Curate, connect, and discover
My favorite thing is when people take something that was /never/ meant to be taken that seriously, and overanalyze it so much that it improves the canon 10fold
i love love love love love names when it comes to character analysis... not meanings (well. meanings too but this isn't what this post is about.) but how they're indicative of a character's identity and therefore their authenticity and trust of other people.
i've been thinking about this with grunkle stan specifically. notice how even after stealing ford's identity he still goes by stan?? yeah. he IS stan pines. by the time the show starts the only context in which he was pretending to be ford was legally. when people think of stanford pines they don't think of the strange man doing god knows what in the secluded cabin in the woods, and why would they?? they hardly knew the real ford anyway. to the people of gravity falls, there wasn't much identity for stan to be stealing. he isn't really lying to people about who he is, he just isn't telling the whole truth. hence stanley vs stanford. yeah?? yeah???
so like. isn't it funny that the character having a legal dispute with him over stealing his home calls him by his supposed full name. gideon doesn't care about stan as a person, he only cares about getting the shack off him. stan is literally just a legal obstacle to gideon. is this anything.
ALSO ALSO. the majority of the fake names he used still have some aspect of his real name in them. this man can't help but be authentic to some degree. literally the only reason he lies about who he is is for self-preservation. he doesn't want to lie to people — he literally risks being found out by using similar fake names just to keep being somewhat himself — but he has to if he wants to stay safe. stanley middle name pines they could never make me hate you.