An Interview with Alex Hirsch | feat. @hanahyperfixates

Hey. Hey. All right, we've done it. Yep. We're doing it. Let's go.

Wait, you know what? Let me grab my journal so I have it next to me for reference cuz I'm going to be asking specific [ __ ] questions.

Same. I have I have I have like a bunch of books here just ready to go. You think I should uh start the recording like now or like keep it as it is?

Uh I'm starting my recording now. Okay. 5 minutes. It's the final countdown just like they always sing about.

Do you get a heads up like a notification when he's in the waiting room?

Yeah, I have invite like so I have the participant list open here so I should I should be able to see when he enters the waiting room. Oh oh oh wait. Oh, here he is. He's here. He's here. Here we go.

All right. Hey. Hi Alex. Hello. Nice to see you. How are you doing?

Yeah, I'm doing good. Nice nice to see you both. You can remind me what are your actual names? I know the internet realm here. We're using internet lingo.

I'm Hana. I have the YouTube channel Hana Hyperfixation. So far it just has YouTube video essays about Gravity Falls. Yeah, nice to meet you. And uh and uh and uh my name is uh HK. Um I'm I run the uh Dad Jokes and YouTube channel which I've been doing this since like 2017 so recently gotten into more like essay type videos but like I've been around for a while.

Yeah. Who are you?

Uh I'm Soos. I'm the new manager of the Mystery Shack. I'm engaged to Melody. I believe that blesses the union so we're looking forward wedding in August. Nice to meet both of you. Thank you for bearing with our fan gushing from both of us. We'll keep it to a minute.

I've experienced so much fan gushing. I I I understand the fan gushing. I've been the giver of fan gushing to people. I'm a fan and no I I'm I am you. We're the same. There's no other here.

All right. Thank you so much. All right, now's the time for the Gravity Falls stuff. Okay.

All right, I'll start with my first question here is like it has some it has to do with something you mentioned last year during you're at you're at a convention in Mexico if I remember correctly and you base it was like when those pilot clips that came out last year occurred like the those new like clips I think I uploaded on my channel which kind of went pretty viral and basically while you were at a during an interview there you said that they were part of a a next time on trailer that was made alongside the Gravity Falls pilot that has sort of never been made public. So by any chance will that next time on reel for Gravity Falls be made public or do you have access to it and if not that it could be released like do you think you could tell us more about what else was on it that we so far haven't yet seen like for example is there a pilot Soos?

Um sure. Yeah, I so I can give you a little context for that. Um when sort of the process of getting Gravity Falls greenlit was I was working at Cartoon Network on a show called Flapjack. Um and I was approached directly by an executive at Disney Television. They were looking to change their brand. They had new executives and they liked my work and they asked if I would come and work in development with them. And I always my dream was to have a television show and I thought this would be a faster way to get to that dream so I said goodbye to all my friends in Flapjack. I moved to an indoor office at Disney. Um I was very young. I didn't know anything. I had no idea what I was doing. And I I I there was sort of a deal made where they said if you help us develop one of our shows we'll help you develop one of your shows. So they they said if you help us come up with characters for the Fish High School show we will consider your your pitch for a show about you and your sister and your your grandpa. So I was really trying to figure out how to sell this show and I remembered that in the TV show Arrested Development there was this running gag where they would always say next time on Arrested Development and then they would show clips that never were in the next episode. It was it was a trick that the creator of Arrested Development Mitch Hurwitz had come up with to get his own show greenlit. He thought if I show them a next time on sequence it will make them it will make their like lizard brains think the show already exists, right? They'll be like oh there it is there's the show. And so I was like I'm going to try the same trick. So I when I ordered the Gravity Falls pilot I next time on Gravity Falls and they had all these fake scenes that you know there was a proto version of Gideon looking angry and there was a Dipper looking wistfully at a proto version of Wendy and there was just lots of quick cuts of a UFO crashing and an alien monster and you know monster biting somebody's head off and and spooky other twins and it was it did there was no real meaning behind it other than like sort of like I was sort of thinking of it like the DuckTales intro just like cars lasers airplanes. Look at all the stuff that's going to be in the project. Um and it it was so effective and so successful at getting the show picked up like you know not only did they test the pilot episode but they tested the next time on and it all the executives passed it around and said look look all the things that are going to be on the show that after Gravity Falls got greenlit they made every other show in development create a next time on. So Owl House had to make a next time on and Gravity Falls had to make a next time on and DuckTales had to make a next time on like they literally built it into their their pipeline. the style guide.

Yeah, yeah I did. No, they I ripped off Mitch Hurwitz and then everyone ripped off Gravity Falls ripping off Mitch Hurwitz. But so so that was essentially an internal sales tool and and the reason that those were never intended to be released is that they were internal sales documents which meant that they weren't like legally cleared for air. They have sound effects music and and stuff that we you know we just grab a texture off the internet and make that the background of the Gravity Falls wallpaper. We've not paid for that. And so legally it cannot be shown anywhere. And so the the plan was to never release it anywhere. And then when we did the cipher hunt I was running out of rewards and treasures to give the audience because I'd already bled Gravity Falls dry of every drop of content that was inside of it. So I said ah [ __ ] it. Here have the Gravity Falls pilot. But the next time on I honestly don't know where that would be. You know I it's there may be some thumb drive or or or server in my garage in a in a box under a bunch of pieces of paper that may have it. You know somebody who worked on it may have it but I don't it's not like I have like here it is for you. Like it's it's lost in the ether. But I mean it may pop up someday. You know somebody who worked on it may have a copy.

All right, yeah that makes sense. But like just final question on that. Was there a pilot Soos in there?

No, there there wasn't actually. Um Soos was not in the pilot cuz the pilot was like an 11-minute version. It was very similar to Trap Mabel and the gnomes but it was condensed. Um and there was no there was no pilot Soos. Soos was a um Soos was in the series bible and it was one of these things where again like I I can't overemphasize how little experience we had when we were doing this and and how sort of in the dark we were just kind of making building the car while we were driving the car but you know I had Soos was there was one single tiny little paragraph about him and a one single drawing in the Gravity Falls bible and when I one of the first people I hired on the show was Mike Rianda who also had zero experience making anything but his student films were funny at CalArts and we got along. And I I remember asking him hey Mike, you read the bible, right? What do you think about this Jesus character? Do you think it's working? Do you think people will get it? And he was like oh dude I love you have to have that character. You need that character. And like nobody else understood it and I was like in my mind I thought oh a character who is so kind of um uh sort of aggressive and and and forceful and selfish like Grunkle Stan needs a counterbalance of somebody who's chill and sweet and selfless and empathetic. You need you need that balance but nobody else got it and then Rianda got it and he was like and he just started riffing as the character. Like he immediately understood the tone and I was like okay I have to keep this guy but that was you know that was there's a parallel universe where Mike said [ __ ] Soos get him the [ __ ] out of here. I'm very receptive to what people were saying at the time so I'm glad Soos survived.

Famously people named Jesus in the bible resonate. That's what I'm saying. They they yeah they made us change his name from Jesus and we changed it to we said okay make it just Soos S U S which now would be read as sus. I said Disney found it to be very sus and said no you have to change it that and then we just like we're like I don't know S two O's and an S that's Dr. Seuss that's going to get we couldn't say S E U S S because that would be legally Dr. Seuss. We couldn't say Jesus cuz that looked like Jesus and sus had a problem so we just I we just kept randomly changing it until it was S O O S and that's how we wound up with such a strange I always thought that the double O was like because I know that like you know round shapes even psychologically are friendly and I thought you chose that to make it look friendlier.

It's funny that it was just well there were none of the other spellings [ __ ] worked. We had to go with something. That's so interesting.

Yeah, well and that's and that's part of the challenge of sometimes having these types of conversations is it's like, you know, I know that as a fan, like like I was obsessed with like Nintendo growing up. And like I had like Pokémon and uh I was obsessed with Missingno, the glitch character where if you if you acquire Mew, trade for Mew, it will create a glitch where there's I actually I literally have a I have an Etsy pillow of Missingno that I ordered because I love Missingno so much. Um and I finally had the opportunity a number of years back to go to Japan and go to Game Freak and meet uh um uh the the creators of Pokémon Red and Blue uh Ken Sugimori who designed Pikachu um and and the guy who made the game and composed the music and I was able to ask him through a translator, "So Missingno, what's the deal with that? What's the secret? What does it mean?" "Oh, we messed up." He looked at the other guy and got stony and said, "I don't know what that is. I don't know what you're referring to." So funny. And I knew and I recognized in that moment like he's still embarrassed that they had a glitch instead of embracing that this is a part of lore that the fans love and people have drawn a sexy Missingno and there's no pillow. In his mind, he as a as a serious video game programmer made a mistake and is ashamed of the mistake and doesn't want to acknowledge it and doesn't want to encourage other people to corrupt their own game. So he says there's no such thing as Missingno. Um and and and now people will come to me and they'll be like, "What is the secret meaning behind this thing?" And I was like, "I don't I don't know. We're just [ __ ] around." That's so funny. But I don't want to I don't want to demystify things sometimes. Sometimes no answer is better than a boring answer.

Mhm. Yeah. I I have a lot of questions like that and I am sorry in advance.

All right. Okay, my Okay, here's another question. It's about release your production of the show. Um in past interviews, you've said that you wouldn't have made Gravity Falls if you couldn't have gotten Kristen Schaal to voice Mabel. And also Jason Ritter's in the past has mentioned how like he almost didn't do Dipper's voice because he had commitments to another show at the time and that almost didn't happen. So how true is the assertion that you wouldn't have made Gravity Falls without Kristen and were there any other voice acting like options you had at the time during that period where you didn't think if Jason was going to be the voice of of Dipper?

Um we had Disney has a really robust casting and uh music department um and that's you know, I whenever I criticize Disney it goes viral and whenever I compliment Disney it gets two likes and everybody misses it. You know, I I I want to counterbalance it by saying at least when I was working there um their their casting and music department were amazing and they were very robust and they were the best in the business um and they they were really supportive and really patient with our process because we really wanted to make something that we loved and you know, I said it has to be Kristen Schaal. The character's written for Kristen Schaal. I don't even know who this character is without Kristen Schaal. Um and they said, "Well, we we don't know if we can get her. So we want to do an a proper audition process and do out a proper casting call and you know, we probably got 20 auditions sent to me on a CD, 30 auditions. Um and there was no second choice. Like everybody who auditioned and maybe some of them with direction if I was there could have could have found the character, but you know, there's a there's just a a uniqueness to what Kristen does. There's there's a sincerity. She never Kristen's never like winking when she's doing the performance. Like when she when she becomes Mabel and she is in love with the latest guy who walked in her field of view, she really is in love. Like she she's not she's not making fun of her own character. She believes what her own character believes and she embodies the character. And so many of the people who came in they were like, "Oh, I'm playing a wacky obnoxious girl. I'm going to be crazy." And they would just be so over the top and I I don't necessarily blame them for that because I think a lot of the roles they were auditioning for would be like, you know, kid whose head transforms into a CG watermelon in a Gotcha commercial. So they're supposed to be like Right. But it was it just I didn't believe it. And and Kristen Schaal's performance I believed. And so we did a lot of auditions, but like if Kristen didn't do it, I didn't have a plan B. Like I didn't know what I was going to do. Like I couldn't figure out what my solution was. Um you know, in terms of Jason um you know, we had hired him we had hired both both of them for the pilot and they both did a great job um and you know, when he started to when his agent started to say this might not be possible due to previous commitments, you know, we did start looking around for uh crap, you know, who who can who who is the right guy for this? And the thing that the thing that Jason brings to the table is um you know, what I said as first a second ago about Mabel like Kristen being Mabel like embodying the character. Like Jason is Dipper. Like I can't overemphasize how much he was a fan of the show in the show. And like he would Right. paparazzi photos of him like at Erewhon like just wearing the Dipper hat on a because like he relates to the character so much. Like he has he's such a big heart. And I actually think that was maybe the thing that Jason the thing that Jason mainly could the biggest contribution to the character was that you know, I was originally in my mind imagining Dipper so self-serious. Uh and Jason has such a sweetness about him that like we started writing to that sweetness. Like we started saying like, "Oh, Jason's the most likable version of Jason's character is when he is give he gave Dipper some blind spots. Like we imagined Dipper to be so smart and Jason like would would make Dipper a little bit more naive and that was more relatable and grounded. Um and so I'm grateful for to him for bringing that to the character um and I'm so glad that he didn't leave cuz the other thing was Gravity Falls was not an easy show to make and we were frequently adjusting and updating the script late in the process because we would write a new episode and say, "Oh, we need to shift this canon." Um and that wasn't normal for Disney and you know, a different actor who may have been less of a fan of the show might would have said, "You know, screw you. I'm not coming in to do a you know, a third retake of a line just because you guys changed a lore concept." But Jason was like pick up the phone and he's already in the booth before you call. He was like, "I can't wait to see the new pages. What's what's going to happen?" Like he literally was like Dipper, you know.

Right. All right. Wow. Wow. I would love to hear like different line readings of like episodes that were scrapped. I feel like it would be so cool. Um and yeah, they really are the heart and soul. And then you know, especially what you said about what you said about Kristen. I'll I'll just say this. This isn't one of my questions, but like sometimes I look back at Gravity Falls and it was a show made in 2012 and you know, there are times when I'm like the writing with the female characters could be stronger. You could like you could have given Wendy more to do. Um but with Mabel, I am always like they didn't they never made fun of Mabel. You know, like I feel like a lot of shows would and I think that's all Kristen, you know. Um and and I absolutely love that quality in her voice and the earnestness and sincerity. The earnestness. The earnestness. That's what that's the thing is.

Well, I think the other thing is like to Mabel covering her face in gems um and uh you know, uh like making this crazy puppet show, to Mabel those things are really really cool. But also to me they're really really cool. It's like me and my sister were very very creative playful kids growing up and we would put on plays and shows and we would record little videos and and we would dress up in crazy costumes. And so like you know, like Dipper is always kind of torn between rolling his eyes at Mabel's antics and then laughing despite himself because he loves her and cares about her. Like we loved Mabel and Kristen loved Mabel. You know what I mean? And like so like I always knew what felt on voice for that character in terms of writing, in terms of acting. Um you know, you're absolutely right that there wasn't a super robust cast in terms of in terms of women. And Wendy was a character who we really you know, she started out as kind of just sort of a Dipper's got a crush on the babysitter and he needs to learn that you know, that that that he needs to go through the tunnel of puberty and have some painful experiences as part of his growing up process. Um but you know, when we started the show, yeah, it's like we didn't know who Ford was. We didn't know who Wendy was. We didn't know if Bill was going to be a character. You know, we were really like I said we're we're building the thing on the fly. Um and you know, I would have in in some parallel universe where I could go back in time and start the show from scratch having everything solved and just being able to build on it. You know, yeah, it would be great to you know, find uh you know, find find great stories for Wendy. Um you know, have a have a more robust cast. I I mean I'm I'm honestly I'm always terrified to look back at the show to think, "Oh gosh, you know, in what in what way were we tone deaf to something that has you know, changed culturally?" And I'm I'm mostly relieved when I watch it to see that like there was so much love. Like we really loved and cared about everything we were doing that for the most part I feel like you know, despite a few false notes and missteps that that that people can feel that we're we're really coming from a sincere place of trying to make something that that has a good heart.

All right. All right. Okay, I guess while we're on the subject of like this kind of stuff, I guess I'll rip this bandage off right now. This is this is a question I asked Serena Hernandez who was one of the artists on Lost Legends that the fan artists who I hired for that. Basically when I interviewed her for about her work on Don't Dimension It, I asked her this sort of similar question. It was said, "As much as I love Don't Dimension It as the story like the whole like different Mabels and stuff, I kind of felt like the treatment that there way that towards Mabel was kind of a bit unusual like the lesson of like like how Dipper names that fault line after her at the start of the book like she might be like mentioned yeah Mabel's fault and then like it kind of seems to imply and then her later on saying that she caused Weirdmageddon and like taking it kind of made it look like that she herself was like the only person who was being blamed for Weirdmageddon and what it was like kind of downplaying like maybe Ford Dipper and Stan sort of like contributions to Stan and Ford. Yeah and those and those contributions to Weirdmageddon and like I like I guess you may notice cuz like you're in the fandom quite a lot but like it's no secret that Mabel's been a bit of a controversial character in the Gravity Falls fandom at large and there's been like various like discussions like backlash and like positive and negative type comments about Mabel over the years but basically my question to you in that sense is why did you write Don't Dimension It the way you did and what was your rationale for having it be a the sort of Mabel redemption story and did the fandoms like perception of Mabel over the years play a factor in that?

Um I mean I you know I I keep an eye on all things in like the fan reality of of the show. Like I like I said like I may sort of I I I want to make something that people enjoy and respond to but I also know these characters in my heart so I'm always sort of balancing you know the the climate of of what I'm hearing with with what I know and what I intend you know for Lost Legends it it basically came from Disney saying hey would you like to make a comic and I was like oh I've never done that before I've always go to the comic store in my hometown when I was a kid and I would look at all the comics on the walls and think wow wouldn't it be cool if I had a comic up there one day and and I never had and this was my shot so my thought was you know similar to Gravity Falls Journal 3 was oh what are what are some cutting room floor stories what are some stories that we we had in we were working on the show that we we never were able to make it into the series and so you know like I said the Gravity Falls process is you take you take a magic and you take a character thing and you stick them together and you try to make them cohere and so much of our thought process is about that you know and it's so interesting when you look at fan conversations because they they often imagine that like the writers each has a character that they are rooting for or a relationship that they're rooting for and that we're we're fighting to advocate for a particular character and that that is what's happening behind the scenes and it's it's it's so not that way at all it's like we're fighting to advocate for something that is compelling and interesting and surprising and satisfying that feels like it's it's tonally right and we will whatever accomplishes that is something that we are going to try um so it's like with Lost Legends I was like okay there was there was four things that I had remembered or there was 10 things that I had remembered of things that were on the cutting room floor there was we had briefly explored what if in the second season what if the family gets trapped inside the portal what would that look like you know they discover the portal what if they get sucked in what could be what could happen and and we thought of some very fun stories and we thought of a story of you know Stan and Ford in the multiverse and we thought of a story of we had done clones with Dipper and we thought wouldn't it be funny to have a million Mabels wouldn't that be fun and you know ultimately we didn't go in that direction because we knew that we only had you know once the portal was introduced to the show we only had 10 episodes left until the series was over we were like I don't think I don't think we have the narrative bandwidth to go to the furthest reaches of the multiverse in the middle of the show when we're just meeting we need an episode where we meet Ford and it's just about Dipper and Ford you know what I mean like we're thinking about like we're moving the chess pieces around we're saying that's exactly going to disrupt the flow of the show and also it felt like it would make Weirdmageddon feel less impactful that they'd already had it gone through a tear in the multiverse but we had in our back pocket we had a a story about a bunch of Mabels and the story that we we had thought was oh wouldn't it be interesting if when you do a clone story the point of a clone story in my mind is a character seeing themselves in a different light right Double Dipper Dipper got to look at himself and said oh my god look at me over pre over planning and over preparing and getting in my own way so when we had thought about a story with a bunch of Mabels we thought oh what if Mabel is feeling some of the frustrations with herself that Dipper sometimes feels where it's like oh this character is so joyful and passionate and running all over the place and I'm trying to get them to focus on something you know the way that Dipper experienced Mabel in Sock Opera where he's like we got to get the code and Mabel's like I got to get my play like what if Mabel had 10 Mabels that were all putting on their own play and and needed help with her play right so it's like we had we had that idea from from back in back when we were working on season 2 we had always had an idea about a face stealing monster we thought it would be a really fun weird scary visual to have one of our characters have a missing face and we're like oh that's a really high stakes story um it in terms of the comic story we were just like oh if I'm doing a comics if I'm doing a comic I need to do one about comics so that was just like and then like little little Stan and Ford you know the the the the the the Stan brothers as kids on the dock was like when we did Tale of Two Stans it was really hard to write that episode because we just wanted to write a million adventures of those two it seems so so fun and so funny and that was so easy to write like I sat down and that just like came out of my fingertips joy cuz I know those guys so well and I I know I have a lot of thoughts about what Glass Shard Beach is like and other characters even that that weren't there that that I've always wanted to see and so that one was really really a piece of cake um but yeah I mean I think you know in terms of Mabel like so just sort of address your question like there there was not really an intention writing any of these stories to like address a sort of uh uh fan complaint of the week like that's it's not the way we think about stories like the way we think about stories is so much we're looking for stakes we're looking for a combination of like a monster and and an emotional thing we're looking for a turn we're looking for and we're always looking to do a a new arc if we can so like one of the things I love in the Don't Dimension It story is Stan and Ford getting into an argument about which one of them is the better caretaker and revealing by the end that they're both terrible caretakers in their I thought that was a really sweet we're like I'm like what's a sweet argument between Stan and Ford they're they're they've gotten over their main issues but they're always going to be bickering forever and what are what are like what are versions of their bickering that are coming from a place of love so I thought okay like they are like the idea that Stan might hear that that Ford has learned Dipper's real name before he has Uh-huh. Right exactly might make Stan a little insecure and then try to try to over parent in a really dumb way like that's we're always like looking for those things right and so again I think it's we're we're looking for those types of of of we're looking for stories that you know create a little turn and create a little twist and then they enter the hive mind and the hive mind has its own sort of like like popular narratives and then fuses these things to those narratives and says oh is this is this arguing in support of my narrative is this arguing against my narrative and the truth is we're always trying to create our own narrative like that's yeah makes sense so like it's there is not an intention to argue like in my mind all of these characters are sweet funny flawed characters doing their best there isn't one character is the good character one character is the bad character like all wonderful wonderful dumbasses all of them like every single one of them like I genuinely believe that in terms of intelligence Dipper Mabel Stan Ford are basically equal they have different types of intelligence in terms of moral alignment Dipper Mabel Stan Ford for the most part relatively equal equal although I would say of that group Mabel is absolutely the purest of heart like she she has the least to learn because her way of looking at life which is like with love and sincerity and with an unashamed fearlessness about who she is is probably the most right and that's why we beat her up the least because there's nothing she needs to change you know so finally try to look for a Mabel story we we we were looking for what's a way in which that that good intention goes awry what's a way in which she loves her boy band so much she doesn't want them to leave or or what's a you know in the case of Don't Dimension It like all of the Mabels are so creative and passionate that when they have to band together it might be difficult to corral them all together but again I again I think the thing that people always sometimes miss when they get into these sort of conversations like sometimes people will look at a story which every story starts with a character making a mistake has the character dig deeper in their mistake has the character change any and and and unkink that kink and sometimes people hey did you notice in act two this character was making a mistake and it's like yeah yeah that's act two irredeemable yeah it's like you know the Mabels of Don't Dimension It are you know are are at first all caught up in their own creative projects and then when Mabel makes a heartfelt plea to them that that their projects are wonderful but she needs their help they all say oh yeah let's go let's go [ __ ] the evil Mabel up let's go save her just like Mabel in in you know in in Gravity Falls in the finale you know is so hurt by the fear of that she wants to hide and then when she sees what reality is she says okay let's go do it let's let's go build down you know I the sort of impulse to zoom in on a moment while a character is on the way to an arc and and sort of I don't know like create a sort of a folk narrative version of that character is I get it. It's like I'm a fan, too. I create folk narratives around the media I consume, but I try not to get I try not to get too drawn into the folk narrative because Yeah. I'm creating narratives, you know, like guess so.

Yeah, exactly. narratives like you're always making new stuff and I Right. getting stuck in a a loop doesn't seem super interesting.

Right. Yeah, like when I was a bit younger in the fandom like that was something I was kind of sucked into and like there's still a lot of people who still like engage like like way too much into that type of topics, but like I've kind of stepped back from it now cuz I just accepted like there's going to be people who have these perceptions of these characters which like where you going to do? Yeah. People are allowed to hate Ford. They're wrong, but they're allowed.

I mean it's like like that's what I like it's like that's the thing is like I said like I believe the customer is always right. Like every experience is true. I can never argue with someone and tell them their experience is wrong. If they say I experience this character in a way that I didn't like him like you're right, you know, um Right. Like it's everyone's experience is their own. I'm not going to invalidate it, but I sort of in my role as a creator I I I sort of try to invite people into the creative space and sort of say like this is this is what it's like on the other side, you know, it's a totally different matrix that we're working with when we're talking about it.

Yeah. Right. Okay, just before we move over to Ahsoka's questions, um just one more Lost Legends related question. It's like what other stories did you have that were planned to be in Lost Legends that didn't make it in? Like those cuz you mentioned those 10 stories and also um the other thing is like when Lost Legends was being advertised back in 2018 like I remember it being advertised as like the first Gravity Falls graphic novel rather than the Gravity Falls graphic novel. And I think you also mentioned in a tweet once that like if the book sold well there could be a chance for more graphic novels or something. So were there ever plans for more graphic novels for Gravity Falls and like if not what stories would you have personally told if you were given the chance to write another one?

Yeah, well it's um like Lost Legends sold well. It was a best seller, but Journal 3 is a publishing juggernaut. It continues to be a best seller 10 years after the show is over. It's a monster manual companion piece to an a television show that's not even on the air anymore and it continues to sell sell sell. And I think in comparison to Journal 3 Lost Legends was it did well, but it didn't do astronomically well like and I think you know, so Disney didn't reach out to me and ask for more. Now I think I could have I could have pushed for more and say oh we got to do more, but it was making comic was was very challenging. It you know the art it takes so much time. Like having having worked in in storyboarding and animation and and writing books and making comics having worked in so many mediums comics are uniquely challenging and and not respected nearly enough because they are really really hard to do. And so it was a combination of it it was very very challenging and Disney wasn't really pushing for it. So like there there isn't currently a plan to do more. In terms of stories that I didn't do yeah like I always you know, I always start with a brainstorm and I brainstormed a lot of stories. There was there was a and a lot of them again like I said cutting room floor stories things that we had had played around with on Gravity Falls but couldn't figure out couldn't make it fit 20 minutes couldn't give it an A story and a B story and there was one where there was a story about Mabel um getting a a sweater from a swap meet that was haunted by the ghost of the grandma who died in that sweater and it was like this it was sort of this scary poltergeist story inside the shack like a bottle episode of oh god we have to get this thing off of Mabel and that one that one didn't quite come together. We didn't really have a strong arc for Mabel like it was a really funny area and there was some funny jokes and some funny puns, but it it didn't necessarily give Mabel like an emotional change or or experience. There was a lot of areas that I really love where I did I came up with like five it could have been a whole separate book of like Stan and Ford adventures at sea and like I had some great ones for that that I'm not going to say cuz if I choose to do them one day I don't want to spoil them.

That's good though. Thank you. Those characters at sea it was so rich. They're really really funny cuz like I said they both have major major blind spots and it's kind of write stories about them as a duo forever because they you can always excuse them both getting hyped on a bad idea for their own reasons and then you can always come up with a reason for them to disagree about it and it's always sweet to see them come together again because they're so full of themselves, but they are also both so damaged they desperately need each other um and like it it I it revealed to me when I when you sit down to write you discover where the story is. It's sort of like you got a dowel rod and you're like oh there's water over here and you don't always know and you just kind of let the story tell you what it is and you know, on on the open sea Stan and Ford had a lot to do, but it was it was so much that I was like I should save this. If I'm going to do something with this I should save it for something more robust. Um there was I was trying to come up with like a proper Pacifica story like a real like a real emotional arc for her. The ideas I came up with some really fun set pieces and some really great scenes, but couldn't quite crack an arc. So we went with what was a a much like you know, just a simpler arc just a you know, Pacifica not be you know, realize the beauty within, but so much of this worked backwards from like it has to be like five pieces before it's a story and we're trying to get those pieces aligned and until it is there's lots of pieces that we love, but they're not a story yet if that makes sense.

Got it. Okay, this is another Journal 3 question. This one I wanted to ask you this since like 2020, but basically um around the same time in November of 2020 when the the vinyl was announced I was made aware by someone who I was a friend of mine who that there was this new Journal 3 version on Barnes & Noble and it's I have right here and it was listed as Journal 3 signed edition and inside of it is your signature right here. And so basically like obviously I know it's actually from you because like Barnes & Noble sold it and of course why would they make a fake one, but like basically I wanted to ask you in regards like what what's the story behind the Barnes & Noble like signed edition and like also like cuz like I'm pretty sure you didn't sign 10,000 of these. So like how rare is it compared to Journal 3 special edition?

Gosh, I I you know uh it was it was sometime before the pandemic. I think that publishing was just impressed with the continued sales of Journal 3 and wanted to kind of just like goose those sales and just sort of remind audiences that it was out there. I think I think a lot of it had to do with like Gravity Falls was now on Disney Plus and and Disney Plus was being discovered by by more people and there's just there was there was a thought of like can we keep this going and publishing asked if I would sign a big stack of stickers and brought them over to my house and I made little dents in it and eventually gave it to them, but I I I genuinely can't recall how many there were. I I don't remember exactly when it happened. You know, the the thing about working with a big company is like a big working with a big company is like working with a friend who changes their who swaps their head with a different head every couple of years. It's like it's like just completely different people are running the company from year to year. So suddenly one person will have a strategy and then they'll move to another department and so like at some point someone was in a position to ask me to sign more stuff, but I can't remember who it was or exactly what what what the thought process was. So I don't even know how many there were. I know it wasn't 10,000 because it wasn't as nightmare as the previous

All right. Go ahead. Okay, this is another quick question. This one's also related to the special edition. Um back a couple of years a year ago or something I was made aware from someone who like asked me a like random question cuz like they think I'm like the guy who knows Gravity Falls facts that isn't Alex Hirsch. People think that I'm the guy who knows and some of this stuff there is no answer. But yeah, so basically like they told me about an eBay listing about Journal 3 special edition and it was a different type of like Journal special edition. Like it was not one of the 10K that is that has a number on it like you know, on the the paper that says like it's with this number out of 10,000 and the seller was claiming that it was like a advanced copy that was on like had no number on it. Like it's off the grid type of a Journal 3. He said that like there were like 50 of them that it were in existence and they knew about like a couple of them. Given that we only know about like the prototype Journal which you gave away during a live stream a couple of a couple of years ago. Like do you have any idea about like if there were other advanced Journal 3 special editions that were made and like that are have no numbers to them?

I I believe if if there's a Journal on eBay that says

It doesn't have a number, and that that came from early on in the publishing's like testing process. I fully believe them. You know, I I never got my hands on one of those. Like, it sounds like it must have just been. I mean, that's that's the crazy thing is it's like when you have a fandom as passionate as Gravity Falls does, it takes the company by surprise. They don't doesn't happen all the time that they get this level of passion and attention. So it doesn't even occur to them to safeguard certain things because, you know, like I I remember there were people who would take tours of the Gravity Falls office and then they would root through the trash and then they would take photos of like casting audition dialogue and they'd post it online and say, "Look, look, this might be from an upcoming episode." And it never occurred to Disney to put like, you know, a bear-proof lid on their trash because they never had anyone passionate enough about the animated Hercules show to do that. And so, I think similarly, you know, publishing probably had their own internal copies of, "Oh, we're testing the ink and stuff," and it didn't occur to them that somebody would hold on to one of those and sell it on eBay one day. So, they weren't like, you know, keeping an eye on on on on trapping it all or hoarding it all. So, I totally believe that those things must exist, but they're, you know, they're they're probably at a factory somewhere. It's It's so far I'm so far removed from that part of it, you know? I'm writing sentences in Microsoft Word and then looking at drawings, and then one day there's a book in my hand, and it's magic to me how that happens, you know?

Understand. Yeah. Okay. I think we're at the halfway point so far of this interview. I think it's time I ask you the big question. I think Dana already knows this one.

Go for it.

All right. Shermie Pines. In "A Tale of Two Stans," we see a baby that many to this day believe is Shermie Pines. However, it's also been widely accepted that perhaps the baby is too young to be Shermie, given the way the timeline is and everything. And I think Jeff Rowe also mentioned in a tweet that he once redacted that he's basically said it was the baby, but then redacted that tweet when someone asked him if it was Shermie. And you were asked once at a convention, like it's pretty a well-known video, is like you were at a con and someone asked you who the baby was, and you were like, "The baby is off-limits, and you can't reveal anything." This was back in like 2015, so the show was still airing. Yeah. So, now that the show has been over for a long time, can you tell us if the baby is Shermie or not? And if not, like, do you have anything you can tell us about Shermie Pines, like official plans that you had or head cannons?

Sure, yeah. Um, so, uh, basically I can I can I can sort of I can step you into it. Like Like Like And actually, I think I said this in this interview earlier, I said that, you know, Rob is the guy who focuses on like timelines and logic, and I'm the guy who focuses on like emotions and themes. Um, and so, like when it comes to the sort of hereditary bloodline of the Pines and and and who's related to who and how it all connects, like I was always really interested in Dipper and Mabel's relationship with Grunkle Stan and each other, and eventually their relationship with Ford and how that affected their relationship with each other and their relationship with Grunkle Stan. Um, and the show has a big theme of found family. Like there's this big theme of these characters are all just, you know, the Mystery Shack is a bucket full of misshapen lost odd oddities, and these characters are a bucket full of misshapen lost odd oddities. And the idea of them all having a place where they fit in and and loving each other as a family was very important to me. Um, so, you know, when it was time for us to come up with Ford and how he related to the show, there was a question of, "Oh, well, is somebody has to be a grandfather to these kids? It's just logically, you know? There must be a grandfather in there somewhere." So, we've got three options. Either Grunkle Stan is their grandfather, Ford is their grandfather, or there is a grandfather somewhere else. And so, I look at this always through the lens of character, and I asked myself, "What would it mean if Ford was their grandfather?" And I thought, "Well, it would mean that Ford, you know, had children. And if Ford had children and abandoned them, he's a much harder to redeem character, and the drama of Stan's brother, I'm interested in Ford's relationship with Stan, not Ford's relationship with some hypothetical abandoned family." That didn't serve Ford to me, and in fact, it made it it made me like him less, and it made me understand the show less. And then the other option was, "Oh, then is Stan the grandfather?" And I said, "Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Stan would not. The whole show was about Stan like loving these kids and and Stan is a very lonely, very uh very starved for genuine human connection character who's always putting on a performance, but is is deeply alone. And And that And that's why by episode two, he's begging the kids to go fishing with them. You know, he he would not abandon grandkids or he would not abandon a son, you know, or or a daughter or or, you know." And so, I was just like, "The point is these lost characters finding family, not characters who had family." That That to me was not right for these characters at all. So, in in my mind, the only answer was, "Oh, there just must be some off-screen grandfather." And I personally, again, had no interest in meeting this character because I didn't think that that character had anything interesting to bring out in Dipper or Mabel. I thought, "I'm really interested in Stan and Ford and Dipper and Mabel. I'm not interested in the grandfather." Um, so, the joke around the office was, "Oh yeah, Grandpa Shermie," you know, and it's like your girlfriend in Canada. Like we're never going to meet this character, you know? Like, "Oh yeah, sure sure, Grandpa Shermie." And I I remember Rob was the guy who was sort of keeping track of timelines and logic and all that stuff, and there must have been some conversation about, you know, "Oh, what is where would Shermie be then from chronologically age-wise?" You know, we see that it's broadly in the '60s, you know. The show in my mind does not take place in a particular date. The show in my not mind takes place in a kind of emotional summer that sort of feels like my childhood, and my childhood was in the early '90s, but the show was released in 2012, and like I always regretted that that "Boys the Boys in Boys Crazy" said 2013 because then it suggested that the show had a canon date, and in my mind, I didn't like the idea of the show having a canon. In my mind, the show had an emotional date. But again, we wanted to have a mystery, so we wanted to say there was a particular date in the, you know, the the '80s when Ford went missing. So, it was it was always this sort of tug-of-war between there's an emotional intent, but in order for the mystery to work, it would be helpful to have a date. But so, in terms of Shermie, it's like I remember asking I think Rob or somebody at some point like, "Would Shermie be here logically? Do we have to see him? I don't really want to see him. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in Stan and Ford being sort of having only each other and then losing each other because of their different life paths." And I think the suggestion was, "Oh, maybe Ford's maybe maybe Shermie would be a baby. Maybe that would happen." And being like, "Okay, sure." And I just I just sort of took at the word of what was said to me in a meeting like, "Oh, there's a baby, great, fine, whatever." And then I remember the episode coming out and people saying, "Well, we've done the math. That's Shermie. That means that that Dipper and Mabel's parents may have had children at at a at a concerningly young age. And is And is this show Is this show's intent to say that it's okay for for for kids to exist in this?" Yeah. And I'm like, "I'm in the story mines. Like, you know, I'm in the boiler room with like the pipes where I'm like, 'Oh no, Ford's not likable. Okay, we need to add this. Oh [ __ ] Dipper's making a choice that's out of character.'" And someone someone's telling me that there's a timeline that needs to be fixed. I remember thinking, so yeah, that must have been right around the time of that Houston Comic Con. And yeah.

Often when you're in production and you're problem-solving, you can solve one problem with another problem. Like often you find, "Oh no, um, you know, like there was there was a situation where we had an arc for Weirdmageddon that was supposed to happen in episode one that we realized we needed to save for episode three, and now Weirdmageddon didn't have an arc. So, then we had to come up with a new arc on the fly, but that actually gave us more time with Dipper and Wendy, which gave us a chance to have Dipper kind of talk about what Mabel meant to him. And so, losing one thing provided an answer to another thing, which actually made the show better. So, this happened all the time where a a a a a crisis would turn into an opportunity narratively. So, the thought was, "Okay, we've got a I guess there's a mistake. The timeline here doesn't work." And the question was, "Is there something better? Is there something we can do with this? Is there something creative? Is there a way to serve the story with Does the Can the baby serve the story? Is there something that we can come up with yet?" Um, and so, when people asked about it, like I was like, "I I can't answer the question because there was a chance that we might think of something useful." Um, we kicked it around. We never thought of anything useful. It was like, "No, that I guess the timeline doesn't work. We should have done something else." Uh, and so, but it's again, it's one of those things where it's like like would it be better could because you don't have a time machine and you can't change Television moves fast. You can't change the episode once it's locked and mixed and gone gone to air, even if you think of a new great idea. Like in the vein of this and this conversation about Shermie, cuz I like I mentioned I do these video essays, and I had a video essay on Shermie. It was like everything we know about Shermie, every mention of him, which is like three things. Like once in the game, once in the comic, not in once kind of in the comics like in code on somebody's corkboard, once in the journal when Ford's like, "These are Shermie's grandkids." And of course, once in "A Tale of Two Stans." And And that was like every instance. And then I was like, "All right, well, now it's time to just speculate and have fun." And a lot of the comments were, "I didn't even know there was a baby. I didn't notice that baby." Which was funny. Um, Shermie, who has spent a lot of time on this. Another one like I showed you the the fake blood. That was part of a YouTube video called "Figuring Out the Gravity Falls Timeline," where the whole bit of the video is that I'm making a conspiracy board, and I'm going further and further into insanity. And by the end of it, I make a deal with Bill so he could tell me the secrets. Um, and it like acci- I I don't know how to tell you this, but you accidentally made the timeline work in a B-side and I could tell it was an accident and it's a and you are going to tell me "No, no, it was completely intentional, but it was an accident." I know. Um, and it stuff like, "Oh man, you use a Sharpie over here. Well, Sharpies were invented in 1964. I'm sure they really didn't think about that, you know." I just keep looking at the camera and being like, "I'm sure they thought really in-depth about when Sharpies were invented." You know, stuff like that. Um, the fact that in the journal, um, sorry, I'm going to try not to gush about this for too long, but there is a line where Dipper mentions that he saw Stan at his Bar Mitzvah at age 12. And usually Bar Mitzvahs are at 13, but occasionally they're at 12, like once every few years if your birthday on the Hebrew calendar comes before your birthday on the Gregorian calendar, which isn't very common. It usually comes after your birthday on the Gregorian calendar. So, given that they were like between 8 and 13 in 1960-something, there is only one year that works out where they could have like had their Bar Mitzvah at 12, and it's 1951, and it works because it means that they would be in high school when Nixon was president, and it makes perfect sense, and it also works because it means that they would be like around 10, 11, 12 when they discovered the Stan o' War, which is 1964, and they would have the Sharpie, and it does work because like a million things that just happened to fall into place. And I spent the whole time thinking, "I'm fixing his [ __ ] timeline for him. You're welcome." I'm like, obviously I'm not mad about it, but it was a great video. I had fun making it. Um, but I was like, "A great video. It sounds like you were able to extract so much content from something that was free from content. You found new content hidden in between the letters." There's content in there. It is interesting that you say that the show doesn't have like, is it canonically set in 2013? Because like the Northwest ghost died in the great flood of 1863 and came back 150 years later. So it's like, well, that does establish that it's in 2013. And I know that it's like a nebulous vague summer, but it's 2013. For the purpose of people like me who think way too far about this um, and and that's what the video is. I I I Sounds like an entertaining video. It sounds like you did your homework. First of all, it sounds like funny and engaging, and it sounds like you had a good time making it, and like that's what It was so cool. I loved it. We want the show to be an invitation to other people to like create, right? Um, but I I think it it's interesting because it's like it sounds like in the process of trying to sort of decode what was in the text, Yeah, you discovered Yeah, sometimes things that we like did intend and put together, but also discovered the degree to which like um It's an accident. the degree to which like there was that there was that famous case, you sound like you might know about this, um where somebody had said that they had like proven that like um that like Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper based on "Alice in Wonderland" um, and then somebody else pointed out like, "I can circle I can circle sentences in the Bible that prove that God was Jack the Ripper. I can circle sentences in, you know, 'Oh, the Places You'll Go' that prove that Dr. Seuss was Jack the Ripper or whatever." That, you know, like the Texas sharpshooter fallacy of like the human mind is a pattern-seeking machine, right? We're so good at seeking patterns, and we will see God's face in the random shape of the clouds, and and and then we'll paint a beautiful painting, and now the painting is real. So, like the interpretation is real. The art is real. Um, like, but it's a fascinating thing making Gravity Falls where we like, yeah, we hit a couple of mysteries and we worked hard on them, and we were proud of them. Um, but we invited people to keep looking. Um, and people would find stuff that would be extraordinary, and it would be so much smarter than anything we ever thought of. Um, and it would fit. I I will like it's, you know, it is fun. I did have a friend tell me, "Are you having fun doing this?" You know, and for me, for my brain, yes. I do love over-analyzing things like that, and I have YouTube comments all the time that are like, "You're over-analyzing a kid show," and I'm like, "I know, buddy. That's my hobby." But but but yeah, it is what it says on the tin. Um, it's, you know, you find out a lot of like you find out so many fun things. Like I now have a bunch of people on Tumblr who um are sending me like the Eurythmics memes because the one of the things that holds the timeline together is that the portal incident had to happen in 1983. And we know this because Ford mentions the Eurythmics on a page, and the song "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" came out in early 1983. And and so it's one of those things where this is this is the final piece of the puzzle. And and and there's a part of the timeline video where I'm like, "Oh man, maybe I was overthinking it, but it doesn't make sense. I have no proof it happened in 1983." And then I remember the I say something like, "There go my sweet dreams of figuring out the timeline." Wait. And and it's it sounds like a very high production uh uh It was. But you know what I what I respect about what you're saying is when we made Journal 3, like you're like, "How do we make we're going to make a monster manual, essentially, you know? It's a monster manual. It's 300 pages of look at this monster." And then there was a question of like, "How do I make a monster manual a monster manual's fun, but how do I make it like worth reading?" It's like, "Can I string narrative through the monster manual?" And it sounds like you've done all this like research and you're like, "I want to create a piece of art about this, but how do I make this a story?" And so, like in the same way that we were stringing narrative through our monster manual, you were stringing narrative through your own descent into uh madness. The fake blood. It was it was great. What you're saying, I think what you're saying is that if if I ever make another journal or or Gravity Falls thing, I need to put like five intentionally completely wrong things in the timeline just to give you something to go crazy. Do that. That's the torture you. I I joke in there that you did it specifically to torture me, so it would be indeed. Well, now that we've met, now that we've met, you won't know if I did or didn't. Thanks, Alex. All right. Okay. I got a couple more questions here. Um, okay. This one, okay, this is a bit of an interesting one. Um, in "Irrational Treasure," when Blubs and Durland are going after Dipper and Mabel like to stop them from figuring out who who founded Gravity Falls, they're in touch with a mysterious dispatcher who tells them to not let the twins find out about the Northwest cover-up and stuff, and after that episode, he's never seen or heard from again. And basically, the question is, were there ever any plans for that character to have a bigger role in the show, or was he just like a one-off character? Does feel like a missed opportunity. You know, I think we didn't know in season 1, we didn't know that there was going to be like government showing up in season 2. Like that that wasn't something that we had planned for. Like we knew that the palette that we were working in is like I was working from a very specific tonal palette in my own mind where it was kind of like '90s conspiracies. So that's like "Weekly World News" and and "The X-Files" and and sort of "Men in Black," and then like I was thinking, you know, sort of like roadside Americana was one of the palettes um, and like there there was these, and then sort of like Amblin movies um, and kind of like sort of purple fantasy from like the '80s and '90s. There's all these sort of particular touchstones in my head of like what makes this feel like the flavor of the show. Um, and one of those flavors because of like because of like "The X-Files" or like, you know, the sort of the brief craze in America where everybody was like copying "The Da Vinci Code," and you had like "Treasure," which is just like this cheap knockoff of "The Da Vinci Code," um, uh, uh, "National Treasure." So, like, anyway, what I'm trying to say is like with each one of our episodes, we're sort of trying to hit a note on that like keyboard of like palette, and like that was our conspiracy episode. So we're like, "Oh yeah, of course, you got to have some government agent who who knows about the Trembley cover-up." Um, but then when we got to season 2 and we realized that like we needed a bigger presence and we needed a bigger threat and we needed the government, it was one of those things where it's like we hadn't we hadn't planned it properly. Um, so there wasn't we we talked about it. We're like, "Is there a way for this government agent who knows about Trembley to be connected to the government agents who cooked up this disturbance?" We weren't really able to find a way to make them connect in a satisfying way. So I wish we had done more with it, you know, um, cuz it it offers opportunities, but we didn't have more. Uh, got it. Okay. This is a bit of a more lighthearted question. It's um, it's about "Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure" because like it's probably the most underrated Gravity Falls book in my opinion. It's like I love that book so much because like the creativity that Jeff had in the stories and like Emmy's illustrations are just some of my favorite in of all the Gravity Falls books. And I know that most people remember that book mainly because of the axolotl poem. And given that you mentioned that's like it's still one can secret, like there's a million videos on YouTube about like what does the axolotl poem mean and stuff, but like I'm more like a fan of like the stories inside of the book that like are of course not canon, but like do you have any parts of that book that you wish or believe to be canon, like maybe character like stuff that like about like Dipper or Mabel, for example, like something mentioned about them in that book? And then also a part alongside that, there's a code in the there's like a message in the book where like Grunkle Stan, when he becomes like a lizard person, he says something in like gibberish, but like it's spelled out in a way that seems like a code, but like no one's been able to crack that. So, like, do you know anything about that as well?

Uh, yeah, I know. I'm glad you enjoyed "Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure." That was just one of these things where like Disney said, "Like, want to do a Choose Your Own Adventure?" I loved Choose Your Own Adventures as a kid, so I was like, "Absolutely. I certainly don't have time to do this. I'm so busy." Um, Jeff was uh Jeff is a such a great writer and he was really excited to tackle it and he had a lot of fun with it. And it was it was really funny and creative. You know, the thing about a a Choose Your Own Adventure is that like it inherently can't be canon because it has parallel existing timelines. And the concept of canon is is broken by the suggestion of all this stuff. So, it was, you know, a chance to just kind of be playful and play around, and Emmy did it. Extraordinary illustrations. I I was I was so knocked out by it. She put so much love and effort, and there was so many illustrations. I felt I felt a little bad when she turned them all in because I was like, "Oh man, we should have asked you for a quarter of this many drawings because you put so much love and detail. They're so appealing." Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, I in my mind, there isn't like that book doesn't necessarily reflect canon. It's as far of the orbit as possible in the sort of expanded narrative. Um, you know, in terms of the the the lizard, I definitely didn't put a code there. So, if there's a code, Jeff's your guy.

Okay. Let's just like each do like maybe one more question and then we have a speed round, a lightning round. Yeah. Uh, we have one prepared, so. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay, this one's a this is probably a quick answer. Um, back in 2021, you revealed that you were working with Dark Horse on a Gravity Falls art art book before Disney scrapped it, and that really broke my heart when I when you I saw that tweet from you. Like I cuz like I have the "Over the Garden Wall" art book and the "DuckTales" art book, and they're just some of the most beautiful books that I've ever owned, and like I can just imagine what a Gravity Falls art book would have been like and what we could have seen in it. Um, what details can you share about that art book? Like what details about the art book can you share that was like planned? Like were there any like versions like the art like the art of DuckTales had like the two different versions? And then like given that book has been released like like the DuckTales art book, like have you have there any been been like any talks about revisiting the concept? And if not, what are the chances of it being revived?

Yeah, I mean, you know, as a as a fan, you know this better than anybody. Like me and my crew, we care so much about delivering something that people love, and we we really really try to do. We try to go above and beyond. It's like it's not enough to make the show. It also has to have secrets and codes, and it also has to have jokes, and it also has to have a journal, and it also has to have a treasure hunt, and the treasure hunt has to have a treasure. Like when we did the the commentary, and when we did the the DVD, I was like, "It has to have commentary on every single track. It has to have hidden commentary. It has to have deleted scenes." Like we put more material in it than any DVD that that company had ever made before. Like anytime we get a shot, we really really try to do right by the fans. So, in terms of an art book, we wanted to make the best damn art book of all time. I mean, we were going to include the very first drawings of every single character. We were going to include um, you know, scrapped storyboards. We're going to include development art before we'd figured out the style of the show. We were going to include um, you know, background paintings and and and color keys and just every single thing that we had, we were going to fit as much of it in the book as we could, and we were going to have um uh we were going to have the editor interview a bunch of the artists, so we're telling the story of the origin of the show, the challenges, the triumphs, as well as as going through all the art, seeing, you know, paths we didn't take, seeing, you know, cut cut material, seeing script pages. Like we wanted to make it like what if you could be, you know, on the ground floor experiencing it. And mainly we just had tons of wonderful material. Um, you know, our our artists are so incredible. Um, and the I have boxes and boxes and boxes of I never threw a single thing away. I'm a pack rat. I have it all, you know. Um, and the thing is it never got off the ground. Like we never started. Like I gathered the material, and then they just ghosted us. Um, and years went by before I I made that tweet where I was like, "Yeah, we just literally got ghosted for no rhyme or reason. We never got an answer to it, you know." Um, so, it's it's a shame. Uh, you know, maybe one day. I I've said to them, I have a standing offer. I say, "I've got all the material. If you ever want to make the book, I'll I'll play ball. I'll I'll play along. I'll make it happen." But um, you know, they're just these again, and the people calling the shots every 2 years they get fired and replaced with somebody else. So, it's like that there's no consistency. So, one day they could have might want to do it.

Have you considered making it barfing gnome themed? Because it would sell it.

Uh, if it was 2012, they would absolutely get anything in.

Got it. Okay. All right. All right. Let's Okay, let's do the quick fire round, and then we can we can like finish this up. Yeah, I'm so sorry. It's all you. The stuff. I also have work soon, so I'm like, "Ah." Yeah. Okay. All right. So, this is your head canon. Um, we know that the show is over, so this is all head canon. I want to say that because there are people who have written fan fiction and are like, "I know what the canon is," and they'll be mad if you say something that contradicts it. So, this is all just your Okay. You get it.

How many minutes do you want on the clock? Like I can I can do the timer.

Uh uh no more than 10 minutes. 10 minutes tops.

Okay. Okay. Okay, let's let's do 5 minutes like together, and then we can spend the last 5 minutes like finishing up and wrapping everything up.

All right. Okay. Okay, let's go. You go first.

Okay. Um, okay, question one. Um, what did Grunkle Stan do in Colombia that got him arrested?

Oh gosh. Um, Hm. My head canon would be that That's so interesting. Grunkle Stan can't walk three blocks without doing something that violates some kind of criminal statute. So, it's like it it doesn't require a lot of imagination to imagine what could have caused that to happen. I don't think Stan was pulling off a brilliant heist. I think Stan Stan did something very small and stupid um not understanding uh the the laws of the country that he was in that landed him um in the situation. And I think, you know what? He probably he probably he probably miss miss executed a bribe. I think I think he did something small, tried to bribe his way out of it, and made it 10 times worse is my hunch.

Okay. All right. Um, did Ford ever use the cloning copy machine, or was that something that was brought into the Mystery Shack after he left?

That's a great question. I think gosh, I mean, that the thing is you're the person to ask for questions like that. To say like that model of Xerox machine, would that have logically existed in the '80s? If not, have. I'm letting you know, I did look into it, and it would have. If but it could also have been just bought by Stan like the wax statues. Sure. I mean, my I don't I don't have a strong intuition on that other than to say that like Gravity Falls has a has a natural law of weirdness. It brings it it it attracts weird things. So, like it it's not hard for for things to wind up in Stan's hands that have real magical properties because like the the town is doing that. So, that's how a [ __ ] like Stan can wind up with real things, some of which are even more impressive than the things that Ford found, which is kind of funny that Ford is like Indiana Jonesing his way across the world trying to find ancient artifacts, and Stan could just be buying them at garage sales because Gravity Falls wants them whether whether you're trying or not.

Okay. All right. Okay. Um, when you is this well known that the the the scrapped labyrinth episode that you were planning that you mentioned on a podcast with JG Quintel? Um, what more details can you tell us about the like quick ones? And also, was there ever a plan to get David Bowie to voice to be a guest star on the show before he passed away?

Yeah, so I mean, the I know this is lightning round, so I'll try to talk quickly. I mean, the I think a lot of times people imagine that the creative process is this very linear thing where you have one big plan and then you do it or don't. And it's as I said before, it's you're exploring, you're improvising the whole way through. So, when I'll, you know, in a in a podcast or something casually mention an idea we'll have, people will say, "Oh, originally they were going to do this, but then they couldn't." And it's like it's not originally. It's like we've got five ideas on the wall and we're trying to decide which one works. Um, and so like with the idea that there could be a labyrinth episode, it was literally just a card that said "Labyrinth." And then I casually pitched it over lunch to one of the executives, and she's like, "That's a very that's a very specific reference. I don't think you can get a whole episode out of that." And I was like, "Oh, maybe you're right." But in my head, I I had a I had a I knew what the sort of setup was in my head, which is that it was movie night, and that Grunkle Stan, Dipper, and Mabel were all going to the the VHS store because Netflix hadn't yet taken over the world yet, and and they were trying to decide what movie to watch. Um, and that Mabel really wanted to watch this um, you know, labyrinth parody, and that and that she got her wish against Dipper's wishes. And that uh it was it it was something to the degree of Mabel No, no, it was Mabel wanted to watch "Labyrinth." Dipper didn't. Dipper convinced the family to watch something else. Mabel was so mad that she wished the Goblin King would come take Dipper away. And then and he does, and then she has to go in and rescue Dipper from this movie. And you learn that the reason Dipper didn't like the movie was that he always had a fear of puppets, and they they scare him, and he has to get over his fear of puppets. And then Mabel, instead of trying to rescue Dipper, is really just flirting with the Goblin King. Um, and the Goblin King is so weirded out by it. Like, we didn't fully arc it out, but we were like, those are the sort of pieces that were involved. Um, I think even if the executive hadn't stopped us, we would have quickly been like, "I'm not sure there is enough of an arc. This is maybe too fantastical." Because we were still figuring out like what what are the rules of reality? Um, but I I would have loved I have so much love for that genre. I would have loved to explore the tone of that uh even even if we weren't quite able to figure out a story behind it. But a lot of those things are it's like it's not like people imagine like we wrote the whole thing and we animated it and then at the second they kept it from you. Like people always saying, "Release this," and I'm like, "There's nothing to release, you know." Right. All we have is a sticky note. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. We only have a sticky note.

All right. I think we got time for like one last rising round question. I got to make it good. [ __ ] Um, okay. Okay. Could Okay. So we know that Bill could possess Ford while he was asleep until he got the metal plate in his head, right? Um, could Ford's was Bill still possessing Ford in the time between him falling through the portal and him getting the metal plate put in his head in dimension 52 years later, or did he not know where Ford was so it didn't work? Had Did you ever think about that? Like there was a Did you have an idea for it?

Emotionally, in my understanding, in my thought of the story, the way I imagine the story, Yeah, whatever connection that that Bill was able to create with Ford where he was able to, you know, ring him up at a moment's moment's notice, pop up in his dream, pop up in his thoughts, you know, offer to possess him to take over his body to do work, that whatever that connection was was somehow severed or nullified by Ford's falling into the nightmare realm and getting lost. That whether it was because of the, you know, properties of the magic, or whether it was because Ford was physically making his way through the multiverse, that that Bill was not I don't imagine that in those 30 years Bill was keeping tabs, poking. Like I think Bill was keeping like trying to find Ford, but I think I I always think of Bill as like this guy who has like like, you know, he's stirring the pot of soup that is the Ford plan, and he's got Ford and 900 other pots of soup across the multiverse of different things he's working on at any given moment. So cocksure that it's all going to work his way eventually that he's like, you know, and also he's so, you know, Bill's a trillion years old. So it's like Ford disappearing for 30 years is like is like somebody saying they're ghosting you and then texting you the next weekend. Ford's going to be back. Oh. Oh. We had such a big fight. Ford's so mad at me. Oh, our Bill and they won't they take over the universe relationship, like he's going to he's going to march off in a huff and he'll be back because where Is Ford going to find anyone else in the multi multiverse that strokes his ego well Bill does? Is there anybody else that's going to make Ford feel as important as Bill? No, of course not. Ford needs validation. And so Bill knows Ford's going to be back eventually. So I I don't That is amazing. I don't think that hunt was too aggressive um between going for it.

Okay. And then one final question. Um, okay. Yeah, sure. I can guess we can ask like one final question. Um, let me just look through, let's see. Okay. This is a quick one. Back in 2013, when you when you went on that road trip between season one and two called Mystery Tour, and you left a bunch of Bill Cipher drawings around around like the Pacific Northwest and stuff. They've been ever since then, like I I've talked to like some of the people who went out and found those Bills that you mentioned that there was going to you were going to give out like a mystery prize to them, and there are a couple of fans who I who I got in touch with who said like they they found it and they're kind of still waiting for. And they still haven't gotten their mystery prize.

Yeah, well, you know what? That's that's amazing that you hunted them down. That was a very disorganized project. It was our first experiment with seeing like, can we make treasure hunts work? Um, yeah, first baby's first ARG. Um, I think uh Um, yeah, how about how about I send you like like some signed sketches or something um, like uh, and and and and you you distribute those to them. Is that okay? Would you be comfortable with that?

Uh, sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Rather than rather than me reaching out to them directly, I feel like they've already If you've already talked to them, it it feels like it's easier to like I give you stuff and you give them a prize. Right.

For sure. I'll I'll message them again. Let them know and we can work that out. That's all awesome. Incredible. We're going to try to be respectful of your time. It's 12:07. We're sorry for going over.

Sorry so about that.

No. No. No, it's fine. No, I like I said, like I'm I'm a I'm a fan. So when I interact with fans, I I'm like, "That's me. I get it." Th- Thank you for this. This is a lot of fun. It's It means It means a lot that you care so much that you you found these things. I mean, you know, stuff that I haven't thought about in years. It's really interesting to to hear about it again, you know, and it's and it's particularly rewarding. Again, I just I can't believe that, you know, 10 years after um, you know, releasing "Tourist Trapped," that anybody even remembers, you know, like I I think that is one of the sort of sometimes disconnects between me and the fan community that everyone's like, "Well, of course it's worthy of this level of care," and it's like, "I only know that because you have revealed that to me." Like, we know that we tried our best, but we had no thought that anyone was going to care. So all the all the passion is just like to me, it's a gift. Like I don't take any of it for granted. I'm I'm, you know, I'm I'm grateful for it. Like, I'm not really as engaged in the fan world these days as I used to be. A, because there isn't new Gravity Falls. Also because just like the I've watched the I've watched the modern fandom culture um in my lifetime go from barely existent to only being a thing about Joss Whedon message boards to literally taking over all of media consumption to being taken as a given that that there's certain things that come with making a show. It's like the shows I was watching growing up were like, you know, like "Doug" and "Rugrats," and and there were no holy wars about um whether Chuckie Finster uh be interpreted this way or that way. Like we had no idea the world that was coming into consciousness as we were thing. Um, anyway, I I do got to run. It was a lot of fun. I hope that these answers were satisfying, you know, I

Yeah, they were amazing. Like, thank you so much, Alex. This means a lot. People always want is like a really clear yes no, hard and fast, and I I know. Understood.

Well, yeah. We can It'll We're talking about a Ford. He's standing on the It's fine. He's saying, "If only they could see me now."

That's awesome. I love that. Great to meet you both.

You too. Thank you for being fans and for keeping the torch alive.

Absolutely. Bye.

All right. Thank you so so much, Alex. Bye. We did it.

Your mic's cutting out a bit. Sorry, I'm screaming. Oh my god. Well, how do we process this? We don't. We We watch the video again and go, "Wow, we look stupid in that frame." It'll be great. That was amazing. I have work in 30 minutes. I'm supposed to be working in 30 minutes. This is insane. Oh my god. What if the Zoom call doesn't save? Oh my god. I'm so That's terrifying to think about. Oh my god. It'll be fine. Everything's fine. This is the best day of my life. You'll be both. All right. Um, I guess I should hang up because I need to eat something and I need to scream and I need to jump up and DOWN AND I'M THAT WAS the best thing ever. I was wondering why you kept looking down the entire time. I was like It's like, oh, there that's what he was doing. He drew us a Ford. Oh my god. Well, I'll talk to you later, man. I'll I'll send you a transcript because I I transcribe pretty quickly. Okay. Perfect. Get that to you ASAP. It might take a full day because I'm also working. I know. Just take your time. Like like this is probably going to take us a few weeks to set up and get out anyways. So. It cost so much to do this call. Oh my god. It was worth it. It was worth it. [ __ ] hell. All right. All right. Bye. Take care, Anna. Bye. Bye.