11-22-2016, 03:30 PM
One of the things that irked me about Mabel in Season 2 was how they began to give her good character development, before promptly unravelling it. This can probably explain it better than I can, but I'll just paste the most relevant part from it here:
Episode 4: Sock Opera is the one that finally made me feel better. Finally somebody calls Mabel out for her selfishness. Finally somebody makes Mabel stop and examine how selfish she is. Not only does she make a promise to help Dipper then immediately break it for a boy she just met; she also takes the most valuable thing in Dipper’s possession and uses it (when she could have used literally any other book she got from anywhere else), choosing to announce it to him when he’s distracted, and pointing out she’s goiing to run off before he processes what she said about taking said possession. This is also her worst crush yet. Full on obsession, wherein she enlists the entire family, her friends, plus Wendy and Soos. Only Bill Cipher calling her out finally gets her to see how miserably she’s treated Dipper now (and in the past). Worse, her apology is half-assed. She calls Dipper a dumb guy in the process of making it. But she’s just a twelve year old girl.
By the time Episode 9 rolls around, Mabel hasn’t learned to quit meddling in other people’s love lives. She’s still in Mabel knows best mode and she pisses off the Love God, and nearly permanently destroys Wendy’s friend group. It’s just dumb luck things work out.
Episode 10: Mabel’s wishes, plus that of her friends, trump Dipper’s again, but at least she says please? Dipper ends up working for Pacifica’s family just so Candy, Grenda and Mabel can get into the fancy party, at which point Mabel decides their bff truce is off because of the cute foreign boy she likes more than the truce.
Episode 11: We see Mabel is truly capable of caring for someone other than herself. Wth all evidence to the contrary, she puts her trust in Stan even when Dipper has lost faith. Growth! Development!
Episode 12: Mabel seems pleased to have another uncle but is definitely still closer to Stan as Dipper grows closer to Ford – and clearly worried a rift will grow between her and Dipper like the one that has grown between the grunkles.
Episode 13: Mabel’s bond with Stan deepens, at Dipper’s expense. But that’s ok. Finally Dipper has someone to Bond With! A friend! Great Uncle Ford! and it takes the entire family to defeat Probabilator, using Stan’s gambling skills and Mabel’s imagination. Which gives the two of them a reason to realize that Dipper and Ford’s interests may not be their interests, but they’re just as valid. A little more growth.
Episode 14: When Stan decides to run for mayor, both twins are on the same page that he can’t do it without them controlling what he says – and the man has no tact. Even Gideon acknowledges they’ve gone a little toward the dark side here.
Episode 15: In an odd inversion of the usual unicorn tropes, a jerk Unicorn gets Mabel into an obsession and a depression spiral about being a good person. Her friends back her up because they realize the unicorn is playing her. But she spends a good amount of the episode feeling terrible about herself because she’s not good anymore. Ford’s validation at the end means the world to her. Development.
Episode 16: And here we see Mabel has gone from supportive of Dipper’s feelings about Wendy to eye-rollingly sick of them…to willing to have Candy be his next girlfriend, whether Dipper is ready or not, and without discussing it with him…only to become infuriated when that doesn’t work out. But she’s only a 12 year old girl.
Episode 17: And the one that really steams my kachongas. All the character development right out the window because Mabel had a bad day. Dipper had a bad day too, that she never even bothered to ask about. Ford was nearly lost again, this time beyond even Stan’s ability to retrieve him, and Dipper prevented that, almost as the cost of his own life (because had that pod made it to space, that would have been it for Dipper Pines, y’all). She was having normal growing pains. Not even literal ones (the kind involving the bones growing and the muscles and ligaments having to stretch to keep up). Her. Brother. Nearly. died. And she begrudges him being excited because she’s not happy. When Blendin shows up and asks for something, she immediately disregards that she’s got Dipper’s stuff, disregards his belongings, and hands it over with only the slightest bit of hesitation.
Now I’ve been told that when you have a sib that’s that close in age “your stuff is my stuff” is to be expected. Wouldn’t know. My sib is 13 years younger than me, so we didn’t have that . To me, it’s horribly disrespectful.
I’ve also seen fans say Mabel was kept out of the loop. But the unicorn episode was all about how to protect the family from Bill. So she knew he was a threat. She may have thought the threat was over because she got the unicorn hair and other unicorn effluvia, but she is not dumb. She knows that there are still other threats in Gravity falls. But her tendency to not take anything seriously unless it affects her is what causes the problem here.
So all that character development thrown out the window.
But we’re expected to be sympathetic because she’s a 12 year old girl
Episode 4: Sock Opera is the one that finally made me feel better. Finally somebody calls Mabel out for her selfishness. Finally somebody makes Mabel stop and examine how selfish she is. Not only does she make a promise to help Dipper then immediately break it for a boy she just met; she also takes the most valuable thing in Dipper’s possession and uses it (when she could have used literally any other book she got from anywhere else), choosing to announce it to him when he’s distracted, and pointing out she’s goiing to run off before he processes what she said about taking said possession. This is also her worst crush yet. Full on obsession, wherein she enlists the entire family, her friends, plus Wendy and Soos. Only Bill Cipher calling her out finally gets her to see how miserably she’s treated Dipper now (and in the past). Worse, her apology is half-assed. She calls Dipper a dumb guy in the process of making it. But she’s just a twelve year old girl.
By the time Episode 9 rolls around, Mabel hasn’t learned to quit meddling in other people’s love lives. She’s still in Mabel knows best mode and she pisses off the Love God, and nearly permanently destroys Wendy’s friend group. It’s just dumb luck things work out.
Episode 10: Mabel’s wishes, plus that of her friends, trump Dipper’s again, but at least she says please? Dipper ends up working for Pacifica’s family just so Candy, Grenda and Mabel can get into the fancy party, at which point Mabel decides their bff truce is off because of the cute foreign boy she likes more than the truce.
Episode 11: We see Mabel is truly capable of caring for someone other than herself. Wth all evidence to the contrary, she puts her trust in Stan even when Dipper has lost faith. Growth! Development!
Episode 12: Mabel seems pleased to have another uncle but is definitely still closer to Stan as Dipper grows closer to Ford – and clearly worried a rift will grow between her and Dipper like the one that has grown between the grunkles.
Episode 13: Mabel’s bond with Stan deepens, at Dipper’s expense. But that’s ok. Finally Dipper has someone to Bond With! A friend! Great Uncle Ford! and it takes the entire family to defeat Probabilator, using Stan’s gambling skills and Mabel’s imagination. Which gives the two of them a reason to realize that Dipper and Ford’s interests may not be their interests, but they’re just as valid. A little more growth.
Episode 14: When Stan decides to run for mayor, both twins are on the same page that he can’t do it without them controlling what he says – and the man has no tact. Even Gideon acknowledges they’ve gone a little toward the dark side here.
Episode 15: In an odd inversion of the usual unicorn tropes, a jerk Unicorn gets Mabel into an obsession and a depression spiral about being a good person. Her friends back her up because they realize the unicorn is playing her. But she spends a good amount of the episode feeling terrible about herself because she’s not good anymore. Ford’s validation at the end means the world to her. Development.
Episode 16: And here we see Mabel has gone from supportive of Dipper’s feelings about Wendy to eye-rollingly sick of them…to willing to have Candy be his next girlfriend, whether Dipper is ready or not, and without discussing it with him…only to become infuriated when that doesn’t work out. But she’s only a 12 year old girl.
Episode 17: And the one that really steams my kachongas. All the character development right out the window because Mabel had a bad day. Dipper had a bad day too, that she never even bothered to ask about. Ford was nearly lost again, this time beyond even Stan’s ability to retrieve him, and Dipper prevented that, almost as the cost of his own life (because had that pod made it to space, that would have been it for Dipper Pines, y’all). She was having normal growing pains. Not even literal ones (the kind involving the bones growing and the muscles and ligaments having to stretch to keep up). Her. Brother. Nearly. died. And she begrudges him being excited because she’s not happy. When Blendin shows up and asks for something, she immediately disregards that she’s got Dipper’s stuff, disregards his belongings, and hands it over with only the slightest bit of hesitation.
Now I’ve been told that when you have a sib that’s that close in age “your stuff is my stuff” is to be expected. Wouldn’t know. My sib is 13 years younger than me, so we didn’t have that . To me, it’s horribly disrespectful.
I’ve also seen fans say Mabel was kept out of the loop. But the unicorn episode was all about how to protect the family from Bill. So she knew he was a threat. She may have thought the threat was over because she got the unicorn hair and other unicorn effluvia, but she is not dumb. She knows that there are still other threats in Gravity falls. But her tendency to not take anything seriously unless it affects her is what causes the problem here.
So all that character development thrown out the window.
But we’re expected to be sympathetic because she’s a 12 year old girl
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