This one's titled Time Travel Destroys Children’s Dreams.

I can’t believe I forgot to post this, it’s super old

goals

Back in My Day

I’ve been very busy the last half of the month, between my grandpa’s funeral and getting sick, so the idea I originally had for @Stanuary week 4 sadly hasn’t gotten off the ground. (It was just gonna be a very silly crossover with Atop the Fourth Wall’s Contest of Champions, and I may come back to it when I don’t feel like I swallowed a gallon of mucus) Instead, I’m posting the first chapter of a WIP I’ve been sitting on for a while that will have Stan in a fight later on. So it sorta fits.

After the flash of brilliant blue light, Ford realized he was no longer standing in the living room of the Mystery Shack. Instead, he was standing in a much smaller living room, with painfully bright yellow and orange 70’s style wallpaper. The same kind they used to have in their home in Glass Shard Beach. In fact, it was the same wallpaper.

“Hey, are ya gonna stand there gawkin’ like a pigeon all day, or are ya gonna move out from in front of the TV?” A harsh voice asked from behind him. 

Ford whipped around to see his father sitting in his old favorite green-and-red plaid chair. The scientist looked down at his hands and saw that they were young and soft, rather than worn and calloused from years of work and travel. But in his left hand he still clutched the Time Tape, the one Shermie had claimed was broken.

“Whatcha got there, slick?” Filbrick asked, spotting the Time Tape.

“Uhhh… tape… measurer?” Ford said slowly. He’d certainly gotten better at lying over the years, but he wasn’t prepared for this. “For…” he looked around and tried to guess the year he’d come back to, “…for my science fair project?”

“That’s not one of mine.” Filbrick observed, “Where’d you get it?”

Stanford was saved from having to come up with a convincing lie when they heard Stanley thunder down the stairs and burst into the room. In the split-second the twins’ eyes met, Ford knew Stan was going through the exact same thing he was.

“Borrowed it from school!” Stan explained, too loudly.

Even though they couldn’t see their father’s eyes behind the old man’s shades, it was clear he was rolling them. “Just as long as you didn’t waste any money buying a new one when we got perfectly good tools at home. Now get outta the way before the commercials end.”

Stan and Ford dashed back up the stairs to their room and slammed the door tightly behind them

“What the heck is going on!?” Stan exclaimed as soon as they were alone. “How are we back here and pimply teenagers?”

“Well, obviously,” Ford’s voice cracked, and he cleared his voice before continuing, “Obviously the Time Tape brought us back here.”

“But Shermie said that thing’s been broken for years!” Stan’s voice cracked right back. “You didn’t fix it, did you?”

“Well, I was just testing it to try and see what was wrong with it. I didn’t think it would actually take us back in time!” Ford pulled their calendar off the wall. It read January 15th, 1969. 44 years before the present they had left… and four months before that fateful day at the Science Fair.

Stan’s expression brightened as he looked at the calendar. “Wait, Ford, we could fix things! Stop your science fair project from breaking, stop Dad from kicking me out!”

Ford’s face fell, and he glanced at his desk. The perpetual motion machine was still in its early building stages, just a few parts of the frame lying still next to the blueprints, and a half-finished methods paper.

“Stan, I know it’s tempting, but it’s an incredibly bad idea! Changing that event would alter a lot of things in our timeline. If we don’t part at the end of our Senior year, we might never defeat Bill!”

“Yeah, and you might never meet him in the first place! Let that jerk be someone else’s problem!”

“And Dipper and Mabel might never be born! At the very least they would be very different people when we returned.”

Stan’s eyes widened. “I-I hadn’t thought of that…. I don’t want that….”

“And that’s even assuming we could change the timeline in the first place!” Ford continued to ramble on, despite the fact that his point had been made. “From what I understand, changing the greater flow of time is absurdly difficult. Dipper had to go through over thirty different permutations just to win a carnival game! Then there’s the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron to worry about–”

“OK,OK, I get it!” Stan held his hands up placatingly, “Let’s just get back to 2013 then!”

Ford pulled the tape out 44 years and pressed the forward button. Nothing happened.

“Ah, so that’s how it’s broken.” He commented, deceptively calm.

“What!? Don’t tell me we’re stuck here!”

“No, no, I’m sure I can fix it…”

“And how long is that gonna take?”

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, if I had my lab and my tools back in Gravity Falls, it would just be a matter of hours, but here… a few days? A week? Maybe more?”

Stan groaned loudly and flopped back onto his bottom bunk.. “So basically, you have no clue. How am I supposed to resist the urge to change the timeline in the meantime?”

“I know it’s not going to be easy, but we really don’t have any other options. We just need to try and stick to the original timeline as much as possible.”

“Crap, Ford, I barely remember what happened throughout this entire year, let alone some random day!”

“I know, I know!” Ford sighed and sat down with a thump at his desk. “I don’t remember much in the way of specifics either. We’ll just have to stick to whatever seems like a normal routine.”

Chapter 2: Stupid Teen Emotions

actually there were 0 time travellers on the Titanic, because the time cops have an entire outpost to safeguard that one particular point in history. every rookie spends a least a month on Titanic duty and they all complain bitterly about it since it is, essentially, the time travel equivalent of being the guard who has to stop tourists from licking the Liberty Bell.

listen. LISTEN. there's going to be somebody, maybe several somebodies, at the travel hub who's dressed nice and knows all the right words and swears back and forth that they can sell you the credentials that will get you into the Titanic's timespace. they'll sell you IDs that pass you and your friends off as 23rd century history students or, worse, some 24th century brats who will go crying to their corporate sponsors if you ruin their paid vacation.

the IDs will look very impressive. they will not come cheap. they will not help you.

there's no checkpoint to bluff your way through and nobody who wants to hear you try. if you try to time travel anywhere near the Titanic, whether you try to board with all the other passengers or appear on the boat in the middle of the voyage, you will get slammed directly into a whitespace dragnet - a time bubble, in layman's terms.

and you will be surrounded by at least a dozen time cops, all of whom are bored and cranky and very eager to flex their newfound authority, which means they will absolutely detain you for as long as possible and insist on giving you a lecture when a slap on the wrist would do. if you talk back they might double your fine or even suspend your chronal permissions for up to a year.

and then they'll send you back to the hub in your period piece clothing that will suddenly look very stupid, and the guys who sold you the ideas will have fucked off to 1998 by then and you won't have a chance in hell of getting your money back, and what I'm saying is that it's not worth it, dude. it's just not worth it.

This is too specific to not be from experience

what are you, a time cop?

Sorry this is a little late XD. Clocking in at just over 4k this is the second-longest chapter. I just kept writing and it Wouldn’t Stop. Enjoy.

Ayyyy it’s Monday! Which means I am back with a new chapter! I took the weekend off of posting because I work a seasonal haunt job but now it is posting time. :3

Stan’s family cares for him more than he ever could have imagined. Five times his family helped him throughout the toughest years of his life, and one time he helped himself.

Back in My Day

I’ve been very busy the last half of the month, between my grandpa’s funeral and getting sick, so the idea I originally had for @Stanuary week 4 sadly hasn’t gotten off the ground. (It was just gonna be a very silly crossover with Atop the Fourth Wall’s Contest of Champions, and I may come back to it when I don’t feel like I swallowed a gallon of mucus) Instead, I’m posting the first chapter of a WIP I’ve been sitting on for a while that will have Stan in a fight later on. So it sorta fits.

After the flash of brilliant blue light, Ford realized he was no longer standing in the living room of the Mystery Shack. Instead, he was standing in a much smaller living room, with painfully bright yellow and orange 70’s style wallpaper. The same kind they used to have in their home in Glass Shard Beach. In fact, it was the same wallpaper.

“Hey, are ya gonna stand there gawkin’ like a pigeon all day, or are ya gonna move out from in front of the TV?” A harsh voice asked from behind him. 

Ford whipped around to see his father sitting in his old favorite green-and-red plaid chair. The scientist looked down at his hands and saw that they were young and soft, rather than worn and calloused from years of work and travel. But in his left hand he still clutched the Time Tape, the one Shermie had claimed was broken.

“Whatcha got there, slick?” Filbrick asked, spotting the Time Tape.

“Uhhh… tape… measurer?” Ford said slowly. He’d certainly gotten better at lying over the years, but he wasn’t prepared for this. “For…” he looked around and tried to guess the year he’d come back to, “…for my science fair project?”

“That’s not one of mine.” Filbrick observed, “Where’d you get it?”

Stanford was saved from having to come up with a convincing lie when they heard Stanley thunder down the stairs and burst into the room. In the split-second the twins’ eyes met, Ford knew Stan was going through the exact same thing he was.

“Borrowed it from school!” Stan explained, too loudly.

Even though they couldn’t see their father’s eyes behind the old man’s shades, it was clear he was rolling them. “Just as long as you didn’t waste any money buying a new one when we got perfectly good tools at home. Now get outta the way before the commercials end.”

Stan and Ford dashed back up the stairs to their room and slammed the door tightly behind them

“What the heck is going on!?” Stan exclaimed as soon as they were alone. “How are we back here and pimply teenagers?”

“Well, obviously,” Ford’s voice cracked, and he cleared his voice before continuing, “Obviously the Time Tape brought us back here.”

“But Shermie said that thing’s been broken for years!” Stan’s voice cracked right back. “You didn’t fix it, did you?”

“Well, I was just testing it to try and see what was wrong with it. I didn’t think it would actually take us back in time!” Ford pulled their calendar off the wall. It read January 15th, 1969. 44 years before the present they had left… and four months before that fateful day at the Science Fair.

Stan’s expression brightened as he looked at the calendar. “Wait, Ford, we could fix things! Stop your science fair project from breaking, stop Dad from kicking me out!”

Ford’s face fell, and he glanced at his desk. The perpetual motion machine was still in its early building stages, just a few parts of the frame lying still next to the blueprints, and a half-finished methods paper.

“Stan, I know it’s tempting, but it’s an incredibly bad idea! Changing that event would alter a lot of things in our timeline. If we don’t part at the end of our Senior year, we might never defeat Bill!”

“Yeah, and you might never meet him in the first place! Let that jerk be someone else’s problem!”

“And Dipper and Mabel might never be born! At the very least they would be very different people when we returned.”

Stan’s eyes widened. “I-I hadn’t thought of that…. I don’t want that….”

“And that’s even assuming we could change the timeline in the first place!” Ford continued to ramble on, despite the fact that his point had been made. “From what I understand, changing the greater flow of time is absurdly difficult. Dipper had to go through over thirty different permutations just to win a carnival game! Then there’s the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron to worry about–”

“OK,OK, I get it!” Stan held his hands up placatingly, “Let’s just get back to 2013 then!”

Ford pulled the tape out 44 years and pressed the forward button. Nothing happened.

“Ah, so that’s how it’s broken.” He commented, deceptively calm.

“What!? Don’t tell me we’re stuck here!”

“No, no, I’m sure I can fix it…”

“And how long is that gonna take?”

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, if I had my lab and my tools back in Gravity Falls, it would just be a matter of hours, but here… a few days? A week? Maybe more?”

Stan groaned loudly and flopped back onto his bottom bunk.. “So basically, you have no clue. How am I supposed to resist the urge to change the timeline in the meantime?”

“I know it’s not going to be easy, but we really don’t have any other options. We just need to try and stick to the original timeline as much as possible.”

“Crap, Ford, I barely remember what happened throughout this entire year, let alone some random day!”

“I know, I know!” Ford sighed and sat down with a thump at his desk. “I don’t remember much in the way of specifics either. We’ll just have to stick to whatever seems like a normal routine.”

Stan and Ford Vs. The Future - Chapter 4

Aaaaand here’s the final chapter! This was a ton of fun to write, but I’m not going to lie, I’m also really glad that I can finally live without this unfinished WIP haunting me like a ghost seeking vengeance on the one who abandoned it.

For @stanuary Week 4: Fight.

TIME CHALLENGE 1

OBJECTIVE: Venture into the mirror maze and shoot the Time Target with a Time Laser Gun! There are two lasers to be found, but only one target, so whoever hits it first wins!

Both pairs of twins stand facing entrances on opposite sides of the formidable looking maze, and make a mad dash inside as soon as the buzzer sounds.

“We’ll find what we’re looking for faster if we split up. Why are you following me?” the old Ford shouts.

Keep reading

Stan and Ford Vs. The Future - Chapter 3

…Well, that sure was quite a hiatus, wasn’t it? Oops! Let’s just not think about that too much and hop right back into the story. (Or reread the previous chapters either on AO3 or in my “safvtf au” tag on Tumblr, because I can see why a refresher might be useful.)

But anyways, this is for @stanuary Week 3: AU!

Stan’s hands are cuffed in front of him, and he stays close by Ford’s side as they’re marched into the arena with time cops flanking them. Their older selves lag behind at the end of the procession, refusing to make eye contact with each other, and young Stan’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse than the glares the elder twins were exchanging earlier.

Their expressions are hard to read. The older Ford looks like he can’t make up his mind between feeling furious and feeling guilty, and the older Stan looks like he’s concentrating extremely hard on not letting his emotions show on his face at all.

Keep reading

actually there were 0 time travellers on the Titanic, because the time cops have an entire outpost to safeguard that one particular point in history. every rookie spends a least a month on Titanic duty and they all complain bitterly about it since it is, essentially, the time travel equivalent of being the guard who has to stop tourists from licking the Liberty Bell.

listen. LISTEN. there's going to be somebody, maybe several somebodies, at the travel hub who's dressed nice and knows all the right words and swears back and forth that they can sell you the credentials that will get you into the Titanic's timespace. they'll sell you IDs that pass you and your friends off as 23rd century history students or, worse, some 24th century brats who will go crying to their corporate sponsors if you ruin their paid vacation.

the IDs will look very impressive. they will not come cheap. they will not help you.

there's no checkpoint to bluff your way through and nobody who wants to hear you try. if you try to time travel anywhere near the Titanic, whether you try to board with all the other passengers or appear on the boat in the middle of the voyage, you will get slammed directly into a whitespace dragnet - a time bubble, in layman's terms.

and you will be surrounded by at least a dozen time cops, all of whom are bored and cranky and very eager to flex their newfound authority, which means they will absolutely detain you for as long as possible and insist on giving you a lecture when a slap on the wrist would do. if you talk back they might double your fine or even suspend your chronal permissions for up to a year.

and then they'll send you back to the hub in your period piece clothing that will suddenly look very stupid, and the guys who sold you the ideas will have fucked off to 1998 by then and you won't have a chance in hell of getting your money back, and what I'm saying is that it's not worth it, dude. it's just not worth it.

This is too specific to not be from experience

what are you, a time cop?