the aesthetics of no-drag
It hadn't been Dipper's intention to end up like this. Things have a way of happening in Gravity Falls that subvert expectation and intent. Events carry him like they don't in Piedmont, and it usually isn't worth the effort to fight the crazy flow.
He had headed out into the woods bright and early, wanting to sketch the sunrise from one of the nearby hills. He's been working on improving his artistry with the thought of one day being able to fill his journal with the kind of vivid illustrations Great-Uncle Ford does so well. He wants to be able to capture his subjects that way. Landscapes are a part of that process, so he trekked into the forest with journal in hand, his shoes and socks soaking up the morning dew from the long blades of grass.
Not too far in the trees, he ran into Chutzpar. The Manotaur had been delighted to see his old pal 'Destructor' (Weirdmageddon apparently being all the proof of manhood required) and the two of them talked for a while. Dipper ended up in the Man Cave, swapping tales of apocalyptic heroism, eating beef jerky, and enjoying the kind of acceptance he'd once so urgently craved.
An hour later, he somehow finds himself charging recklessly through the woods on the back of the Multi-Bear, howling in unison with a Manotaur hunting party as they pursue a buck which had a run in with a height-altering crystal and now weighs at least a ton. The deer has already collapsed someone's back porch, stepped on the mayor's car, and crushed two of the water tower's struts, leaving the edifice's already dubious structural integrity in even more question.
Also, Dipper is wearing nothing but a loincloth.
It's absolute madness and he's having the time of his life. The Multi-Bear crashes through a stream and plows into the underbrush, all heads roaring. Chutzpar punches his way through a grove of thistles and out of the corner of his eye Dipper sees Testosteraur headbutt a sapling. They are an unstoppable tide of muscle and behind them is a wake of carnage; they are the world's manliest stampede.
"To the left! Straight up that ravine!" Dipper shouts. The Multi-Bear lunges that way and the Manotaurs spread out around them, forcing the fleeing buck towards what Dipper knows is a dead-end at the foot of the cliff. The desperate animal skids to a halt, its massive hooves kicking up mounds of dirt. It has nowhere to go. It's big enough that it could charge through their perimeter, but it doesn't understand that; it's instinctually terrified.
Gravely, Dipper takes the small leather bag that hangs around his neck and opens it. He reaches inside and raises a single gleaming crystal. With great ceremony, he holds it up directly in the rays of the rising sun. A pink beam shoots out with a flash and the buck begins to shrink. When it returns to its regular size, Dipper places the crystal in the bag and stands up on the Multi-Bear's back.
"Go, my brother!" he tells the deer. "Run and be free!"
The deer spots the Manotaurs moving aside to make a path and darts out of the clearing.
"Good chase. Good chase, everyone," Dipper says, going down the line of Manotaurs and exchanging high fives and bro fists. "Pituataur, up top! You were on fire, man. Beardy, you've got a bird nest in your— oh, on purpose? Right on. Good chase."
"Ha ha! A fine chase, Destructor!" Chutzpar booms, clapping one massive hand on Dipper's shoulder and nearly driving the boy to his knees. "Multi-Bear, good to see you."
"Likewise. Hey, are we still shooting hoop on Saturday?" the Multi-Bear asks.
"You know it, bro. Bring your A-game!"
The Multi-Bear turns to Dipper. "Do you need a ride back to town?"
"You know what, I think I'll walk back," Dipper says. "See you later, man."
"Peace out," the Multi-Bear rumbles, disappearing into the brush.
Dipper is filthy, half-naked, covered head to toe in tiny cuts and abrasions, and couldn't be happier with how the morning has gone. Adrenaline still pumping through his veins, he runs through the woods as if he's still on the mission, vaulting over logs and gullies. He retrieves his journal from a hollow log and then, finally feeling tired, follows the road back to the Shack. About halfway there, he realizes his clothes are still at the Man Cave. Oh, well. He'll have to get them back later.
The Shack has only been open for business for a couple hours by the time he arrives. Tourists usually show up in the afternoon after a morning of driving from wherever they'd been staying the previous night, so the parking lot is empty. Dipper goes into the gift shop, expecting to see Grunkle Stan or Soos stocking for the day. Instead, Mabel is manning the counter.
"Wow!" she says, starting to laugh. "Did you join a family of forest apes when I wasn't looking?"
"Ha ha. I'll have you know that I was being a man with the Manotaurs," Dipper says with great dignity.
"A weird, naked man in a washcloth diaper," Mabel chortles.
"It's a loincloth, I was training! Come on, look at these muscles!" Dipper makes a fist and curls his bicep. "See? Okay, that's not, you know, a lot¸ but…"
Mabel just keeps grinning. "Wait 'til Pacifica sees this!"
Dipper's eyes bug out. He hadn't thought of that. He'd been so caught up in reliving part of last summer that it hadn't even occurred to him. "I'm gonna go change."
He freezes in place when he hears Pacifica's voice. "Dipper?" she calls from what sounds like the living room. "Are you in the gift shop?"
He panics. "Don't come in! You can't come in!"
He can see her feet beneath the swinging 'Employees Only' door. "What? Why?" she asks, clearly annoyed.
"Because, I, ah, you just can't, okay, just… give me a second!" He looks frantically to Mabel.
Mabel's eyes are deeply conflicted, but her empathy wins out over her mischievous impulses. "Um, yeah, you can't come in."
"Why not?" Pacifica snaps.
Dipper begins backing up towards the front entrance, hoping he can swing around the house and get upstairs before he's seen. "Because—"
"He's naked!" Mabel finishes. "Yep, he's totally naked, all over the place. It's gross."
Dipper buries his face in his hands. "Really?"
A long silence from the other side of the swinging door. "…Why are you naked in the gift shop with your sister?"
He drops his hands. "I'm NOT! I'm not naked, it's a whole thing, just— never mind! I'll be right back, just don't—"
Too late. Pacifica pushes open the door and storms in with her eyes flashing, no doubt concluding the two of them have been messing with her. "What the heck, you—" she stops dead in her tracks when she sees him.
Dipper doesn't think he's ever blushed this hard in his entire life. His face is scarlet; he can feel it burning as if he's inches from the fireplace. "Hey," he squeaks.
Pacifica's expression defies description. "…What are you wearing?"
"Uh…" He looks down at himself. "It's a Manotaur thing…"
She won't stop staring at him. "It's a what thing?"
"Manotaur. You remember those big half-man, half-bull guys, right? Hiding out at the Shack…?" He takes another step back. "I need to go change. So…" He takes a few more awkward steps backwards and then, unable to stand the scrutiny any longer, he turns and scurries back outside.
He bolts up to the attic and slams the door to his room behind him. Oh, man. He'd looked like a total idiot. If it had to happen, why couldn't it have happened after he had the chance to fill out a little? Like, in a year or two, or maybe never. He is still working on his muscles, carrying on from last summer, and they haven't gone away, but he's growing so fast that sometimes he feels like he is nothing but skinny limbs and a big head.
He's never going to live this down.
Glumly, he gathers up a change of clothes and goes to the bathroom to shower. His scratches burn in the warm water, though it's not a bad feeling; there's accomplishment attached to them. He dresses, wondering if he can get away with pretending the whole thing never happened.
Taking a deep breath, he goes back downstairs. He tries to put things into perspective. As embarrassing as this is, it's got nothing on the moment he confessed his crush to a Wendy who not only wasn't seriously injured, but wasn't even Wendy. That had been traumatic on many levels. He debates internally how being seen in a loincloth by Pacifica compares to being seen by Wendy in a lamb costume. He concludes they are equally bad as a baseline, but Wendy was his cool older crush and he had wanted her to think he was cool, too, with an almost unbearable desperation.
Pacifica is his girlfriend and they've been through some serious stuff together, and while he does want her to think he's cool, he also knows she's seen the real him already. So that makes him feel a little better about it.
But just a little.
Suddenly aware that he's ravenously hungry after his woodland escapades, he slinks into the kitchen and finds Mabel digging through the refrigerator. She extracts her pitcher of Mabel Juice and begins pouring a glass, plastic dinosaurs and all.
"Hey!" she says when she spots him. "Soos is fixing up the golf cart so we can do donuts in the parking lot! Oh, and Wendy called and said she's going to be late today. But tonight's movie night!"
After the morning he's had, he's okay with hanging around the Shack. Riding on the Multi-Bear hadn't been the smoothest experience and he's starting to ache. "When's the Duck-tective premier again?"
"Next week. Me and Soos are writing a one-act play based on our fanfiction for the premier party; who do you want to play, the Constable or Steve?"
"Uh… I'll get back to you," Dipper says, hoping he can remain behind the scenes.
Mabel finishes her juice in three huge gulps and slams the glass down on the counter. "Ambrosia!" she breathes, and Dipper swears he can see the exact moment the sugar hits her system. "Dipper, I just remembered there's something I want to show you."
"In a minute. I am really hungry," he says, stepping around her to get to the fridge. "Hey!"
She drags him back by his shoulders. He's quite a bit bigger than she is, but she's still surprisingly strong. "No, Dipper, right now! Come on, it's over here."
He looks longingly at the fridge but allows Mabel to drag him forward by the wrist. She's taking him deeper into the house through one of the halls. "Mabel, where are we going?" he whines. "The wax museum? Come on, I want to eat!"
They come to a sudden halt. Mabel puts her hands on his shoulders and looks him straight in the eye. "Dipper, this is for your own good."
A chill runs through him; he's heard her say something very similar before. "Wait—"
She rams him bodily through the nearby open door and slams it behind him. "FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! I LOVE YOU!"
Oh. Oh, no. He's in Pacifica's room. He tries to open the door, but Mabel is holding the knob on the other side. "MABEL!"
"I'm not letting you avoid each other and get all moody!" Mabel yells back. "We've got too much fun to have, bro-bro!"
"Mabel, open the door right—"
"Dipper?"
That's not Mabel. Resigned to his sister-engineered fate, he turns and faces Pacifica, who has just emerged from her bathroom. He can already feel his cheeks turning red. "Hey…"
To his surprise, her face is equally red. "Hi," she says shortly.
"Uh, Mabel locked me in here, and—"
"I heard. And Mabel, this is not okay!" she says, raising her voice.
"Right. Of course you did." He swallows hard, and decides to just get it over with. "Look… I'm really embarrassed about earlier, and—"
"It's not a big deal," Pacifica interrupts. "Right? I mean, you weren't naked or anything. You were being a huge dork or whatever and completely ridiculous, but I didn't see… Well, I saw, you know…" She's getting redder by the second. She's looking everywhere but at him.
But it is a big deal, for reasons Dipper can't articulate. Maybe it shouldn't be a big deal, but that doesn't change that it is. He thinks that it has something to do with where they are in age and where they are in their relationship, and if they were just a little younger or a just little older maybe it wouldn't matter at all, but right now it does. It's so weird and so awkward and he can't talk past it. And he hopes that soon this will all be hilarious, but he can't get there yet. She didn't even see anything, at least not anything she wouldn't see if they went to the pool, though context can be everything (that's always been a weird thing Dipper's noticed, how you can go to the beach wearing next to nothing but go to the store like that and you'll get arrested). But she's blushing like she did, or like…
…like she liked it.
He justisn't ready for this. Her face says she isn't, either. He can't push it. He can't do this, he doesn't know how. They can flirt, and they can dance around the edges of their attraction, but to directly confront this deeper, adult-shaded portion is beyond them. Whatever they are to each other, they haven't reached this point. Maybe in a year, or a few months—or maybe even in a few weeks, who knows? But not right now.
"Sorry I was being so weird," he says in a rush as his brain mercifully unknots. "I had this whole thing with the Manotaurs training me last summer and I ended up hanging with them again. It's kind of a long story."
She shrugs, brushing her hair back in a flippant gesture he remembers well. "So tell me about it sometime. But, no more loincloths. You can't pull that look off. It is not you."
He laughs, mostly out of relief. Anything to get past this moment. "Nope, definitely not. But you were in a potato sack at one point, remember."
"You wish you looked as good as I did in a potato sack," she fires back.
"We should trade sometime and find out," he jokes.
Her eyes widen. He doesn't know why until she says, "You want me to wear that?"
"Huh?" Wait, that would mean she wouldn't be wearing— oh, geez. And he was trying to get out of this mess. "Uh…" He turns around and frantically bangs on the door. "Mabel, we talked! Let us out now!"
The door opens to reveal Mabel smiling beatifically. She evidently hadn't been able to hear the whole conversation. "See, that wasn't so bad! Let's gooooo!"
Mabel rushes off to wherever the golf cart is. Dipper and Pacifica follow a bit further behind. Dipper risks a glance at Pacifica and finds her looking back at him despite her reddened cheeks.
"Now we're even," she says haughtily.
Dipper remembers laughing at her 'getting dirty' slip; his sense of victory had been premature. He nods ruefully. "Okay, we're even."
"I'd look good in anything, though," she brags abruptly.
"No way. No one looks good in tie-dye."
"Anything," she reiterates, jabbing him with one neatly manicured nail.
"Fine, if we go to the Woodstick Festival then you have to prove it."
"You watch. I'll be fabulous," Pacifica states with absolute conviction.
He's just eager at the thought of going to the festival with her, win or lose. And he's definitely not thinking about her wearing a loincloth, because that would be creepy. Nope. Never, ever going to think about it.
…Man. And he thought he'd been awkward and sweaty last summer.
The Aesthetics of No-Drag by Regulator Watts (Dischord, 1997)