
Speaker 3: There is a goat named Black Philip for Vinegar Pete. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he seduces these depressed puritans into a life of deliciousness.
Speaker 1: Oh that's what that's from.
Speaker 2: That's what that's from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always thought that was like a McDonald's slogan
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, before Black Philip got this movie deal,
Speaker 3: he did, you know, have to do a commercial here
Speaker 3: and there to make goat rent in his.
Speaker 2: Stable, and as we know, the McDonald's logo is two
Speaker 2: v's upside down.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: How is that not a comedy movie quote?
Speaker 3: What'st thou like to to live Deliciously?
Speaker 1: It is a hilarious quote to me, and I can't
Speaker 1: believe it's from a harm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just the setup. Wait do you I mean
Speaker 3: he'll be here all week because he follows it up
Speaker 3: with what'st thou like to Taste butter? Because apparently it
Speaker 3: was believed that eating butter was Unchristian at the time.
Speaker 1: So oh, so that whole that whole story, that whole
Speaker 1: part of Bill's backstories. Just this is a reference.
Speaker 3: To the Bitch. Thank you to Kesla in our discord
Speaker 3: for pointing me to that reference.
Speaker 1: Hey do you know the name of the goat that
Speaker 1: played Black Philip in that movie? What? It's Charlie.
Speaker 4: That's great, that's funny.
Speaker 3: I also know Charlie is impossible to work with. There
Speaker 3: are three times in the movie in which Black Philip
Speaker 3: bucks the father with his horns, and then there is
Speaker 3: one unscripted moment where Charlie does and they use that
Speaker 3: take and like he could have died.
Speaker 2: Real diva, All right, back to America.
Speaker 3: Ah, do I.
Speaker 2: Have to No, you don't.
Speaker 1: America is quoted as the only country by an American abe.
Speaker 1: Lincoln wore his hat so that no one could see
Speaker 1: Bill sitting on his head, pulling his hair and controlling
Speaker 1: his body to make him cook grisotto.
Speaker 2: God love me a ratitude we reference that.
Speaker 3: Is an alternate theory to the hand on his head.
Speaker 1: One the hand might have just been Bill's disguise.
Speaker 2: Maybe this next page, which is the love of my
Speaker 2: life Johnny Crickets, I Love Johnny Crickets.
Speaker 3: Now lay the anti cipher kind of skull and bones
Speaker 3: club looking logo.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And there's like an extended picture of this,
Speaker 2: So this is sort of a zoom in on the
Speaker 2: full anti Cipher society area. But like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: you gotta check out Johnny Crickets.
Speaker 3: You will do. And so then we get because this
Speaker 3: has been kind of shifting through narrators as Bill tries
Speaker 3: different subjects. But then we get several pages written by
Speaker 3: Thurbert mudget wax Staff, the third, who is a copywriter.
Speaker 3: He comes up with slogans and the fail son of
Speaker 3: a steel magnate and the photo of him here is a.
Speaker 2: Selfie and the illustrations are done by Stephen DiStefano. But yes,
Speaker 2: Matt Chapman is the selfie picture.
Speaker 3: Matt Chapman sent us an email with the original image,
Speaker 3: so he says, Alex first texted me what's your current
Speaker 3: facial hair situation? When I told him I was beardless,
Speaker 3: he said they needed someone to dress as an old
Speaker 3: timy man for photos for a section in the book.
Speaker 3: A half hour later, I put on the cravat for
Speaker 3: my kids Miles Edgeworth costume, pulled the shade off a
Speaker 3: lamp and texted back my best old timey slash eraser
Speaker 3: head poster photo which we'll be putting up on our Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Speaker 3: Then they photoshopped the crap out of it, gave me
Speaker 3: a mustache, crossed out my eyes, and now by forehead
Speaker 3: and chin are sort of in a published book, hooray.
Speaker 3: So unfortunately the Edgeworth cravat has been edited out and
Speaker 3: replaced with this bow tie. And yeah, the reason there's like,
Speaker 3: very very harsh lighting on one side of his face
Speaker 3: is because Matt, with the hand that he's not taking
Speaker 3: the picture, is holding a lamp that he took the
Speaker 3: shade of.
Speaker 2: I love the harsh lighting on the second like. I
Speaker 2: think it adds a lot of character to the picture.
Speaker 2: That there is that harsh lighting.
Speaker 1: It's impossible not to read all of this like old
Speaker 1: timey strong bed.
Speaker 13: Bounds, a saspar in a swimming hool, last one in
Speaker 13: a freemason.
Speaker 3: I also think the illustration on the second page is
Speaker 3: supposed to be Matt like by the face shape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does look like Matt.
Speaker 1: I also know this contains your favorite quote, Charlie.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, I need to Should I
Speaker 3: do the Should I do the old timey strong bad voice?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, please, sure enough.
Speaker 16: When I relate the slogan to my boss, his cigar
Speaker 16: fell from his mouth. So impressive was he, and he proclaimed,
Speaker 16: you shall have the slogan and marry my wife. What
Speaker 16: could I say? But yes, soon I was rich off
Speaker 16: slogan money and married to my boss's wife.
Speaker 3: As is the a African Tree.
Speaker 1: And I love that it's written from this comically old
Speaker 1: timey perspective, but it still tells like a genuinely haunting
Speaker 1: story of this anti cipher society that forms and their
Speaker 1: downfall as Bill, you know, messes with them all.
Speaker 3: And it's also kind of backstory for why Ford knows
Speaker 3: what he knows about fighting Ceipher to some.
Speaker 1: Extent A little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to point out we talk a
Speaker 3: lot about getting things past the censors. My whole could
Speaker 3: be yours. Large men need not apply.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 3: Dan Backside apparently took out an ad in this newspaper
Speaker 3: as well, because there's a small ad at the bottom
Speaker 3: that says.
Speaker 16: All run about, you'll steal it and no one.
Speaker 3: Will ever know.
Speaker 1: We also get doctor B. Blanden's time pieces, The famed
Speaker 1: clocksmith of the West End Plains, Doctor B. Blendon has
Speaker 1: this to say about his moveless clocks. If you're reading this,
Speaker 1: help help me. I'm stuck in this time period. Help which,
Speaker 1: of course we knew from Journal three.
Speaker 2: And then the portal drawing.
Speaker 3: It's a steampunk portal.
Speaker 1: I do love that it requires at least six stout
Speaker 1: lads to operate.
Speaker 2: Ian Worrel drew up the initial drawings for it, but
Speaker 2: he's not sure who finished it. But the page's cried
Speaker 2: to Danny Hines, Emmy Ciria Gutten, Joe Peck.
Speaker 3: I'm just obsessed with this section. I could do a
Speaker 3: whole podcast to this section.
Speaker 2: If the folks want us to do something for the
Speaker 2: Patreon unlike deep diving into specific sections rather than lossing
Speaker 2: over it, email us if you want that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get the Anti Cipher Society the Curse at four,
Speaker 3: which includes Annie Oakley type parody named Delilah Gulch. Yes,
Speaker 3: there's an inventress, a Tinkerer, Abigail Blackwing, Horace broad Shoulder,
Speaker 3: the largest man I've ever seen, Yes, and Father Tinsley
Speaker 3: Opim whose last name is Opium. Just a former priest
Speaker 3: who is drunk out of his mind all of the time.
Speaker 3: That's really his thing.
Speaker 1: Naturally he's the one to get possessed.
Speaker 3: Of course, of course, and even later we get, as
Speaker 3: an alternative to wax Staff's anti cipher Conic, which apparently
Speaker 3: contains turpentine cocaine, we have Father o Pim's brainwash, which
Speaker 3: has a large label to print ingredients, seems vast and
Speaker 3: empty because the only ingredient is alcohol.
Speaker 2: I love that mountain dew code red is at the
Speaker 2: bottom just for tat Yes, it's like the least amountain there,
Speaker 2: but it's to taste the precious.
Speaker 16: Morning moisture from a local mountain Peak tim scarlet by minerals,
Speaker 16: which we have fancifully named mountain dew code red.
Speaker 1: Very fanciful.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you haven't listened to Bmore Chill, Alex, but
Speaker 2: I know that in b Moore Chill, mountain dew code
Speaker 2: red is what kills the squip.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right, Yeah, it's an anti possession.
Speaker 2: It's an anti possession tonic.
Speaker 3: Wait, I didn't catch this joke the last two or
Speaker 3: three times I read this. At the beginning of the century,
Speaker 3: Don Herold printed of pod powerful paper stock to fortify
Speaker 3: the news voice frail.
Speaker 1: Yes, and then at the bottom there's a I say,
Speaker 1: the opinions of a man who simply walked up to
Speaker 1: our typing.
Speaker 3: Machine Inventioneer's Fair instead of the World Fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That basically, the anti cipher society is invited to
Speaker 1: an Inventioneer's Fair and they are essentially laughed out of
Speaker 1: the place and committed.
Speaker 3: That's also the plot of the Jungle Cruise movie.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, oh, okay, I that doesn't concern me.
Speaker 3: But I love that Theodore Roosevelt hosts Teddy Talks.
Speaker 1: Yes, you so crazy, I will.
Speaker 4: I would watch listen.
Speaker 3: I'm not asking you to spend more of your time
Speaker 3: in sanity making it. I'm saying I want to make
Speaker 3: the Thurbert Mudget Waxed aff the third cartoon.
Speaker 1: Now by cartoons, I assume you're referring to carcinogenic tunes,
Speaker 1: since they've painted on cancer causing celluloid, which Bill eventually
Speaker 1: tried to break into, which I think this is my
Speaker 1: favorite section. Obviously, I'm biased as a cartoon stress myself.
Speaker 3: As an animated I mean animatrix, I mean animattress, I
Speaker 3: mean animatrix, animatris.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as an animatrix, I love that. And then this
Speaker 2: animation page is a combination of Matt Chapman, Louis Zong,
Speaker 2: and Joe Pitt.
Speaker 3: So supposedly not supposedly, that's a misprint for the Matt
Speaker 3: Chapman one.
Speaker 4: I suggested it might be the Bill Cipher.
Speaker 2: Flow, but the Bill Cipher Flowed is a Louis Zong illustration,
Speaker 2: so it might be a combination of Matt and Louis.
Speaker 3: Nope, he says, I'm not sure what the second credit
Speaker 3: is for. Honestly, as far as I knew, I only
Speaker 3: sent one photo to be used.
Speaker 2: Excellent.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just a funny miscredit like how my IMDb
Speaker 3: claims I was on whose line is it anyway and
Speaker 3: did a voice for veggie tails.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 3: It's entirely possible that the photo of the parade was
Speaker 3: taken by Matt and just posted it to like Facebook
Speaker 3: or texted to them years ago or something, and he
Speaker 3: did not. They didn't ask his permission or anything. They're
Speaker 3: just like I think Matt took a picture of a
Speaker 3: parade once.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, but yeah, makes a deal with
Speaker 1: one Elias Inkwell, no guess ass as to who that
Speaker 1: is referencing the middle name of I mean, most people don't.
Speaker 3: Know Walt Disney is short for something that's not just
Speaker 3: his full Christian name.
Speaker 1: His name is Walter Elias Disney, and that is his
Speaker 1: full Satanic name.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, given a Satanic name.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love the song for the cypher symphonies for
Speaker 1: he's a jolly good fellow. He's pointing in dapper and
Speaker 1: yello for he's a jolly good fellow. Now it's time
Speaker 1: to release the bees. At this point, live bees will
Speaker 1: be released into the.
Speaker 3: Field and then there's just an image of a bunch
Speaker 3: of people in an old timey photo under a marquee
Speaker 3: that says cypher symphonies running and screaming as there are
Speaker 3: bees surrounding them.
Speaker 2: The illustration on the left is a Joe Pitt illustration. Notably,
Speaker 2: there was a rat in there. He just posted on
Speaker 2: Instagram on the sixteenth of August there was a rat
Speaker 2: in the little hole underneath, and Disney specifically requested that
Speaker 2: they remove the mouse.
Speaker 1: I also love that Katir Elias Inkwell begs his employees, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a brainstorm Katier away to exercise Bill.
Speaker 3: I mean, every sentence of this is flawless, Folks.
Speaker 15: I'm in a bit of a bind here, but I'm
Speaker 15: hoping you can put asid drawing a track of female
Speaker 15: cows in skirts for a day.
Speaker 1: And lend me a hand.
Speaker 15: It pains me to admit this, but our last cartoon
Speaker 15: was conceived by an immortal demon from a realm of nightmares,
Speaker 15: and now he's after my soul. Of all things egg
Speaker 15: on my face, I can assure you, well, I need
Speaker 15: a way to get rid of the rotten fellow, and
Speaker 15: I'm hoping one of your creative types can brainstorm Katier
Speaker 15: a way to expel him from my brain forever. In Hollywood,
Speaker 15: we create dreams every day. I'm asking you to kill
Speaker 15: one fifteen dollars to the man who can do it,
Speaker 15: your boss, Elias inc. Weell, ps, I need a new character,
Speaker 15: maybe a talking egg, a womanly dog, HOLLI the frog
Speaker 15: with folio?
Speaker 9: Is that anything?
Speaker 1: And thank you to David gansel aka Doggins for voicing
Speaker 1: Elias Inkwell right there.
Speaker 3: Yes, amazing job, Dave. That voice is canon as far
Speaker 3: as we are all concerned.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, through Doggins of Belove You Day.
Speaker 3: We should do a podcast with him sometime, Ella maybe soon.
Speaker 1: So then they end up developing away to banish Bill,
Speaker 1: which is a song called the World Is Small Ever
Speaker 1: After for Always, which is so catchy that any brain
Speaker 1: that hears it, but.
Speaker 3: There's no room for anything else in your mind.
Speaker 1: Yes, we get into the nineteen forties in which Bill
Speaker 1: started to hang out in nuclear testing ranges just to
Speaker 1: see if portal could just be made by that much radiation,
Speaker 1: and it temporarily worked apparently, is seen in this dossier,
Speaker 1: which is French for dossier.
Speaker 3: This unfortunately strikes any possibility that gravity Falls and Futurama
Speaker 3: share continuity, because Zoidberg was not the Roswell alien. It
Speaker 3: was Billy and the Angry video game NERD movie for
Speaker 3: that matter.
Speaker 1: You know, there goes my theory.
Speaker 3: So this is from Commander Buck Pearson, which is a
Speaker 3: wonderful name.
Speaker 2: Incredible name.
Speaker 1: Now that's the name of someone who was born with
Speaker 1: the intention of becoming the commander of the US Army.
Speaker 4: Mister and missus Pearson, what do you want to name
Speaker 4: your kid?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it should be a good strapping name
Speaker 3: that can handle classified documents one.
Speaker 1: Day, how it lifts the infant Listen, Maggot.
Speaker 3: Blows cigar smoke in his face, which was good for
Speaker 3: babies back then.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course it was.
Speaker 1: I love that Bill claims to be older than your mom, Jack, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I love whatever they integrate these David
Speaker 1: Lynches on the Yeah, the way Bill talks.
Speaker 2: I really love that the thumb prints are more triangles.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah.
Speaker 4: And there's the business card that Robin s Eddie designed.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I guess we get a hint at it's named the
Speaker 1: Bureau of something.
Speaker 3: So when I was reading this, it's a catch up
Speaker 3: for this record when it says that just observing Bill's
Speaker 3: blood made them a little nauseous.
Speaker 4: I was looking at it and like, hey, it's working.
Speaker 3: How about you, guys?
Speaker 2: I'm okay, but I don't work dead.
Speaker 1: Probably one of those one of those new colors.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it resembles mercury a little.
Speaker 1: Okay, that explains the taste.
Speaker 3: Oh I love this next page this is yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: So we get it to the swing in years.
Speaker 3: Weird fact about me.
Speaker 4: I love dua like legitimate ram.
Speaker 3: I listened to it all.
Speaker 2: I mean, how can you not love doop.
Speaker 3: Legit in my like top three musical genres, like I
Speaker 3: do listen to it a lot.
Speaker 2: So the cipher tones is designed by Eduardo Valdez. Hevia
Speaker 2: and I do want to read to you what caption
Speaker 2: he did?
Speaker 1: Oh please please yes me okay.
Speaker 2: So it's like, here's one of the illustrations I made
Speaker 2: for Book of bill This rare vinyl only plays on
Speaker 2: the limited edition Dan set Billigram turntable, making it pretty
Speaker 2: much useless, which is sad because Bebop shoebop, double dop,
Speaker 2: moble Mop dibble hop wibble wop is a real bop.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to see more of my illustrations, please
Speaker 2: get Book of Billets out in stores already topping the chart.
Speaker 2: And we can't see the full album in the book,
Speaker 2: but in his Instagram post from August second, you can
Speaker 2: and it's a triangle record with the eye in the center.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the CD shaped like Diddy Kong's head.
Speaker 3: That would break the insert type of CD dress. There's
Speaker 3: something that like you place a CD down on. It
Speaker 3: was fine in those but the type that kind of
Speaker 3: like swallows your CD, it would just destroy.
Speaker 1: So, baby, you know, I will a parentheses shake hands
Speaker 1: with Bill from nineteen fifty four blew up the charts
Speaker 1: until a moral panics started over the lyrics to the
Speaker 1: sack Up Twist and Job then proceed to construct a
Speaker 1: hoop of titanium capable of stabilizing a gateway to the
Speaker 1: dark void of scream Eames.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: And also is it just me hmmm or.
Speaker 3: Does Pluckin' Jim Pucket look a little bit like Friend
Speaker 3: of the Show.
Speaker 4: Key in Carlile.
Speaker 2: It does kind of look a little bit like Friend
Speaker 2: of the Show Key in Carlile. That picture is from
Speaker 2: the Everett Collection in Alarmy.
Speaker 1: So I'm realizing that, like this section of the book
Speaker 1: is very like Forest Gump of like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was there every point in history.
Speaker 1: And then I got really good at ping pong.
Speaker 3: I put my money in some Apple company.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really love the featuring judgmental yodeling.
Speaker 3: I love the quote I hate Bill Cipher more than
Speaker 3: I love my son. And let's be clearer, plucking Jim
Speaker 3: Pucket adores his son. It's not to say that he
Speaker 3: doesn't love his son, but it.
Speaker 1: Does speak to his hatred of Bill Ceipher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I love the design of the eighties computer,
Speaker 2: the eighties mouse, in the eighties floppy disc. It's beautiful,
Speaker 2: maniac and tosh.
Speaker 3: This is probably based on the Apple two, which was
Speaker 3: the first Apple computer.
Speaker 1: Confusingly well because Apples Apples already existed.
Speaker 3: It's the sequel to Apples.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The blood slowly slowly oozing out of the disk drive
Speaker 1: is very like, don't hug me.
Speaker 4: I'm scared it ate some bump Kit's fingers.
Speaker 1: So it's not Jam. Definitely notice not Jam.
Speaker 2: I want to make these Triangel collections so badly.
Speaker 1: They're so so u core.
Speaker 2: They are very meat core. I'm probably gonna make some
Speaker 2: of these for my collection. They're gonna go next to
Speaker 2: my toilet. Ed Gralan Poe Edgar allan poet sitting on
Speaker 2: a toilet reading a book with his pants fully up.
Speaker 3: Now with slightly less lead, less poison, more value. What
Speaker 3: is the original called.
Speaker 2: They're basically precious moments.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I don't know too much about precious moments,
Speaker 3: but quick Google appointed me to the fact that they
Speaker 3: own a church.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, my tracks. I mean it's all rooted in
Speaker 1: like Christian patriotism.
Speaker 3: So that's exactly it, though, is like that feels teetering
Speaker 3: on false idolatry? Is a church opened by corporation?
Speaker 17: Oh my goodness, let me there's a there's a few
Speaker 17: corporate churches that are We could go deep into that, Laura,
Speaker 17: just maybe not today, but I'll say that I'm very
Speaker 17: familiar with the precious moment statues, being from the Bible
Speaker 17: Belt myself from McGucket territory.
Speaker 1: It is funny that they're literally selling false idols.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm forgetting is that. Uh Jesus loved capitalism.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Notoriously did not throw over a table because of capitalism.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no no, I.
Speaker 1: Mean he was a well he was a woodworker, right,
Speaker 1: He actually carved little cheeby versions of himself and he
Speaker 1: sold them to all his friends. Everybody bought one except Judas.
Speaker 1: For some reason, this is an interesting page to me
Speaker 1: because it's Bill like actually starting to not give up,
Speaker 1: but admit that he kind of had a bad plan,
Speaker 1: that he that he's running into complete dead ends everywhere
Speaker 1: he tries to make a deal on Earth.
Speaker 3: And in our episode on Journal three, I summarized the
Speaker 3: book as the Smartest Man in the World explains to
Speaker 3: us why he's the dumbest man in.
Speaker 2: The world, as Hannah hyperfixates describes Ford as a himbo scientist,
Speaker 2: which I feel like is the best description of Ford.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and this one, the Book of Bill, is
Speaker 1: more like the dumbest man in the world refuses to
Speaker 1: admit that he's the dumbest.
Speaker 8: Man in the world.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: The difference is that Ford eventually admitted that, and I
Speaker 1: think Bill is just literally like to the grave his
Speaker 1: refusing to acknowledge this. He doesn't even say, oh, I've
Speaker 1: been running into these dead ends. It's just he says,
Speaker 1: my big bat on Earth was starting to look like
Speaker 1: a bad hand, Like he's just blaming fate or like
Speaker 1: some something that's like, surely this is not my fault.
Speaker 2: So It's credited both of these pages to Aaron Bothman,
Speaker 2: Gabriel Sorez, and Eduardo Valdez Hevia, which I know Edwardo
Speaker 2: Valdez Hevia did the screen the NaSTA, But I want
Speaker 2: to know who did these chess pieces over on the
Speaker 2: sixer page, because they are amazing.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 9: EDWARDO three D sculpted the models, and then Aaron Buffman
Speaker 9: he three printed them and textured them and photographed them,
Speaker 9: and then Ian did a little finishing on the end,
Speaker 9: and then I did a little finishing on the finishing. Here,
Speaker 9: let me show you guys something cool here. Let me
Speaker 9: turn the camera on. Here's you know, here's one of
Speaker 9: the chess pieces.
Speaker 3: My gosh, wow, is she the queen?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we fully figured out what was
Speaker 1: what depends on I mean, if he asked dips.
Speaker 3: The disco queen, the dancing queen.
Speaker 9: Here's the dance and queen right there. His cap is
Speaker 9: kind of at a weird angle because he was only
Speaker 9: meant to be photograph from one angle. But when you
Speaker 9: turn around, you know, I have all of them as.
Speaker 1: Chess, gravity falls Monopoly in my home.
Speaker 9: I mean, like Disney just uniquely doesn't give a sick
Speaker 9: about merchandising their cartoons, and it was always a little
Speaker 9: sort of heartbreaking, you know that my friends, yeah, who
Speaker 9: are making other shows, you know from college. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 9: I go to New York and Times Square and I'm like,
Speaker 9: I can buy like five hundred Finn and Jakes, and
Speaker 9: they're just they're never gonna make you know, at least
Speaker 9: then they were never going to make any merchandise. So
Speaker 9: you know, with the book, I'm like, I'll just make
Speaker 9: my own damn merchandise. I'm a fan. I want a
Speaker 9: Gravity Falls chest set, so I'll commission when I want
Speaker 9: Precious Moments figure of Bill.
Speaker 3: I'll just make my own damn.
Speaker 9: Precious Moments figure. I'll just create them because I want them,
Speaker 9: even though that's a crazy thing to want. And and
Speaker 9: then I'll just use this book as an excuse to
Speaker 9: do the thing that would be fun anyway. Yeah, I
Speaker 9: wanted Bill Cipher wigi boards, so I know I commissioned
Speaker 9: Bill Cipher wigi boards.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, all right, these next two pages Ian
Speaker 2: Worrell and Joe Pitt. Oh boy, hope he draws me pretty.
Speaker 1: And again there we get the dimensional I like you,
Speaker 1: pointed out Charlie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yes, I love this part of the book.
Speaker 2: All of these pages are Andy Gunnsalvez, Emi Cesaraega, and
Speaker 2: Joe Pitt. All of the Journal pages in the section
Speaker 2: are credited to them.
Speaker 1: I was excited because for the book of Bill, because
Speaker 1: I was excited for something that was very much like
Speaker 1: the polar opposite of Journal three, like sort of a
Speaker 1: Bill's warped version of Journal three. But you know, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: the part that did get me the most invested was
Speaker 1: just more Journal three.
Speaker 3: Yes, but never Journal two.
Speaker 2: Never Journal two? Were Journal one weird?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, because Journal two is just today I found
Speaker 1: this weird mushroom. I ate it. I probably shouldn't have
Speaker 1: h that's all that's in Journal too. I would read
Speaker 1: that fair point, so would I.
Speaker 3: Yes, uh so. The when my waitress told me the
Speaker 3: apple pie was made from scratch, I replied, incredible. I
Speaker 3: must meet the chef who created the atoms. There's one
Speaker 3: of the most famous Carl Sagan quotes is in order
Speaker 3: to create an apple pie from scratch, who must first
Speaker 3: invent the universe?
Speaker 1: You're Carl Sagan is a Kylo ren kermit.
Speaker 3: I've heard impressions of him and never heard his voice,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, he can't actually sound that much like Kermit.
Speaker 3: And then I watched the clip that I was saying
Speaker 3: the destruction of Bill's world resembled, and I was like,
Speaker 3: oh no, they they're pretty good, pretty accurate impressionists.
Speaker 14: If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,
Speaker 14: you must first invent the universe.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we open these lost journal three pages so
Speaker 1: that Bill is giving us a peek into and he
Speaker 1: teased this up as though Ford has torn out these
Speaker 1: pages because they delve too deeply into his issues with
Speaker 1: relationships in general, which does kind of open up a
Speaker 1: question of like, why didn't they reconstitute in the journal
Speaker 1: that we know?
Speaker 2: But I mean it's possible that they did and then
Speaker 2: he ripped them out before publishing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's also more of a that's a theory on
Speaker 1: that doesn't really belong in this particular room, so we'll
Speaker 1: get to that later. But I really like the illustration
Speaker 1: on the Cipher Speaks page because there's these little lines
Speaker 1: on Ford's hands that I guess are just sort of
Speaker 1: like texture or shading, but yeah, to me, make it
Speaker 1: look like he's wearing like Mickey mouse gloves and I
Speaker 1: really does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which, as we know, Bill is wearing gloves all
Speaker 3: the time, all the time, so they have that in common.
Speaker 1: Yes, But yeah, I mean these are basically more examples
Speaker 1: of Ford getting buttered up by Bill. But I think,
Speaker 1: like you alluded to, focusing more on how Ford is
Speaker 1: a victim rather than how he's he did not exclusively
Speaker 1: do this to himself. That Bill is a manipulat act.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's a case of textbook manipulation
Speaker 1: up but up up trauma.
Speaker 2: But yeah, being able to see how the influence of
Speaker 2: Bill slowly changes for it in these pages is so interesting,
Speaker 2: and it.
Speaker 1: Makes sense why Ford would focus excessively on the ones
Speaker 1: that where you know, now he is in this humble
Speaker 1: era of his life and he feels very bad, but
Speaker 1: he's being too hard on himself and he's ignoring the
Speaker 1: parts where Bill was manipulative, not just that Ford allowed
Speaker 1: it to happen, but that Bill was active in that.
Speaker 1: And I think it makes sense for Bill on his
Speaker 1: side in his book to be like a credit where
Speaker 1: credits due sixer on the brains of this operation.
Speaker 2: I find out fascinating that Bill did love bomb forward
Speaker 2: with rats.
Speaker 1: Well that's one of his tips.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then.
Speaker 3: Would disappear for months on end and not even tell him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yes, he told us that leaving rats on a
Speaker 3: doorstep is a great.
Speaker 4: Way to uh flirt or find love interest interesting and.
Speaker 1: Also that he specifically possessed each rat and placed it
Speaker 1: in and.
Speaker 3: Then I guess got the rat to just die into
Speaker 3: the spot because he look, there's like x's on there.
Speaker 1: I mean, that makes sense.
Speaker 9: So this is.
Speaker 3: Where Bill remembers Ford's birthday, and that's why he placed
Speaker 3: all these rats on his porch. Yes, and he insists
Speaker 3: upon getting Ford drunk, which is, you know, hugest of
Speaker 3: red like he Bill loves red. Flats of them. We
Speaker 3: do get a page written from the perspective of Ford
Speaker 3: drunk off his Ford Gord.
Speaker 9: One thing led to another thing.
Speaker 4: Normally I tried a sober but he mixed the dream drink.
Speaker 3: And gotta say, I gotta say, I just got look,
Speaker 3: it's look, it's just being my journal here. I gotta
Speaker 3: say this, Bilga, He's really got it all. Figure it out.
Speaker 2: Punctuated with ad aspera aspirin, which is such a funny reference.
Speaker 3: And stranforord pie ad Asper Asper Strand from buh we
Speaker 3: got a return of disco girl.
Speaker 1: Or chronologically speaking, the first appearance true.
Speaker 3: The first appearance would have been the years nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: two and that girl is you? It's Silbiver. He did
Speaker 3: a dream. Oh carry okay, disco.
Speaker 2: Girl come true?
Speaker 3: What girl is you?
Speaker 1: Wo?
Speaker 3: What color is Bill's hat?
Speaker 2: I guess technically a dark brown because it's a sepiotone page.
Speaker 3: What color is his bow tie?
Speaker 2: Black? But he doesn't have his gloves on or his leggings.
Speaker 2: Bill's naked.
Speaker 3: Bill does appear to be naked with this man he
Speaker 3: has gotten drunk, just.
Speaker 2: A bow tie and a hat, which is so scandalous.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's that Bill is not only you know,
Speaker 1: getting for drunk and giving him these gifts, but also,
Speaker 1: you know, emphasizing the fact that two four he's like
Speaker 1: the only one who cares because he's mulling over how
Speaker 1: his birthday is difficult now that he and his brother
Speaker 1: aren't talking. And it is that dichotomy that Bill exploits,
Speaker 1: that loneliness, he.
Speaker 2: Finds an instance to squeeze in there in a time
Speaker 2: of vulnerability.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get Grifter, the grime Lifter, one of Stan's
Speaker 3: classic products.
Speaker 1: I would get like an entire catalog, right, just a
Speaker 1: catalog of all of the Stanco products.
Speaker 2: Of just like the horrifying puns and product. I love
Speaker 2: it so much.
Speaker 3: This page has another one of my favorite lines. Bill says,
Speaker 3: you could have just absorbed him in the womb, you know.
Speaker 3: Ford says, you can't just eat your twig bill at
Speaker 3: Bill responds, you'd be surprised what you could eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the next page is one of
Speaker 1: my favorites in the entire book.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we alluded to it earlier, but basically Bill again,
Speaker 1: this is a manipulation tactic, but he is also genuinely
Speaker 1: vulnerable with Ford in a way that he isn't really
Speaker 1: with anyone else where. He takes off his hat and
Speaker 1: he pulls out a single atom or the last few atoms,
Speaker 1: just a speck of his home dimension, where he says,
Speaker 1: you know, in the passive voice, it was burned out
Speaker 1: of existence. And Ford asks how by what? And he
Speaker 1: says Bill looked distant, more distant than I'd ever seen him.
Speaker 1: And Bill just says, by a monster.
Speaker 2: Which does heavily imply that it was on accident that
Speaker 2: his home dimension.
Speaker 1: Leaves, yeah, leaves it open that there's either that there's
Speaker 1: some guilt or that you know, how does Bill truly
Speaker 1: view himself apart from all this self absorber and.
Speaker 4: Ford offers to hunt it down and Bill responds.
Speaker 3: Sixer, it would eat you alive. So like, this is
Speaker 3: an insane amount of self awareness to be said for
Speaker 3: William Mischief.
Speaker 1: Cipher, especially after he just said you'd be surprised for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's you can interpret the you know, him
Speaker 1: telling his sort of his backstory to Stanford is like
Speaker 1: he's either just toying with him, like he knows, like oh,
Speaker 1: six or it would eat you alive, but inside he's
Speaker 1: just going he doesn't know.
Speaker 3: Or well it says he laughed joylessly before that, which
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like how Bill usually laughs.
Speaker 2: Well, and then Bill disappears for months at a time
Speaker 2: looking into this next part. So it's like, I think
Speaker 2: that he he is self aware and does know, and
Speaker 2: I think he got too close, which is why he's
Speaker 2: distancing himself for a while.
Speaker 1: Intentionally to get Stanford to think, a, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: he'll never come back. Maybe I imagined it and b
Speaker 1: did I do something wrong, like was I not loyal enough?
Speaker 1: You know, make him like desperate for that attention.
Speaker 4: It's really really legitimately scary.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also time doesn't work the same Bill does
Speaker 2: not experience time the same way.
Speaker 1: That's also true.
Speaker 2: So for Ford to be gone for thirty years, that's
Speaker 2: like thirty minutes in Bill's time, And it.
Speaker 1: Also works out in Bill's favor because he would disappear
Speaker 1: and then Ford would be like, oh, I haven't heard
Speaker 1: from you in months, and Bill would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's been like a day, and then you know, yes,
Speaker 1: because Bill probably knows that Ford perceives that differently, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of like the first Matt Smith episode
Speaker 2: and the Girl in the Fireplace episodes of Doctor Who,
Speaker 2: where like he keeps disappearing and reappearing at different points
Speaker 2: in her life.
Speaker 3: There's a bit later where Ford is like legitimately incensed
Speaker 3: that he's been gone so long and Bill is like, actually,
Speaker 3: it's your fault, and Ford instantly acquiescence.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3: This part of the book showing just a relatively realistic
Speaker 3: depiction of an abusive relationship, is the part that's like
Speaker 3: the freakiest to me, not the nudity or swearing or blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yes.
Speaker 1: So we come to a winter break the winter time
Speaker 1: and gravity falls against some obviously something we rarely get
Speaker 1: to see. It's it's just nice to see the holiday
Speaker 1: traditions acknowledged and to see that lovely illustration of the
Speaker 1: Stan twins in a big honka sweater.
Speaker 3: And I love any mention of Philbrick raising them Jewish
Speaker 3: because you could tell me it's not addressed.
Speaker 1: Much their mom. Let's be real, their mom reasing for
Speaker 1: the words Philbrick and raising them don't.
Speaker 2: In the same sentence, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yes, yeah, Like I imagine that she put them
Speaker 1: in that sweater and he was like, you're still clothing them?
Speaker 1: Can't they make their own clothes? By now?
Speaker 2: I love this sweater so much though this like and
Speaker 2: then over to these beautiful like presents from Fiddleford.
Speaker 1: H yeah, and then instantly Ford is like, my god,
Speaker 1: I'm a matuerk because I didn't uh, I didn't get
Speaker 1: you anything and all that. Fiddleford says. He says he
Speaker 1: only wished to hold my novel prize one day, which
Speaker 1: is so sad. Yes, and again like speaks to how
Speaker 1: you know, obviously not intentionally, but Ford was not a
Speaker 1: good friend to Fiddleford. No, a long time.
Speaker 2: Fiddleford is such a I love him like, he's such
Speaker 2: a good character.
Speaker 1: This next page, this is after Fiddleford leaves to go
Speaker 1: visit his wife Ford.
Speaker 3: Here's a noise outside. You know, it's the eighties, it's snowing.
Speaker 3: He hears a noise outside of the house that would
Speaker 3: become the mystery Shack and finds children's footprints leading to nowhere.
Speaker 3: After he peers back inside to get his lantern.
Speaker 1: Well, he also hears a loud bang noise.
Speaker 3: So something must have happened there. Some kids must have disappeared,
Speaker 3: and he must have peered his head out the.
Speaker 4: Door and then gone back inside for the lantern.
Speaker 1: What could that be? I wonder?
Speaker 2: I love the tie ins to the shallots.
Speaker 1: That's a return of the land orca acknowledgment that's still
Speaker 1: set up earlier in the foot, as well as the
Speaker 1: Bobba Yaga and the baby yoga. That's so cute, isn't
Speaker 1: baby yoga that thing from the Mandalorian?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I love also that he's just casually like yep,
Speaker 3: those are crampus tracks and not like I didn't predict
Speaker 3: the Crampas showing up simply because it was like, well,
Speaker 3: he wouldn't have so casually observed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But at the same time, he totally would.
Speaker 3: That's no, that's Ford. That's the genius idiot who's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: Crampus tracks leading the Crampas.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I love that he's kind of annoyed by,
Speaker 1: like the idea of this like seasonal themed villain. My
Speaker 1: tolerance for his fairytale nonsense had reached a rock bottom,
Speaker 1: he says.
Speaker 3: This is another one of my favorites. The glowing red
Speaker 3: pentagram opens a hole to the Crampus's lair. He says,
Speaker 3: on the bright side, it seemed very warm. On the downside,
Speaker 3: it looked like Hell. Like, hey, that's nice. You know,
Speaker 3: it was getting kind of cold in here. He opened
Speaker 3: up a portal well to Hell.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but it is warm.
Speaker 3: Just the way his brain works is not just he
Speaker 3: didn't just write it. As he opened a portal to Hell,
Speaker 3: he was like, oh, he opened a portal. It was warm.
Speaker 3: It led to Hell.
Speaker 1: He's there with a bunch of kids that the cramp
Speaker 1: is captured, and as they are all about to be
Speaker 1: dragged to hell him and these children. He's thinking about
Speaker 1: what his obituary would look like. He's thinking about himself.
Speaker 2: They're saved by Bluegrass, Yes.
Speaker 1: Of course, saved by a Fiddleford wielding the most powerful
Speaker 1: weapon in his arsenal, his banja.
Speaker 4: All grass gets kind of blue in the winter time.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: Fiddleford was so good for him, I know.
Speaker 1: And then at fittingly, I mean they he allows Fiddleford
Speaker 1: to play Grandma got run over by a reindeer.
Speaker 4: A sacrifice graver than any I have ever.
Speaker 2: I love the snowmen so much. They're so cute. I
Speaker 2: love that McGucket has a carrot, but Ford just has
Speaker 2: a potato for a nose.
Speaker 1: I mean that is his nose.
Speaker 2: It's accurate. Yeah, And then I.
Speaker 3: Love when Bill returns. He definitely knows it's Christmas and
Speaker 3: is with Ford because he says, Happy Halloween, catch any leprechat.
Speaker 3: So it's like he's choking, like I don't have an
Speaker 3: idea of holidays, but he definitely knows it is a
Speaker 3: holiday and showed up on a holiday on purpose, and
Speaker 3: he's just saying this to be like, whoops, I'm so silly.
Speaker 3: I don't know what day it is. I didn't know
Speaker 3: I was gone forever.
Speaker 2: You're so smart for I do want a Bill Ceipher
Speaker 2: elf on the shelf this year. I think that feels.
Speaker 4: Oh we did describe him as an elf on a shelf.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also crucially describes Fiddleford as a third wheel, which
Speaker 1: kind of leads me to a question of how you know.
Speaker 3: The decision to frame Bill and Ford's relationship the way
Speaker 3: you did abusive obviously is the big decider, But the
Speaker 3: shippers are talking, so I want to talk about the
Speaker 3: idea of kind of almost too realistically at times displaying
Speaker 3: an abusive relationship, and how the amount that you're allowed
Speaker 3: to say or want to say on what.
Speaker 9: You think the nature of the relationship was the nature
Speaker 9: of the relationship in the show is clearly this guy
Speaker 9: who wants to be seen as a great scientist and
Speaker 9: is willing to risk everything for it and is at
Speaker 9: the end of his rope, and then a god comes
Speaker 9: from the sky and tells him everything he ever wanted
Speaker 9: to hear about himself and gives him incredible powers and
Speaker 9: access to things and answers to everything he's ever wanted.
Speaker 9: And you know, you just have to ask yourself when
Speaker 9: you're writing a story with these characters, like, Oh, how
Speaker 9: would that make you feel? If God came down and
Speaker 9: told you were special and hung out and was your
Speaker 9: buddy and was always whispering in your ear and you
Speaker 9: let them into your mind?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 9: I mean that's canon in the series he says he
Speaker 9: was free to come in and go in my mind
Speaker 9: as he pleases. You know what degree of intimacy is
Speaker 9: something like that? Can you imagine letting someone live inside
Speaker 9: your brain? And if you were a dream demon who
Speaker 9: would spent thousands of years trying to get one person
Speaker 9: to be your salvation and a time and time again
Speaker 9: they shut it up, and then suddenly somebody has the
Speaker 9: power to do it, how would that make you feel?
Speaker 9: You might feel like, what a sucker I finally got
Speaker 9: Look this one, he's finally got it. He's the biggest
Speaker 9: sucker of all. But then you're also feeling like, you
Speaker 9: know what God's name would I do without him? Nobody
Speaker 9: else can do this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and because we see that string of failures, especially
Speaker 1: over history.
Speaker 9: Yes, and you could sort of imagine if your bill,
Speaker 9: You're like, well, in order to get this human to
Speaker 9: do everything I want, I'm going to have to lay
Speaker 9: it on thick. I'm going to have to play the
Speaker 9: part of somebody who is, you know, their best buddy,
Speaker 9: everything you want, anything you can imagine. I'm here for you.
Speaker 9: Nobody else understands you, and you need to like a
Speaker 9: cult leader. You need to keep them away from anyone else. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you need to separate them from other people. You need
Speaker 9: to keep them dependent on you. You need to sort
Speaker 9: of intentionally disappear every now and then so that they
Speaker 9: sort of grow to become addicted to your tension like
Speaker 9: a slot machine periodic engagement.
Speaker 1: And it only gets heavier as we see a whole
Speaker 1: spread of memorabilia from Ford's childhood and teen years, including
Speaker 1: Ford and Stan's Your Book photo, which heartbreakingly, Stanley is
Speaker 1: on one side with like his fist kind of pointed toward
Speaker 1: where Ford's photo is going to go, like they're planning
Speaker 1: to do a fist bump in their photos. And Stanley
Speaker 1: didn't graduate and Ford is just.
Speaker 4: Looking their blank like a muppet. No one's holding Yes.
Speaker 1: It looks like that must have been after graduation, that
Speaker 1: that was taken, So that was after Stanley left, was
Speaker 1: kicked out. And I also love Stanley's so we know
Speaker 1: what that Ford's you know catchphrase at astrepper Aspera, but
Speaker 1: that Stanley's your book quote is I can fit my
Speaker 1: whole fist in my mouth.
Speaker 2: What agen it's I say?
Speaker 3: For Stanley's senior stand out least likely to escape New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Ha ha.
Speaker 1: He got kicked out of New Jersey, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Booted from New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kicked out of so many states that his classmates
Speaker 3: never would have imagined.
Speaker 1: Embarrassingly, I could never figure I didn't figure out what
Speaker 1: the igro maddened anagram was.
Speaker 3: You did it, I thought, I thought when it went
Speaker 3: past dreamed god Win, I was like, well, that's the one,
Speaker 3: But nope, it is weird begeddon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird mcgeddon. I looked at that and immediately
Speaker 2: saw it. But I also am very good at jumbles,
Speaker 2: just the jumbles.
Speaker 3: I don't need no crosswords.
Speaker 1: So then we get into the real terror because the
Speaker 1: test of the portal happens. He Ford realizes that Bill
Speaker 1: is actually working against him, and we get this this.
Speaker 3: Battle of wills, of battle of bills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, battle of Bill's Bill going in and out of
Speaker 1: Ford's body, sabotaging himself and just all of the things
Speaker 1: that Ford has to do to keep his body safe
Speaker 1: and also somehow his mind sane.
Speaker 3: There was a version of kind of this story in
Speaker 3: Chourneal three for children. Yes, this is just straight up horror.
Speaker 3: He finds the writings of wax.
Speaker 2: Staff of the Anti Cipher Society.
Speaker 3: And is able to build his own Bill hunting suit
Speaker 3: where the gun he fired at Bill's hat originated.
Speaker 1: It's more advanced, but it looks just as stupid.
Speaker 2: I love it. It's great.
Speaker 3: On the next page, it was at this moment that
Speaker 3: I learned two interesting facts. Bill Cipher can possess corpses.
Speaker 3: Bill Ceipher could possess.
Speaker 2: Corpses exclamation mark.
Speaker 1: This is also the moment where I realized, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is like a perfect book. It's like
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven Chuck Norris Meme levels of awesome,
Speaker 1: where it's like Bill's possessing zombie and then Ford says,
Speaker 1: I've missed you, and then he says, but miamim is
Speaker 1: getting better, and then he flasts the zomb bills and
Speaker 1: then it's oh yes, bacon and he grows a mustag.
Speaker 3: So good.
Speaker 4: This section is terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yes, like legitimately yeah.
Speaker 1: The post its with just this, you know, cliche.
Speaker 3: Not now I have a headache, which is referring to nothing,
Speaker 3: I guesses, Oh.
Speaker 1: My god, yes, Bill tapes a snake into the journal retaliation.
Speaker 1: Ford plays the world as small ever after for always,
Speaker 1: and he.
Speaker 3: Wakes up in position to commit suicide but not having
Speaker 3: done so.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, I knew he could have made me jump,
Speaker 1: but he didn't. Why to send a message that I'm
Speaker 1: his toy. He could spare me or take my life away. Horrifying.
Speaker 1: We're not even at the worst part yet.
Speaker 2: No, although I will say these next pictures are delightful
Speaker 2: as a reader and horrifying for Ford.
Speaker 1: There's some levity in here because there's a I keep
Speaker 1: coughing up spiders. Why would he do this? I think
Speaker 1: is my favorite image of just Bill possessing Ford to
Speaker 1: just stick a nail through his hand, and then he's
Speaker 1: raising a hammer.
Speaker 3: And then there's one of him with a cop that
Speaker 3: is completely still, like a bucking up palace Yogan, Yeah,
Speaker 3: slapping his stubby and it's really red.
Speaker 2: I really love the sock puppet on the first Yeah,
Speaker 2: so good. I know that Emmy took the pictures of
Speaker 2: the polaroids that they used for this, and she said
Speaker 2: that on the backside of it. On the reverse side
Speaker 2: of the polaroid is Neil as a child flipping off
Speaker 2: the camera.
Speaker 1: So he's watching a recording that Bill has made while
Speaker 1: possessing Ford. He sees and I mean the terror alone
Speaker 1: of watching footage of like you, your body, you doing
Speaker 1: things that you know you didn't do. And he walks
Speaker 1: up to a payphone. He dials up Stanley and he
Speaker 1: basically says, I'm going to take a swim in the
Speaker 1: frozen lake tomorrow. I might not come back. I just
Speaker 1: want you to. If you never hear from me, it's
Speaker 1: because I never loved you. Buy And then it's revealed
Speaker 1: that he never actually called because the payphone was out
Speaker 1: of order. And then you know, as Ford is horrified
Speaker 1: watching this video, everything just goes black and he's in
Speaker 1: the mindscape again and Bill just kind of monologues about
Speaker 1: again that like when he appeared on the roof, classic
Speaker 1: abusive relationship type of talk where you know you're my property.
Speaker 1: Don't forget it. I can rewire your optic nerve so
Speaker 1: that the sky's below you play a tone that gets
Speaker 1: louder and louder until you bash in your own skull
Speaker 1: just to make it stop. I can delete memories randomly,
Speaker 1: just for fun. Maybe I already have. What do you
Speaker 1: want to remember? Your mother's face, your own name? Who
Speaker 1: are you? Anyway? And it's like he four describes it
Speaker 1: as though he's flicking on and off a light switch
Speaker 1: that he genuinely cannot remember his own name at Bill's whim. Basically,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: I think that labeling this as traveling two dimensions meant
Speaker 2: for older readers was a good call, to say the least,
Speaker 2: to say the least. Oh my gosh, Yeah, this is horrifying.
Speaker 1: I fell to the ground on the verge of vomiting
Speaker 1: any second. My tendons would pop, my bones would splinter,
Speaker 1: And there's like there is a level of viscera to it, sure,
Speaker 1: but I think it is. It's the emotional implications that
Speaker 1: are the most horrible. Yeah, and then again he's reminded
Speaker 1: of a genuine relationship that he took for granted in
Speaker 1: Fiddleford and again in Stanley.
Speaker 3: And the way, uh I know, Alex, the way you
Speaker 3: described Fiddleford and Ford's relationship is sometimes you're in a
Speaker 3: school where there's only one person who gets your sense
Speaker 3: of humor and you become like two peas in a pot.
Speaker 3: At this picture of them that has since been torn
Speaker 3: up definitely shows us.
Speaker 1: That with Ford just covered in post its screaming. And
Speaker 1: that's the note really that that ends on is just
Speaker 1: a reflection on this is the relationship that Ford finds
Speaker 1: himself in now and these are the ones that are
Speaker 1: left broken in its wake. We leave on a note
Speaker 1: where it's right before he reaches out to Stan to
Speaker 1: have him come uh to the lap to help him.
Speaker 1: So then we go back to Bill's perspective and it
Speaker 1: really is night and day. You know, Bill just doesn't
Speaker 1: buy what he says is a sobs.
Speaker 3: He says, somes were just practical jokes, some light hazing
Speaker 3: to initiate him into my gang, just like the rest
Speaker 3: of my hench maniacs. Look, it's not my fault if
Speaker 3: mister tabletop Gaming rolled a zero on Sets of Humor
Speaker 3: and he calls it one little spat and he says,
Speaker 3: Fortsy swore eternal vengeance.
Speaker 9: You sort of wonder, Okay, we'll find Bill, and we're
Speaker 9: so close to getting the portal, and then my little
Speaker 9: pet here they start. You know that they're pulling their
Speaker 9: end of the You know, Magic got a pet dog
Speaker 9: in you're you know, you're you're playing a tug of
Speaker 9: war with a rope and they're pulling a little too hard.
Speaker 9: You know, you might snap at the dog and then
Speaker 9: it runs away, and then oh my god, what am
Speaker 9: I do? I got to put up lost posters?
Speaker 3: Where's my dog?
Speaker 9: Now? Was to be alone in this house? What am
Speaker 9: I gonna do? Like, you know, I think I was
Speaker 9: reading up a lot about cult leaders, Like before I
Speaker 9: wrote the book, I'm like obsessed with cults, but I
Speaker 9: like did a little bit more sort of cult research,
Speaker 9: and I was looking into, like, you know, cult leaders,
Speaker 9: like what the hell I'll have in common? Because I
Speaker 9: was sort of asking myself, you know, Okay, if I'm
Speaker 9: going to explore Bill's origins, I want to sort of
Speaker 9: what are what are people like this? What are they like?
Speaker 9: And sociopaths are terrible at being dumped. They just cannot
Speaker 9: handle it, Like it is so important to them that
Speaker 9: they have control over the other person that the moment
Speaker 9: you dump and go no contact with the sociopath, suddenly
Speaker 9: you're the most important person in the world to them
Speaker 9: because you're the one that got away. I was just
Speaker 9: sort of taking the relationships in the show and asking, Okay, well,
Speaker 9: if I spent more time with them, what does that
Speaker 9: look like? If I'm trying to be authentic to these
Speaker 9: voices and I'm trying to actually terrogate them, how would
Speaker 9: they act? And then you put your fingers down, your
Speaker 9: fingers type, and you're like, yep, that seems right.
Speaker 1: And it's that he allows us to see Ford's perspective
Speaker 1: on it, and then we snap back to Bill's perspective
Speaker 1: and he doesn't even realize how it makes him come off.
Speaker 1: He goes to you the readers, like, aren't I in
Speaker 1: the right?
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I think he's spent so long rationalizing things
Speaker 9: in his mind. Again, this is an instance where you know,
Speaker 9: Bill says, you know.
Speaker 7: Yo, me, your buddies, You want to see journal three.
Speaker 7: I got to pay his Well, wait, did you see
Speaker 7: Ford at his lowest? This will be hilarious, you know,
Speaker 7: and you'll see all just see how how how important I.
Speaker 3: Was, and you'll see how he screwed me over.
Speaker 9: And he's so sort of so in his own delusion
Speaker 9: that he loses track of you know, I get I
Speaker 9: don't know if you guys watched the Jinks. Yeah, but
Speaker 9: like Bob Durst, you know, he got away with murder
Speaker 9: and all I had to do is keep his mouth shut.
Speaker 9: But they're like, want to do an interview, and he's like, well,
Speaker 9: I would love the attention. That would feel yeah cool,
Speaker 9: And then he then he talked talking to Bob Durst. Yeah, Caffy,
Speaker 9: we killed them all of course, and the burning. You know, oftentimes,
Speaker 9: especially cult leaders, especially late term cult leaders, like the
Speaker 9: later days of l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 3: Have you listened to the Behind the Bastards on.
Speaker 4: Those oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh they're so good.
Speaker 3: Please to our listeners, please check out any Buying the
Speaker 3: Bastards episode about l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 4: They're some of the best podcasts out there.
Speaker 9: But it's like these guys, they will often tell on
Speaker 9: themselves because they just no one is holding them accountable,
Speaker 9: so they'll just be kind of bored.
Speaker 3: El Rod Hubbard used to go around and tell people
Speaker 3: he barely know, you know, you really wanted to make money, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the way to do it would be the starter religion.
Speaker 9: Yeah yeah, yeah. Well I mean it's like, I mean
Speaker 9: Trump does this where he'll just be like rambling in
Speaker 9: the middle of a speech and he'll be like, oh God,
Speaker 9: which thing was it? Were some hateful dogs for the week?
Speaker 9: I can't remember.
Speaker 3: Well, there's one where he talks about just anti trans
Speaker 3: rhetoric and gets a huge applause in the crowd and goes, you, guys,
Speaker 3: aren't that passionate when I talk about the economy?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, really yeah, and he just like it, admits the
Speaker 3: trans thing is a grit to get the Republican Party favors,
Speaker 3: and he literally audience. He says, yeah, He's like.
Speaker 18: When I talk about taxes, you don't care, but I
Speaker 18: say all the bathrooms and you love it, So I
Speaker 18: keep talking about it like you literally admits that this
Speaker 18: means nothing to him, and that he's willing to trade
Speaker 18: like the safety and dignity of other human beings.
Speaker 9: For a brief, cheap applause, and he's giving away the
Speaker 9: game like in a normal world that would be the
Speaker 9: end of him. People say, wait a minute, he's just
Speaker 9: saying what he thinks we want to hear. So like
Speaker 9: these guys, when they're completely surrounded by their cult followers,
Speaker 9: they will say the thing right. So it's like, to me,
Speaker 9: it was in character. It's like Bill would never reveal
Speaker 9: this intentionally, but he would be so confident that it's
Speaker 9: a perfect phone call. Listen to it and it's like
Speaker 9: clearly not Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Bill goes for a few cold glasses of I'm Fine
Speaker 3: juice at Oh Sad Last Multidimensional pub and the rock
Speaker 3: bottom asteroid belt of the Vicious Spiral Nebula.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to go where everybody knew his name,
Speaker 1: Cyria gu It's.
Speaker 3: A drawing of Bill drinking a mug of beer that
Speaker 3: is larger than he.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: This next page is a call transcript for the dimensional
Speaker 3: Authority as Bill is conducting various disorderly drunken shenanigans.
Speaker 1: But not the fun kind like he was doing with
Speaker 1: the hench Maniacs earlier. This is like the breakup kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The majority of it is from the perspective of a
Speaker 3: woman working the drive through at Barrito Paradox intert Mexican restaurant.
Speaker 3: Think outside known logical.
Speaker 1: Authority, what's your emergency?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm working to try people do Burrito a Mexican restaurant,
Speaker 8: and they're just.
Speaker 3: And she's just horrified that there is this drunken customer
Speaker 3: who's causing all of these problems.
Speaker 1: Has anyone heard, ma'am.
Speaker 6: Imagine his body glitch through the ceiling and it's swimming around.
Speaker 8: There's a kid who's crying super louder because his head was.
Speaker 3: Ce reference to the old.
Speaker 2: Gushers commercials still lives in my nightmares.
Speaker 1: It's all starts when he orders one sixer please.
Speaker 8: He ordered one sick, so please. We're talking back, this
Speaker 8: doesn't make any sense, and.
Speaker 1: He started crying, which, to be fair, that's a normal
Speaker 1: customer service interaction. But then it gets weird.
Speaker 2: Sir, this is a burrito paradox TM.
Speaker 3: And then it ends with him crying because his mom
Speaker 3: won't pick him up and not understanding where everyone in
Speaker 3: his dimension went on.
Speaker 8: I want you to I want bade her school synd
Speaker 8: and forget again.
Speaker 1: Put the gross off.
Speaker 8: My sandwiches are all.
Speaker 14: I'm doing.
Speaker 8: You Beta, where did you all go? Where did hear that? Well?
Speaker 1: We did only spend a mere six hours in dimensional
Speaker 1: authority lock up for indecent exposure. So I guess the
Speaker 1: gloves and the boots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm obsessed with this train set on the
Speaker 2: next page.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god.
Speaker 2: This is all credited to Ian Morrel.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that in that mild like two pages.
Speaker 1: Bill never really gets his dignity back through the entire
Speaker 1: rest of the book because this is kind of where
Speaker 1: he gets into like like if this were like a
Speaker 1: Ted talk or like a speech, like this is like
Speaker 1: the call to action at the end of the commercial,
Speaker 1: you know, because this is where he addresses you the reader,
Speaker 1: and he explains how he needs you to help him.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, now that I've earned your sympathy after
Speaker 3: showing it big an abuser and then crying as exactly
Speaker 3: himself that it didn't worry.
Speaker 1: It's like maybe if he hadn't gotten so like full
Speaker 1: of himself that he thought he could just show us
Speaker 1: the journal pages and we wouldn't think any different, because
Speaker 1: you know, you go through the human history segments and
Speaker 1: you feel like, oh, this he's just like this hapless
Speaker 1: guy who keeps failing at this goal.
Speaker 3: Evil for ust.
Speaker 1: Go, yeah, maybe you'd want to help this guy who
Speaker 1: just forrest comes throughout history and then we see how
Speaker 1: he affects forward and we're like, oh, no, you're horrible
Speaker 1: and also pathetic.
Speaker 9: The way that we connect to characters in fiction is
Speaker 9: like if they're making entertainment happen every time they're on screen,
Speaker 9: we just love them and we hate a character that
Speaker 9: makes entertainment stop. So what characters create entertainment? Bastards? And
Speaker 9: then we start to really relate to and sort of
Speaker 9: sympathize with them, and you find yourself being like, boy,
Speaker 9: I hope Walter White becomes the king pin of drugs
Speaker 9: and destroys all who get in his way, and you're like, no,
Speaker 9: he's a monster.
Speaker 3: Why did I say that?
Speaker 9: But when you're so compelling, And then when his wife
Speaker 9: is like, maybe you should stop selling meth, you're like, boo,
Speaker 9: get out of here, Skyler, And it's like.
Speaker 3: Wait, wait, wait, no, she's right, you shouldn't sell maths.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you shouldn't sell meth. But jeez, every time Barrin
Speaker 9: Krantz is on screen, I'm glued to the screen. So
Speaker 9: some part of me is weirdly bonding to this character.
Speaker 9: So to me, it was really important after you know,
Speaker 9: one hundred and eighty three pages or so of just
Speaker 9: goofy silly, Oh, Bill's making me laugh with his stupid
Speaker 9: jokes and he's arguing with himself and we've got cute
Speaker 9: little gags and no, now it's a cute little test
Speaker 9: like it's easy to forget he tried to kill Dipper
Speaker 9: and Mabel. So it's very important to me towards the
Speaker 9: end of the book to be like, Okay, Bill has
Speaker 9: done his best to make himself seem like a playful funness.
Speaker 3: He's a silly guy. He's a silly guy.
Speaker 9: I'm just a little I'm a little different. Get used
Speaker 9: to it.
Speaker 1: And his plan for this, you know, second coming of
Speaker 1: Weird Mageddon is also pretty convoluted.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it's also just like he already got a
Speaker 3: weird Mageddon.
Speaker 1: Like and I think, you know, it's fascinating to me
Speaker 1: on a metal level because the clamoring for like, oh,
Speaker 1: season three, Season three, Season three, just you know how
Speaker 1: many fan fictions and animations there are which obviously are
Speaker 1: well done, you know, no shade to them.
Speaker 3: So Shelby, when I were in one.
Speaker 1: Exactly where like, oh, you know, you shake the statue's hand.
Speaker 1: What's gonna happen when you shake the statue's hand. The
Speaker 1: statue's gonna have Bill's gonna come back somehow, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be the and it's gonna be that. And I
Speaker 1: think it's really interesting how this is kind of reflected
Speaker 1: in how just desperate Bill is for like, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be so good, you guys, We're gonna do the same
Speaker 1: thing that we did before, and it's gonna be even better.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna win this time, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: it's gonna be great and and and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to do the same thing over and over and you know,
Speaker 1: it's the antithesis of the end of the series, which
Speaker 1: is like, you know, you can move on, or even
Speaker 1: the end of like Lost Legends for example, of like
Speaker 1: you can move on and enjoy your life outside of this,
Speaker 1: but Bill can't. Bill is stuck in this. Bill is
Speaker 1: is stuck on this goal.
Speaker 2: He's in arrested development.
Speaker 1: One might say, that's right. So essentially Bill's plan is
Speaker 1: to uh that he's gathered enough of your blood you
Speaker 1: the reader, to introduce mild delirium as he enters your mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: when you shake the statue's hand in gravity falls, you
Speaker 1: would trade places with him. And then he says this
Speaker 1: as though it's gonna be so easy, I use your
Speaker 1: meatmobile to fire up one of the Earth's remaining portals,
Speaker 1: so easy, Like wait a minute, there's only one that
Speaker 1: really got built and worked and it was destroyed. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: how am I a random reader of this book supposed
Speaker 1: to do that? But he doesn't think about that. He
Speaker 1: only thinks about the following steps, where he wants to
Speaker 1: boot up a portal. He says he wants to turn
Speaker 1: the sky plaid crush the president into a fine paste.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, broken clock twice a day, and
Speaker 1: he wants to let every city sent off the volcano
Speaker 1: split the earth in half. He wants to specifically kill
Speaker 1: the pines with sharp objects. That's maybe the most horrifying
Speaker 1: illustration in the book. Yeah, Hyperian pressed, what do you
Speaker 1: think about just an illustration of two dead children in
Speaker 1: a puddle of blood? Is that cool? Okay?
Speaker 9: Cool?
Speaker 1: Great? But yes, finally, the culmination of all of this.
Speaker 3: Is, in fact the pinata. I have a feeling that
Speaker 3: pinata means something. And this is in case you see
Speaker 3: a pata, I think that is going to come back.
Speaker 3: Thank you for bringing that up. Listen. That's the one
Speaker 3: rule of this podcast. Alex is always right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he basically is making this desperate pitch to you.
Speaker 1: And then Ford interrupts again.
Speaker 3: And Ford comes to realize his family is not judging
Speaker 3: him for having been duped by this abuser. His family
Speaker 3: is just laughing at how sympathetic this guy is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're all just like, get out to this loser. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, don't worry Ford, You're saying, that's this guy.
Speaker 3: Just it's so so validating to people who have gone
Speaker 3: through experiences like what Ford has gone through.
Speaker 1: Like I said, yeah, and it's so on that metatextual level,
Speaker 1: so indicative of like, yeah, there's more to life than
Speaker 1: just doing gravity falls again. Yeah, yeah that Every family
Speaker 1: member gets their own turn to write in the book.
Speaker 1: After Ford, we get Mabel, who very accurately interprets the
Speaker 1: issues that Bill is dealing with similar to that of
Speaker 1: a breakup or let's face it, it is a break
Speaker 1: a breakup.
Speaker 3: She says, why don't you date someone else's uncle. She
Speaker 3: talks about breakup bangs.
Speaker 1: Like I think Bill would look great with breakup banks.
Speaker 2: I love that. She goes, uh, no, maybe stay away
Speaker 2: from uncles for a while.
Speaker 3: It's you gotta work.
Speaker 2: It's on you, work on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Dipper says, come at us again and I'll
Speaker 3: end you.
Speaker 1: And Mabel says that too, you. But Dipper is not
Speaker 1: concerned with the betterment of Bill's emotional stage dippers just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll kill you. I'll kill you dead.
Speaker 3: And then we got Stanley, which I know I've called
Speaker 3: other things some of my favorite lines in the book,
Speaker 3: but this is this is number one. It says, Look,
Speaker 3: the little wise guy, hain'te that complicated. I only met
Speaker 3: him once and he cried like a baby, and then
Speaker 3: I punched him to death. What more do you need
Speaker 3: to know?
Speaker 2: It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: And that's how Bill's gotten away with it for you know,
Speaker 1: sixty five million years, right, is that he's never He's
Speaker 1: deliberately surrounded himself with people who were likes Stanley, with
Speaker 1: people who didn't think the way that the same way
Speaker 1: that he did, at least in terms of the con
Speaker 1: artist aspect, which is.
Speaker 2: Why like the Pines twins are stronger together, like in
Speaker 2: both in both segments of the Pines, like both different
Speaker 2: Pine twins, they're stronger together than separated. And I think
Speaker 2: that that's something that Bill always acknowledged, was that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you separate them, if you separate Mabel from Dipper,
Speaker 2: he can win, Yeah, but together you cannot win.
Speaker 1: And even at the end, Stanley is really the only
Speaker 1: member of this family that that truly makes Bill have
Speaker 1: a breakdown. Like even Ford, for all the tears that
Speaker 1: he's cried into his mugs at Oh Sadly's, no one
Speaker 1: makes him just freak out the way that Stanley does.
Speaker 3: Because he doesn't want anyone's interpretation of him to be
Speaker 3: I only met him once.
Speaker 4: He cried like a baby, and I punched him to death.
Speaker 3: He doesn't. That's not how he wants to be seen.
Speaker 3: It is how he is the home.
Speaker 2: Yes, I I really love this, like echo of a scream,
Speaker 2: that's like echoing through time over on page one ninety
Speaker 2: six in the regular edition, two thirteen in the limited edition.
Speaker 1: It's amazing the happening of his own like his eye
Speaker 1: becoming a mouth, becoming an I becoming a mouth illustration
Speaker 1: Do you know who that was?
Speaker 2: This is a mixture of Ian Emmy and Jeffrey Thompson.
Speaker 3: Stanley also pieces together something about everything in the book briar.
Speaker 3: Bill never once bragged about where he has been since
Speaker 3: the finale. Yes, yeah, which it's like it's Bill, so
Speaker 3: it's gotta suck.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And he also says, if Bill's so smart,
Speaker 1: how come we're so much happier than him, and also
Speaker 1: the fact that Stan ripped a dollar in half that
Speaker 1: shows how much he loves his family.
Speaker 2: And then moving on, I know that Theoloa the galaxy
Speaker 2: a Sholoa was Emmy. This page is credited to Alex Constat,
Speaker 2: but I know Alex Constead worked on some of the
Speaker 2: later pages, so this could be a combination of Alex
Speaker 2: possibly Christopher because the prisms are here and Emmy.
Speaker 1: It is really interesting looking at this page side by
Speaker 1: side with the Secret Page and the Time Pirates Treasure.
Speaker 1: How it's like framed very similarly with the aschlos.
Speaker 3: And there's similar rhymes here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: In Time Pirates Treasure it said a different form a
Speaker 3: different time, and here it says.
Speaker 8: To change your form will take some time.
Speaker 3: And it's this open endedness versus finality. But we get
Speaker 3: the ultimate twist. What happened to Bill after his prayer
Speaker 3: to the showload the end of Weird Pagetton three.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect ending.
Speaker 3: Bill is in therapy for all eternity.
Speaker 1: Therapy forever.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the therapism.
Speaker 3: Recommendation indefinite karmic rehabilitation, and then the infinity symbol.
Speaker 1: It's this therapy dimension outside of time.
Speaker 2: I think that the reveal that this is Bill's arts
Speaker 2: and crafts book during therapy.
Speaker 1: It also great, Yes, incredible.
Speaker 2: These pages are done by Joe pitt, Ian Worrel and
Speaker 2: Alex Constadt. I know Alex Constat helped to design the
Speaker 2: therapy group, but this picture over here, the one with
Speaker 2: like the therapy group, Ian posted on his instagram on August.
Speaker 1: Fourteen, Saturn neating his son. Yes, oh yes, it is
Speaker 1: obviously hilarious, but also the perfect punishment for you know,
Speaker 1: someone who just refuses to acknowledge any of his issues,
Speaker 1: who will constantly see the faults of other people and
Speaker 1: use that to his advantage, even see faults that aren't there,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to himself, just has no ability
Speaker 1: to reflect. You know, you can't even say that he
Speaker 1: isn't being given the chance, because we see that this
Speaker 1: is not an inherently infinite punishment. There are patients listed
Speaker 1: as ready to reincarnage, yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Have been cured, but I mean like seeing that Bill
Speaker 2: is unwilling to change his patterns, that instead he wants
Speaker 2: to fall back on something he wants to to escape
Speaker 2: and continue his patterns. He's gonna be in therapy infinitely
Speaker 2: if he doesn't change the patterns.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's this constant question in the fan
Speaker 1: base of like when will he figure it out? When
Speaker 1: will he get better? And it's I think the point
Speaker 1: of what Ford and the rest of the Pines are
Speaker 1: saying is that you know that shouldn't matter to you,
Speaker 1: focus on the people who love you and treat you well,
Speaker 1: rather than waiting on the rehabilitation of someone.
Speaker 2: Who may never be rehabilitating.
Speaker 1: If he ever gets there, it'll be long after you're dead.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: He did say at one trillion in twelve he's a preteen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so for him to have a whatever his species equivalent
Speaker 3: of a prefrontal cortex would take another one trillion in
Speaker 3: twelve years. Maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if he ever gets there, it'll be way too
Speaker 1: late to make amends with anyone he's wronged in this lifetime.
Speaker 3: But I also love the bit of foreshadowing where Herbert
Speaker 3: mudget wax Staff the Third says Bill should be in therapy.
Speaker 3: He'd hate that is after Herbert was himself admitted to
Speaker 3: a psych word, which meant he underwent therapy, and he
Speaker 3: was like, oh yeah, oh, I know who it hate
Speaker 3: his thought process storing therapy is ooh, I hope Bill
Speaker 3: experiences this one.
Speaker 1: And I mean, Alex, was this always like the idea
Speaker 1: you had in mind? Or was it something that sort
Speaker 1: of came up organically as you were writing this?
Speaker 9: So it's a whole section of the book that I started
Speaker 9: writing and I realized it didn't fit in, but I
Speaker 9: loved it so much that it was It was the
Speaker 9: trial of Bill Cipher. It was the idea that like,
Speaker 9: perhaps after his appeal to the ishologs, it wasn't straight
Speaker 9: to the therapism. It was perhaps some kind of trial.
Speaker 9: And I was writing a court stenographer's trial of Bill Cipher,
Speaker 9: and the judge is like, what do you have to
Speaker 9: show your new defense? And Bill Cipher's like.
Speaker 8: I would like to refer the audience to my shirt.
Speaker 9: And it's the I'm a little different, get used to it.
Speaker 9: Like that was literally his entire defense. And then like
Speaker 9: it cuts to his like legal team, which is just
Speaker 9: like ten Bill Cipher's.
Speaker 7: Like we thought the shirt was going to be a hit,
Speaker 7: like all arguing with each other.
Speaker 1: But the end was the end punishment always going to
Speaker 1: be a therapy forever? Was that?
Speaker 9: Yes, that seemed appropriate. I mean, it just seemed like
Speaker 9: all Bill wants is to be in control of his
Speaker 9: narrative and to have infinite freedom. So the worst thing
Speaker 9: that he could experience would be being treated condescendingly and trapped.
Speaker 9: And the irony was I'm like, it's not enough for
Speaker 9: him to be in prison, because all you have to
Speaker 9: do is escape. For prison, it's much worse if they
Speaker 9: say we'll let you out when you genuinely, sincerely experience
Speaker 9: true regret for the pain you've caused os. And it's like, oh, oh,
Speaker 9: all I have to do is experience true regret for
Speaker 9: what I've.
Speaker 1: Done, because it's not prison, I do. There is a
Speaker 1: way out.
Speaker 9: There is a way out. But he just has to grow.
Speaker 1: For him than the punishment.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And you know, here he is seeing Forward growing
Speaker 9: and everyone else growing, and it's so insulting to him
Speaker 9: that they're growing, and he's furious that anyone else would grow.
Speaker 9: And now he's like, you know, gosh, I wrote so
Speaker 9: many I did write maybe like eight pages of like
Speaker 9: full Silence of the Lambs, like his therapism Warden, like
Speaker 9: interviewing him and you know, kind of like the joker,
Speaker 9: like you know, tell us about your past. And yeah,
Speaker 9: he kept telling different stories. Oh my cast boy, I
Speaker 9: remember me and Pete Pauw.
Speaker 7: I was a riverboat captain and we were catching bullfrogs
Speaker 7: by the mississipp and.
Speaker 9: They'd be like, let's go again, Bill, tell us about
Speaker 9: your past.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, uh, you know on the South side of Chicago.
Speaker 9: You know, I was shooting some b ball after skull built.
Speaker 9: Tell us again, tell us about your past. Oh boy, Well,
Speaker 9: you know I had a magic purple cran then I
Speaker 9: could try anything. But one day, like like constantly, I
Speaker 9: was like, you know, there's only so many pages in
Speaker 9: the book.
Speaker 1: I also love the subtle design change of just giving
Speaker 1: him that scar that like crack of static across his body.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just this ending this these final couple pages,
Speaker 1: or he was just repeating to himself, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: Someday someone will let me out, and then it's just
Speaker 1: an image of the statue.
Speaker 2: I think it's so interesting that this all ends with
Speaker 2: I'm fine, I'm fine. Where the book cover, like the
Speaker 2: book jacket of you being PiZZ Yes, yes, has that
Speaker 2: I'm fine, I'm fine helped me.
Speaker 1: You could read that final image of the statue with
Speaker 1: the glowing eye is like, that's so that's really something's
Speaker 1: going on there. That's that's meant to be terrifying. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the deconstruction of Bill in the
Speaker 1: book is that he's not really terrifying. He's kind of
Speaker 1: pathetic and gross and really gross. Yeah, so, sort of
Speaker 1: adjacent to all of this new Bill Cipher related material.
Speaker 1: On August seventeenth, twenty twenty four, Disney released the short
Speaker 1: How Not to Draw a Gruncle Stan, which is one
Speaker 1: in a series of shorts called How Not to Draw,
Speaker 1: which is always a drawing lesson where the artist is
Speaker 1: communicating with the character that they're drawing and something always
Speaker 1: goes wrong in a hilarious, wacky, silly way. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure this one is just as silly with jokes for kids.
Speaker 8: By Biggy Bounce just kidding.
Speaker 9: Wow, tough crowd, Now, who's fork?
Speaker 3: Do I have the pleasure of breaking?
Speaker 1: It's beautifully enemy.
Speaker 3: It's so weird to get high quality gravity falls out
Speaker 3: of aation to kill and just.
Speaker 1: And voiced voiced gravity falls animation as well, Like we
Speaker 1: haven't had that in such a long time. And so
Speaker 1: essentially the premise is that this artist is drawing Stan
Speaker 1: and then summons Bill seipher despite Stan's protest, of which
Speaker 1: is my favorite part, just the idea that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone knows.
Speaker 3: This, like yeah, so so he offers Bill a dollar,
Speaker 3: which of course says the eye of Providence audit, which
Speaker 3: of course Bill can see through all the pictures of
Speaker 3: him in our world, and somehow manages to write the
Speaker 3: incantation on the dollar, and the artist, trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what it says, reads the entire thing.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, of course Bill shows up in the drawing,
Speaker 1: transports Stan himself into the dollar, which he's especially when
Speaker 1: he makes it one hundred of course. And also his
Speaker 1: method of getting the artist to shake his hand is great,
Speaker 1: where he literally just gets the artist to put his
Speaker 1: hand on the paper, then he moves onto the artist's
Speaker 1: hand and moves the hand himself.
Speaker 3: Yes, very high me the robot of him? Who is
Speaker 3: that the origin of shake and then the person just
Speaker 3: shakes is from Get Smart, where there's a character called himI,
Speaker 3: the robot who doesn't understand human norms.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Yeah, so I guess for Bill, the handshake is
Speaker 1: a pretty flexible thing, and then he takes over they
Speaker 1: essentially swap places where the artist is now the drawing,
Speaker 1: and Bill, horrifically is now a three D model in
Speaker 1: our world, which I guess is what it must have
Speaker 1: looked like to the people of gravity Falls when Bill
Speaker 1: gained physical form. I mean, weird Mageddon. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it got a lot of people sort of
Speaker 1: speculating on maybe there is more gravity Falls that will
Speaker 1: happen in animation with the Book of Bill and this
Speaker 1: kind of releasing right on top of each other. But
Speaker 1: whether or not that actually means anything. I really enjoy
Speaker 1: this short.
Speaker 2: I will take any crumbs of gravity Falls that I
Speaker 2: can get, like anything.
Speaker 1: This is like a great crumb. And I even love
Speaker 1: the glitch at the end with the YouTube out of
Speaker 1: order thing is also Bill and has codes and stuff
Speaker 1: and uh huh, Well, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to come here and possess this interdimensional and
Speaker 1: possessable demon. Yeah, yeah, and talk with us about the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really delightful.
Speaker 9: Thank you for you know, keeping the fires of the
Speaker 9: Fantom alive and you know, like you know, I said,
Speaker 9: this book is sort of an anniversary present to the fans,
Speaker 9: and I'm so glad they loved it.
Speaker 3: It's, in my honest opinion, the best gravity falls book.
Speaker 2: It is the best gravity falls book. Like, congrats, congrats,
Speaker 2: it is the best gravity falls book.
Speaker 9: Right, thank you worked very hard on it, So that's
Speaker 9: that means a lot to me.
Speaker 3: So we got a head down to the holl of conspiracies.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about which lower things are true
Speaker 3: and which aren't. It would be a weird energy to
Speaker 3: have you there for that. Usually the energy of that
Speaker 3: is oh, we don't know, and it's like, well if
Speaker 3: someone there knows.
Speaker 9: Right, I could see it messing with the tone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yourself at home up here, feel free to play
Speaker 2: around with the exhibits and we'll see you later.
Speaker 9: Okay, Yeah, I see there's a there's like a fortune teller.
Speaker 9: I'm just gonna keep pressing buttons and seeing what little
Speaker 9: messages it spits out.
Speaker 1: It does have a tendency to turn people into Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: so I would be careful it does do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, it finally made me big.
Speaker 9: I've been waiting so long.
Speaker 3: Tom Eggs is actually smaller than he was at the time.
Speaker 3: You know, aging does that to your bones.
Speaker 4: Catch on the rewind Alex.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 8: Conspiracy.
Speaker 1: All right, so now we're here down in the Hall
Speaker 1: of con it looks really different.
Speaker 2: Someone definitely redecorated down here.
Speaker 3: Is this like a bed?
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks great, it looks it looks honestly
Speaker 1: better than it's ever looks.
Speaker 2: I hear footstets.
Speaker 1: What is happening?
Speaker 3: Act natural?
Speaker 1: Welcome to mystery shack, look back a nostalgic time. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's attracting too much attention.
Speaker 8: Oh shoot, I'm sorry. Guys, I thought you were and
Speaker 8: you went away. I don't usually come out when there's
Speaker 8: people out here.
Speaker 1: Is that who I think it is?
Speaker 3: That is indeed, Hannah hyper fixates of YouTube fame, fame,
Speaker 3: let's say fame.
Speaker 1: And we all gasp like the Scooby Doo gang. We
Speaker 1: all gasped, Hannah hyper fix.
Speaker 3: Ito, what are so wait? Hang on, if I'm following
Speaker 3: environmental storytelling properly, have you been living in the Hall
Speaker 3: of Conspiracies for the two years since we ended the podcast?
Speaker 1: Oh, you've been here the whole time.
Speaker 8: You know, rent is really expensive in the city, y'all. Uh,
Speaker 8: you know, the walls were here and they didn't have
Speaker 8: anyone living in them, and I figured you wouldn't mind
Speaker 8: if I just set up an entire YouTube studio inside them.
Speaker 3: That honestly would explain the conspiratorial wall of journal three
Speaker 3: pages that appears behind you in the video. The whole time,
Speaker 3: I was thinking, that looks just like the one of
Speaker 3: the whole conspiracies.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I never put that together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I.
Speaker 8: Hope you don't mind. I was using your security cameras
Speaker 8: as a camera because I can't really afford one.
Speaker 1: Oh that's where all the footage went.
Speaker 2: That explains it.
Speaker 3: And I've always said your videos put the ford in
Speaker 3: cant afford. But you are had a hyper fixate, so
Speaker 3: you do hyper fixate on gravity falls conspiracies. I guess,
Speaker 3: all things considered, this is the perfect home for you.
Speaker 4: I understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm not mad about it. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm surprised you're not mad? Are you the one who
Speaker 1: took my lunch out of the fridge.
Speaker 8: Well, there's not a lot of hood in these walls,
Speaker 8: if you think about it. It's actually really rude of
Speaker 8: y'all to not keep them socked like I have to
Speaker 8: use something.
Speaker 1: My god, I told you it wasn't me.
Speaker 3: I told you it was Shelby and I'm still I'm
Speaker 3: still believing that in spite of contrary evidence.
Speaker 1: See my next guess would have been Molly Lewis. But
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad I didn't have to DM them about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can check the other wall.
Speaker 4: That David got suck in that one time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're gonna, Hannah, you're gonna want to watch out.
Speaker 1: You're gonna want to watch out for that one wall, Hannah.
Speaker 2: The one with the David shaped hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it can get a little glitchy.
Speaker 8: I'm avoiding it. And by the way, just so you know,
Speaker 8: you guys need new milk.
Speaker 3: Yours has gone back two years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you shouldn't have tasted that.
Speaker 1: Can I have a slice of it?
Speaker 8: Though?
Speaker 3: Oh so, Hannah, Actually your timing is kind of perfect
Speaker 3: because we are on a tour right now. This is
Speaker 3: our episode on the Book of Bill, so we were
Speaker 3: actually about to cover a book of Bill codes and conspiracies,
Speaker 3: of which there are a lot And well, Hannah, why
Speaker 3: don't you you know you could tell the podcasting audience
Speaker 3: a bit more about yourself to sort of contextualize why
Speaker 3: you're you're so perfect for this particul task.
Speaker 8: Well, aside from the fact that I've been living in
Speaker 8: your walls for the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which I'm still which I'm still wrapping my
Speaker 1: head around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm still I'm still in the denial stage of grief,
Speaker 3: so I haven't processed it at all yet. I might
Speaker 3: be mad at you later though, we'll get there.
Speaker 8: Well later is better than now, but for now, Yes,
Speaker 8: I have had a hyperfixates and I consider myself a
Speaker 8: bit of an expert on the characters of gravity Falls.
Speaker 8: I have a YouTube channel on YouTube. If you can
Speaker 8: believe it.
Speaker 4: That's a good place for it.
Speaker 1: And if you can believe what it's called, you can
Speaker 1: believe the name of the channel.
Speaker 8: It's on a hyper Fixings, yes, where I go on
Speaker 8: and on in a multi hour video essays about the characterization,
Speaker 8: the themes, and the story of gravity Falls. And I
Speaker 8: am very happy to be here, even though I do
Speaker 8: feel a bit awkward about y'all discovering me like this.
Speaker 1: Well, it's okay, because your videos are awesome and if
Speaker 1: anybody out there hasn't seen them yet, you absolutely should.
Speaker 4: Ella you voiced in one of them, right, I did.
Speaker 8: Yes, you voiced from an article from an interview with
Speaker 8: Alex Church. I had you read out out a question
Speaker 8: that was asked of him.
Speaker 1: Yes, about Pacifica.
Speaker 8: Right, Yes, it was in a video of talking about
Speaker 8: abusive fatherhood and abusive parents in Gravity Falls and how
Speaker 8: the narrative kind of treats them. And this is this
Speaker 8: is from like a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: And I think you also cited the podcast, right. I
Speaker 1: think you cited it in the Queer Coding video.
Speaker 3: Yes, in the Queer Queer representation the Queer Coding and
Speaker 3: Gravity Falls. You cited the podcast when talking about Grenda.
Speaker 8: Yes, I did.
Speaker 4: And then I was recently in your video.
Speaker 8: A defense of Stanford pods.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, now where Shelby is my question?
Speaker 2: That's true in the basement currently, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, why haven't you gotten Shelby on one of these yet?
Speaker 8: Well, Shelby's going to be busy by new milk for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess that's a good reason for me
Speaker 2: to not be there.
Speaker 3: So why don't we start by talking about both some
Speaker 3: of the more interesting cryptograms that are revealed by decoding
Speaker 3: the Book of Bill, as well as the new ciphers
Speaker 3: that were added to the ouvra of gravity falls, ciphers
Speaker 3: and cryptograms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it's it's been a while since
Speaker 1: we've had a new one, I think. I mean it's
Speaker 1: been a while since we have had new gravity falls anything,
Speaker 1: and now we have approximately a million.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that sounds cool.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk a bit about the color
Speaker 1: substitution cipher because this is one of the ones where
Speaker 1: you know, and it's kind of like what we did
Speaker 1: with the Visionaire cipher where we were walked through how
Speaker 1: that works. But there are a lot of ciphers here
Speaker 1: where like season one, I understood all of it. Then
Speaker 1: you get to season two, I'm like, all right, I
Speaker 1: don't wanna let the other fans kind of handle this
Speaker 1: particular arena of the the mystery solving because I don't
Speaker 1: understand this.
Speaker 3: And here it just gets so heavy at times with
Speaker 3: some of these.
Speaker 1: And this one is bad for me because I'm a
Speaker 1: little color blind. So it's like this, why are there
Speaker 1: these gray blocks of nothing in the and we're expected
Speaker 1: to decode them?
Speaker 4: So what is the color substitution cipher?
Speaker 8: The car substitution cipher is so cool because it consists
Speaker 8: of these card blocks hidden on certain pages. But part
Speaker 8: of the reason why a bunch of multi card blocks
Speaker 8: don't stand out as strange or as a possible code
Speaker 8: is because the book of Bill is full of these
Speaker 8: pages with this glitchy effect kind of symbolic of the
Speaker 8: damage and the corruption that Bill Cipher has endured since
Speaker 8: the end of the show. And so these blocks just
Speaker 8: kind of blend in.
Speaker 1: I think to me aesthetically, they remind me the most
Speaker 1: of like the TV test pattern is what I would
Speaker 1: compare them for sure.
Speaker 8: Ye say the same thing.
Speaker 7: It comes to Bill be right back, so many questions.
Speaker 8: Yes, they also accompany a static pattern, and a lot
Speaker 8: of the pages that they show up on just visually
Speaker 8: you have like this like static noise pattern right next
Speaker 8: to it, and so it doesn't feel that out of place.
Speaker 8: But shout out by the way to the Grammy falls
Speaker 8: separated a discord. A lot of people over there and
Speaker 8: on Twitter in general kind of put together that the
Speaker 8: patterns seem to echo where letters would be in different phrases.
Speaker 8: And while the blocks are not separated with spaces, which
Speaker 8: would you know, kind of make it a bit more
Speaker 8: obvious that these are words and phrases, they still managed
Speaker 8: to brute force it and put together that it's a
Speaker 8: cipher and they made keys and they spread them around.
Speaker 1: It is wild, insane, And I know you have particular
Speaker 1: trauma with decoding blocks hid in book pages.
Speaker 8: Please don't say the R word around me.
Speaker 3: Rectangles and you're going to talk more on that later.
Speaker 3: But we also have coffee rings, which we have all
Speaker 3: leads to one specific cryptogram. So we'll get more on
Speaker 3: that when we decode that one.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I know that there was a later edition
Speaker 2: adding more contest.
Speaker 8: Really yeah, yes, if I could just say about that
Speaker 8: real quick, I can't believe the coffee rings are a
Speaker 8: freaking code and a rectangles aren't. God damn it.
Speaker 3: It's insane.
Speaker 1: It got to the point I think it was. I
Speaker 1: think it was cipher Hunt where I that initial page
Speaker 1: that people had to decode, where I realized, not only
Speaker 1: is there nothing that Hersh and the other folks behind
Speaker 1: Gravity Falls will not make into a code, there is
Speaker 1: nothing that the fans will not figure out is a code.
Speaker 1: He really can't take anything for granted. There will be
Speaker 1: like like flex of like eraser shavings or something on
Speaker 1: a page, and will you're like, Okay, this is actually
Speaker 1: a code if you look at the length of each
Speaker 1: shaving and multiply it by the diameter of the overall
Speaker 1: shape that the shavings create. Like, it really is unreal
Speaker 1: to me, and I admire it.
Speaker 3: The funny part of that also is, you know, you
Speaker 3: get fans that are hyper vigilant and just looking for
Speaker 3: things where there where there might not be any there.
Speaker 1: But that more often than not that pays off. In
Speaker 1: any other fandom, people would be constantly grasping at straws,
Speaker 1: but here it's like, no, the straw leads to a
Speaker 1: very delicious beverage every time straws.
Speaker 3: Yeah, keep that in mind for earlier in this podcast hint, hint.
Speaker 3: But Chrissy from our discord server helped us kind of
Speaker 3: understand the episode Time Codes and the Coffee Rings. So
Speaker 3: here is the explanation of the episode Time Codes Cipher
Speaker 3: that she had written for us. Yes, because yeah, Ella
Speaker 3: had asked and she explained it, and the explanation she
Speaker 3: gave was first number.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess see how it did. Let's explain how
Speaker 1: it appears first, right, like how it's Yes, Okay.
Speaker 2: If I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure that the color substitution cipher is mostly in regards
Speaker 2: to Euclidia, specifically.
Speaker 1: On the Silly Straws pages, which is the page that
Speaker 1: you skip to if you decide not to take the deal.
Speaker 2: Yes, page seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Yes, the only numbered page. Yes, there are strings of
Speaker 1: just numbers, and they do have spaces, but beyond that,
Speaker 1: there's no like. They are all three or four numbers each,
Speaker 1: like digits each, and there's no apparent pattern or way
Speaker 1: to brute force it. So there has to be some
Speaker 1: sort of method to it. And you know now that
Speaker 1: I'm looking at them in hindsight, all of the the
Speaker 1: first parts of the numbers in each sort of set
Speaker 1: starts with either a one or a two, notably no.
Speaker 4: Three, and then the second parts only go up to twenty.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Well, and I assume that that's the jumping off point
Speaker 1: that people got the rest from. So what Chrissy in
Speaker 1: our discord explained to me is that in each set
Speaker 1: there's two numbers. In the first number, the first digit
Speaker 1: is going to represent the season of gravity falls, so
Speaker 1: either one or two, and all the other digits that's
Speaker 1: going to represent the episode number, and then the second
Speaker 1: number is going to have the last two digits are
Speaker 1: always going to be the seconds of the time code
Speaker 1: in the actual episode, like where in the episode to
Speaker 1: skip two, and the rest of the digits before it
Speaker 1: is like the minutes, and then you are meant to
Speaker 1: take each of those number sets and grab the word
Speaker 1: that is spoken by the characters at that particular timestamp. So,
Speaker 1: first example is the first number is two to fifteen,
Speaker 1: so that is season two, episode fifteen, and the next
Speaker 1: number is eight five eight, so that is eight minutes
Speaker 1: fifty eight seconds. That gets you the word twisted because
Speaker 1: it is in the last Maple corn Ford saying.
Speaker 9: I know he's older than our galaxy and far more
Speaker 9: twisted me.
Speaker 1: Literally is that exact second?
Speaker 3: Join me on my single one hundred toilet dreams picture
Speaker 3: everybody want to scam some sweet bucks or potential pizza.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's from the Strongbad Email Rock Opera where they ask
Speaker 3: if he's ever written a rock opera and he says,
Speaker 3: not only have I written it, but you've all heard
Speaker 3: all of it separately because it cost that's one word
Speaker 3: from each of my emails. Yes, and then literally did
Speaker 3: write a song that way, And it's complete gibberish because
Speaker 3: it's hard to forbe go here thoughts out of that.
Speaker 13: Join my single hundred toilet pigture everybody, some sweet box book,
Speaker 13: never mind double paints.
Speaker 3: But I guess where Matt failed, his former co worker succeeded.
Speaker 8: I just want to point out, by the way that
Speaker 8: on this silly straw page, like with all these numbers,
Speaker 8: all these first glance nonsensical numbers, the literal next page
Speaker 8: says this book has no codes, which is so funny
Speaker 8: to me.
Speaker 3: It's also such a coincidence because this podcast has no codes,
Speaker 3: none at all.
Speaker 1: It's true established that earlier.
Speaker 3: That's right, What is happening here?
Speaker 4: Do you want to read the next new cipher?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 3: Hannah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, sure, it's the therapism one right.
Speaker 1: Right, which is another substitution cipher. So it's symbols that
Speaker 1: each correlate. Yes, And I guess that was also that
Speaker 1: must have also just been brute forest, right.
Speaker 8: I believe at least some of it was. I think,
Speaker 8: you know, we talked about how like a lot of
Speaker 8: these were brute forests or over analyzed by the fan them.
Speaker 8: Several of these were over analyzed by the fandom even
Speaker 8: before the Book of Bill came out, or at least
Speaker 8: they were recognized in some you know, brute force crack
Speaker 8: from the images on the Gus Oregon Park's Twitter account
Speaker 8: or various images that like were leaked in advance made
Speaker 8: their way around town, and you know, people started to
Speaker 8: like brute force from those. Though of course that wasn't
Speaker 8: a lot to pull from. Most of the book managed
Speaker 8: to say pretty secret until it was actually released. But yeah, Therapism,
Speaker 8: if I remember correctly, is just a substitution cipher. And
Speaker 8: I'm trying to remember what page has the actual key
Speaker 8: for it. There's just so many freaking pages in this book.
Speaker 8: So yeah, yeah, let's keep moving. Okay.
Speaker 2: It also includes an alchemic substitution cipher.
Speaker 3: Another one of those just a is this be as
Speaker 3: this sort of deals? This next one is to me
Speaker 3: what the color one is to uh ella. It's an autostereogram,
Speaker 3: one of those images that just looks like a bunch
Speaker 3: of repeating blocks.
Speaker 4: But if you cross your eyes, it's.
Speaker 3: In three D. I have very poor visual vestibular skills.
Speaker 3: I don't have complete monocular vision.
Speaker 4: I see the world in three D.
Speaker 3: But think of it like if you have a three
Speaker 3: DS there's that three D slider if you turn it
Speaker 3: all the way up, obviously it's in three D. If
Speaker 3: you turn it all the way down, obviously it's in
Speaker 3: two D. I'm like, when you don't push it all
Speaker 3: the way down, or you don't hear that click, but
Speaker 3: it's otherwise all the way down where it's in three
Speaker 3: D if you pay attention very closely.
Speaker 4: That's how I see the world. So like when I.
Speaker 3: See three D movies, I have to focus really hard
Speaker 3: to justify paying the extra ticket price, or it just
Speaker 3: looks the same to me. So I used to go
Speaker 3: to when I was learning to ride a bike when
Speaker 3: I was seventeen, I had to go to vision therapy
Speaker 3: to do so, and I used to have to look
Speaker 3: at these autostereograms all the time for therapy reasons, to
Speaker 3: try to get my motion sickness and my depth perception
Speaker 3: a little better under control.
Speaker 4: And I'm very out of practice.
Speaker 3: I was able to cross my eyes and make the
Speaker 3: image three D, but I wasn't able to do it
Speaker 3: well enough to see what the heck I was looking at.
Speaker 2: Are these like the magic eye puzzles?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, those always have given me a head.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm just glad that Candy's favorite color is in.
Speaker 3: This book magic magic eye poster. What's your favorite color?
Speaker 8: Gravity faves magic Poster.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I was able to I'm able to do
Speaker 3: it because I have so much practice, because I used
Speaker 3: to have to do it for hours every Thursday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently this one just translates to the word no,
Speaker 1: and I'm I don't know how you're supposed to see it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got that the second letter was oh, but
Speaker 3: I could not tell what else I was looking at.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you're getting that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't see anything.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't look at it in the Google Dog.
Speaker 3: It's bigger in the actual book. But you do have
Speaker 3: to cross your eyes until signs that are the same
Speaker 3: line up with each other. So until it's no long
Speaker 3: like keep crossing your eyes and keep adjusting it until
Speaker 3: it's no longer blurry.
Speaker 4: It's hard.
Speaker 3: I guess my disability means I've been forced to do
Speaker 3: it more often, which is funny.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I understand the process.
Speaker 2: I will say that, like, when I'm looking at those,
Speaker 2: it's the same problem that I have when I'm looking
Speaker 2: at repeated numbers. I just I can't fathom them.
Speaker 3: And then there are two more substitution ciphers that have
Speaker 3: been introduced that not only unlock codes in the book,
Speaker 3: but unlock codes in earlier works.
Speaker 1: Which which is and this is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things about this book, hands down, is that codes are
Speaker 1: retroactively like they're backwards compatible with the show itself and
Speaker 1: it's that and also the episode time codes code I
Speaker 1: think I love is that it enhances your viewing of
Speaker 1: the show and it references to the actual series. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's why they had the quick time bar in that
Speaker 1: other book. It was supposed to establish that you're looking
Speaker 1: at the time codese. Think about it like that, it's
Speaker 1: all connected.
Speaker 4: What's this first one here?
Speaker 2: The first one that was given was the Rune substitution cipher,
Speaker 2: which is seen in Dipper segment in the theme song
Speaker 2: and translates to hey dip so when.
Speaker 3: He's holding up the candle and there's just some like
Speaker 3: etchings there. That's the same cipher as revealed in book
Speaker 3: A Bill, which is like crazy because that's we only
Speaker 3: know what that says fourteen years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was no.
Speaker 2: Key for it wild, there was no indicator.
Speaker 8: Notably, there are some interesting things with the substitution cipher.
Speaker 8: For one, thing. The Hey dip only works if some
Speaker 8: of the cipher or if some of the runes are
Speaker 8: actually combined, like they need to be touching for it
Speaker 8: to work. But also there are other instances in Grabby
Speaker 8: Balls runes do show up. They show up in Ford's
Speaker 8: cabin in a Talatoo Stands like a ton of times.
Speaker 8: He just has these stone tablets covered in ruins just
Speaker 8: laying around.
Speaker 3: Translated.
Speaker 8: No, they don't match the same alphabet. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 8: talk about this in my Talatoo Stands video which has
Speaker 8: already come out.
Speaker 1: That's insane or maybe it's maybe it's just an maybe
Speaker 1: it's just an ancient version of key smashing.
Speaker 8: Yes of course, but yeah, no, those runs actually match.
Speaker 8: Like I think it's called old Barthick runs. They have
Speaker 8: a specific name for that runic alphabet, and it is
Speaker 8: an actual uh Norse alphabet, but it doesn't actually mean anything.
Speaker 3: So it is ancient keys. It literally is ancient key smashing.
Speaker 2: Did we put them through like the Caesar cipher or anything?
Speaker 2: Just see if it's an extra ciphered cipher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Could be combined.
Speaker 8: No, nothing I can find, especially because you know the
Speaker 8: runes that we get in the Book of Bill. Some
Speaker 8: of them do match old actual runes, but they have
Speaker 8: different letters or these different symbols, at least as far
Speaker 8: as I could tell then the actual ones that you know,
Speaker 8: the Vikings used. They just look similar aesthetically. Yeah, as
Speaker 8: far as them being put through any kind of substitution
Speaker 8: cipher or anything like that, or a cesarean cipher, I
Speaker 8: I am going to say that I don't think they
Speaker 8: were thinking that deep about it. And even the hay
Speaker 8: dip in the theme song, because the symbols only match
Speaker 8: if they're touching. That was absolutely like a retroactive thing
Speaker 8: that they did. But I'm so glad they did it
Speaker 8: because it's so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was gonna I was gonna say, you
Speaker 1: could easily make the argument that that it wasn't planned,
Speaker 1: but rather they they saw these unsolved things and they thought,
Speaker 1: let's build an alphabet around that.
Speaker 17: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think knowing the way that hersh operates and the
Speaker 1: way that the crew operates, I could see it being
Speaker 1: either explanation just as easily. Because for as much as
Speaker 1: they have kind of made stuff to retroactively fit, they've
Speaker 1: also thought through a lot of stuff that they've held
Speaker 1: intentionally you know, close to the vest so as not
Speaker 1: to give away with their you know, because how many
Speaker 1: times in interviews has he said like, well, I were
Speaker 1: holding onto that maybe this kind of stuff, maybe we
Speaker 1: want to do something with it later.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I remember where I'm sorry, I remember where the
Speaker 8: therapism code is. It's not in the book. It's actually
Speaker 8: one of this one of the circle. Oh my god,
Speaker 8: I got a Google to double check myself here, but
Speaker 8: I believe it's one of the circles in this Yes, yes,
Speaker 8: this is so cool. This is another instance of one
Speaker 8: of those things.
Speaker 1: So hard.
Speaker 8: I'm excited there.
Speaker 1: No, thank you for swearing because we get to use
Speaker 1: our sensor.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 4: And speaking of swearing, ella, oh yes.
Speaker 1: This maybe is my favorite like reveal that the Book
Speaker 1: of Bill brought about in general. Toward the end of
Speaker 1: the book, in Ford's notes, he has some photographs from
Speaker 1: his childhood with Stanley, and they have a picture something
Speaker 1: called a Brose Secret Code, which just has a bunch
Speaker 1: of symbols that you would associate with a comic book
Speaker 1: character swearing things like that. Not only do they use
Speaker 1: it later in the book at various points, but we
Speaker 1: saw those exact symbols in season two, episode seven, Society
Speaker 1: of the Blind Eye, when McGucket is hamboning apparently what
Speaker 1: is a swear? At the reveal that the Blind Eye
Speaker 1: Society wiped Lazy Susan's memory and we never knew what
Speaker 1: exactly he said, but thanks to the code, which you know,
Speaker 1: lines up to the alphabet with twenty six symbols, we
Speaker 1: know that he said, oh Disney, which again could have
Speaker 1: been retroactively made to fit, but it would be so funny.
Speaker 3: Well, so this one, this one I'm not sure about
Speaker 3: because there there isn't a sixth letter swear? Is there?
Speaker 8: Uh? Not one in English I could think of, unless
Speaker 8: there's noose.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 8: I grew up a pretty goody two shoes.
Speaker 4: Maybe there's side that have been developing.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there's sure, Oh yeah, true, but no,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to understand that, given their frustrations with
Speaker 1: Disney S and P that maybe that was always intended
Speaker 1: to be what he said.
Speaker 3: Disney.
Speaker 4: Disney itself is a swear.
Speaker 1: In the Gravity Falls Universe. Yes, Disney itself is a swear,
Speaker 1: so this isn't.
Speaker 3: In Lost Legends, when either Dicky or Ascott finally learns
Speaker 3: to swear. Is it? This is not true? That does
Speaker 3: not unlock that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me gum shoes.
Speaker 3: What is that?
Speaker 2: She's the Jersey devil. That's raill. I'd be excited if
Speaker 2: I wasn't so terrified. Where Hey, look who finally learned
Speaker 2: to swear?
Speaker 1: I actually am not sure.
Speaker 3: I am not sure either.
Speaker 8: God, I gotta pull that up and don't chat here.
Speaker 1: Well, I have my copy right up on the shelf here.
Speaker 8: We might be doing a live decoding.
Speaker 1: Yes, we are doing a live attempt at decoding right now.
Speaker 8: But we'll do it live.
Speaker 1: We'll do it live.
Speaker 3: Well, we've done that before in Tourists Trapped and in
Speaker 3: Love God.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's true. Mm hmmmmm.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: The first letter is S. This is very promising. The
Speaker 1: first letter is S, yes, but the second letter is B,
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't think we're actually getting anywhere though.
Speaker 4: Let's just say S B.
Speaker 8: Maybe it needs to be substituted.
Speaker 1: Third letter is E. I think the last letter is Z.
Speaker 1: That's a good swear, Yeah, he says SZ S B easy.
Speaker 1: There's no visible exclamation mark on the Bros Secret Code
Speaker 1: like page. But I think where Z is looks like
Speaker 1: it's the top of an exclamation mark. So I think
Speaker 1: he says spez, yeahz.
Speaker 3: No is that is that encoded?
Speaker 1: To be fair, that's his first time swearing, so he,
Speaker 1: you know, is the best one he knew.
Speaker 8: If somebody called me a spez, I would assume it's
Speaker 8: a slur.
Speaker 3: It's very close to a slur.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. It was also the it was also
Speaker 1: the sixties. It was the sixties, so it's a different times.
Speaker 3: It's a one vowel off from being a slur.
Speaker 1: It's in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the slur. I'd never entering the slur neighborhood. I
Speaker 3: try to route around it when I'm driving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean growing up there was kind of it
Speaker 1: was rough.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, why.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't say yeah. So, uh, now that we've
Speaker 1: established I'm pretty sure that's all of the types of ciphers, right, Hannah,
Speaker 1: Are we missing any well? Okay, so there is, we.
Speaker 3: Are missing them, but our aim is getting better.
Speaker 1: There's a translatable barcode I think right on the intro
Speaker 1: page to the book.
Speaker 8: It'slf there is. I think it translates to I think
Speaker 8: it's on the MA the scene page, and I believe
Speaker 8: it translates to hay NERD.
Speaker 3: We have a written down a bunch of the more
Speaker 3: important codes that are revealed here.
Speaker 1: That might be important, right, because there are like fifty
Speaker 1: codes in this book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we we picked a best of sort of
Speaker 3: selection here. So on the how to Cheat Death page
Speaker 3: in Bill's substitution cipher is written, regrowing limbs is axis art,
Speaker 3: but can he regrow a ripped out heart?
Speaker 1: I don't know if that is from Bill's perspective, because
Speaker 1: I don't know if he would admit.
Speaker 3: To Eh, Okay, then I'll give it another take.
Speaker 1: No, maybe he's talking about I guess he could be
Speaker 1: talking about someone else. I guess I assumed that that
Speaker 1: was referring to Bill.
Speaker 3: Do you want me to give another take where I
Speaker 3: see it as me?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 8: Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, regrowing limbs is axis art? But can he regrow
Speaker 3: a ripped out heart?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, you're reading on It has given me
Speaker 1: this sort of mini theory of like, is this referring
Speaker 1: to Bill himself, having you know, gone through this horrible
Speaker 1: thing that he did and having a ripped out heart?
Speaker 1: Or is it Bill talking about just something gruesome that
Speaker 1: he would do to someone else? So many questions, so
Speaker 1: many questions. So going back to the silly Straws page,
Speaker 1: the code that we talked about earlier is actually just
Speaker 1: one piece of the overall code on that page. The
Speaker 1: rest are all in the Caesar cipher. They're sort of
Speaker 1: wiggling down the silly straws as Bill goes way. But
Speaker 1: the rest are in the Caesar cipher, and you put
Speaker 1: them all together, and they read this little poem, I
Speaker 1: doctor of a different kind who wants to make his
Speaker 1: patient blind. The doctor says three SIPs a day will
Speaker 1: make the visions go away. Fussy eater baby Billy wouldn't
Speaker 1: drink unless it's silly, twisted out of shape. After the kill,
Speaker 1: the ghosts of his family are haunting him still.
Speaker 3: And you know what I especially love about this page
Speaker 3: in particular, is I have previously said to Ella the
Speaker 3: most gravity falls joke.
Speaker 4: In Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy is.
Speaker 3: Why do you think I'll drink with this crazy straw?
Speaker 3: Not so crazy now?
Speaker 1: With ah? Yes, so I haven't connect back to conspiracies
Speaker 1: is great as well, as you know, I Doctor of
Speaker 1: a different kind. Hearkens back to TJ. ECKBERGA pages will
Speaker 1: probably never come up again.
Speaker 2: No, probably, probably not on the codes. There are no
Speaker 2: codes in this book page. There's a circle in a
Speaker 2: tree with an alphabet around it. Throughout the book there
Speaker 2: are stains made by coffee. If you line them up
Speaker 2: with the tree alphabet circle, there are droplets corresponding to
Speaker 2: the position of the letters. Putting all the coffee stains
Speaker 2: in the book together, you get his dimension now deceased,
Speaker 2: Scalene and Euclid rest in peace.
Speaker 3: So I didn't understand this one at all. Chrissy explained
Speaker 3: it and provided a useful little graphic here for me
Speaker 3: to help understand it. And then I did write that
Speaker 3: explanation myself, but the graphic helped a lots of thanks again, Chrisy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, how does it correspond to the position?
Speaker 3: There are drops, so's it's the ones that go outside
Speaker 3: of the circle.
Speaker 4: Anything in the circle is fine.
Speaker 3: But there are drops that kind of like extend outwards
Speaker 3: like a little lie. And yeah, if you look at
Speaker 3: the image here, those drops have read dots on them
Speaker 3: to just show where they are. And that is a
Speaker 3: coffee stain lined up with the tree circle.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I first saw that that circle, I knew, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously that feels like a cipher wheel. But I think
Speaker 1: I went back to my dipper in Mabel's Guide to
Speaker 1: Mystery NonStop Fun. I grabbed the cipher wheel from that.
Speaker 1: I was like, is this part of it? Is it
Speaker 1: going back to this book? But no, that's just that's
Speaker 1: just more letters.
Speaker 8: You had the spirit, But no, not in that case.
Speaker 1: We like your hood spa thank you. I I like
Speaker 1: it too.
Speaker 8: Also, are we allowed to talk about like what it
Speaker 8: actually says?
Speaker 1: Sure, scaling and.
Speaker 8: You could rest in peace these like it's been basically
Speaker 8: interpreted widely by the fandom that Scalen and Euclid are
Speaker 8: the names of Bill's parents, of his mom and dad.
Speaker 8: But you know, scaling and Euclid, for those of you
Speaker 8: who might not know, are terms from geometry. And you
Speaker 8: know you're going to see a lot of terminology about
Speaker 8: geometry when we talk about like Bill's dimension, at least
Speaker 8: in the fan theory and speculation circles.
Speaker 3: I love the idea that one of Bill's parents is
Speaker 3: named Euclid of Euclid.
Speaker 8: Yes, I mean, you know, people name their kids after
Speaker 8: locations all the time, Like I know people named Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: That's true, you know, from Brooklyn I'm more thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: how did if these are the common names, how did
Speaker 1: they land on Bill?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what kills me, uncon child, that's true, he
Speaker 2: has an upward facing.
Speaker 3: I sure in Euclidia, William is like naming your kid
Speaker 3: Zeppo or whatever, Like that's that weird celebrity name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, moon Unit, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like William really, well, we call him Bill for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, keep away from me.
Speaker 8: It's like, but it's spelled like a g in there,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's michaela with a bunch of g's and h's,
Speaker 1: lomanzolo ron.
Speaker 4: Jelo, Yes, shytheed. Do we have to censor shythied?
Speaker 1: If I hear one more silly ass name, this entire
Speaker 1: dimension is going to feel.
Speaker 3: My Rath, Salien and Euclid are kind of like the
Speaker 3: hippies of Euclidia, which is why Bill grew up so
Speaker 3: open minded to the conspiratorial idea of a third dimension.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, absolutely, they didn't stile their bouncing baby boy.
Speaker 3: We'll call him William William Mischief Cipher.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I wonder is that is it a family name,
Speaker 1: Cipher or well?
Speaker 3: He did also say it's a dimensional user name in
Speaker 3: the a m A. So maybe he has just a
Speaker 3: normal triangle name in Euclidia and and this is like
Speaker 3: like that's his name.
Speaker 1: Maybe silly Billy though kind of or baby Billy.
Speaker 2: He was baby Billy La La la la haw.
Speaker 3: Know you want to read this next one?
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely so alert from time Baby. On this page
Speaker 8: we see a mass alert going out from time Baby
Speaker 8: to the rest of his people who follow him, basically
Speaker 8: saying watch out for this rogue rapscallion. It has a
Speaker 8: picture of Bill Cipher's.
Speaker 1: Mugshot very much in the vein of the Barbie and
Speaker 1: Can meme from the Barbie movie.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Baby, it really does look like I do love
Speaker 8: the side view of Bill and he just looks like
Speaker 8: a line.
Speaker 1: Yes, but again he's got the kind of like he
Speaker 1: has the eye though is three D, which sort of
Speaker 1: hearkens to his origin.
Speaker 8: Yeah, of having that special eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I do love that the words criminal, cidistic, yellow, and
Speaker 8: guilty were re arranged to say I'm a silly guy,
Speaker 8: which is very funny. But the code itself on the
Speaker 8: side of the page says in the room Cipher loan
Speaker 8: survivor of the Euclidian massacre.
Speaker 1: I don't know who could have done that, but I'm
Speaker 1: glad I survive.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this does hearken on the page where he talks
Speaker 8: about his early years, and he has this like scrambled
Speaker 8: up message about what happened when he quote put on
Speaker 8: a show for his family.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, he essentially says on that page, if there was
Speaker 8: no enough but him.
Speaker 3: On the Shaman page again, in the therapism cipher, he writes, which.
Speaker 1: Hench Maniac rited me out, which I believe is implying
Speaker 1: it Jessel Brahm, Yes, the oracle. Yes, yeah, I also
Speaker 1: knows the oracle that she was scribbled out of the
Speaker 1: hench Maniacs bios page, implying she was once part of
Speaker 1: the group. But then obviously we see her in Journal
Speaker 1: three and she is against Bill, So this might have
Speaker 1: been a moment where she informed the Shaman that Bill
Speaker 1: was deceiving him, and then the shaman established the zodiac
Speaker 1: through that.
Speaker 8: When you go to the page where her face is
Speaker 8: scribbled out, there's also a message scribbled out, but fans
Speaker 8: have kind of put together. The message next to her
Speaker 8: name says the smartest one figured out horizontal dimensional portals,
Speaker 8: Way too smart? Who needs her? Too many eyes? Anyways,
Speaker 8: and I just love that amazing.
Speaker 1: That's like, it's not quite a cipher, but it's just
Speaker 1: seeing fast as scribbles. It's kind of a cipher. Well, Shelby,
Speaker 1: you should probably yeah, Shelby should talk about this one.
Speaker 2: All right. So on the witch Crow page, there's a
Speaker 2: Rune cipher that translates to curse Wittabane.
Speaker 1: But what does that mean?
Speaker 2: As your local owl House expert. In the owl House universe,
Speaker 2: Philip and Caleb Whittebane are the two brothers who found
Speaker 2: the portal between the human world and the world of
Speaker 2: the Titans. So, according to TV tropes Wild Masse Guessing,
Speaker 2: since Bill was fostering witchcraft among the Puritans in colonial
Speaker 2: New England, and since Caleb and Philip Whittebane were witch
Speaker 2: hunters in colonial New England, it's very probable that one
Speaker 2: of the Wittabane brothers, most likely Philip, came into Bill's
Speaker 2: purview while hunting witches that Bill had empowered.
Speaker 3: I just want to say real quick if I'm following.
Speaker 4: So on the there's a whole history.
Speaker 3: Section in the book that talks about before Ford, the
Speaker 3: people who Bill had try to build a portal for him.
Speaker 3: But the interesting thing about the Witchcraft page is Bill
Speaker 3: Ford of the day for du jour At that point,
Speaker 3: Mary Dower Thatch, we don't. It's the only one. We
Speaker 3: don't read about the falling out. We don't know how
Speaker 3: far she got into making a portal. It just ends
Speaker 3: with you know, she likes Bill and we hear no
Speaker 3: more about her.
Speaker 1: She likes Vinegar Peeves.
Speaker 3: Yes, but what you're saying is it is in the
Speaker 3: same location and time period, and there is a character
Speaker 3: present that discovered a portal, which is kind of insane,
Speaker 3: and you would understand the implications about that more than
Speaker 3: I would well.
Speaker 1: As the first documented the collector cosplayer.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was the first collector cosplayer. I'm actually I'm
Speaker 2: also one of the foremost Witebane experts.
Speaker 3: I have a fantastic Witebane comic dub compilation on your YouTube.
Speaker 8: You are to wit Abane what I am to Stanford Fines,
Speaker 8: very true.
Speaker 2: The foremost expert is probably Magpie, who does the Witta
Speaker 2: ban like. He's in the process of animating all of
Speaker 2: the portraits from Hollow Mine. Oh so in the owl
Speaker 2: House there is in Hollow Mind there are all of
Speaker 2: these pictures in the background which are Philip Whittebane's life,
Speaker 2: that's Emperor Bellos's life. Spoilers if you haven't seen it, Sorry,
Speaker 2: this is not an owl House spoiler free podcast. What
Speaker 2: but Within? So the only thing that we knew about
Speaker 2: the Widobanes prior to season three really was these pictures
Speaker 2: in Belos's mind and the episode where Loose meets Philip
Speaker 2: Whittebine who wrote the journal that she is going through.
Speaker 2: So everything with speculation up until I want to say
Speaker 2: thanks to thanks to them. Yeah, there are two brothers
Speaker 2: who lived in New England who were led over to
Speaker 2: the Boiling Aisles by a witch. But the two boys
Speaker 2: were orphaned. So my theory is that the wit a
Speaker 2: Bane that Bill is cursing was essentially the mother of
Speaker 2: the Witdobane brothers, not one of the brothers.
Speaker 3: That Mary Dower Thatch was the mom, because she did
Speaker 3: say she had been like gathering other women to kind
Speaker 3: of listen to these yes, empowering ideas, the ideas.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the boys are orphaned, and it may it's
Speaker 2: implied that their parents were convicted of witchcraft and that's
Speaker 2: why they're orphaned. And so Caleb was old enough to
Speaker 2: know that joining in the witch hunts was the safest
Speaker 2: way to keep them safe once they moved from their
Speaker 2: original village to a later village. But Philip was young
Speaker 2: enough to buy into the nonsense, which is why he
Speaker 2: is so bad in the Owl House.
Speaker 8: I absolutely love that.
Speaker 3: So, but also you're saying that the portal that Mary
Speaker 3: Dower thatch built is how Emperor Bellows got to the
Speaker 3: boiling aisles. So Bill caused the entire plot of owl Houses.
Speaker 2: It is highly possible, but they moved. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: that they moved to a different village, so the portal
Speaker 2: is not necessary the same one. But the implications of
Speaker 2: Bill's actions put Philip on the path to becoming the
Speaker 2: like terrible conservative Christian he is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's more about impacting the characters.
Speaker 1: So if they ever actually built a portal the Witch.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't know.
Speaker 4: We don't know.
Speaker 3: We did not get far enough in Mary Dower Thatchy's
Speaker 3: story to know how trying to build a portal went.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it almost seems like that's intentional.
Speaker 8: Actually, what I will say about that is something that
Speaker 8: I find really funny. So Bill has in all of
Speaker 8: the men's lives that he's interacted, he has tried to
Speaker 8: manipulate them. He's tried to like ruined our lives functionally
Speaker 8: so that he can get a portal and come into
Speaker 8: our world. Whereas, at least the way he writes it,
Speaker 8: when he interacts with these Puritans, he essentially walked into
Speaker 8: their lives and when you live like this and basically
Speaker 8: empowered them, like it's the equivalent of a Burger going
Speaker 8: into your home to steal your TV and seeing that
Speaker 8: you not only have no tea, but you have no furniture,
Speaker 8: and then goes, ah, man, I can't rob you. So
Speaker 8: I'm actually not even convinced that he made Mary dawerth
Speaker 8: that should make him a portal. Okay, it looks, at
Speaker 8: least going by this page.
Speaker 4: He taught her about feminism.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, he wanted to inject some chaos and liberation
Speaker 1: into the lives of repressed people, which you know he
Speaker 1: would view that kind of puritanical repression as like the
Speaker 1: most repugnant thing.
Speaker 4: Because it's the opposite of chaos.
Speaker 8: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's likely they didn't even get that far. And
Speaker 2: I think that Mary and both Witabine parents were probably together.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, what he says when he interacts with the women is, Look,
Speaker 8: you know how I feel about human suffering. It is funny, but.
Speaker 1: Some death.
Speaker 8: So he basically gives them some real cult spells. He
Speaker 8: did just kind of like feel bad for them. And
Speaker 8: then what the women essentially did, at least according to
Speaker 8: the letter that's in here, written by Mary dowert Thatch,
Speaker 8: is that they started drinking boxed wine and having a
Speaker 8: book club. And honestly I love that for them. Yes,
Speaker 8: we love feminism.
Speaker 1: Hey like, so did did Bill like invent witches at
Speaker 1: least in the human world?
Speaker 3: No, because they let us say that New England was
Speaker 3: not the first witch trials there were, uh.
Speaker 1: England. But he made it so that there were real witches.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the Owl House and this and gravity
Speaker 2: Falls are connected, parts of the boiling aisles have been
Speaker 2: spilling over for generations for years.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, okay, okay, guys, as well as this hold on,
Speaker 1: if I may say this.
Speaker 4: In Journal three, there is implied cross.
Speaker 3: Continuity with Rick and Morty. In Lost Legends, there is
Speaker 3: implied cross continuity with both Rick and already.
Speaker 4: An owl House and that Book of Bill.
Speaker 3: There is only applied cross continuity with Owl House. And
Speaker 3: that's just a fun progression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not not for fun reasons.
Speaker 3: No, we we know why. Yeah.
Speaker 8: What I will say though about like these pages, I
Speaker 8: do wish I do, Like I don't have a lot
Speaker 8: of complaints about the Book of Bill, but I do
Speaker 8: wish that there was another woman that Bill interacted with,
Speaker 8: because I would love to see like an eat, like
Speaker 8: a woman scientist that was like fooled by Bill. I
Speaker 8: think it would be so cool. Uh, the only woman
Speaker 8: that he interacts with.
Speaker 1: Come on, give Thurbert Wagstaff a few years to discover estrogen.
Speaker 8: Exactly exactly who learned a lot about themselves in the multiverse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well you were going to say about that
Speaker 1: this is the first like full on acknowledgment of the
Speaker 1: owl House universe in something that is indisputably cannoned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were talking about this earlier because you know,
Speaker 3: I wanted postera in the crawl space in face it
Speaker 3: the first story in Lost Legends that could just be
Speaker 3: they felt like drawing Eta like it doesn't necessarily imply anything.
Speaker 3: And Stan does go into detail about his ex wife
Speaker 3: in a hidden DVD commentary and is definitely describing Ida,
Speaker 3: but that is also a DVD commentary of an already
Speaker 3: existing episode. It is not necessarily new, objectively canon gravity
Speaker 3: Falls material. It might be canon, but it is part
Speaker 3: of an existing episode.
Speaker 1: You can also make the argument that it's not if
Speaker 1: you wanted to, but this you really can't.
Speaker 8: But there is also like in the Owl House Itda
Speaker 8: she says that when she goes into the human realm,
Speaker 8: she goes under the name Marylyn.
Speaker 3: So that is the first implication of the cross continuity
Speaker 3: being canon in Owl House. But this is kind of
Speaker 3: the first implication in an official standalone Gravity Falls work
Speaker 3: characters from the Owlhouse existing in the gravity Falls universe, well.
Speaker 1: Certainly characters other than Da as well. I think is important.
Speaker 3: Sure that is true, because yeah, we only have gotten
Speaker 3: implications of Ida from Lost Legends in the commentary, and.
Speaker 2: I think that like the fact that they're choosing the
Speaker 2: wind A Banes as part of that lore when we
Speaker 2: had to guess so much of the Widow Bane lore
Speaker 2: prior to season three, is like a really cool way.
Speaker 1: To stay right. That's like a huge puzzle piece for
Speaker 1: the Owl House fans just casually dropped it in a
Speaker 1: Gravity Falls But yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like, why was there a portal there? Well, maybe
Speaker 3: someone was going around that area at the time, trying
Speaker 3: to get people to build portals.
Speaker 1: Yes, do you want to build a portal?
Speaker 3: Well, I need to make that video now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's got to be. It's gotta be
Speaker 1: Bill going around knocking on everybody's.
Speaker 4: Door, and each verse is a different one of these characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, let me tell you, I've definitely seen a comic
Speaker 8: floating around of love is an open door with Ford
Speaker 8: and Bill.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh, sixer, if only there was someone out there
Speaker 1: who loved you.
Speaker 19: Oh no, it would be great to do that, because
Speaker 19: just about every Disney show has a secret portal in
Speaker 19: it at this point, basically like including duct tails and
Speaker 19: like like they all got portals.
Speaker 1: Like the other dimension.
Speaker 11: Hat.
Speaker 1: So now we're getting into the Lost Journal three pages
Speaker 1: that Stanford wrote. So on the Lost in the Woods page,
Speaker 1: when referring to the there's a waitress at the diner
Speaker 1: that Ford is talking to and not really making much
Speaker 1: of a connection with in the author's symbol cipher, he
Speaker 1: writes Stanley could have made her laugh, which is so sad,
Speaker 1: so sad.
Speaker 8: I have so many feelings about this, y'all. I please
Speaker 8: stop me for ranting, but I'm gonna start ranting, no,
Speaker 8: I go for it, Ran. You know, like we get
Speaker 8: a lot about how Stan felt this like intense insecurity,
Speaker 8: and this like the feeling is self conscious about not
Speaker 8: making it to the level that Ford is, at least academically.
Speaker 8: We get so much evidence that like Ford, at least
Speaker 8: by his teachers at least in the context of schoolwork,
Speaker 8: got to get all these accolades and got all this recognition,
Speaker 8: and Stan felt insecure. Right, We don't get as much
Speaker 8: or at least Ford doesn't as emit as much in
Speaker 8: the pages of Journal three that we got in you know,
Speaker 8: the original Journal three or in the series itself, because
Speaker 8: Ford is such a proud man. Ford doesn't like to
Speaker 8: talk about his falls. So seeing this in the context
Speaker 8: of a page that was you know, hypothetically ripped out
Speaker 8: of Journal three at some point, Yeah, a page where
Speaker 8: he specifically says.
Speaker 3: Like about how he struggles to socially connect with people, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's also I guess that we don't we don't see
Speaker 1: him in this element in the series. We don't see
Speaker 1: him in the real world. In the show itself, we
Speaker 1: see him like in the lab missions when he.
Speaker 8: Comes out of the portal, he is a badass. And
Speaker 8: also he doesn't need to interact with other people because
Speaker 8: he's living in the basement and he's trying to figure
Speaker 8: out the rift and YadA YadA YadA.
Speaker 3: And on official government documents, he only exists once. True,
Speaker 3: there's already a Stanford going around in town.
Speaker 1: But if we had like a Slice of Life episode
Speaker 1: with Stanford, we'd see all the kind of deficit that.
Speaker 2: He has socially, Yeah.
Speaker 1: In pretty much every other arena of life other than
Speaker 1: other than the particular niche that he is an expert in.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I talk a lot about this in
Speaker 8: my Hotel to Stands video. But I tell too, Stands
Speaker 8: is so break neck pace that we don't get a
Speaker 8: lot of small, characterized nation moments where we just get
Speaker 8: to know the characters because we only have thirty minutes,
Speaker 8: chop chop. We got to move on. We got to
Speaker 8: talk about what's happening next, because we need to fit
Speaker 8: the life stories of two sixty plus year old men
Speaker 8: into this episode. But this is one of those.
Speaker 1: Quiet person But you said sexy, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you're right, but I mean, you're true, but six year
Speaker 1: old I was.
Speaker 8: Just gonna say this moment of Ford just kind of
Speaker 8: sitting in the cafe feeling awkward and feeling bad about
Speaker 8: not being able to like really make a connection with
Speaker 8: other people, and writing even in code, not even in
Speaker 8: a way where other people could read it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only on.
Speaker 8: The bottom of this page. Doesn't say Stanley could have
Speaker 8: made her laugh, but at the top of the page
Speaker 8: he writes in code six fingered freak he feels this
Speaker 8: and it just like it breaks my heart.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that, like Taylor two stance shows us
Speaker 2: pretty clearly that Ford is an introvert and stan is
Speaker 2: an extrovert. And I think that, like when they were together,
Speaker 2: they could sort of complete each other, but separate they
Speaker 2: have their weaknesses, and Ford tends to be pretty narcissistic,
Speaker 2: especially when he's talking about himself in his journals, so
Speaker 2: he would not speak in anything other than code about
Speaker 2: his insecurities, I think.
Speaker 1: But there's like this three second clip of Ford getting
Speaker 1: like turned down by a girl at a school dance
Speaker 1: and then Stanley instantly knows how to cheer him up,
Speaker 1: like he get like, Ford gets yes yeah, and then
Speaker 1: Stanley comes over splashes himself.
Speaker 8: There is a tweet by Alex Hirsch, where he did
Speaker 8: say that the thing that Ford said to make that
Speaker 8: girl throw punch on him is a pickup line that
Speaker 8: he got from stan which is kind of funny.
Speaker 2: That's funny. He doesn't have the delivery that Stan does.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and she just kind of looks like, what did
Speaker 8: you just say? And then throws punch.
Speaker 1: On was like and then her her aim improved.
Speaker 3: So, according to Stanley, the most important thing about comedy
Speaker 3: is timing yes exactly.
Speaker 8: On the my music be page, in a Therapism cipher,
Speaker 8: we get a description of a tattoo that Bill tries
Speaker 8: to convince Ford to get that he says he's not
Speaker 8: quite sure of Bill apparently, according to Ford, told him
Speaker 8: that the tattoo means why. However, if you translate it,
Speaker 8: it says in the therapism cipher, if lost, return to Bill,
Speaker 8: which is hot one funny, but two knowing that Ford
Speaker 8: does get stuck in the multi verse and does have
Speaker 8: wanted posters with Bill trying to find him is pretty
Speaker 8: good planning on Bill's part.
Speaker 3: It's also really hot.
Speaker 8: It is yeah, there's Is this a good time to
Speaker 8: talk about their relationship or are we are we? Are
Speaker 8: we glossing over that for the Haull go for it.
Speaker 8: It's very apparent about all of these journal three pages
Speaker 8: that Ford and Bill have this very like I'm not
Speaker 8: gonna specifically say romance because it could be interpreted in
Speaker 8: a million different ways, but at least romance coded or
Speaker 8: using language similar to romantic language.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the closest, it's the only close relationship
Speaker 1: with someone he's not related to, that exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: On the pages written by the rest of Fort's family.
Speaker 3: That is the only way Mabel knows how to interpret it.
Speaker 3: She's like, Okay, so you can't get over your breakup.
Speaker 8: So you're like a needy x quote unquote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if there is more complexity here to how to
Speaker 3: define it, it is not overt or understandable enough to
Speaker 3: anyone else that calling it anything but a romance is
Speaker 3: useful according to Mabel, who's always correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and granted, you know Mabel interprets. Mabel obviously romanticizes
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, but also, you know, a twelve
Speaker 1: year old understands what's going on well.
Speaker 2: I mean, and I'll also say that I personally have
Speaker 2: had friendship breakups that have essentially been a relationship breakup,
Speaker 2: So you don't have to read the romance into it,
Speaker 2: but it's more fun Chip.
Speaker 8: Yes, regardless of whether it's romantic or platonic or just
Speaker 8: devotional muse and you know, muse e relation coding that
Speaker 8: we're looking at here. It was absolutely this very toxic,
Speaker 8: very abusive dynamic. When they do quote unquote break up.
Speaker 8: You know, we have Bill saying things to Forward in
Speaker 8: the following pages, things like you're my property, don't forget it. Yeah,
Speaker 8: like you're nothing without me, things like admit it, you
Speaker 8: love this, And it's so so like I mean, it
Speaker 8: is black and white. It is incredibly clear that that
Speaker 8: is what they are going for.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a textbook abusive relationship.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean talk about it.
Speaker 3: It is literally a textbook abusive relationship. Well, I have
Speaker 3: a friend who actually was in an abusive marriage and
Speaker 3: he read book of Bill recently and was so vindicated
Speaker 3: by the pages by Ford's family laughing and saying, don't
Speaker 3: fall for this. This is ridiculous, and so vindicated by
Speaker 3: the punishment of eternal therapy.
Speaker 4: Yes, as well as you know, you talk a lot.
Speaker 3: In your videos about and in the one that I
Speaker 3: was in about how this abusive controlling figure is how
Speaker 3: Ford was interpreted by a lot of a fandom. The fandom,
Speaker 3: but here we see a lot of those shortcomings were
Speaker 3: enhanced by being on the receiving side of that, not
Speaker 3: on being on the giving side of that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I as someone who is active in
Speaker 8: a fandom. In twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, there was a
Speaker 8: big surge of people who were very angry at Ford,
Speaker 8: and I was one of the people who was always
Speaker 8: defending him, and I still will to this day. He
Speaker 8: is and I say this all the time, my baby girl.
Speaker 8: But the thing about Ford is that I knew back then,
Speaker 8: even if it wasn't said as explicitly as it is here,
Speaker 8: that it felt like this was kind of what someone
Speaker 8: would act like if they were in an abusive dynamic.
Speaker 8: And as someone who is myself a victim or you know,
Speaker 8: I was once a victim of an abusive relationship that
Speaker 8: I got out of, it was really validating and very
Speaker 8: vindicating to see this because I kind of look back
Speaker 8: at a lot of the old arguments and a lot
Speaker 8: of the ways people were talking about him was as
Speaker 8: though he was acting maliciously or purposefully cruel, and that's
Speaker 8: just not something that's backed up by this book years later,
Speaker 8: in the Book of Bill, and get this evidence that
Speaker 8: Bill really really tormented Board. Of course he's not going
Speaker 8: to trust others. Of course he's going to be off playing.
Speaker 3: Like getting bitten by a trapped animal.
Speaker 8: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: From the jump. It's like, I'm not really sure why
Speaker 1: people were surprised, because even before we you know, even
Speaker 1: before we tied it to this particular relationship or even
Speaker 1: Bill in general, we know from the jump. We know
Speaker 1: from episode one that whoever wrote this book went mad
Speaker 1: and you know, was driven into this intense paranoia and
Speaker 1: literally wrote in giant letters trust to know what because
Speaker 1: of some mysterious he that he's trying to avoid. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is stuff that we know from episode one.
Speaker 8: You know, people forget that when they see, you know,
Speaker 8: someone punched stand in the face, followed by a thirty
Speaker 8: minute explanation of all Stan's trauma, and so, you know,
Speaker 8: sometimes fandom has short memory.
Speaker 1: It's true. It's yeah, I get that. I get that.
Speaker 3: What have I walked up to you punched you in
Speaker 3: the face, and that spent thirty minutes telling your family.
Speaker 8: I have a joke in my video along the lines
Speaker 8: of you know if on episode one of Torust Trapped,
Speaker 8: you know of Gravity Falls and Tourist Trapped, stan walked
Speaker 8: up to Dipper, punched him in a face, and walked away,
Speaker 8: and then Dipper stood at the carava telling us every
Speaker 8: awful thing that has ever happened to him in his life. Yeah,
Speaker 8: you might feel different about Stanley for the rest of
Speaker 8: the series, and that's kind of what we got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we wouldn't like stan Well.
Speaker 2: And I'll say that having recorded the first like we've
Speaker 2: done the character work on the first couple pages of
Speaker 2: this for the book of Bill recording that we're working on,
Speaker 2: Ford is definitely in a place where he's falling back
Speaker 2: on the abusive relationship he was in with Bill just
Speaker 2: having this book present in his presence.
Speaker 3: We've been recording the Ford pages and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 3: don't even read a word of this book, And every
Speaker 3: time it comes back he's like, yeah, I know, I've
Speaker 3: been reading it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very much like falling back into that relationship
Speaker 2: with Bill Well.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that this is how the book
Speaker 1: appears to Ford, that he doesn't appear that way to
Speaker 1: anyone else.
Speaker 3: Right, because we know it appears to sus it's just
Speaker 3: he's ungruvet or.
Speaker 8: All Ford even says in one of the pages where
Speaker 8: he pops back in, he says, I understand the appeal
Speaker 8: of this. Maybe you're like me and you're just attracted
Speaker 8: to the things that hurt you and that broke my heart.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to circle back to the is it romantic question,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to phrase this in a
Speaker 1: the way that sounds the least bad. I think the
Speaker 1: closer they get into the more explicitly like abusive language
Speaker 1: of the like you're my property, don't forget it, and
Speaker 1: you're nothing without me, et cetera. Yeah, the more they
Speaker 1: do that, the easier it is. I think to read
Speaker 1: what came before as romantic. Obviously toxic.
Speaker 3: Miss Spears would have some words about this relationship.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I think they lean into it in a
Speaker 1: way that suggests like a level of passion that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't all be.
Speaker 8: Clear in my interpretation, I definitely do think it's romantic.
Speaker 8: I think that I want to leave wiggle room because
Speaker 8: there's a lot of people have different interpretations of it,
Speaker 8: and you know, these characters are meaningful to a lot
Speaker 8: of people.
Speaker 3: And also I've been to wiggle rooms and they're a blast,
Speaker 3: so you should leave those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, don't get rid of all the wiggle rooms.
Speaker 8: If not romantic, it's at least devotional, you.
Speaker 1: Know, That's what I mean. And I think that the
Speaker 1: more passionate that language gets, even though it's obviously in
Speaker 1: a terrible way, Yeah, the more you're inclined to. And
Speaker 1: it also brings to mind like fusion in Steven Universe,
Speaker 1: where sometimes that's romantic, sometimes that even has adult like connotations,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's platonic, sometimes it's familial. But when it
Speaker 1: is romantic, and particularly when it's abusive and toxic, there
Speaker 1: is that similar language that he's used very pointedly to
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 3: It, and you should pledge to the Patreon for more
Speaker 3: analysis on that.
Speaker 4: In our new Paywalt series, that's.
Speaker 1: True, although we won't get there for like ten years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll get there in ten years.
Speaker 3: No, two years before lap stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know what side of TikTok you guys
Speaker 2: are on, but there's been a fair amount of discussion
Speaker 2: about a new show called Kevin Kin f Himself that
Speaker 2: I've been CEO.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, well that's been out for a bit,
Speaker 1: but I think it's on Netflix now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been out for a bit. I have it's
Speaker 2: on my list now that I'm seeing all this discourse.
Speaker 2: But pretty much one of the things I've heard said
Speaker 2: about it recently was they don't reveal Kevin's backstory because
Speaker 2: they don't want to humanize the abuser, because there is
Speaker 2: so much of being in an abusive relationship where you
Speaker 2: justify the actions of the abuser in order to give
Speaker 2: them a pass on things. And so it feels like
Speaker 2: a lot of this book is Bill giving you that
Speaker 2: backstory so that you sympathize with him in his abusive
Speaker 2: relationships and humanize him. But like, he's still an abuser.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how terrible his backstory is.
Speaker 8: He follows up this entire section with, oh, obviously I
Speaker 8: was joking. Come on, if you really believe that stuff
Speaker 8: about the I Steeler.
Speaker 2: Experiment, so gas lighting, Yeah.
Speaker 8: No, it's text book abuse. It's so messy.
Speaker 1: Literally, Yeah, I mean I beat this book up and
Speaker 1: that was textbook abuse.
Speaker 3: And finally, the most important hidden code of them all.
Speaker 3: But to end things on a lighter note, yes, in
Speaker 3: Stanley's letter written in his secret code from when they
Speaker 3: were children, is love you bro?
Speaker 8: Oh my gosh, yes, it is so sweet to see
Speaker 8: them still using them, like still using.
Speaker 1: This code, specifically that it's written in the context of
Speaker 1: you think he's writing a swear. He says, what a
Speaker 1: bunch of love you bro?
Speaker 8: Yeah. I think it's so funny. The other instance of
Speaker 8: like seeing a code written by one of these two
Speaker 8: men when they're grown up is actually, like, you know,
Speaker 8: the photograph with Philford and Ford from college, the one
Speaker 8: that's ripped up and found on Philipford's desk. If you
Speaker 8: look at the whiteboard on that page, the whiteboard behind
Speaker 8: college h Ford has a code written in this that
Speaker 8: says miss you like obviously talking about stamp.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's another code that got unlocked by the book.
Speaker 8: Then uh no, no, this is in the book. It's
Speaker 8: on the page with Ford and Fiddle. Oh yeah, the
Speaker 8: one at backups more, the one that he finds in
Speaker 8: Philford's desk that says try to for get written on
Speaker 8: it with a mustache Fiddle. Yes, you know. Any instance
Speaker 8: of these men as adults after they're falling out using
Speaker 8: this code brings a tear.
Speaker 11: To my eye.
Speaker 8: I think it's so endearing. I think it's so great.
Speaker 1: For sure, it's made me realize, like we never actually
Speaker 1: saw fiddle Ford at backups more. I love that they
Speaker 1: gave him that message.
Speaker 8: Yeah, sah, it's so good. It's so funny and the
Speaker 8: cowboy boots it's amazing.
Speaker 3: So uh, given the amount of time it has been
Speaker 3: since we even entered the Hall of Conspiracies, you could
Speaker 3: recognize that uh hata eye prefixates is overqualified. U. Usually
Speaker 3: we have a trial run with a guest where we
Speaker 3: take them on a tour before they can graduate the
Speaker 3: docent and give a tour themselves.
Speaker 1: Considering you've been living here, I think you're pretty familiar.
Speaker 4: You know this place better than us the past two years.
Speaker 8: Yes, I actually watch your training videos in the back
Speaker 8: for fun when I'm bored. I don't have cable.
Speaker 3: Did you appreciate the little the little hip hop beats
Speaker 3: though we had to kind of explain some of the
Speaker 3: things going on around.
Speaker 8: I did those were really good beats?
Speaker 1: Like how to properly pour a coffee?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and we don't know why that'll be important
Speaker 3: for the Hall of Conspiracy with how much coffee I drink.
Speaker 2: It is, well, the coffee stains so now it makes sense.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, yeah, it's because of the coffee stands.
Speaker 1: So you can lead us this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you actually prepared some theories to talk about today.
Speaker 1: I have to just kind of be along for the
Speaker 1: ride and and react to it. Can we still say react.
Speaker 3: A ten year old joke?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's it's like a fine wine.
Speaker 8: Oh yes, I am so excited to talk about these.
Speaker 8: I want to say that I found that different codes
Speaker 8: and different theories show up on different circles. And I
Speaker 8: am mostly on Tumblr for tatoes, so.
Speaker 1: That's where we sourced a lot of our early stuff. Anyway.
Speaker 3: It's from dog with a blog Conspiracies dot tumblr dot com.
Speaker 1: Of Chris Aviary.
Speaker 8: I guess I'll just jump right in right unless I
Speaker 8: need anything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go.
Speaker 8: First up on the list, we have what we're calling
Speaker 8: the Mandible theory, put together by longtime grabby balls band
Speaker 8: Anista Rose on Tumblr. This theory is focused on the
Speaker 8: specifics of how exactly Bill destroyed his home world, focusing
Speaker 8: on his description of the dimensions destruction as being done
Speaker 8: by quote a monster, as well as other elements to
Speaker 8: essentially predict that Bill might have physically devoured his own dimension.
Speaker 8: There are plenty of mentions of Bill devouring people and worlds,
Speaker 8: and lots of imagery, both in Where Beginning when he's
Speaker 8: seeing taking a bite out of the Earth and the
Speaker 8: projected plans, and in the Book of Bill, when a
Speaker 8: page mentions the souls of someone that Bill devoured begging
Speaker 8: to be heard and reaching out.
Speaker 3: Oh, Grembler, right, and in Don't Dimention It when Ford
Speaker 3: describes accidentally eating a planet when he entered the multiverse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but when I thought of that, so that
Speaker 1: last atom that he had under his hat is like
Speaker 1: I couldn't finish it.
Speaker 8: He's still full. He's saving that for later, the way
Speaker 8: you might serve, the way you might save crumbs and
Speaker 8: a beard. The real meat and potatoes of the theory, though,
Speaker 8: is that the souls of the devoured are still in
Speaker 8: Bill Cipher, driving him insane, the same way that like
Speaker 8: the souls of people are mentioned on some pages of
Speaker 8: the book as like still existing there and reaching out
Speaker 8: to the reader. There is a code in the multi
Speaker 8: colored squares on a page that says he sleeps, he
Speaker 8: never dreams, but somehow still he hears their screams. Oh
Speaker 8: my god, wait, I don't know if that's actually a
Speaker 8: type in the I don't know if that's the type
Speaker 8: in the screamshot. Yes, in their scream Yes. I have
Speaker 8: been lovingly calling this the Bill Vore theory.
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing it's called mandibles because that's one of
Speaker 1: the visible words on his redacted account of his u.
Speaker 8: On the redacted account of him destroying his home dimension
Speaker 8: of euclidia.
Speaker 1: I like this because the idea of like, oh, he
Speaker 1: still hears the screams, like you know, you interpret that
Speaker 1: initially maybe as metaphorical as as trauma as PTSD, but
Speaker 1: Bill will never admit that he needs help, so he's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: that's indigestion exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like he starts hearing the scream of his parents
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh, where's the pepto?
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 8: And then if you do want to take an engsty
Speaker 8: line with this, like you can interpret it as both
Speaker 8: a traumatic like you know, he still hears their screams,
Speaker 8: but it could also be he does physically constantly here
Speaker 8: there screams driving him to madness.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, you know, I'm surprised that prevents him from sleeping.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it would kind of create a nice
Speaker 3: kind of white noise.
Speaker 2: He mixed that with with the Shepherd's Rising Shepherd.
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly, his favorite song a banger.
Speaker 3: In Bill Seipher's interview with himself, he asks is it
Speaker 3: true you're the biological father of Phineas from Phineas and
Speaker 3: Ferb and responds to his own query with this interview
Speaker 3: is over, clearly dodging the question, as well as possibly
Speaker 3: being a reference to the time Strongbad interviewed himself because
Speaker 3: it ends exactly that same way. So from the TV
Speaker 3: Trip's Wild Mast Guessing page, they write on whether or
Speaker 3: not Bill is Phineas Flynn's father. Likely not. It's doubtful
Speaker 3: that the show's creator would go the route of Phineas
Speaker 3: being the anti Christ, which, if you don't know, is
Speaker 3: the idea of a virgin birth conceived by a woman
Speaker 3: possessed by a demon or satan, depending on if you're
Speaker 3: watching Supernatural or not, which when are you not?
Speaker 2: I am she's your mother, but the thing inside of her,
Speaker 2: the thing that you're talking to, it a demon.
Speaker 8: Notably, this isn't the only person that the book implies
Speaker 8: he might be the biological father.
Speaker 3: Of That is true.
Speaker 8: On the page opposite of the Love page. When asked Bill,
Speaker 8: have you ever been in love? He says, sure, how
Speaker 8: are your mom high?
Speaker 1: For me?
Speaker 8: By the way, have you taken a GADA test recently? Well,
Speaker 8: obviously it's not a virgin birth. We've established Bill mom.
Speaker 3: You're right? If Bill mom, that doesn't fall into anti
Speaker 3: Christ's territory.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 4: Yeah, cut, did Charlie take clip?
Speaker 3: Did you? What did you love?
Speaker 2: What do you mean.
Speaker 1: Cipher? Well, he did read the book.
Speaker 4: He did read the book.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's that's why Charlie Day read the book to
Speaker 1: find out.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so that also means that, you know, because
Speaker 3: claiming he's someone's father is something he has done for
Speaker 3: literally everyone.
Speaker 4: This could be taken with a grade of salt.
Speaker 3: But if we did actually want to seriously discuss it
Speaker 3: as a theory.
Speaker 1: I guess for context we should say that on Phineas
Speaker 1: and Ferb, Phineas is uh, Phineas and Ferb are are
Speaker 1: blended family. Ferb's dad already had Ferb and married Phineas's mom,
Speaker 1: who already had Candice in Phineas. We have never met
Speaker 1: or known about either Ferb's mom or Phineas's dad.
Speaker 3: There has been no allusion to Phineas's biological father in
Speaker 3: the actual show, as well as Jeff Swampy Marsh and
Speaker 3: Dan Pop and Meyer have basically built all of the
Speaker 3: major characters in that show around simple shapes because they
Speaker 3: know how cool it was as a kid to be
Speaker 3: able to draw your favorite characters from cartoons, and Phineas
Speaker 3: is specifically based on the triangle shape.
Speaker 1: There were theories because for a brief time, Dufen Schmertz
Speaker 1: dated Phineas' mom, there were theories that he was the father,
Speaker 1: but that has been thoroughly debunked deep yeah, debunked by
Speaker 1: Dan Pop and Meyern.
Speaker 3: But this one has not. However, it has been a
Speaker 3: little bunked haha. Disney Channel.
Speaker 1: Oh, longest running Disney Channel series references.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back to bunked on Disney Channel. Terrible
Speaker 3: unwatchable show. It's long. It's the longest running series because
Speaker 3: they're getting really good numbers because people walk away from
Speaker 3: their TV the second it turns on, so they'd just
Speaker 3: been you know, it's always on for people, yeah, they say,
Speaker 3: or more likely, Phineas's biological father made a deal with
Speaker 3: Bill to make him the smartest man on earth, only
Speaker 3: for things to go horribly wrong. However, traces of that
Speaker 3: deal still linger in Phineas, who is abnormally intelligent for
Speaker 3: his age.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes he is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and his inferbs inventions practically defiologic. And they say alternatively,
Speaker 3: Bill is the reason he doesn't want to talk about
Speaker 3: it because he's disgusted at how positive and friendly Phineas is.
Speaker 3: We're manipulating. It was impossible, as Phineas didn't have any
Speaker 3: insecurities or ego that Bill could pray on the lines
Speaker 3: of anti anti Christ.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, I love this, Hey, Firb, what are
Speaker 8: we gonna do today? I don't know, how about build
Speaker 8: a multi dimensional portal?
Speaker 1: Well, they could do that in an afternoon. In fact,
Speaker 1: they feel.
Speaker 2: Like they've done that.
Speaker 1: Well they have. They helped Dofen Schmertz. They helped and
Speaker 1: repair his other dimensionator.
Speaker 8: Yeah, oh my god, Bill, you got to them.
Speaker 3: This means Phideas and SEUs could join a book club
Speaker 3: of Like, so, what did you think of the book
Speaker 3: of Bill SEUs? I don't know it just it just
Speaker 3: said he's uncorruptible. Yeah, I saw that too.
Speaker 1: Okay, Hannah, are you ready to dive into rectangles? Rectangles?
Speaker 8: Jesus Christ. Yeah, I'm ready.
Speaker 3: This is so harm you said, Jesus. I'm ready. You
Speaker 3: should say Antichrist.
Speaker 8: Where's that SpongeBob meme of what I've got?
Speaker 3: Rectangles?
Speaker 8: You know, I'm gonna talk about a few of the
Speaker 8: rectangles based theories, But first, I guess I gotta explain
Speaker 8: what rectangles I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: So a rectangle is a throwing myself out a window.
Speaker 4: We don't have those in here?
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, no, no, I made some. I'm doing some renovations.
Speaker 8: Where are you gone?
Speaker 3: Renovations? By which do you mean punching?
Speaker 8: I've been punching a hole in the wall every time
Speaker 8: I see a rectangle?
Speaker 4: Why is that tell us about your your madness?
Speaker 8: So in Journal three, on the margins of many of
Speaker 8: the pages, if not most of them, we have these
Speaker 8: series of red rectangles. These rectangles sometimes form patterns that repeat,
Speaker 8: sometimes they don't. Sometimes they have random letters stuck in
Speaker 8: between them. Notably, and I think this is important to
Speaker 8: say that I had an interview with Alex Hirsh where
Speaker 8: I asked him about the rectangles, and he said that
Speaker 8: the ones in Journal three, to his knowledge, did not
Speaker 8: have any specific meaning. Even though I had a friend
Speaker 8: of mine with the linguistics degree look at them, and
Speaker 8: she said that it looks like it echoes English. Like
Speaker 8: I cannot tell y'all how many things I tried.
Speaker 1: If he hadn't said, to his knowledge, yes that opened worms.
Speaker 8: Now, notably the ill trader of Journal three, or at
Speaker 8: least one of the illustrators and agans all this did
Speaker 8: design these rectangles. I have a tweeted at him and
Speaker 8: haven't gotten a response, probably because I'm a crazy person
Speaker 8: who won't shut up about these rectangles.
Speaker 1: You've thrown a few bricks through his windows with messages.
Speaker 3: No, they've made a few windows in his windows.
Speaker 8: Exactly, I'm doing renovations. If you're listening to this, do
Speaker 8: not bother Andy. He's probably a very nice man, even
Speaker 8: though he has, and this is true, ruined my life.
Speaker 3: If you're listening to this, don't bother anyone that's not nice.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 1: And if you're listening to this and you are, Andy,
Speaker 1: I'm bothering you.
Speaker 2: Andy, tell me that.
Speaker 8: The rectangles.
Speaker 16: Listen.
Speaker 3: You should never bother anyone.
Speaker 8: But exactly, exactly, I've tried everything with the rectangles and
Speaker 8: Journal three, if you can think of it, I have
Speaker 8: tried it. I've talked about this in a video on
Speaker 8: my channel where I interview else her, So you can
Speaker 8: go check that out if you want to see a
Speaker 8: list of everything I've tried. Yes, that being said the
Speaker 8: same way that the ruins that we see in this
Speaker 8: series before the Book of Bill don't have any meaning
Speaker 8: and now retroactively do have a meaning assigned to them,
Speaker 8: like the hey dip in the theme song. A lot
Speaker 8: of people, and by a lot of people, I mean
Speaker 8: me and a bunch of and a handful of theorists
Speaker 8: are really wondering if the rectangles that we see on
Speaker 8: the margins of the Lost Journal three pages in the
Speaker 8: Book of Bill give retroactive meaning in one way or
Speaker 8: another to the pages in Journal three, or if they
Speaker 8: have their own meaning asside to them, especially because there
Speaker 8: are some marked differences between these rectangles and the rectangles
Speaker 8: in the first book. For one thing, a lot of
Speaker 8: the patterns repeat way more than they used to.
Speaker 3: Can I just say real quick, I have a blast
Speaker 3: listening to this. This is like I get to hear
Speaker 3: a new Mystery Shack look back episodecorn.
Speaker 8: I'm so glad, I'm very I'm very honored. Like that
Speaker 8: y'all like my nonsensical ramblings about geometric shape.
Speaker 4: You are the perfect, perfect guests for this segment.
Speaker 3: That is why we moved you onto this, because we've
Speaker 3: already been recording for an hour and a half and
Speaker 3: I don't want to waste that much Alex's time with this.
Speaker 3: But this is this is what your time was designed for.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So some differences
Speaker 8: between these rectangles and the ones that we got in
Speaker 8: Journal three. First of all, the patterns repeat way more
Speaker 8: often than the ones that we saw in Journal three.
Speaker 8: In Journal three, I was able to split apart and
Speaker 8: maybe parse out twenty five different patterns. Some of them
Speaker 8: repeated a bunch, some of them didn't. In the book
Speaker 8: of Bill patterns, I can only detect about maybe ten
Speaker 8: or eleven different ones, and a couple of them we
Speaker 8: just see a bunch of times. The other thing is
Speaker 8: that they have different cutters. So the majority of the
Speaker 8: rectangles are red. But then on the pages related to
Speaker 8: a winter break and Christmas time and the holidays, we
Speaker 8: see some that are red and green, and they might
Speaker 8: be thinking, well, yeah, Hannah, those are obviously themed after Christmas.
Speaker 3: You don't Christmas Adult is a watch for me every year.
Speaker 8: Obviously they're not red and green for any specific reason.
Speaker 8: But then explain to me a hypothetical person being mean
Speaker 8: to me.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, I'm gonna grab my journal that I
Speaker 2: made real quick, because I made my journal based off
Speaker 2: of the screenshots of ones just on the show, and
Speaker 2: I think the rectangles are in that so I think
Speaker 2: that it's been part of the design from the beginning,
Speaker 2: whether they mean something or not.
Speaker 8: Oh, but that's the thing, Like, well, no, the thing
Speaker 8: is we even see it in the show itself, like
Speaker 8: that's where they come from. And yeah, that's also notable.
Speaker 8: They didn't originate in Journal three, the physical copy. They
Speaker 8: were in the Journal three pages that we saw in
Speaker 8: the series specifically. Now a lot of those were carried
Speaker 8: over into pages, but there's a couple of pages in
Speaker 8: Journal three that don't quite match the rectangle pattern that
Speaker 8: we saw on pages in the series of Journal three.
Speaker 8: It gets really confusing when I keep talking about it,
Speaker 8: So if you need clarification, please stop me at any point.
Speaker 8: But what I was getting at is that at one point,
Speaker 8: specifically on the page with the bill proof suits, and
Speaker 8: I believe on the page after that, we have a
Speaker 8: series of bluish purple like more blue rectangles for some reason,
Speaker 8: and I don't know why those are blue.
Speaker 3: By the way, blue is and green are a separate
Speaker 3: spectrum of light from red. Ella just wanted to let
Speaker 3: you know. So this makes sense going forward.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's an interesting theory too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, looking at the journal that I made, the
Speaker 2: only page that has rectangles on it from the show
Speaker 2: at the very least prior to season two is the
Speaker 2: page that's the portal. Everything else is rectangleless.
Speaker 8: We see a lot of them in season two though.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's why I said, like prior to season two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so there was an addition made basically towards
Speaker 3: the end of production of season one and then carried
Speaker 3: over into season two, possibly for no reason, which is insane.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's possible that Andygan's office joined in in
Speaker 8: season two. I would need to check that, though, No.
Speaker 3: He did the illustrations in the journal in season one.
Speaker 8: Okay, we're at with three options here. The first option
Speaker 8: is that Alex Hirsch lied to me and that they
Speaker 8: do have a secret meeting and I just haven't figured
Speaker 8: them out yet. I'm gonna sign step this, and you know,
Speaker 8: assume that Alex is telling the truth when he tells
Speaker 8: me that, to his knowledge, they don't have any meaning.
Speaker 3: I do want to point out in regards to that, though,
Speaker 3: someone else asked Alex about the rectangles on Twitter, and
Speaker 3: then Alex responded with a gift from the ballad of
Speaker 3: Buster scrugs of someone at the gallows looking over next
Speaker 3: to them and going first time and tagged.
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, you know, I can give you some information
Speaker 8: that I just I haven't really talked about very publicly,
Speaker 8: but I think it's fine. So in my Alex Hirsch interview,
Speaker 8: I made puppets of all the speakers, including myself, that
Speaker 8: Gfan and Alex Hirsch, Yes and I. Because I couldn't
Speaker 8: use footage from the interview and I wanted her to
Speaker 8: be a visual element. I made a puppet show of
Speaker 8: the entire interview and it was.
Speaker 1: Very fun and it was glorious.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. I was left in the end
Speaker 8: with this like Muppet style puppet of Alex Hirsch just
Speaker 8: on my shelf looking at me all the time, and
Speaker 8: I asked Alex if he wanted it, and I sent
Speaker 8: it over to him. I sent it with a pamphlet.
Speaker 8: The pamphlet included tips on how not to get stabbed
Speaker 8: by some of the pins that were keeping the eyebrows
Speaker 8: in there, and I'll say some information on how it
Speaker 8: was cursed and maybe killed someone. I'm not really sure.
Speaker 8: It was a fun pamphlet, fun to put to either.
Speaker 3: I just want to say, pamphlets that included us on
Speaker 3: how not to get stabbed are some of my favorite
Speaker 3: pamphlets because I personally not actually that much a fan
Speaker 3: of getting stabbed.
Speaker 8: You know, they're my favorite because I'm not a fan
Speaker 8: of getting sued by Alix hursh oh i am.
Speaker 1: I think that's really sweet too, because I know, you know,
Speaker 1: Alex in the days where he was actually able to
Speaker 1: respond to fan mail, I feel like that's kind of
Speaker 1: the style he would write in this kind of like
Speaker 1: mini arg oh, you know, like there's a code on
Speaker 1: this page and stuff like that, like this is just
Speaker 1: for you. You know, that's that's really cute.
Speaker 8: When Alex did see the pamphlet, he noticed that on
Speaker 8: the back of it, I had a bunch of rectangles.
Speaker 8: I just I put a bunch of on it, like
Speaker 8: you know, in a pattern echoing journal.
Speaker 1: Do you know how it feel.
Speaker 8: He told me that it was funny and charming, and
Speaker 8: he added on and by the way, I love the rectangles,
Speaker 8: and I said thanks. I felt probably similar to the
Speaker 8: way that Dipper felt when in the Book of Bill
Speaker 8: he writes in a code to Bill, see it's not
Speaker 8: that hard. I can write codes too, only you replace
Speaker 8: CDEs with nonsensical rectangles. And then he said, he said
Speaker 8: to me, and I felt a lot like how to
Speaker 8: hyperfixates reading it going do they mean something? This time?
Speaker 8: I'm saying, go. I had Alex try to figure it out.
Speaker 8: So you know, that's probably like the funnest interrection I've
Speaker 8: ever had with anyone. But I do think, and I
Speaker 8: do want to be clear. I do think that he's
Speaker 8: telling the truth what he says. That he does not
Speaker 8: know the meaning of them.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that they have no meaning.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, like because famously, didn't the guy who made
Speaker 8: the pixel art for Susan the real Girl hide in
Speaker 8: a cup?
Speaker 3: Paul Robertson hid binary in there.
Speaker 8: That's I said, space sham two. Yeah, And these are
Speaker 8: codes that Alex didn't even know about. Alex has also said.
Speaker 9: I don't think that he would have done that just
Speaker 9: because he never has before. Occasionally there will be like
Speaker 9: a gag in one of those journals, in a symbol
Speaker 9: or something that Andy did put in that's just like
Speaker 9: a goofy joke where people are like, this joke doesn't
Speaker 9: seem in character.
Speaker 8: I'm like, ah Andy, So whether or not they have
Speaker 8: any meaning, the jury is out, but I'm leaning toward snow.
Speaker 1: Now. As for the.
Speaker 8: Book of Bill, there are a few theories on what
Speaker 8: they could mean. I'm sorry we've talked so much about
Speaker 8: the rectangles and haven't even gotten to the theories yet,
Speaker 8: but I think all that was helpful information.
Speaker 3: Let's just go no, no, I love every second of this,
Speaker 3: Do not apologize.
Speaker 8: Amazing, great ictic.
Speaker 3: Now this is podcasting.
Speaker 8: Podcasting, baby. So the first story I want to talk
Speaker 8: about is one that was devised by me. I kind
Speaker 8: of had some help putting a document on this, put
Speaker 8: together by the folks in the Gravity Falls subreddit discord server.
Speaker 8: The link is in the podcast description if you want
Speaker 8: to check it out, it's just the Google doc. The
Speaker 8: goal was to find similarities in the patterns of the
Speaker 8: orders and arrangements of the rectangles that are in Journal
Speaker 8: three and in the book A bill and to match
Speaker 8: them up. We weren't looking at cars. We were just
Speaker 8: looking at patterns. Because I mentioned to you that I
Speaker 8: found twenty five different patterns in the original Journal three,
Speaker 8: and you know, twenty five is really close to twenty six,
Speaker 8: and there's twenty six letters of the alphabet, and so
Speaker 8: it must mean something, right, right, It means something, right, guys,
Speaker 8: I'm not crazy. We talk about the rectangles.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the rectangles.
Speaker 8: The basic idea behind this, behind finding these patterns, is
Speaker 8: similar to how the strings of numbers on the Silly
Speaker 8: Straw page related to specific words as specific timestamps in episodes.
Speaker 8: I was thinking that maybe if a pattern in this
Speaker 8: book matches a pattern on a page of Journal three,
Speaker 8: perhaps the first word of all of these pages might
Speaker 8: actually mean something, or maybe the first word of the
Speaker 8: paragraph next to pattern in Journal three is what you
Speaker 8: should keep track of. And then when you put them
Speaker 8: all next to each other, maybe it spells something, or
Speaker 8: maybe it writes something, or maybe there's a phrase. And
Speaker 8: a bunch of them were repeated from like the same
Speaker 8: two or three pages in Journal three, and to my knowledge,
Speaker 8: that didn't go anywhere, at least not in any way
Speaker 8: I could detect. But wait, there's more. I'm not crazy.
Speaker 8: I have other theories. So we also have the RGB
Speaker 8: x code theory. And this is also one of mine.
Speaker 8: Because I was talking to a friend and I was
Speaker 8: talking about the rectangles, and I kept saying, man, it
Speaker 8: doesn't make sense. Some of these rectangles are green, some
Speaker 8: of them are red, some of them are blue. We
Speaker 8: just have red green, blue, red, green, blue boo RGB.
Speaker 8: And so I ran to my computer and I counted
Speaker 8: every instance of a red rectangle in the book of Bill,
Speaker 8: every instance of a green one, and every instance of
Speaker 8: a blue one, and I, okay, maybe if I put
Speaker 8: this in as the numbers in an RGB code, that
Speaker 8: could maybe translate to a hex code, and maybe that
Speaker 8: and essentially the curd that I ended up with was
Speaker 8: just an ugly shade.
Speaker 1: Of brown that's towards for marine.
Speaker 8: You found it, Yeah, right, There is in one of
Speaker 8: the pages a super duper tiny code. This is I
Speaker 8: think right before the pages where we get to hear
Speaker 8: from Stan, Mabel and Dipper. But there's a super tiny
Speaker 8: code in the inner margin, like up against the crack
Speaker 8: of the book that says, what is Ford's favorite color?
Speaker 8: And it's so tiny you literally need a magnifying glass
Speaker 8: to read it. It is so hard to read. And
Speaker 8: in some people's versions of the book, it's so deep
Speaker 8: in the margin that they physically can't see it. Because
Speaker 8: it's deep in the crack.
Speaker 1: You have to destroy your book in order to read it.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Also on this page speaking of destruction as a
Speaker 8: code that says destruction is the form of creation. On
Speaker 8: this page it has that question. And so I was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 8: I'm wondering what kind of color I'm looking for. Maybe
Speaker 8: it's a hex code, maybe it's an RGB code, Maybe
Speaker 8: this is related to something else, Maybe it's a password
Speaker 8: to something. And I just kept trying to figure it out,
Speaker 8: and I just ended up with a muddy, ugly brown.
Speaker 8: And I guess that's for true marine enjoy. Well, you know,
Speaker 8: I tried different variations, like maybe if I only count
Speaker 8: all of the greens that show up after a specific point,
Speaker 8: Maybe if I don't count all the reds that show
Speaker 8: up after the first instance of green, what do I get?
Speaker 8: But ultimately I couldn't find any real meaning. But for
Speaker 8: your records, there is about four hundred and forty two
Speaker 8: red rectangles sixty four green ones and twenty seven blue ones.
Speaker 8: Have fun, y'all enjoy that.
Speaker 3: This is the best episode of this podcast.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 8: I'm glad someone's having.
Speaker 3: I'm calling it right here.
Speaker 8: But then, so this was mostly the idea of Jim
Speaker 8: Bags seven seven seven. He kind of worked us out
Speaker 8: in DMS with me because he still is and so
Speaker 8: am I going crazy already. Rectangles and he came up
Speaker 8: with the idea that maybe these different rectangles, because we
Speaker 8: can find six different sizes of rectangles at least in
Speaker 8: the Book of Bill, maybe they translate into six different
Speaker 8: musical notes.
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's very close encounters.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he arranged a rectangles into a song, and I
Speaker 8: think the way he did it was specific rectangles that
Speaker 8: are on the left and right sides of the page
Speaker 8: were like the bass, and ones on the top and
Speaker 8: bottom sides of the page where the treble, and he
Speaker 8: just kind of played them in some kind of synthesizer.
Speaker 8: He would know more about this than me, but essentially
Speaker 8: it made a song.
Speaker 4: We have permission to play it.
Speaker 3: So for all the listeners, here is what Jim Beg
Speaker 3: sent to Hanna at that point.
Speaker 1: The rectangle whole song.
Speaker 3: No, m.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing is well, well, yeah, we know what
Speaker 1: the thing is.
Speaker 8: It doesn't sound like exactly a song, but it kind
Speaker 8: of has us almost ending like it ends on a
Speaker 8: like it kind of sounds like it ends at the
Speaker 8: last rectangle, which is I think not intentional, but there
Speaker 8: you go. And it does almost match a pattern, though
Speaker 8: I think that's more to do with the fact that,
Speaker 8: like I said, they have fewer patterns than this, and
Speaker 8: so a lot of them just repeat. So you get
Speaker 8: a lot of like repeating variations of these six notes.
Speaker 8: And it's fine, it's fun. We have fun here. I
Speaker 8: don't think this necessarily means anything, but if anyone in
Speaker 8: the audience that is more musically inclined wants to make
Speaker 8: a musical song out of these, please do. Maybe it'll
Speaker 8: be cool if.
Speaker 3: Someone wants to put on a Broadway musical with this
Speaker 3: is the lamebow tief of the main character.
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for the next whatever other Gravity falls Me
Speaker 1: is released in the far future. I'm waiting for that
Speaker 1: to be like the Rosetta stone of the rectangle. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're like, oh my god, like you're
Speaker 1: just like up at three am and.
Speaker 3: Then Honor will disappear because their mission on this Earth
Speaker 3: has been.
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly, it'll be like finally I am free.
Speaker 4: Atoms will return back to the universe at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Yes.
Speaker 8: There is a rectangle decoding forum on the subreddit discord.
Speaker 8: They have a list of everything that has been tried,
Speaker 8: and I'm just going to read off these things that
Speaker 8: has been tried aside from the stuff that I see.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I love this episode.
Speaker 8: Number one using the six different box sizes to try
Speaker 8: and turn it into letters, but there's too few box sizes.
Speaker 8: Number two, using the six box sizes and the spacing
Speaker 8: between them a turn it into letters. Nothing they could detect.
Speaker 8: Three converting to small boxes versus large boxes three by
Speaker 8: three into Morse code, Bacon cipher or binary. Four converting
Speaker 8: the boxes into hexamal. Five counting the numbers the boxes
Speaker 8: on each page and taking that number through a one
Speaker 8: Z twenty six. Six taking every single rectangle and putting
Speaker 8: them over each other. Oh, they've made some really cool
Speaker 8: images just overlaying these pages of rectangles. Seven taking every
Speaker 8: single rectangle and putting them into a bar code format.
Speaker 8: Eight taking every rectangle on a specific page and turning
Speaker 8: it into an individual bar code format. Nine taking every
Speaker 8: single rectangle out of page and turning them into musical
Speaker 8: notes A to F, and that was what I mentioned.
Speaker 8: Ten taking specific chunks slash patterns of the rectangles and
Speaker 8: converting those into letters. Nothing happened. Eleven using the hex
Speaker 8: CosIng part of coding the various rectangles, tried that nothing.
Speaker 8: Twelve overlaying rectangles onto pages of the Great Gatspeed huh.
Speaker 8: And they've apparently also tried every result from Caesar at Bash,
Speaker 8: et cetera. Something that I feel like I need to say,
Speaker 8: because I don't want to like give anyone false hope
Speaker 8: or give you know, disappointment, But I need to say,
Speaker 8: for every code that we've talked about in other languages
Speaker 8: of the Book of Bill, there are prism, runic, et cetera.
Speaker 8: Those codes are different in those books because they translate
Speaker 8: to a different code and a different message. The rectangles, however,
Speaker 8: are always the same. And that's something that we really
Speaker 8: need to keep in mind. And that's probably, to me,
Speaker 8: at least one of the final nails in the coffin.
Speaker 8: Unless hypothetically the rectangles don't decode to letters, I think
Speaker 8: I don't think it's a substitution cipher it probably maybe
Speaker 8: it decodes to something else.
Speaker 1: You're a much stronger person than me, Hannah, because this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that would ruin my life,
Speaker 1: like if I was if I was focused on it,
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't. I wouldn't know like how to feed myself,
Speaker 1: Like if I was this focused on Oh, you.
Speaker 8: Want to know how I've been feeding myself, I've been
Speaker 8: eating your lunch. Ella.
Speaker 1: Well, that's true out of the fringe and conspiracies.
Speaker 3: That's why are missing.
Speaker 2: Now and old milk and old milk.
Speaker 3: But I want to point out that Hannah, literally, like
Speaker 3: data lists before them, crafted wax wings for their defensive
Speaker 3: Ford PIDE's video.
Speaker 1: And now you know why, Hanna, did you take my spaghetti? Play?
Speaker 3: Wait, Hannah, was you? Were you the one who took
Speaker 3: dipper spaghetti in Bottomless Bit?
Speaker 8: This interview is over. I also really would be remiss
Speaker 8: if I didn't add I am not in the like
Speaker 8: theorizing game as heavy duty as the people in the
Speaker 8: subreddit discord, right, I really want to be clear that like,
Speaker 8: I am in there, and I'm keepping an eye on things,
Speaker 8: and I'm occasionally trying things when I have downtime, which
Speaker 8: I never really do because I work three jobs and
Speaker 8: I'm always busy drinking expired milk. But I do want
Speaker 8: to be clear that they are doing the bulk of
Speaker 8: this work and trying the bulk of these things. And yeah,
Speaker 8: like I want to give them a huge shout out
Speaker 8: because even though Ella, you just said that I'm stronger
Speaker 8: than you, they are stronger than me. I'm mostly in
Speaker 8: the background here. I have passed on to the new guard.
Speaker 3: If the food chain is to be believed, there's something
Speaker 3: out there that could eat them.
Speaker 1: Well, there's always a bigger fish.
Speaker 8: Yes, I'm hoping that with enough expired milk, then I
Speaker 8: can play my throne as most insane gravity falls hand. Ooh, Hi,
Speaker 8: it's me Future Hannah. I'm the Hannah from the future.
Speaker 8: I borrowed Blended Blendon's time take to go back in time.
Speaker 8: Ooh is that anything? Did you like my sick gravity
Speaker 8: falls reference? Kids? Anyways, I'm here to tell you all
Speaker 8: that about a week after recording all of this, Annigan's
Speaker 8: all this, one of the illustrators of Journal three and
Speaker 8: the one who created direct Chain was in the first place,
Speaker 8: actually got back to a fan from the gravity Fall
Speaker 8: subrend at Discord who asked him about the rectangles. And
Speaker 8: it turns out the rectangles don't mean anything, nothing at all.
Speaker 8: So all of the theories that you have already listened to,
Speaker 8: h yeah, they might not be anything. They're probably nothing.
Speaker 8: And guys, I'm not pulling your leg. This isn't something
Speaker 8: I wanted. This isn't something I'm making up to keep
Speaker 8: the secrets of the rectangles to myself. This isn't a
Speaker 8: lie from the corrupt offices, a big rectangle to get
Speaker 8: you all to buy more rectangles. To the best of
Speaker 8: my knowledge and to the way that I understand and believe,
Speaker 8: the rectangles mean nothing. And I've spent eight years decoding
Speaker 8: scribbles in the margins of a children's book. Anyways, I
Speaker 8: guess I'm gonna time tape away.
Speaker 2: Now, So.
Speaker 1: Shall we move on to the next theory? Yes?
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: This is sort of a classic theory that it made
Speaker 1: a comeback thanks to Book of Bill that Bill is
Speaker 1: a bird now. This was in place after the series
Speaker 1: finale when we see a bird fly to the hand
Speaker 1: of petrified Bill statue, and seems to be backed up
Speaker 1: by the end of the Book of Bill, where a
Speaker 1: bird is seemingly on the statue's hand as the eye glows.
Speaker 1: In the Time Pirates Treasure the Aschloe says another form
Speaker 1: another time than they assumed that meant the bird.
Speaker 2: I mean they do talk about reincarnation in the therapism. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's true, but that would imply that Bill has grown
Speaker 2: after this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you want to read the next one since
Speaker 1: it's about a goat?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: I should because it's about a goat.
Speaker 3: You're so right.
Speaker 4: So this is the.
Speaker 3: Retroactive Gompers Bill connection theory, so from Censorfire on Reddit,
Speaker 3: but likely others from the same time.
Speaker 4: There was a theory back in.
Speaker 3: The day pre twenty sixteen that Gompers is related to
Speaker 3: Bill because of the horizontal pupils. Obviously, nothing in the
Speaker 3: show ever confirmed that, and also goats just look like that. However,
Speaker 3: in the Book of Bill, Bill confirms that goat's eyes
Speaker 3: never changed when he possesses them, which gives retroactive leeway
Speaker 3: to this theory.
Speaker 1: Because it is you know, Gompers does happen to appear
Speaker 1: in a lot of critical moments, which is part of
Speaker 1: why people have bought that in the first place.
Speaker 3: And also in the AMA When Bill was asked what
Speaker 3: he thinks of Gompers, he responded, I like him better
Speaker 3: this way. But it's so funny that him referencing this
Speaker 3: movie that was happening at the same time as Gravity
Speaker 3: Falls has weirdly flawlessly tied into both the Owl House
Speaker 3: and an existing Gravity Falls fan theory that both are
Speaker 3: referenced on that page.
Speaker 8: I I did not know about the Vivich stuff.
Speaker 1: What's thou like to eat spoiled milk?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 8: Please cnch crunch. Well, I was thinking about what I
Speaker 8: was reading. All This is the stuff related to the
Speaker 8: search for the Blind Eye website that existed a few
Speaker 8: years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I have you all.
Speaker 8: Talked about this before on the podcast.
Speaker 4: A little bit.
Speaker 1: The idea that I like him better this way refers
Speaker 1: to the transformation that.
Speaker 8: Yes, right, The website did tell the story of a
Speaker 8: wizard who was transformed by a witch implied to be
Speaker 8: the hand Witch's sister into a goat.
Speaker 4: Was she called the foot Witch?
Speaker 8: No, I think she was maybe the ear witch. She
Speaker 8: cursed his ear as well. I don't know. I'm making
Speaker 8: stuff up at this point because I don't remember it
Speaker 8: that much detail.
Speaker 2: No, that's correct. Never trust a witch, they'll curse your
Speaker 2: ear and turn you into an immortal goat. So I hear,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I talked about this for twenty minutes of my
Speaker 8: Tell Who Stands video, or at least I felt like
Speaker 8: that long, because there's just so much that we don't
Speaker 8: know about Gomber's backstory, and yet they've given us some
Speaker 8: more back story that we've wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, yeah, because it relies on not only does
Speaker 1: it rely on the Search for the Blind Eye website,
Speaker 1: but that code that shall be just quoted is from
Speaker 1: Journal three. So it's like a multi platform thing. You
Speaker 1: have to piece this together.
Speaker 3: Wasn't there also a cryptogram or something in the three
Speaker 3: DS game that alluded to Gompers being something else?
Speaker 1: Three? Yes, the three DS game is that he's an
Speaker 1: immortal guardian of the forest. So I don't think it
Speaker 1: alludes to what he used to be, but it's what
Speaker 1: he is now exactly.
Speaker 8: And so what I see in the Book of Bill
Speaker 8: this note where Bill specifically says, when I possess goats,
Speaker 8: it's the only animal whose pupils don't change shape.
Speaker 1: Hey, Hannah, what's the what's the shape of those goat pupils? Again?
Speaker 3: Elongated squares has been hitting the memory gone again.
Speaker 8: There is a five five five number in the Book
Speaker 8: of Bill. Now, normally, of course, five five five numbers
Speaker 8: are associated with whatever on TV. They want to have
Speaker 8: a fake phone number that no one can actually call
Speaker 8: and it doesn't actually go somewhere. But with this phone number,
Speaker 8: if you call it, you hear a woman say hello
Speaker 8: in an automated message. It also seems like if you
Speaker 8: say specific phrases you get a response like wait, who
Speaker 8: are you trying to reach? And then if you say
Speaker 8: another response, if it like check something out on an
Speaker 8: internal voicemail box, you get wrong number by and then
Speaker 8: it hangs up. This is very weird because it seems
Speaker 8: like this was not intentional. Someone actually asked Alex Hirsch
Speaker 8: about this phone number at one of his book signings
Speaker 8: at Barnes and Noble. I don't remember which specific one,
Speaker 8: but he then said, yeah, no, that's not on purpose.
Speaker 8: But what this means is that there is a five
Speaker 8: fi five number in the book that goes to some
Speaker 8: kind of automated message, which.
Speaker 4: Is also hilarious.
Speaker 3: The idea if he's telling the truth that Alex just
Speaker 3: put a five to five to five number there being like, well,
Speaker 3: those don't actually exist, so no one could call this
Speaker 3: without checking, and apparently this is one.
Speaker 4: Of the few five five five numbers that's real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who would anticipate that a five five to five
Speaker 1: number would be real? That's been standard practice in TV forever.
Speaker 8: Well, that's the thing is that usually there is a
Speaker 8: rule applying to the four digits that follow a five
Speaker 8: five five number, where numbers between a specific number and
Speaker 8: another number are usually reserved for media. However, most people
Speaker 8: kind of ignore that because five five five has become
Speaker 8: shorthand into public lexicon for this is a fake phone number.
Speaker 8: So there are a few times when different TV shows
Speaker 8: or producers or whatever will use a phone number and think,
Speaker 8: because it's five y five that this rule technically applies.
Speaker 8: And it was because of them that the theorists in
Speaker 8: the Gravity felt subfrat at discord went, well, wait, this
Speaker 8: doesn't follow the exact rule. The four digits that follow
Speaker 8: the five y five are not within this range, which
Speaker 8: means it could be intentional and it could be real.
Speaker 1: And they just didn't know.
Speaker 8: Exactly, and they were looking at the fact that the
Speaker 8: name Jess kind of matches, you know, Jess as in Jasslbrahm,
Speaker 8: the character who was scratched out. So from their perspective,
Speaker 8: there is a phone number in this book. When you
Speaker 8: call it, you get the name of a character who
Speaker 8: is an oracle of esoteric knowledge. And sometimes if you
Speaker 8: say specific phrases, it triggers a response, not much of
Speaker 8: a response, but a response. And so to respond to
Speaker 8: the question that Jess sometimes asks, wait, who are you
Speaker 8: trying to reach, they came up with a list of
Speaker 8: five hundred different names to see if it triggered the response.
Speaker 8: You know, the conversation you go, hello, Hello, who are
Speaker 8: you trying to reach? And then if you've said the
Speaker 8: correct name, then hopefully the idea is that you get
Speaker 8: a good response. But none of these names were.
Speaker 3: This is actually scaring me more than anything else that
Speaker 3: Gravity Falls has, because we do not know why there
Speaker 3: is this automated service, and we do not know what
Speaker 3: is the thing that will trigger it to not say
Speaker 3: wrong number. And I'm like, hey, we might have stumbled
Speaker 3: on something weird or at least invasive here, And I'm
Speaker 3: like getting goosebumps, kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's also the fact that not only in
Speaker 1: Cipher Hunt, but also in the Gus Spurnside arg there
Speaker 1: were working phone numbers connected directly to gravity falls and
Speaker 1: what was going on. So I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: part of the thinking too, right, is that, well, we've
Speaker 1: had phone numbers that worked before, so why would this
Speaker 1: one be different?
Speaker 4: And by the way, don't call this if you're listening.
Speaker 8: If you feel strongly about it, you could also censor it.
Speaker 8: But the phone number is what one hundred five five five.
Speaker 6: Jo It wasn't until Alex specifically told a fad who
Speaker 6: happens to be in the discord server that the number
Speaker 6: didn't mean anything that they kind of backed off of
Speaker 6: the theory and stopped calling this random five by five.
Speaker 3: Numbers a random five five to five number that if
Speaker 3: you did enter the right name of would reveal all
Speaker 3: the secrets of Area fifty one and the Rosswall incident.
Speaker 1: But oh well, no, don't encourage them. The name was Paul,
Speaker 1: by the way, that would what you're supposed to say.
Speaker 3: Sick Paul reference el. Yeah, you'll get in touch with
Speaker 3: seth rogen if you.
Speaker 1: So. On the page that establishes the therapism, there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of various creatures and monsters of things that
Speaker 1: are in various levels of security and various levels of healing.
Speaker 1: Bill is listed as max security, but so is one
Speaker 1: of the Flavor Pups, the Smile Dip Dogs that Nabel hallucinates.
Speaker 3: One of Dos Flavor Pups.
Speaker 1: Dos Flavor Pups which Mabel hallucinates in the inconveniencing and
Speaker 1: there a therapism code under it translates to the beast
Speaker 1: the worst. Yeah, which leads us to these next theories.
Speaker 2: So this theory is labeled the Smile Dip Dog crimes.
Speaker 1: And this from TV Trope's Wild Mascuts.
Speaker 2: Yes, So what's written here is it's likely, given Alex's
Speaker 2: sense of humor, that the seemingly harmless dog is actually
Speaker 2: worse than Bill for whatever reason, and that even Bill
Speaker 2: himself fears him, hence the need for such high security.
Speaker 2: On the Gravity Falls subreddit, Roscoe s f writes completely
Speaker 2: random theory about the Smile Dip Dog that I came
Speaker 2: up with off the top of my head. Burst off.
Speaker 2: I know this is a crazy, probably false theory. Please
Speaker 2: don't spam the comments saying this is incorrect. So, thanks
Speaker 2: to the Book of Bill, we now know that the
Speaker 2: Smile Dip Dog is a creature as powerful as Bill
Speaker 2: and is currently being held in the therapism. My theory
Speaker 2: is that the creature is a sort of ancient interdimensional
Speaker 2: deity that wants to control the world, maybe the entire multiverse,
Speaker 2: maybe not, but definitely earth. I think that this deity
Speaker 2: has some ability that lets it enter people's minds, similar
Speaker 2: to Bill, but it does not quite work the same way.
Speaker 2: While Bill can enter people's dreams or enter their heads
Speaker 2: as part of some deal, I think the dog can
Speaker 2: enter people's mindscapes without their consent or even without them
Speaker 2: being aware of it. However, it can only enter someone's
Speaker 2: mind if they are under the influence of something like drugs, booze,
Speaker 2: or possibly toxic candy. The dog wanted to subtly take
Speaker 2: over the Earth and not reveal itself until it was
Speaker 2: in a position of power, so it took the form
Speaker 2: of a cartoonish dog, which anyone would just assume was
Speaker 2: a hallucination caused by whatever they are on. Although the
Speaker 2: dog is not much of a deal maker, it would
Speaker 2: sometimes get into contact with humans or try to manipulate
Speaker 2: them into putting more substances into circulation. For example, it
Speaker 2: could have worked with a higher up at the CIA
Speaker 2: and gotten the ball rolling on mk Ultra, but.
Speaker 3: I love that is so fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 8: This is a.
Speaker 3: Lot for those who didn't listen to our billsipher Ama
Speaker 3: episode mk Ultra. Okay, so basically, the government wanted to
Speaker 3: find out if mind control is possible and put a
Speaker 3: lot of research into interrogating their Cuban guinea pigs, and
Speaker 3: a lot of that involved the invention and eventual distribution
Speaker 3: of LSD or as it's commonly known on the Street's Acid. Yes,
Speaker 3: there's a fantastic episode of Behind the Bastards that goes
Speaker 3: into every detail that is publicly it's alty classified now
Speaker 3: other than the Smile Dip dog part.
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess coming back. But the big thing
Speaker 2: that connects it to the show is that when it
Speaker 2: started up, a cult that worshiped it and got said
Speaker 2: cult members to market and sell Smile Dip, a candy
Speaker 2: laced with a subtle amount of hallucinogens, maybe something not
Speaker 2: native to Earth, probably something that would not be easily detectable,
Speaker 2: but was still strong enough to allow the dog into
Speaker 2: consumers' mindscapes. The cult eventually faded away, as did Smile Dip.
Speaker 2: While all this was going on. The dog had heard
Speaker 2: of Bill. It knew he was trying to get to
Speaker 2: Earth so that he could rule over it and likely
Speaker 2: destroy it, so it tried to find a way to
Speaker 2: stop him and hit a stroke of luck when he
Speaker 2: found Mabel, who ate the entire shelf of expired smiled up.
Speaker 2: It entered her mind and tried to give her a
Speaker 2: warning that it hoped would stop Bill from entering the
Speaker 2: third dimension, Must distrust Grunkle, but Mabel was too high
Speaker 2: on sugar too realize. Eventually, the dog was discovered and
Speaker 2: sent to the therapism.
Speaker 1: The must distrust Grunkle is like an interpretation of what
Speaker 1: the dog says to Mabel when you play it backwards.
Speaker 1: It was never really confirmed at.
Speaker 3: I mean, really, the only way to confirm any of
Speaker 3: this is if someone here has been eating large quantities
Speaker 3: of expired products, and you know where we're gonna find
Speaker 3: someone like that.
Speaker 8: I also heard must just trust grunkle, but I don't
Speaker 8: have a grunkle, so just ignored it and kept eating.
Speaker 1: What about the muscular dolphin? Did he say anything?
Speaker 8: What happened between me and the muscular dolphins stays between
Speaker 8: me and the muscular.
Speaker 1: Dolphins that's fair. Last theory here comes from Peter Dagg
Speaker 1: double O seven on the gravity falls subreddit Do you
Speaker 1: believe Bill has ever seen Conway's Monster? In math, especially
Speaker 1: in geometry, topology and group theory, there is a concept
Speaker 1: known as the Conway's monster that is a group of
Speaker 1: transformations as rotations, symmetry, or permutations that only exist in
Speaker 1: eight times ten to the fifty third power dimensions eight
Speaker 1: followed by fifty three zeros. I know there may never
Speaker 1: even be any mention of the monster in ANYGF media,
Speaker 1: but considering Bill so related to geometry and seeing higher dimensions,
Speaker 1: I would love to believe that he could have seen it.
Speaker 1: A further explanation on Conway's monster. It's also sometimes called
Speaker 1: the monster or monster group.
Speaker 3: I just call it Conway and then pedants get mad
Speaker 3: at me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually the explanation comes from Hallboarts on the explain
Speaker 1: Like I'm five subreddit, who says group theory, in some
Speaker 1: sense studies types of symmetry. For example, an equilateral triangle
Speaker 1: has a threefold symmetry, whereas a square has a fourfold symmetry.
Speaker 1: These symmetries are objectively different. Mathematicians were interested in knowing
Speaker 1: all the types of symmetries, so they categorized tons of them.
Speaker 1: Think of symmetries as chemical compounds.
Speaker 3: I will not for it. It's an imperative statement. It
Speaker 3: doesn't say you can. It told me to.
Speaker 8: Did Ford write this? There's so much here.
Speaker 1: It turns out that some symmetries are really composites of
Speaker 1: two simpler symmetries, like sixfold symmetry may really be a
Speaker 1: composite of twofold symmetry and threefold symmetry. It turns out
Speaker 1: that all finite symmetries are really a compounds of a
Speaker 1: set list of simple symmetries. Simple symmetries are symmetries that
Speaker 1: cannot be broken down like a prime number. Basically, so
Speaker 1: simple symmetries are like chemical elements of symmetry. The monster
Speaker 1: is a huge simple symmetry. Normally simple symmetries are much smaller.
Speaker 1: It is very unusual that such a large symmetry has
Speaker 1: no constituent components, be like if there was a random
Speaker 1: element of astronomical size compared to the other elements like
Speaker 1: oxygen and carbon.
Speaker 3: I don't understand any of this. I have a learning disability.
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense to me that Bill would
Speaker 1: be able to perceive something as freaky and mathematically unlikely
Speaker 1: as that, going by.
Speaker 8: The trends in the Book of Bill, He's probably with
Speaker 8: this thing.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I figure that Bill's gone out
Speaker 1: drinking or played cards with Conway's monster.
Speaker 8: Yea, absolutely, yes, only Bill can call him Conway Connie. Yes.
Speaker 8: I think that like the amount of information that we
Speaker 8: have about Gombers like as background info, and the amount
Speaker 8: of information that we have about Schmebylock as background info, Frankly,
Speaker 8: I would not be surprised if, you know, if this
Speaker 8: much lore existed for the Smile dip Dog or for
Speaker 8: the possible Codway monster. And I think that's really fun.
Speaker 8: I love this series.
Speaker 1: That's a great point is that, I mean, the Hall
Speaker 1: of Conspiracy is kind of was founded on the idea that,
Speaker 1: like we never confirmed or denied anything, not just because
Speaker 1: we were in No Spoiler Podcast, but because it's the
Speaker 1: kind of show where like you can't take anything for granted.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't assume that anything is just gonna
Speaker 1: be a joke, because they will always inject more lore
Speaker 1: to something.
Speaker 8: I mean, the main plot twist of this show is
Speaker 8: that someone has a long lost twin in a way
Speaker 8: and another dimension, which if you described it about any
Speaker 8: series what sound fake as hell like Detective.
Speaker 3: But it's just been an absolute dic. Such a kid
Speaker 3: having you on here to talk about the first spoiler
Speaker 3: full episode of the podcast and possibly the last episode
Speaker 3: of the podcast.
Speaker 8: This thing is jam packed with spoilers.
Speaker 1: Well spoilers in the current moment, we're not predicting spoilers.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us today. I mean,
Speaker 3: you live here, but thank you for lending us your
Speaker 3: rectangle flanged brain.
Speaker 2: Thank you for letting me live in your walls, allowing
Speaker 2: us to join you in our hall.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, we should get you some like actual food.
Speaker 8: I don't know if my stomach knows how to consume
Speaker 8: actual food anymore, and just drinking expired milk for two years,
Speaker 8: so I don't know if I could do that, but
Speaker 8: I'll try.
Speaker 3: So thank you enormously for taking your time out of
Speaker 3: your day to be here with us.
Speaker 4: Tell us where to find you and what you got
Speaker 4: going on?
Speaker 8: Oh absolutely so obviously you can find me on YouTube
Speaker 8: at how to Hyperfixates, and you can check out some
Speaker 8: of my way too long video essays about gravity Falls.
Speaker 8: If hypothetically you enjoyed hearing me ramble on and on
Speaker 8: and on about the minutia and the small details.
Speaker 3: If hypothetically you've made it fifty four episodes into this
Speaker 3: podcast and don't like gravity Falls, then you know not
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it might not be your thing.
Speaker 1: For a game at the old college try Yeah.
Speaker 8: You can also find me on Twitter how to hyperfixate
Speaker 8: no s at the end Because I couldn't fit it
Speaker 8: in and you would like to keep up with a
Speaker 8: project that I am really passionate about. I have created,
Speaker 8: with the help of some lovely mods, mystery twin mystery bags.
Speaker 8: It's going to be a mystery bag full of Gravity
Speaker 8: Falls fan products like key chains, acrylic standyes, posters. I
Speaker 8: know for a fact that there's going to be some
Speaker 8: handmade bath bombs by me and some handmade items made
Speaker 8: by some other artists made of real hands with real hands.
Speaker 8: Sticker is keychains. Buy more key chains. As crincle Stead
Speaker 8: would say.
Speaker 1: You just made me remember one of my favorite gas
Speaker 1: subtle hidden messages.
Speaker 8: It's a very good cab. I but you especially should
Speaker 8: buy more key chains because one hundred percent of the
Speaker 8: proceeds are going directly to aid for the people of
Speaker 8: Gaza who have been so badly impacted by violence there.
Speaker 8: This is going to aid for innocent civilians, and as
Speaker 8: a Palestinian person myself, this is a cause that I
Speaker 8: care a lot about. We have a team of like
Speaker 8: forty different artists helping, including some names that you've probably
Speaker 8: heard of. So if you would like to check that out,
Speaker 8: please check out Mystery Twin Bags on Twitter or Mystery
Speaker 8: Twin Mystery Bags on Tumblr, or just checked out the
Speaker 8: pinned tweet on my Twitter at how to hyperfix It.
Speaker 8: I'll definitely be dropping updates on my YouTube channel as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you want to find more episodes of
Speaker 3: this podcast, well there is fifty three of them and
Speaker 3: then some change with bonus episodes and as far as
Speaker 3: most of you are concerned, no more. Last episode again
Speaker 3: we didn't cry this time?
Speaker 1: Well not, yeah, there's still time.
Speaker 2: Why would you say that?
Speaker 3: You can find all of those, such as our previous
Speaker 3: interview with Alex Hirsch on Cypherhunt at pipe dreampodcast dot com,
Speaker 3: where there are other shows like Escape from Vault Disney,
Speaker 3: How did This Not get made?
Speaker 4: Come on Hookah pods and pod made You special.
Speaker 3: There you can find a link to our show's social
Speaker 3: media's Discord server and our patreon patreon dot com slash
Speaker 3: mystery shack, where if you didn't check out our last
Speaker 3: post here on the feed, we revealed we are doing
Speaker 3: a new thing there.
Speaker 4: It's called remembering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry about that.
Speaker 3: For just three dollars a month, you could listen to
Speaker 3: us Me, Shelby and Ella rewatch Stephen Universe together. It
Speaker 3: doesn't go this deep into the weeds. It's just us
Speaker 3: in rewatching a show we like and discussing it.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Alex Search for voicing Stan and the
Speaker 1: Hall of Conspiracies intro, as well as for being here
Speaker 1: earlier today.
Speaker 3: He's a hard man to get in touch with, so
Speaker 3: the fact that every way schedule he's still made sure
Speaker 3: he has an ad for us, He's delightful.
Speaker 1: The Hall of Conspiracy theme is lental dentist remix of
Speaker 1: our first episode by Simon the Dimbo B two hyphen zero.
Speaker 1: Got a link to that full song in the description.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Prian Bryan for making the instrumental to
Speaker 1: our theme song. I actually wrote the theme song and
Speaker 1: you can find it at lchsre dot bancamp dot com
Speaker 1: and you can find me at drawn without ref on
Speaker 1: the social media's yeah, what about? What about? What about
Speaker 1: the rest of us?
Speaker 3: Here? Oh, you can find me at c h A
Speaker 3: r l E y m A r l o w
Speaker 3: E Charlie Marlow with an even seven to seven letters.
Speaker 3: That's on YouTube and Tumblr and Patreon. I'm not in
Speaker 3: as many places as I used to be, but I
Speaker 3: have been. I've been good.
Speaker 4: How about you, guys.
Speaker 3: I've been doing an abridged series of the Zelda cartoon
Speaker 3: that's just the most charliest thing I have ever produced.
Speaker 3: It is sort of an act of gender expression, my
Speaker 3: first time voicing a female character. I voiced both Link
Speaker 3: and Zelda, and Link uses say them pronouns in the series.
Speaker 3: Ella and Shelby have helped enormously with it. Hannah hasn't yet,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 8: Something, But if I have free time, I would love to.
Speaker 8: I think I might be free In twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: I am on most social medias at Shelby Sessler, just
Speaker 2: my whole name. I'll go ahead and I'll plug the
Speaker 2: comics that I did, their Moon Meg on Instagram's comics
Speaker 2: and the Magpie win Abane prequel videos that I do
Speaker 2: just so if you want to know what the Windebane
Speaker 2: information is, you can sort of get a little bit
Speaker 2: of backstory and understand.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: Those are so good.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to give a shout out to my
Speaker 1: wonderful friend Sam. They recently mailed me in physical mail
Speaker 1: a lovely print that they drew of Grunkle Stan and Compey,
Speaker 1: who is the dinosaur from Journal three that imprints on
Speaker 1: Stan after the events of Lambefore Swine. It's for sale
Speaker 1: in there, Etsy, and we can link that in the description.
Speaker 1: But they just they said it to me in this
Speaker 1: in such a loving way, like with this whole little
Speaker 1: letter with that which had codes on it, and of
Speaker 1: course a wonderful drawing of Bill Seipher, but also just
Speaker 1: said just a thank you for making such a cool podcast,
Speaker 1: and also because I just think you'd like the drawing.
Speaker 1: It's based on the extended Journal three plot of Lambefore
Speaker 1: Swine where Stand steels and hatches a dino egg. Though
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're remember that, haha. I hope this gets
Speaker 1: to you safely Stay Weird from Sam and it's just
Speaker 1: so awesome. So you can follow them at at Radical
Speaker 1: Underscore Bears their at s shop is Radical Bears Cartoons,
Speaker 1: so we will link all that in the descriptions. You
Speaker 1: can check out this awesome print and this awesome artist.
Speaker 3: Also, please check out the new documentary on Cipher Hunt
Speaker 3: that Ken Carlyle did. Alex harsh is also interviewed in it,
Speaker 3: and we contributed a little cameo, so did Hannah.
Speaker 4: It's god literally everything.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: I think part of the goal must have been like, Wow,
Speaker 3: that Cipher podcast is pretty pretty pretty good. You might
Speaker 3: have to work pretty hard one up them, to be fair,
Speaker 3: he did so.
Speaker 1: Some of the questions that we asked Alex today were
Speaker 1: actually submitted on our discord server by various listeners and
Speaker 1: from friends of the show and even some docents, So
Speaker 1: we want to give a shout out to those folks,
Speaker 1: including Simon Chrissy e are one two.
Speaker 3: EU that's actually er twelve view.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, sorry, it's just not my native language. I'm
Speaker 1: not elite speaker natively. There's also ko oh, my our docent,
Speaker 1: Mary and Lady Aloha.
Speaker 4: Ella and I have been working together.
Speaker 3: For almost exactly ten years. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: we just guested on an episode of In Each Tree
Speaker 3: Telling to talk about our first ever collab. So if
Speaker 3: you enjoyed hearing us here, please listen to us reminisce
Speaker 3: on the episode of Any Tree Telling titled How the
Speaker 3: Grunkle Stole Hanukkah. Also, I recently guested on the new
Speaker 3: Escape from Valt Disney on an episode of WandaVision, and
Speaker 3: Ella was on an.
Speaker 4: Episode of the podcast Not One Right Way.
Speaker 3: And one of my partners, Saskia, has been doing commissions
Speaker 3: for candy with a K, basically Friendship bracelets. There's a
Speaker 3: link to their deepop. In the description, they said they're
Speaker 3: going to start doing gravity falls ones and also they
Speaker 3: do custom commissions. They're really cute. Please buy one.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been a great you know, final for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future, I guess episode of the podcast. Definitely
Speaker 1: know others that we have.
Speaker 4: There are some futures you can't foresee.
Speaker 8: But yeah, oh my god, this has been three hours.
Speaker 3: Oh it's been longer because don't forget there's a whole
Speaker 3: Alex hersche interview before this.
Speaker 8: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So if you listen to this podcast while driving to work, uh,
Speaker 3: get a job.
Speaker 4: That's closer to you, start applying or maybe.
Speaker 1: You should, like you know, petition your local government to
Speaker 1: do something about the traffic, because it could be a
Speaker 1: short commute.
Speaker 4: But still you work ten minutes away.
Speaker 3: But so that interview with Bill towards the beginning of
Speaker 3: the podcast, we put up on Twitter as kind of
Speaker 3: a teaser for a Patreon cut of the episode, and.
Speaker 4: It went absolutely viral.
Speaker 3: We got fan art, we got people lip syncing to
Speaker 3: it on TikTok.
Speaker 4: The response has been insane.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and we gained by our account and by
Speaker 3: Patreons over eighty new Patreon supporters.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: The way we've always done things on this podcast, listen
Speaker 3: past the ending song. On previous episodes, we always have
Speaker 3: like a little skit where someone usually one of the
Speaker 3: official gravity Falls cast or crew members, plays a Gravity
Speaker 3: Falls character and gives a reason that they're listing names.
Speaker 3: That is not a funny skit with ninety plus names. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there's a medium more tailored to saying many things.
Speaker 1: Well, what medium would that be, Charlie.
Speaker 3: Well, a small medium at lark.
Speaker 1: Do we know any Hope?
Speaker 2: I think we've got a wittle old friend.
Speaker 3: And now the mystery shack look back Patreon shoutouts roll
Speaker 3: due by Little.
Speaker 1: Gidium Patti y'all, We just want to extend a big
Speaker 1: old thank you too, and did Apple Junior Bropedi Piranha
Speaker 1: plant Obie friendly local geek. They even cancel Paranica Sacris,
Speaker 1: Veronica Hope, Ddy driffud Nikki Brass, Lavenders and Draca Bury
Speaker 1: the Monkey, Madison, This and It Spinosa A Spriky Prickson,
Speaker 1: Cjubu Lation, Mombletina d mumble Tina and Cookie Verpallina, Keilena Bradford,
Speaker 1: Audrey Comrio, the brain Worm, Foxes Sko Graven Lebtmino rais
Speaker 1: a saint you brother Suspiri a rum, keep it together,
Speaker 1: gleeful you got this. Adam went to a Zadan and
Speaker 1: m Samantha angry Josh's cave and Neil and Zucker didn't
Speaker 1: Mirra Foo, Micael Hurst, Wilson, jen a m Ko n
Speaker 1: e j and he speaks to Quana Payo, what anitaf
Speaker 1: and i'ner three narts that were day Randa, who's tide
Speaker 1: strong thumba go out Weiba Angel Currisoo to Florida Leimer
Speaker 1: will gag me rbutum Redo cabalpe kyrak Camaron, there's a
Speaker 1: cool blue Res' just one Ga Ways, Dream Boyage're right, John,
Speaker 1: then You're We're kilt and Sean just gotta finish this.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Rosary, Bella Juba Eighty, Lura Lemon, Mary McKeon, Leo Maldonado,
Speaker 1: Noeleon Ziogo, Any for Loow, Awkward, Eliam Or Relicious, Kiddia,
Speaker 1: the Thesmith, Emile Guampasia India, Laurel Stephanie Vella, Juliana Caruso,
Speaker 1: Benife Made Ellie Angel, There's Canning and Astor and original
Speaker 1: Stormwalker pistols on sensitive Dams. I have no name and
Speaker 1: could go for a good scream. Anonymous, Joe Myosota, Sofrey
Speaker 1: Set one Man, support us, Patreon dot com, Slash Mystery Shack,
Speaker 1: Oh Sweet Marry and Joseph Hang Gotta take a to
Speaker 1: you