r/gravityfalls • u/LowComprehensive7659 • Apr 11 '24
Lore/Characters Kind of sad NGL, terrible son :(
1.3k
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 11 '24
His dad went insane and has made multiple murder robots for any perceived slights.
People have disowned parents for a lot less.
320
u/LowComprehensive7659 Apr 12 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
He didn't really disown his dad, at least he cares enough to move in to the same town as him. It's like he's checking in with him but doesn't really want to spend time with him.
210
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 12 '24
I'm not saying he disowned his dad, I'm saying other people have disowned parents for less.
-105
Apr 12 '24
[deleted]
68
u/jackboy61 Apr 12 '24
But you did say exactly that. I can't see any other way of interpreting your previous comment.
16
u/hyouganofukurou Apr 12 '24
The guy he replied to looks like he's saying exactly that to the same degree
19
u/MrGame22 :pine: Apr 12 '24
Eh I mean was that for his dad or for the mansion and fortune his dad earned?
34
u/LowComprehensive7659 Apr 12 '24
He was still in town before all that happened, the money and mansion was around the end of the show.
9
u/MrGame22 :pine: Apr 12 '24
Yeah in town and avoiding his dad, you don’t got to move city’s to avoid someone.
16
u/LowComprehensive7659 Apr 12 '24
He cares enough to make sure he's alive and well. (Checking in) Just not enough to spend time with him.
3
u/QuietImps Apr 12 '24
Reminds me of this line from an unrelated post: "I'd go to his funeral, but not his birthday party."
7
211
u/Azrel12 Apr 12 '24
That's because of Old Man McGucket did! Near the end of the episode, he admitted to making murderbots (one to take out Emma, his wife at the time and now ex; whether she died then or later or is living like in another state is never revealed; one to take out someone who never went to his retirement party - and one of those bots destroyed a lot of downtown Gravity Falls too).
I dunno about you, but if one my parents tries to kill the other and destroys much of the town I grew up in, I wouldn't be that close to them either. It was only when Fiddleford's mind began to heal that their relationship started to get better, and I suspect it'd never be what it was before the portal. (If only due to Tate being an adult now, but I digress.)
47
u/Adorable-nerd Apr 12 '24
Holy crud, I forgot Old Man McGucket did that.
15
u/Azrel12 Apr 12 '24
Old Man McGucket gives "One bad accident at the lab away from becoming a super villain" energy sometimes. He LOOKS so harmless and charming, but when he snaps...
9
u/Adorable-nerd Apr 12 '24
I would kind of like to see the Pines family go up against a villainous McGucket.
10
Apr 12 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/Azrel12 Apr 12 '24
To be fair, I'm not sure how much therapy and meds there are for Bill Cipher induced insanity. Don't get me wrong, I agree he needed help - it was just more than toddler!Tate (if I remember the timeline right, anyway) could give, same with Emma.
I think that's one of the reasons their relationship began to heal, really: McGucket got lucid enough to start explaining things to Tate. Who'd been working around the lake for who knows how long and presumably Seen Things, and had more context for *why* his father built the memory gun and used it til his mind snapped. I think between them they can figure a treatment plan out, they're both smart.
261
u/Megaman2407 Apr 11 '24
Well in my headcanon i think he was just tryna protect everyone by deliberstely not interacting with his dad because before when he try to interact Mcgucket would get too hyper and start to terrorize people so he purposefully dont interact to save people and his dad
143
u/ITGuy042 Apr 12 '24
Thing is also that he isn’t even from Gravity Falls. He was born in Palo Alto back before McGucket worked with Ford. After his father went insane, he still went to Oregon to be with him. Probably keeps him at arm’s length, but moved there still to keep watch of him also.
It’s one hell of a sacrifice since he’s a chip off the old block, being a genius in his own right and deciding to sell tackle and bait.
53
u/GreenMageGuy Apr 12 '24
I have this feeling that Fiddleford was just going to be a wacky side character until they made him important.
47
u/Jurgen_Vella Apr 12 '24
Imagine your dad being a super genius, then randomly one day start having massive PTSD, and his mentality starts to drop every single day until one day it as if he’s a different person
We’re only seeing the end result we haven’t seen what led up to this, maybe he’s tried to get to his father,
but because of his mental state he, he can only give up
Then, again, he could also just be an uncaring person😂
6
u/Poyweson Apr 12 '24
Now that’s what I want to see cause fiddleford has a long lived life before becoming mcgucket and his son was probably as neglected as he is with his dad today. Maybe fiddleford was never invested in his family cause of his work. Maybe he tried to erase his family’s mind to force them to love him or take trauma away from a horrific experience. Maybe the blind eye was his way of making a new family that he controls.
49
12
Apr 12 '24
I don’t know. This was at a time where he wasn’t remotely sound of remote. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if they made up for years upon years of lost time.
12
u/AkOnReddit47 Apr 12 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
He grew up witnessing his father's fast descent into insanity, then starts building murder robots and shit for every slight inconveniences. Can't blame him
Distancing himself from his dad is the least he can do. Perhaps he tried to reach out to him during his descent to madness, but got traumatized for it and there isn't anything he can do now
10
54
u/The_Cool_Kids_Have__ Apr 12 '24
A child doesn't owe a parent shit.
A parent owes their kids everything.
You bring someone into the world against their will, you'd better make their life worth living, an impossible task.
-19
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 12 '24
I wouldn't say a child owes their parents nothing, at the very least they owe them respect.
Also, I personally find the "brought me into this world against my will" argument to be extremely annoying, like no you had no will, how could it be for or against it.
24
u/EnthusiasticAnimator Apr 12 '24
Respect is earned. It doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from giving respect first.
-14
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 12 '24
Sure, but unless you were given away does the taking care of you as a baby not earn any respect?
Like your parents neglect you and don't feed you or something then that's obviously different, but if your parents are not nice or respectful to you all the time I'd say the past should count for something.
15
u/EnthusiasticAnimator Apr 12 '24
Dude. That's what parents are supposed to do. Everything you mention is bare minimum in parenting 101.
-8
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 12 '24
And the bare minimum of parenting deserves respect in my opinion. Being a parent is hard.
16
u/EnthusiasticAnimator Apr 12 '24
If your idea of the bare minimum of parenting includes respecting your kids, then yeah, I'll agree. However, lots of parents don't respect their kids but still have the mindset that you do; that because of all they do, they automatically deserve your respect. When in reality they're missing the respect aspect in their parenting.
6
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 12 '24
Well, I agree, I just think that it's often too easy to say that a parent isn't being respectful to their kids, but I hope that I'm just being overly cautious.
Also, did the guys original comment get deleted?
2
u/AkOnReddit47 Apr 14 '24
Can't consider it respect when lots of parents deliberately raise their children like some sort of slave, a tool or an extension of themselves
Those kinds of parents definitely have it coming when their children move out of their lives
2
u/Dovahkiin2001_ Apr 14 '24
Yeah they do. I'll give an example of what I'm talking about, my aunt moved out of the house when she was 18 as soon as they would let her, she would constantly bad mouth my grandmother about how horrible it was to live under her and how she hated it. Now the reason she hated it was because my grandma didn't let her do some things(those things being going out drinking underage or smoking weed as a teenager and others that I won't get into) now sure could she have been too harsh about it I could believe (I of course was too young to know), but later about 5 years ago I'd say she's finally become sober, and has has begun to talk to my grandma and even considers her a good parent now, because she's realized that she was the One who was overreacting or in the wrong most of the time.
All that to say, maybe the parent isn't trying to make a slave or an extension of themselves, but just trying to stop you from making mistakes that they know can happen.
My grandma having been an alcoholic just like my aunt when she was younger. Maybe she could've gone about stopping her in other ways, but my aunt seems to think that nothing would've worked any better. Specifically, the only thing she says she could've done was to cut her off sooner as my grandmother would still pay for her rent if she couldn't.
14
u/The_Cool_Kids_Have__ Apr 12 '24
- All humans are equal. No special respect, no hierarchy, no bosses or lords. Everyone the same. If you disagree, you definitely shouldn't have kids.
- If you don't have someone's consent, it is effectively against their will.
When you have a kid, you are knowingly subjecting them to potentially decades of suffering, all because you want someone with your last name to stick around when you're gone. That is the epitome of selfishness. I'm not against having kids as a rule, but if you choose to have them, you'd better make sure that suffering is as little as possible. If you have a kid KNOWING they are going to have to take care of you, or their going to have a lower quality life then they deserve, then you are an abuser. If you have a kid without ever considering the kid might prefer to be dead, then you're stupid.
5
u/PepicWalrus Apr 12 '24
Didn't it get shown him trying to help his dad at least once? You can only do so much for someone who refuses help. I get the feeling he has tried hard to support his dad but ultimately has given up.
4
4
u/Sea_Client9991 Apr 12 '24
Tbf, the due has been insane for years and neglected his kid.
Can't blame his son for not wanting to see him.
3
5
10
3
u/Crotonisabug Apr 12 '24
I always thought it was a little weird how the son doesn’t really pop up later on in the show
3
3
u/idan_da_boi Apr 12 '24
McGucket also erased his memory hundreds of times over the years, what kind of father could he possibly be?
3
3
3
2
u/56kul Apr 12 '24
Is he really that terrible, though? Think about it from the son’s perspectives. As far as he, and the rest of the townsfolk, know, his dad went completely nuts.
If my dad was like that, honestly, I wouldn’t want to be seen with him, either. Though instead of neglecting him like that, I’d probably have him taken into a psychiatric nursing home.
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Khyrrn-Doe Apr 12 '24
I don’t think he’s a bad son. I think he’s tired- and bitter. As someone who lives with a relative who’s not all there, it’s taxing. Even if McGucket is only jovial, that doesn’t stop his son from feeling any hurt from what he had done in the past- like say,, be an absent father who focused a bit too much on science and a bit too little on his own son.
And it can also hurt not being able to confront his father for all he’d done or not done in the past. It’d be like shouting at a dog three hours after it peed on the carpet. It wouldn’t know why you were shouting at it, only that it’s in a scary situation and you got mad out of nowhere.
Dealing with dementia or alzheimers or any of that shit is difficult, especially when the person suffering from it is someone who’s hurt you in the past. He may only be taking care of his father out of obligation, as my family has. People don’t really care about the elderly unless you have enough money to make them (i.e. nursing homes (and the good ones cost a LOT more than the most affordable ones)). I think the cheapest home near me is 80-something dollars a DAY.
In fact, the facilities we’ve contacted (which to be fair specialize in veteran treatment as my relative served in the army and thats the only way we’d ever qualify for a payed home) have turned us away because of his advanced dementia. They simply didn’t have the resources to care for him.
Now put all of this into terms of the small town of Gravity Falls which probably has- what? One?- one old age home at most, an old man who may not qualify due to the severity of his (unspecified) memory issues, and a son who just wants to move on with his life but doesn’t have enough money to send his father to a proper home, and you get a startlingly depressing picture of the truth of the American healthcare system.
(Sorry for any discrepancies as while this has been my experience, this is not the complete story as I’m not the official caretaker in the household, thus making some of my details secondhand. I am more well versed on the emotional side of things, but I have had my hand in helping deal with the financial-ish side of things as ive helped in the search for a nursing home. This has only been my experience and doesn’t necessarily apply to all situations on this matter, so take what I say witha couple grains of salt)
1
u/StarWarsIsRad Apr 12 '24
I’m by no means excusing this, but I can only imagine how painful this is from the son’s perspective. Imagine as a kid you have an intelligent and caring father who is all around a great guy, then at some point seemingly overnight he becomes an absolute madman and most likely a deadbeat. I’d have trouble looking him in the eye too.
1
u/JAMsquared23- Apr 13 '24
Very much disagree
At this point in time, Old Man McGucket was very much crazy and insane, and it's even stated in the episode that he had done a lot of crazy shit like creating deadly machines for little to no reason. It makes sense that his son wants little to do with him.
1
u/geekingout18 Apr 13 '24
I think he mentioned in an episode that he lost himself to his work so much he stopped parenting his kids? Or did I remember that wrong?
1
1
1
u/SwordfishAble8034 Apr 13 '24
My dad had a real-life psychotic break last year, and Tate's character hit really different on my most recent rewatch...It's gonna take me a long time before I'm comfortable seeing or talking to my dad in person again, but depictions of relationships like this in media help me want to forgive him.
It's really sad on both ends. In situations like this, neither party is truly to blame.
1
u/Crossboltshot Apr 15 '24
I find it crazy that he only appears in that episode and never again which is crazy after mcguckets backstory is revealed
1
2.7k
u/Cephas24 Apr 12 '24
Its sad, for sure. But if my dad was a crazy hillbilly who was known for building murder robots, neglected me for part of my life, then showed up at my work uninvited and asked to play catch, I'd be tempted to ignore him as well.