My takes on gravity falls characters - this what I will base my fanfics on - will add more

Stanford Pines:

Stanley Pines:

Fiddleford:

Tate:

Living with a parent of mental illness is scary sometimes and other times simply, for lack of better word, annoying. It is tiring yet you feel terrible for being tired. And it hurts.

I think that growing up, when Tate lost his father to the memory gun, he also lost his mother. So many days did he spend his childhood never speaking of his problems. I think Tate’s parents were caught up in their own emotions and it wasn’t exactly their fault but it was still very unfair for Tate who had no one to really talk to. I think that Tate and his father actually had quite a bit in common but it was not something they would ever bond on. I think that when Tate’s mother saw Fiddleford in Tate through his intelligence, it hurt her knowing that he could end up like him. I think she tried to discourage him from having any interest in science and told him to just be “normal”. Fiddleford destroyed any chance of having a normal family and she does not want Tate to take after him. I think that is a part of the reason why he never told anyone his SAT score (the other part being that he hated this part of himself). I think Tate was hurt as he didn’t see his father as a bad person, but a person too weak to face his own problems. I think this also felt like abandonment. Tate did not know the extent of what his father was going through. The moment his father left to work with Stanford, that was the last he would see of his father. The man that came back was not his father. That man only looked like his father if his father was a song he was trying to remember in his head. That man was not polite or caring. He was scary and unpredictable. He would yell and he would say random things. Tate could not understand this man and he would eventually get frustrated with trying. He was mad that whatever happened in Oregon took his father away from him. I think that his mother was very hurt from this. It’s scary seeing such a kind and gentle man become a violent and paranoid one. Seeing this switch changed the way she thought of people. I think that’s why she still doubted her son’s ability to not destroy his life no matter how hard he tried to not be like his father. His father was nothing like what he became after the memory gun yet that change still happened. I think this also made Tate so fearful of science and his own intelligence. His father’s intelligence was enough to create something that revolutionized neuroscience and engineering but not enough to prevent the damage it caused by using it irresponsibly during a time of mental instability. I think that as his father got worse, it felt like he was the one taking care of him. That can feel shit as his father did not take care of him in his teenage years. I think when Fiddleford would ramble about weird things, Tate felt frustrated. A kind of “why are you like this” frustration. I think he felt disappointment and anger with his father but he never really hated him. He was sorry for his father when he made a fool of himself due to not knowing better. No matter his feelings for his father, he would always feel anger when people made fun of him. He grieved what his father once was and that grieving would feel like it would never end until death. I think sometimes he hated him as a kid though because he felt he abandoned his mother and him. He felt lost and sas his mother was so lost as well. They were both going through it but it would be hard to speak about. Mental illness has no mercy and that is something he would forever understand better than anyone else. 

           I think that Tate is also very fearful of Ford in addition to his great anger towards him. Assuming Tate never met him at all in the show, I think he used to want to meet him so he could beat the shit out of him for what he did. But as he got older, he realized that he did not need to know what happened, whatever it was, should not define his father who at the end of the show was trying to get better.

Bill Cipher: