>>86133472Although Bill wasn't going to be there for the very beginning, I think that by the time they actually started the show, he was actually supposed to be the main villain, but I think things with him were supposed to be a little less boring and straightforward. They were doing the messages from Bill in other materials pretty early and he was the "He" who Ford couldn't let find his journals from the first episode, so there was a lot of foreshadowing. But his plan should have been more complicated, maybe it was supposed to be, but there was no time. S1 had a lot of filler like Mabel's boy craziness so they didn't have much time in S2 for something too convoluted and by the time S2 started people already wanted to quit the show because it was so much hassle and stress.
I think the series probably started with Alex thinking of his summer with his sisters and Grandpa, probably started with ideas about that and a tourist trap, and supernatural stuff.
The Journals and Bill were probably a later addition than that, at first, Bill was just supposed to appear to Dipper in his dreams each episode, but only to Dipper, and was supposed to make fun of "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" conspiracy nuts. This ironically probably led to his popularity as a meme character, because conspiracy nut jokes are funny, and well, meme-y. But then he needed to kind of be shoved into the role of a typical kids' show villain, instead of the more Rick and Morty stuff in say the AMA, and some people didn't really think it worked. Probably one of a lot of cases where Alex and other people making the show wanted to do more R&M or Simpsons humor and were frustrated because it was a kids' show, that happens a lot.
I wish they had done more with the Zodiac and the Northwests, the Blind Eye, the Holy Mackerel and all of that, not incredibly complicated but a little less simple.
