Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure is a Gamebook (or, as the cover puts it, "Select Your Own Choose-Venture!") based on the Gravity Falls series. It was written by Jeffrey Rowe, with help from Alex Hirsch and art by Emmy Cicierega. It was released on July 26, 2016, the same day as the Defictionalized Journal 3 was released.
One fine day, Dipper and Mabel stumble upon time traveler Blendin Blandin, who's searching for the treasure trove of the Time Pirates, a group of rogue time travelers who stole history's greatest treasures and hid it somewhere. Bored and interested in untold riches, the Mystery Twins quickly get themselves involved, and must choose between one of three time periods to find the key to the treasure;
- Medieval Times, where the king makes them go on one of three quests,
- The Old West, full of desperadoes and other typical cowboy shenanigans,
- Or the future, where two members of the Time Pirates were sighted.
Where should they go? The choice is yours… (Or that guy who reads over your shoulder and butts into your business. I'm talking to you, Steve!)
Time Tropes!
- All of Them: When the trio needs to infiltrate the Infinitentiary to find Davy Time-Jones, Mabel gets them all arrested and sent there by going up to a cop and confessing to "all of the time crimes".
- Ambiguously Gay: When Blendin, Disguised in Drag, catches the attention of a man on the train, he's interested enough that he wants to see where it goes while Dipper and Mabel keep going without him.
- Anti-Climax: Some of the endings, where the twins don't actually meet any kind of bad fate, but just get tired of or bored with the treasure hunt and decide to go back home to the Mystery Shack.
- Bad Present: Two endings features this:
- If Mabel chooses to use dynamite to escape danger, they end up striking oil and Blendin decides to become a rich oil tycoon and promises to leave a portion of money buried somewhere for Dipper and Mabel to find years later. But when they return to Gravity Falls, it has become an apocalypse run by Toby Determined, who had found the buried gold and used it to take over the town.
- If the group confronts the men in the saloon and Dipper claims they're the new entertainers, they're successful enough at it that Blendin is happy and making money and decides to remain there. Dipper and Mabel return home...only to find that Blendin staying in the past somehow resulted in one of the 40% of timelines with the lizard people taking over.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Dipper turns out to be the soothsayer Nostradamus in the "Go Through with the Marriage" ending, having been egged on by Wendinella into using his knowledge of the future to scare the people of the 20th century with vague prophecies.
- Blessed with Suck: At one point you are given a choice between having the heroes get the Midas touch or eternal youth. See how either goes.
- Brick Joke:
- In the Introduction, Blendin fires one of his futuristic laser guns into the distance, which is followed by Toby Determined screaming. Depending on what you choose, you may run into him in one of the eras.
- Dipper expresses concern that, if they mess up the past too badly, they could create a Bad Present or Bad Future ruled by lizard people or something. Blendin assures him that the lizard people timeline only happens about 40% of the time, and they're usually pretty nice. The twins discover in one of the endings that leaving Blendin in the past while they return to the present somehow resulted in the lizard people timeline coming true.
- Burn the Witch!: This nearly happens to Dipper, Mabel, and Blendin by mob led by Shopkeeper Sprott. They manage to escape back to the present which leads to an ending where they encounter Farmer Sprott and learn that his western ancestor was burned alive as punishment for letting them escape. Dipper and Mabel contemplate whether they should feel guilty, but decide that it's In Spite of a Nail since Farmer Sprott hates witches regardless.
- Butt-Monkey: Blendin as usual. He is ignored, casually insulted, and in some endings, even left behind to a crappy fate by the twins and other characters. Even in the main ending, he is promptly betrayed by the Time Pirates once he brings them to the treasure, and though Dipper and Mabel decide to save him anyway despite him betraying them, they do so while noting that he's dumb and a terrible time-traveler.
- Butterfly of Doom: Discussed; Dipper worries that stepping on a twig might result in a Bad Future ruled by reptilians. Blendin assures that only happens 40% of the time, and those eras aren't so bad. In one ending, this does happen.
- But Thou Must!: A few choices turn out to be these.
- It is averted if you decide to say no to Blendin's offer. The book offers an ending where the twins are bored and wondering if they should have taken the offer. This is Gravity Falls, though; another adventure will come their way.
- Chekhov's Gun: Mabel's yarn ball sweater.
- Cruel Twist Ending: A few, but lampshaded specifically in the Marry Princess Wendinella ending; Dipper worries that she might die and leave him broken-hearted. See below for more details.
- Disguised in Drag: Blendin in the Wild West, and it's convincing enough that he's able to woo the owner of the train they intend to rob.
- Doomed by Canon: Nonfatal example; the Pines' middle-class status doesn't change in the good ending. That's because Dipper and Mabel bury the treasure in the woods so that they won't have to pay taxes on it and Grunkle Stan won't get greedy. Dipper only keeps one coin to flip when he's indecisive.
- Et Tu, Brute?:
- Happens if Dipper chooses to turn Davy Time-Jones over to the Time Police. This leads to one of the endings where Dipper and Mabel go back to the Mystery Shack and life goes on, but Dipper never gets over the immense guilt.
- Downplayed with the main ending. Dipper and Mabel are definitely not happy when they find out that Blendin lied to them all along and used them (as he secretly made a deal with the Time Pirates to get them the treasure in exchange for joining them); however, in the proper ending, they decide that Blendin's still their friend despite the betrayal and fight the Time Pirates to rescue him after the Pirates betray him.
- Fire-Forged Friends: The Twins and Blendin. This is especially evident in the main ending, where Mabel and Dipper decide to fight the Time Pirates and save Blendin even after he (non-maliciously) betrayed them; after the group finds the treasure, Blendin admits that this is the only timeline where he's had friends.
- Foreshadowing: In a secret ending (as in one ending that gives you a code that you have to decipher which leads you to a website link that holds another ending) Dipper and Mabel meet a dimensional being named The Axolotl. When Dipper gives it his name, The Axolotl responds with, "No, it isn't." reaffirming that Dipper isn't his true name. His real one isn't revealed until Gravity Falls: Journal 3.
- Genius Bruiser: Sir Swollsly, the asinine frat-boy prince in the middle ages, is the best chess player in his fraternity, and absolutely loves the game - to the point that he's even able to best Dipper at it. He's only beaten on the jousting route.
- Happily Ever After: Quoted verbatim in the "Go Through with the Marriage" ending in regards to Dipper and Wendinella.
- Identical Grandson: Farmer Sprott's ancestor is running a general store in the old west, and Bud Gleeful's cyborg descendant has a used spaceship lot in the future.
- Identical Stranger: In medieval times, there's a princess who is a carbon copy of Wendy. In the old west, there's a prospector who resembles Old Man McGucket.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Wendinella coughs after mentioning that only death can come between her and Dipper in the ending where they marry, and when Dipper questions it, she mentions that everyone gets a bit of the plague here and there in medieval times. Subverted, however, when Wendinella lives through it as if it were no more deadly than a common cold, and she and Dipper have a long and happy life together.
- Interspecies Romance: Forced upon Dipper if he refuses the King's offer of the princess' hand in marriage, whereupon he is married off to the King's prize donkey.
- Lampshade Hanging: All over the place, especially in quite a few of the bad endings that required making a blatantly wrong choice to get there.
- Made a Slave: The fate for Dipper, Mabel, and Blendin in the Medieval Times' "Find a Replacement Suitor" ending, at the hands of the newly crowned King Robbie Valentino.
- Mine Cart Madness: At one point, you must decide if you want to escape danger by setting off dynamite, or taking a ride down a rickety mine cart.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Judge Hangamanforanycrime. He lives up to his name, too - he really is a judge.
- Nominal Hero: Depending on your choices, the Twins and Blendin do some pretty unethical things in pursuit of the treasure.
- Press Start to Game Over: The very first choice has the option to not go on the treasure hunt, leading to an ending where Dipper and Mabel go back to the Mystery Shack and regret this decision as they wait for another adventure to come their way.
- Prince and Pauper: In the "Refuse the Marriage" ending, Wendy learning about Wendinella inspires her and Mabel to pull this to cause a little chaos in medieval times.
- Shout-Out:
- The space racers operate more-or-less the same as pod racers in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
- Similarly, Blendin makes a deal with the emperor that if they lose the space race, then he, Dipper, and Mabel will have to wear metal bikinis and work in the emperor's space casino.
- During the future race, Dipper and Mabel have to contend with Toby Determined as Racer T.
- Dipper's plan to infiltrate the Infinitentiary is an exact recounting of the plot of Face/Off.
- When Dipper and Mabel get stuck in aristocratic France and end up on the wrong side of a revolution that basically turns into what the narrator compares to Les Misérables.
- Stable Time Loop:
- In the "Go Through with the Marriage" ending, Dipper turns out to have been the real identity of Nostradamus. Having lived in the future and heard of him, Dipper uses this pen name to write vague prophecies of the future (using his knowledge of the time) to freak people out at Wendinella's urging.
- In another ending, Dipper and Mabel accidentally end up becoming feared as criminals known as the "Calamity Brothers", whom they've heard of as the most feared bandits of all time. They realize that the Calamity Brothers were them all along and never existed on their own, and decide to live out the rest of their lives as these outlaws.
- Space "X": Blendin still does this to the point that Mabel asks Blendin if someone pays him every time he says the word "Time".
- Status Quo Is God: In the good ending, Dipper and Mabel decide to bury their share of the infinite treasure because they don't want to deal with the headache of paying taxes on it and Grunkle Stan getting his hands on it. If Stan had known about the money, he would have been less stressed about Ford kicking him out. Similarly, Dipper could have funded the ghost hunting show he wanted to make. But if they had done those, then it would violate canon.
- Time Crash: One ending leads Dipper, Mabel, and Blendin to be trapped in an endless void filled with copies of themselves from infinite alternate universes where the three made poor choices.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: A few endings.
- In the main ending, Blendin and the kids find the treasure, allowing Blendin to move out of his mother's house.
- In the "Go Through With The Marriage" ending, Dipper marries Princess Wendinella, basically scoring a version of his dream girl, gets a kingdom of his own, and suffers no cruel twist whatsoever.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The twins and Blendin have become this. There are a lot of insults thrown around (most—but not all—from the twins), but they do refer to each other as friends in several different timelines.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: In the "Eternal Youth" ending, Dipper and Mabel spend years stuck as prepubescent adolescents, forced to outlive their loved ones in Time Baby's uprising while Blendin is stuck looking the same as he did before. They spend the next decades trying to find ways to occupy their time for all eternity.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: A few other endings...
- In the "Midas Touch" ending, the gang catches themselves before high-fiving each other, only to turn to gold anyway when they pause to wipe their brows in relief.
- In the "Find a Replacement Suitor" ending, because the gang only wants the Time Key and marrying Dipper off to a medieval princess is irrelevant, they pluck Robbie from present day to marry off... only to then discover that the princess is identical to Wendy, leading Dipper to immediately regret the decision and everyone suffering when Robbie smashes the Time Tape and turns the gang into his royal slaves. Similarly, if Dipper refuses the marriage after he knows that the princess is basically a carbon copy of Wendy, he states that it was probably the right choice... before the present day Wendy comes in wearing an old wedding dress she found, leading Dipper to run out of the room in tears.
- You Already Changed the Past: Before going to the old west, Blendin warns Dipper and Mabel that they are going to the western period that is ruled by history's most dangerous bandits, The Calamity Brothers. Depending on what choice you make, Dipper, Mabel, and Blendin try and rob a train and be cornered by the sheriff and his crew. If you choose to run for it, Dipper and Mabel leave Blendin behind and become feared outlaws known as "The Calamity Brothers". This makes Dipper realize that the Calamity Brothers never existed on their own because the legend was about them all along. They decide to just roll with it.
