Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27708312-20170202163909/@comment-31166511-20170217073431

I thought it was pretty good. I would give it a 8.2, well worth a real and quite funny.

All the Wendy dialog was just spot on. I could easily hear it in the character's voice.

Dipper's internal voice was also well done and showed an excellent understanding of the character's thought processes. It was different from how we usually see him presented in the show. Which made it interesting, but also a little difficult to get used to. Maybe it would have been better to ease the reader into this unfamiliar style, although I can see how giving Dipper too much thinking time would damage the pacing and loose a lot of the pressure and dramatic tension.

The creation of the quest item was well thought out and fit the kind of plotlines we saw in the show. I really liked the little tour of the Mystery Shack that the plot required, but I kinda wish it had taken Dipper to at least one new and unique Shack attraction.

Ok, this is the part with the harsh criticism: Where the story utterly fails is where it wanders from PG-13 guidelines.

Adult references are okay in Gravity Falls stories, but they have to be really obscure and heavily veiled. Kicking a girl in the crotch (not as effective as you'd think, besides girls have vulernable areas that produce a similar reaction. But this is a story critique, not an instruction book for beating up girls). Realistically, using violence would have made Dipper's job much, much easier. All he has to do to save himself and the world is to sacrifice Wendy. Finding a solution with minimum and indirect violence is what makes the story impressive.

Also ingesting toxic substances is a very non-Gravity falls plot element. More likely the cure would have involved merely smelling the formaldehyde--which is still very toxic, but that's pretty obscure knowledge. You could probably get away with it plot-wise, just as the show is constantly and heavily implying Grunkle Stan's off-camera antisocial activities.

Granted, it's your story and you can go anywhere you want with it, but if you are hoping to get praise from readers who enjoy stories with Gravity Falls restrictions, you gotta stick close to the original and save the artistic freedom for one really cool plot point.

I admit that there was at least one moment that I totally laughed out loud. Chuckles were not rare, either; your comic timing is pretty well spot on.

The inconvienent repercussions at the end of the story were absolutely Hirshian! It was a perfect Gravity Falls ending and a thing of beauty. I wouldn't change a thing!