poetofthepiano reblogged
Believable
poetofthepiano reblogged
one of the reasons why i’ll never get over Society is bc out of nowhere comes this dark and menacing shadow and all at once, we’re introduced to fiddleford hadron mcgucket.
society’s one of the few episodes that DOESN’T have magic in it, and that makes it all the more terrifying. this time, the terror has come from inside a human brain. even the portal was designed by a demon. the idea that something as simple as a nightmare can mutate into something so twisted all on its own is very frightening and not often explored in television (especially for children). we don’t know who these people are, but we can tell right away that there’s something very old and very dangerous at work.
visually, the episode reflects this, too: there’s a lot of dark browns and reds; those are very old colors mirroring the rust of the ancient inner workings of the town and the mind. the members of the society always stay in the shadows, and we know nothing about them until the very end of the episode. the whole time, we’re just tiptoeing through the background, watching as people lose their minds, holding out breaths and hoping we don’t get caught. it’s a very tense and suspenseful episode that expertly reveals details little by little, starting with the society, and then the gun, and then - all at once - fiddleford hadron mcgucket.
it’s unexpected, and that’s the whole theme of the episode, really. he comes out of nowhere. we thought we knew all there was to know because we didn’t think there could be anything deeper - not in the mortal sense, anyway. and again, it’s part of the episode’s theme. we go into this expecting to find the answer to the question “who wrote the journals?”. we were looking for the magic, the mystery, and the supernatural. we did not expect to see the final cry for help of a disparaged genius. we were looking for the paranormal and instead found the pathetic creations of the perturbed psyche of the pitiful partner of the peculiar parent of one particular portal, and as perplexed as we are, all the pieces still fall into place.
but it goes beyond the portal, because that is only discovered upon second glance. no, what is important here is that it was all only a man. the wrath and horror unleashed unto the world which now held the town and itself in its fist was the brain child of a frightened mechanic. it was not something otherworldly which ultimately drove him to madness, it was his own guilt. it was not the desire to forget the mystical that prompted his creation of the gun; no, it was the overwhelming truth that he had done something unforgivable and anything that resulted would be his fault. thusly, he needed to forget.
and so we are introduced in the span of one minute to a man whom we will never know, named fiddleford hadron mcgucket, scared and alone. his visage is golden with age, and his face and name are just unusual enough and his voice just soft enough for us to immediately know everything we need to know about him. he paces a bit, and he fidgets around as he delays the inevitable until he holds us his creation and we see it in its brass glory and know everything that comes next.
society introduces a character that we have known since day two and he’s dressed in green and afraid of his own mind. i can’t express my love for this episode; undoubtedly it is my favorite and this only begins to scratch the surface of what i feel towards it. i don’t quite know why i wrote this. perhaps someone will read it and think “yes, she’s right, that was a good episode” or something like that, and i think if i can do that then i’ll consider it a success because someone will have felt the formidable humanity of society that i felt.
This hits really hard, especially in light of all the things that have been happening around the world. We like to blame things on one big entity whose name shifts depending on who’s in charge. But the darkness inside us, that little bit of evil telling us it’s okay, not necessarily to do “bad things” but just to not care, to ignore, to hate, it’s something we saw Dipper was almost overcome with. But all the characters struggled with that. From those at the forefront, like Mabel and Stan, to Candy and Grenda. There’s something that makes us want to give in to justifying something we do that’s clearly selfish or hurtful. And it’s a struggle.
I feel this is the narrative of Gravity Falls. There is darkness everywhere, but there is also light. It’s your choice and up to your efforts to fight what darkness wants to take over your person. It’s a heavy theme and I’m certain there are still people who refuse to believe in this line of thinking. But every small act of giving in to that darkness creates a world where light cannot penetrate.