Life gets Stranger in Gravity Falls

by MrI95

It's summer 2016, and young photographer Max Caulfield is travelling through Oregon, looking for a place where the weirdness in her life will make sense. That place is named Gravity Falls. WARNING: this work was planned as a one-shot tribute, but I MAY turn it into a serialised story IF I feel like it AND there is audience interest.

TRANSCYPT OF AN AUDIO FILE FOUND ON MAXINE CAULFIELD'S LAPTOP UNDER THE SIGNATURE D:/GF CASE/#0 - 5-6-16

Hello world.

My name's Maxine Caulfield, but call me Max. Seriously.

I'm nearly 21, DoB is 21 September 1995, trade is photography… and time travel.

Yep, on 7 October 2013 I suddenly became able to rewind time around me and, later on, to go back to past events using photos as a link. No, it's not that cool: not after you've spent a week trying to stop the psycho teacher terrorising your high school, not after you get him busted and still have to choose between:
A. Going back to the beginning of the week, and letting your childhood betsie-slash-crush get shot to death.

Or

B. Sticking to the timeline you created, where a butterfly-effect-produced tornado wipes out your home town.

Wanna know what I did? Go google it for yourself, keywords Arcadia Bay, Oregon, October 2013. I cannot tale the story one more time, I simply can't…

(Sighs)

So, you may ask what am I doing here in the middle of my native Oregon, on a pickup, with the camping stuff and photo equipment you would expect from a Big Foot hunter, don't you?

Well, I AM on a freaks hunt, in a way.

My time powers never wore off after that week, and I've spent all these years trying to cope with them. It's been hard. After a while, I felt like digging into pseudo-sciences and conspiracies and weirdness in general, hoping I could reach out to someone else involved with paranormal shit.

Well, I've found records of this couple of scientists named Stanford Pines and Fiddleford McGuckett: they spent the early '80s studying supernatural stuff in central Oregon, disappeared all of a sudden and popped back in business in 2012. Starting from them, I've collected rumors about the gnomes, dinosaurs, ghosts, zombies and living videogame characters spotted in that area, and most of all I found a disturbing creepypasta about the Weirdmageddon of late August 2012…

You know, an artist-slash-reporter travels where things are happening, so I packed up and drove through the forest looking for this remote town of weirdness, this Gravity Falls. Local people are elusive about their "local folklore" and the very mayor, Mr. Tyler, told me to "NEVERMIND IT!" (I quote)... but I do know that Stanford Pines's twin brother Stanley used to own a freakshow museum in the forest, now run by local geek Jesus "Soos" Ramirez. And apparently the Pines twins' grandnephews from California are spending their summer break there.

As crazy as it may sound, I am dead serious on my next move: I'm headed to the Pines's Mystery Shack, then I'll see. I know, I'm meddling with what could just be another Oregon tourist trap, but all the scraps of info I've put together makes me believe it isn't… and I cannot spend one more day feeling like an anomaly in the order of things. I hate having this ability to change things around me to such an extent, I hate the constant pressure of not knowing whether to use it or not, I HATE NOT BEING ABLE TO TALK ABOUT IT WITHOUT BEING LOOKED AT LIKE A TRAUMATIZED IDIOT!

(Panting)

Ok, here's the Shack. I'm getting in. Wait for the next podcast.

Hopefully.