>>120024180While I think the idea of his brother being what's in the portal isn't the most exciting, I'm not totally opposed to it, but some of the ways it was handled ruined my enjoyment a bit:
>completely took away Stan's mystery aura making him a lifelong superficial conman that was barely involved with mystery himself and only got character depth in his 70s>had Stan and Ford only ever interact until high school and for a couple of minutes in their 30s for their entire lives until Stan brought him back in their 70s (having a brother I can tell you we'd be strangers if we stopped talking in high school)>made Stan appear incompetent by having him not progress a single inch in bringing Ford back ever since picking up the first journal 30 years ago since he didn't even attempt to find the others let alone succeed, especially since Dipper found one by accident on day 1 and Gideon found one as a kid too >completely neglected to address how 30 years of wandering through dimensions would reflect on a person even as smart and competent as Ford >needlessly convoluted faked death identity switcharoos (more needless than complex, this could've just went unaddressed)There was more I can't remember right now. They should've at least had Stan help Ford and McGucket with the portal and mysteries for a couple of years first, showed Stan actually making the effort to find the journals and maybe even finding and losing journal 2, or had them better hidden, and maybe had Ford stuck in other dimensions for a shorter amount of time. A lot of the decisions felt strange and not fleshed out, for no apparent tradeoffs, and what should've been reveals that gave characters depth and nuance, somehow made them even flatter stereotype caricatures.
>>120024215I saw both Stan and Ford in the GF VN Alex played on one charity livestream before even deciding to watch the show so Ford's existence was kinda spoiled for me and I can't know if I would've picked up on the details otherwise.
