If there was one single expert on forgettin' in Gravity Falls, it was good ol' Fiddleford McGucket.

Heck, he was the creator of the memory gun, the founder of the Society of the Blind Eye, and he'd been wiping his own memories for decades before that Blind Ivan feller had taken the gun from him. On top o' that, thanks to his memories finally returning, he knew exactly how forgettin' actually worked – after all, how else was he supposed to 'ave made the memory gun do it if he didn't know how the human brain did it?

But knowin' how it worked and seeing it happen every time he exited a room – seein' his son's eyes go blank every time he looked over his own shoulder, or watchin' the Northwest girl try 'n describe him to somebody else even though she didn't remember a gosh darn thing – were two completely different cans of beans.

What, oh what, had he done to deserve this? All he'd ever done was gone to college, went to make a name for himself, and come to help a friend with his research! And yet here he was, sittin' in a room in the new McGucket estate, and turnin' into a monster.

The teleportation thingamabob had scared him something awful, especially after he'd been stuck halfway through a wall, but it was nothin' compared to watching his own hands grow long and spindly, and his arms turn to twigs, all in but a few short seconds. He'd seen what had happened of the last time he'd been turned inta' somethin' new – he'd lost years of his life that way, and he didn't want to become the madman he once was, not again.

Even after the scare had faded, and he realized he was still the ol' Fiddleford he remembered, he wasn't the same, and even when people remembered them, he'd seen the looks of unease in all their faces whenever he was nearby, and whenever they saw him.

There was something truly awful, seeing that fear on people's faces, after everythin' he'd went through for this here town, and it led him to think that, just maybe, it was better to be forgotten, just this once.

It was the young'un Mabel Pines, during one of her many flights across the town, that first suggested it.

"You know, Old Man McGucket?" She said, beaming at him. "It'd be nice if I could actually remember what you looked like and sounded like after I left!"

She hadn't brought up the subject again, but after she left, an' the house had gone back to being quiet, his son had come into the room with a thoughtful expression on 'is face.

"You know, Pops, it would be nice to have a picture of you or something."

So they'd started tryin' things.

The first thing they'd tried was one of the old cameras his son had collected in his young'un years. The photograph was taken and developed, the first photos of Fiddleford since Weirdmageddon.

It came out blurred somethin' awful, but even so, if you squinted at it, you could barely make out Fiddleford's figure, far too tall and skinny, even for an old man.

So they kept tryin'. They moved onto another photograph, and another, until the ol' camera ran out of film and burned out from whatever supernatural force was brewin' beneath his skin. After that, they tried movin' on to newfangled cameras – fancy digital cameras with video-traping and flash that could be turned off. Those cameras burned out all the quicker, and every time he appeared in the pictures, his new monster-body was blurry and blotchy, like the scribbles of a madman.

How fittin', for a former madman to look like the creation of another.

Eventually, they gave up on the cameras entirely and moved on to writin'. Words couldn't be blurred out by describing something. Still, that presented another problem entirely, because whenever his son looked away from him to write down the words, he completely forgot what he was goin' to write.

"Or for heaven's sake!" The Northwest girl burst out finally one day, seeing their struggles. "Here, I'll describe him, and you just write the words down!"

And she did so, staring him full in the face even as her newfangled golden eyes twitched in protest. She described him down to every last detail, from the odd glowin' wisps of his beard to his twiggy arms to his deep-sunken eyes and long pointy face and nose, and the spindly joints of each hand and foot, as well as their long ragged nails.

When she was done, she left immediately, and took him a mighty long time to find 'er again, and ask why she'd done it.

"Because you don't deserve that," she snapped. "You were one of the people that saved the town and the first hillbilly that a Northwest ever held hands with! People shouldn't forget that, or you!"

All he could do was thank her, and leave before his eyes could start gushing.

Several weeks later, the letter his son had sent off to his former wife came back with a drawing of the creature the letter had described – a picture of him, based on the description his ol' flame had gotten, with a tiny message in her handwriting down in the corner.

Hang in there, Fiddle. Even if we don't remember what you look like, we still remember you.

He did cry, then.

I didn't mean this to happen, but McGucket somehow ended up kinda... Slenderman-y.

Also, sorry this took me so long to write this! You wouldn't think McGucket would be hard to write, but... well.