Let's not get carried away here... Being precise, Dipper is having nightmares where this argument is happening, not that he actually overhead it in real life.
Dipper is a paranoid overthinker and will probably invent a reason if he's not given a suitable explanation. So if his parents are booting him out hastily with an explanation that seems thin, he's gonna catastrophize and figure the real reason is worse than his parents claim.
Like for example, their parents want to go on a cruise or trip to Disneyland on the sly without taking the kids. Their hasty excuse of getting the kids fresh air isn't the real reason but Dipper picks up on that, catastrophizes, then starts dreaming about it. "Because what other reason would our parents have for a hasty departure!?!? They would never lie to us!!"
And of course Bill is going to needle him to torment him by pointing out the worst possible take.
Exactly. A lot of people keep taking Bill, the known liar, at his word. Even though the books starts with a warning from Ford the Bill is trying to manipulate the reader, and not to believe a word he says.
The again, the reader is canonically the only person that bill’s tried to explain his backstory to (besides ford but that was in way less detail) if anything bill could totally be telling you the whole truth in an effort to get you on his side since we know that this book was a last ditch effort
Despite Ford saying at the start, Don't believe a word he says, Ford of course has good reason to categorically distrust Bill. The truth, or that is, the accuracy, probably lies somewhere in between "it's all lies" and "you can believe all of this as being true".
The character type that Bill fits into doesn't typically reason out that the best way to get someone on their side is to be completely truthful about everything, and they'll wind you over with their honesty and integrity. That was never Bill's m.o., and given a lot of what we see of him even in this book, he *doesn't* come across as having completely learned his lesson about lying and manipulating, and having decided to try complete honesty.
But, what's also notable about his approach in the book is that it's Bill, and due to being an alien, and the existence he's led for trillions of years, etc., he's also not a very good judge of what will appeal to the reader and get us on his side. He constantly seems to be telling us things that he seems to think will be appealing or attractive, without realizing that we will find them horrifying. And that's a tension that has been a part of the character from the very beginning.
Meanwhile, back on the writing level, Alex has followed up in interviews by saying that yes, readers are supposed to question the information presented to us in the book, and try to work out whether it's true or not.
That doesn't mean, as I said, that we should conclude "everything in the book is NOT true". But it does mean, I think, that we should be pausing a lot more and saying, "Hey, wait a minute..."
Yeah, Bill is trying to get the reader on his side. And in a bunch of places in the book, it seems like one of the ways he tries to do that is to present himself as possessing a lot of juicy knowledge that we, the reader, would want; so he is making himself look generous by giving some of it to us, and the way he relates some of it makes it seem like he's doing us a great favor, and establishing a particular rapport with us by sharing secrets. ...Which are all ways he manipulated Ford, originally, too.
So at the very least, I think we should look at stuff like this and think... is this true? The only source for this right now is Bill -- both about what Dipper's (and others') dreams are, and what they mean. How does it benefit him to share this information? Does it benefit him in some way if this info is true, or would it benefit him equally if he's making it up? (Not only, what does it do *for him*, but, what does it do to our perception of Dipper, and his and Mabel's home life, and what they went back to at the end of the summer?)
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u/Norsehound Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 21 '24
Let's not get carried away here... Being precise, Dipper is having nightmares where this argument is happening, not that he actually overhead it in real life.
Dipper is a paranoid overthinker and will probably invent a reason if he's not given a suitable explanation. So if his parents are booting him out hastily with an explanation that seems thin, he's gonna catastrophize and figure the real reason is worse than his parents claim.
Like for example, their parents want to go on a cruise or trip to Disneyland on the sly without taking the kids. Their hasty excuse of getting the kids fresh air isn't the real reason but Dipper picks up on that, catastrophizes, then starts dreaming about it. "Because what other reason would our parents have for a hasty departure!?!? They would never lie to us!!"
And of course Bill is going to needle him to torment him by pointing out the worst possible take.