Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27708312-20170202163909/@comment-31166511-20170312040130

Finished "Juggling Practice"

The line that made me laugh out loud was Wendy replying to Dipper's insistance on volunteering:

"Alright, it was nice knowing you, man." said Wendy jokingly as she picked up the axes.

There were a few bits that I thought were out of character.

Dipper wandering around bored with nothing to do at the begining of the story didn't come off as accurate. Take a look at even the first episode, even before Dipper has the Journal to guide him on an adventure, he has a journal of his own that he's writting in as Mabel rolls down the hill and Stan shows up in a gillman mask.

Dipper is very curious about the world and regards himself as a scientist/explorer/adventurer. He describes himself as having keen powers of observation. There must be hundreds of things around the circus that bear a closer look to learn how they work.

Dipper is also an avid reader. Both fiction books and periodicals to keep him up to date on the work of other monster hunters. What ever interests he would develop in the circus universe, he would still spend time to learn about it in greater detail.

I was a huge reader as a kid. I would walk two miles from my house to the nearest bookstore, then walk back with my nose in a book, using only periphial vision to navigate my way back. My feet learned every single inch of my route. Soon I could place each step so to avoid all the tripping hazards along all the sidewalks on my walk. I only looked up when stepping into streets.

Decades later when people walked around with their eyes locked on tiny little screen and ran into poles or cars, I would snort "Amateurs! How do you screw up so bady with something only one-third the size of a book blocking your vision!"

Wendy is a lot more understanding of Dipper's short-comings than she was in the series. Compare her in "The Inconviencing". Dipper gets called Dr. Buzzkill and Wendy says "Yeah, a little bit."

If this is a universe where that never happened then it falls on you as the author to show how Wendy and Dipper's friendship develops. It feels like you are skipping ahead a bit.