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The Last Confession of Stanley Pines

So I don't know who's going to be reading this letter, if it ever gets read. Not by Ford. I'm only writing this to get something out of my system, and I just know he's gonna make a big deal out of nothing if he ever finds out about it. Probably make me go to a doctor or whatever. And there's no way I'm shelling out money for some shrink. (You know what I call a psychology degree? A ballpoint pen, some glue, and five bucks' worth of photocopies at Kinko's. Heh. Those rubes at the APA never even knew what hit 'em.)

To make sure he doesn't see this, I'm putting in the one place I know he'll never look: my safe deposit box at the Gravity Falls First Savings and Loan. My brother might be a genius, but he'll never think to check the obvious. And even if he does, he'll have to make it past the self-destruct device I've put in here to keep the IRS from seizing my financial records. (Which reminds me - whoever you are, make sure to burn this after you're done with it. Or eat it, I guess. I'm not picky.)

Anyway, if I had to guess, I figure it's probably Dipper or Mabel who'll be reading this. In that case, you remember all the junk that went down with Bill and the Weirdmaggedon. Better than I do, even. You know about me getting my mind erased to delete the little schmuck. Then how I got my memories back over the next couple of days. All of 'em. Even the stuff that wasn't in Mabel's dinky little scrapbook. Even the stuff I don't wanna remember.

Mom and Dad. The Jersey Shore - both growing up there and the TV show. The boxing lessons. The scams. The jail time. The two-for-one deals at that one buffet place down by the turnpike. It's all there.

Which is kind of the problem, actually...

Okay, problem is way too strong a word. I want you to understand - this isn't a big deal or anything. It's completely under control. There's nothing to worry about. Got it?

It's not that I've forgotten anything. My memory's fine. Like I said, it's all there. Here's the trick, though... lately, I've been remembering more. More than my own memories.

Thing is... if I'm Stan Pines... then why do I remember being born in a two-dimensional pocket reality? How do I even know what a two-dimensional pocket reality is?

But there it is anyway. I remember growing up as a low-caste memetic parasite in a dreary, flat little world among creatures without even the slightest bit of depth. (Okay, so maybe a little like New Jersey.) I remember the first time I got a glimpse of something new, something larger and grander than the flat, tiny little worldview I'd been taught. I remember bursting free from the plane, shattering that tired reality behind me, my consciousness expanding and evolving as I rose through the manifolds. Three dimensions? Four dimensions? Six? Why not? No limits, baby!

I remember the Incursion Wars. I remember struggling and wheeling and dealing with the other gods and kings and abominations for a slice of the reality pie, way back before some dinky little rock called Earth was even a thing. I remember battling with the Time Giants and the fleets of the Fledgling Empires on top of the ruins of Karn. I remember getting stabbed in the back by the Racnoss - not to sound racist or anything, but that is the last time I'm trusting any kind of omni-carnivorous arachnoform - and cast out into the Howling Void... at least until I managed to latch onto a little nightmare realm to call my own. Not much to look at, but beggers can't be choosers. Anyway, all I needed was a place to hang my hat.

I remember running into Rick Sanchez and his idiot grandson - my first clue as to the possibilities of this tiny world. I remember prowling at the edges, reaching through in places where the walls between realities were weak. Spending millennia whispering in dreams, cutting deals, building alliances, planting the seeds of greater things. I remember getting worshipped as a god by this one pack of losers in Egypt. Even got them building pyramids in honor of my greatness... at least before that wet blanket Thoth shut the whole thing down.

I remember all the names they gave me. Oh, so many names. The All-Seeing Eye. The Many-Angled One. Nyarlathotep. He-Who-Deals-In-Souls. The Watcher in Dreams. The Crawling Chaos. (Always did like the sound of that last one.)

I remember the waiting. Oh Yog-Sothoth, the waiting. The endless, hideous waiting. Uncounted eons of years of boredom and nothingness. Tearing apart my own mind and reassembling it from scratch, just to give myself something to do. I even learned how to play euchre at one point. Can you believe that?

So can you imagine my excitement when one of my plans - in a little podunk town in Oregon - finally started coming together? When it looked like I'll finally be able to fulfill my own prophecy and step into a place where I'd once again have real power? Can you imagine the impatience, the frustration, the pure all-consuming rage when a pack of barely-evolved monkeys dared to stand in my way for even the tiniest fraction of a nanosecond? And then - in a final indignity - trapped me in the body of one of them? Some grumpy half-wit retiree with maybe ten to twenty years of existence left? Can you even imagine?...

I should be angry. No. I should be enraged! I should be doing everything I can to burn this tiny world to ashes, until not even a whisper of the word human remains anywhere in creation!

There's just one problem.

Being stuck as Stanley Pines? - In his stinky, flabby wreck of a body? With his primitive genetic-based bonds and his stupid endorphins pumping through his stupid, barely-functioning monkey brain? With his petty little failures and regrets and irritation and pain and love?...

It feels good.

So... like I said, it's nothing to worry about. I've got it under control. As shabby as it might be, life's pretty good for me right now. I'm retired. I've got my brother back. We're travelling the world together, just like we always wanted, trying to patch things up. I've got a few thousand in the bank - under a different name, naturally - to blow in Vegas at some point. And I've got this grand-nephew and grand-niece that I can stand being around. It might not be some fancy eternal extra-dimensional party or whatever, but it'll do.

Because I guess there's one thing me and the one-eyed freak might have in common: after all the time we've spent on the road - after all the scams and the drama and the dreams that never amounted to much - we could both probably do with a little peace.

(I'm serious about you burning this letter, though. Don't let me down here. In fact, if you could just go ahead and burn the whole bank down, that'd probably be for the best.)

Love, your Grunkel,
Stanley Pines (mostly)