History FanFic / DrowningInYourDepths

* DecompositeCharacter: Bill Cipher, the antagonistic demon of the ''Gravity Falls'' series, has his character split into what appears to be two separate characters: the more affable ChaoticNeutral characterization most fans attributed to Bill post-Dreamscaperers is given to current Pirate Captain Bill Cipher, secondary protagonist and Dipper's friend [[spoiler:and eventual lover]]. The more malevolent characterization of the second half of the series, complete with making prophecies, threatening the lives of the Pines family, and inspiring paranoid tension in Ford, seems to be embodied by "Cipher," a mysterious demon whom Ford fears that may in fact be connected to Captain Bill Cipher, although it's unclear how right now. This character overhall has the benefit of adding a [[NobleDemon considerable]] [[LoveableRogue amount]] [[AmbiguousDisorder of]] [[ReluctantPsycho depth]] to Bill's character.

** It also implied that it "visits" Tad, and that Tad just never said anything about this. If this is true this would confirm the voice's supernatural rather than entirely psychological nature; however, we as of yet have no proof of this claim--if the voice itself is a mundane symptom of Bill's AmbiguousDisorder, then any claims such as this could equally be so.

* HumansAreBastards: Bill certainly believes so.

** In ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', Bill is a powerful supernatural creature offering to make deals that further his own ends, while Dipper is a far less powerful mortal that Bill makes a deal with and takes advantage of; Bill is perpetually the one with greater power. In ''Drowning,'' Bill is a human[[spoiler:[[AmbiguousSituation ?]]]] in the process of literally drowning, and Dipper is the ridiculously powerful supernatural creature that saves his life and offers him a ship, crew, and return to the surface--on Dipper's terms and conditions, of course. Downplayed in that they haven't swapped dispositions, only power dynamics; Dipper is still compassionate and Bill's still mentally unstable.

* FunnySchizophrenia: While Bill [[ThereAreNoTherapists exists in a time before psychiatrists and thus does not have a formal diagnosis]], and while the underlying causes are probably supernatural rather than entirely mundane, many of Bill's symptoms would probably get him diagnosed with some kind of mood or personality disorder under the umbrella of schizophrenia, although rarely does any version of schizophrenia manifest with violence like Bill's. It should not surprise anyone, therefore, that this story averts FunnySchizophrenia ''hard:'' rather than causing anyone humor, Bill's apparent mental illness causes him to fear those around him will flee from him should they find out about his issues, and his inability to function in normal society for a consistent duration is the very reason he's a pirate. Bill's very much characterized as a ReluctantPsycho, and while he's incorporated his reputation for fearsome mental instability into his charismatic facade for the sake of his survival, his inability to always be in control of himself is in no way played for laughs.

* HearingVoices: Bill hears a voice that constantly sasses and disagrees with him. While this and other unusual behaviors of Bill's mimic some kind of mental illness, it's unclear to what extent these symptoms are mundane or magic. The voice in particular talks like an entity very independent of Bill and self-aware that it "inhabits" him. At one point, it threatens to possess his "vessel" out of frustration; however, it doesn't appear to mean him harm, instead expressing the desire to keep Bill stable, claiming it's only staying with him to keep him from falling apart out of "love," and its major problem appears to be Bill's self-destructive behavior. It also appears to ship Bill and Dipper.

* InternalReveal: Dipper's and Bill's stop at Nassau reveals to the majority of the pirate community that Bill's new first mate is an inhuman being powerful enough to summon god-tier entities unseen for thousands of years. Depending on how many of Gideon's followers escaped and what they learned before they did, Gideon now likely also knows.

* InsaneTrollLogic: After hearing word that a shipwreck ''possibly'' previously crewed by human pirates was raised from the seafloor around the time Dipper disappeared, Ford falls to TheoryTunnelvision, and, from only ''three'' pieces of information--pirates possibly in the area, a ship recently sank and then was raised from the seafloor half a day later, and Dipper disappeared around this time--Ford concludes definitively that Dipper is being held prisoner by pirates on that formerly sunken ship. This conclusion completely ignores a lot of the actual evidence surrounding said disappearance, like the fact that it was well known that Dipper was chaffing under the living conditions forced upon him ''by Ford,'' and that Dipper clearly came back home in secret right before his disappearance in order to gather materials before leaving again, as if knowingly preparing not to come back. Ford's theory also ignores that while there is evidence that Dipper left of his own volition, there is no evidence whatsoever that Dipper is or ever was anywhere near the sunken ship, or that anyone survived the sinking of the ship, or even if anyone went down with the ship in the first place, let alone that Dipper had somehow been kidnapped by these entirely hypothetical survivors. Given that it's explicitly stated that magic is uncommon and comparatively weak amongst humans and that no human can see the future, it's also just flat-out completely insane to believe without evidence that these hypothetical human pirates stuck at the bottom of the ocean coincidentally were already prepared for successfully battling and capturing an extremely powerful and magical siren during the wrecking of their ship ''and'' for somehow restoring their sunken ship to the surface while simultaneously trying not to drown at the bottom of the ocean for eleven hours straight after the story went out of its way to demonstrate how clumsy humans are in the water even when they're ''not'' drowning. [[SarcasmMode But what other answer could there be?]] Even the semi-accuracy of their assumption is astonishing considering how little evidence they used to get to it. The more obvious and evident solution is that Dipper ran away, and if they really wanted to connect him to the sunken ship with no evidence, OccamsRazor would imply that ''Dipper,'' the only confirmed magical entity in the area at the time, may have used the recently sunken ship as his escape, especially since he came back and took the magical materials necessary for serious magical work with him; no phantom impervious-to-drowning siren-capturing magic pirates necessary. But instead of seeing the more obvious and likely explanation (one Stan even ''warned'' might happen if they confined Dipper too strictly), the Stan twins appear to have heard the word "pirates" and turned their brains off.

* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: Played with. Characters talk quite a lot about the pirating Bill has committed prior to the story, but due to the focus on hunting Gideon, none of that has so far gone on during the story proper. The characterization of Bill in the first chapter sounds far more like a pirate than the softer character we see him be around [[LoveInterest Dipper]] and [[EccentricMentor Rezin]].

* SwappedRoles: In ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', Bill is a powerful supernatural creature offering to make deals that further his own ends, while Dipper is a far less powerful mortal that Bill makes a deal with and takes advantage of; Bill is perpetually the one with greater power. In ''Drowning,'' Bill is a human[[spoiler:[[AmbiguousSituation ?]]]] in the process of literally drowning, and Dipper is the ridiculously powerful supernatural creature that saves his life and offers him a ship, crew, and return to the surface--on Dipper's terms and conditions, of course. Downplayed in that they haven't swapped dispositions, only power dynamics; Dipper is still compassionate and Bill's still mentally unstable.
** Similarly, [[spoiler:if the implications about Bill's father being both the conspicuously unnamed pirate who wrote the prophecy ''and'' a DecompositeCharacter of canonical Bill Cipher are true, then he and Ford are also this, At the time they appear to have met and collaborated, Ford was a supernatural creature who shared information on magic and the supernatural with his curious human friend, and Bill's father was a rougish human who left behind a journal of dark and mysterious research, whose work is unfinished, whose identity outside of his authorship of the journal is mysterious, and whose ultimate fate is unknown but implied to be grim--which is the opposite of their roles in Gravity Falls (wherein Cipher is the magical mentor and Ford the mysterious unnamed author whose work is both ominous and unfinished). Like Dipper and Bill, however, they've generally kept their canon dispositions.]]

* UnderestimatingBadassery: Dipper in human form is described as quite small, rather pretty, and physically female despite his male gender identity. Given that this is the Golden Age of Piracy and neither women nor trans individuals were very highly thought of or even well understood, there have been occasions when characters are particularly rude or cruel to Dipper while operating on the assumption that he has no power to do anything about it. They would be wrong.

* WaterIsAir: Bill lampshades how strange it is that he can talk and converse with Dipper after Dipper temporarily gives him the ability to breathe underwater--which should have, logically, affected the actual acoustics of their voices and made human-style linguistics almost impossible, as sound waves travel very differently in the denser water than in air and the human ear is not adapted to pick up sounds accurately in those conditions. Similarly, Bill can also see perfectly clearly [[SeeWater while submerged in salt water]], despite the human eyes not being adapted to the refractive indices of water and despite salt water generally being very painful for the human eyeball. Though it's never confirmed, there's always the out that these effects were tied in with the spell Dipper cast to enable Bill to breathe. It ''is'' actually implied that the merfolk's natural magic enables them to speak and sing like humans even under the sea, so the idea that some of these attributes would carry over in the temporary spell isn't ''that'' far of a stretch. [[spoiler:Of course, the fact that Bill himself likely isn't entirely human and has his own natural magic may also contribute]].

''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008528/chapters/11509696 Drowning in Your Depths]]'' is a ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' AlternateUniverseFic written by [=AngstMom=] formerly updating regularly on Fridays and currently undergoing a massive rewrite. Warnings for graphic depictions of violence, major character deaths, and explicit sexual content.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Discussed InUniverse--there is clearly ''something'' wrong with Bill mentally, but nobody knows exactly what. [[spoiler:Beginning at the onset of young adulthood, Bill began regularly hearing a voice in his head which exhibits a contrasting personality from his own and frequently argues with him over his decisions as if it was a spectator. Bill also displays a tendency to [[RageBreakingPoint snap under extreme emotional stress]] and lose all inhibitions preventing his anger from spiking into an incredibly violent rage, an AxCrazy state of mind that he refers to as his "Beast." This mental condition is arguably the very reason Bill became a pirate: after his first violent snap back when he was still an honest trader, Bill knew he could never stay on the legal side of the sea without being hunted because this "Beast" had remained in his head since its first appearance and continued to periodically emerge. Though the story gives hints that the symptoms are [[NeurodiversityIsSupernatural possibly tied in with the supernatural]], the origins of the problems do not negate the nature of their existence: Bill clearly suffers from persistent mental health issues that definitely cause him "significant distress and impairment of personal functioning," which is the literal definition of a mental illness, even if it is one that in some way involves magic.]]

* TheProphecy: Multiple individuals have discussed a "prophecy" at varying points. Bill offhandedly mentions that one is visually depicted on a stained glass window in the captain's quarters, First Scale fondly implies that she knows one relating to Dipper's and Bill's relationship, and Stan and Ford imply knowledge of one during their conversations when searching for Dipper. The only instance of any such prophecy being given in full for the reader is during the Pirate Council meeting at Nassau, in which the Praesul presents two passages supposedly predicting the future that were written by a conspicuously unnamed pirate twenty years ago. It should be noted that though this is called a prophecy, the actual passages, when paired with the name the passages are addressed to, read more like a promise of revenge, or a curse. [[spoiler: The prophecy seems to have been written for Ford and to be about some sort of revenge the writer will enact upon his "lass" after a period of eighteen years. It's implied the writer may be Bill's father.]]

* TheProphecy: Multiple individuals have discussed a "prophecy" at varying points. Bill offhandedly mentions that one is visually depicted on a stained glass window in the captain's quarters, First Scale fondly implies that she knows one relating to Dipper's and Bill's relationship, and Stan and Ford imply knowledge of one during their conversations when searching for Dipper. The only instance of any such prophecy being given in full for the reader is during the Pirate Council meeting at Nassau, in which the Praesul presents two passages supposedly predicting the future that were written by a conspicuously unnamed pirate twenty years ago. It should be noted that though this is called a prophecy, the actual passages, when paired with the name the passages are addressed to, read more like a promise of revenge, or a curse. [[spoiler: The prophecy seems to have been written for Ford and to be about some sort of revenge the writer will enact upon his "lass" after a period of eighteen years. It's heavily implied the writer is Bill's father.]]

* AmbiguousDisorder: Discussed InUniverse--there is clearly ''something'' wrong with Bill mentally, but nobody knows exactly what. [[spoiler:Beginning at the onset of young adulthood, Bill began regularly hearing a voice in his head which exhibits a contrasting personality from his own and frequently argues with him over his decisions as if it was a spectator. Bill also displays a tendency to [[RageBreakingPoint snap under extreme emotional stress]] and lose all inhibitions preventing his anger from spiking into an incredibly violent rage, an AxCrazy state of mind that he refers to as his "Beast." This mental condition is arguably the very reason Bill became a pirate: after his first violent snap back when he was still an honest trader, Bill knew he could never stay on the legal side of the sea without being hunted because this "Beast" had remained in his head since its first appearance and continued to periodically emerge. Though the story gives strong hints that the symptoms are [[NeurodiversityIsSupernatural probably tied in with the supernatural]], the origins of the problems do not negate the nature of their existence: Bill clearly suffers from persistent mental issues that definitely cause him "significant distress and impairment of personal functioning," which is the literal definition of a mental illness, even if it is one that in some way involves magic.]]

* AmbiguousDisorder: Bill has a pretty severe one. [[spoiler:Beginning at the onset of young adulthood, Bill began regularly hearing a voice in his head which exhibits a contrasting personality from his own and frequently argues with him over his decisions as if it was a spectator. Bill also displays a tendency to [[RageBreakingPoint snap under extreme emotional stress]] and lose all inhibitions preventing his anger from spiking into an incredibly violent rage, an AxCrazy state of mind that he refers to as his "Beast." This mental condition is arguably the very reason Bill became a pirate: after his first violent snap back when he was still an honest trader, Bill knew he could never stay on the legal side of the sea without being hunted because this "Beast" had remained in his head since its first appearance and continued to periodically emerge. Though the story gives strong hints that the symptoms are [[NeurodiversityIsSupernatural probably tied in with the supernatural]], the origins of the problems do not negate the nature of their existence: Bill clearly suffers from persistent mental issues that definitely cause him "significant distress and impairment of personal functioning," which is the literal definition of a mental illness, even if it is one that in some way involves magic.]]

''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008528/chapters/11509696 Drowning In Your Depths]]'' is a ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' AlternateUniverseFic written by [=AngstMom=] formerly updating regularly on Fridays and currently undergoing a massive rewrite. Warnings for graphic depictions of violence, major character deaths, and explicit sexual content.

* BallroomBlitz: It's a political meeting alongside a far less pretentious type of party, but the same principal applies. [[spoiler:In chapter 18, every pirate crew allied with the Pirate Council convenes in Nassau to socialize and discuss the concerns of the day, and Dipper and Bill attend hoping to find information about Gideon's location and destroy any prestige Gideon has built off of supposedly killing the Demon Atop the Sea. No one is allowed to bring weapons into the gathering, so naturally those that have secretly sided with Gideon reveal they snuck in weapons halfway through.]] Chaos Ensues.

* EnthrallingSiren: Dipper is one, as are the rest of the Pines family. Unlike most versions of sirens, Dipper's pod and town do not use their voices to lure humans; in fact, the sirens prefer to live far away from humans and the shore to the point where it's very rare for humans to encounter them. Given the rarity of its use on humans, that Ford is the one who taught the twins, and that sirens make note of which sea species are immune, it's possible the CompellingVoice's intended function may instead be a defensive ability against predators in the ocean.

* RealityEnsues: Though pirates can be violent and merciless criminals and tend to meet hostile greeting parties in richer, well-governed ports, this is not true for smaller ports, who--given that they need the trade and business the visiting ships bring--tend to welcome all ships without much question as long as their crews don't cause them trouble.
** Bill's unstable schizophrenia-like behavior, which has barred him from living on the right side of the law, driven most stable relationships away from him, and prevented him from feeling like he's in control of himself or his own life, [[FunnySchizophrenia is not actually funny.]] At all.