〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Gideon Gleeful
CHARACTER AGE: 10
SERIES: Gravity Falls
CHRONOLOGY: Before “The Stanchurian Candidate”
CLASS: Tiny Menace
HOUSING: Anywhere is fine!
BACKGROUND:
Gravity Falls is a show about the summer vacation that twin 12-year-olds Dipper and Mabel Pines spend with their great uncle Stan in a backwater town in Oregon. Things take a turn for the strange after Dipper finds a mysterious journal out in the woods. The journal, labeled only with the outline of a six-fingered hand and the number 3, is full of information on the area's paranormal creatures, phenomena, and secrets, which Mabel and Dipper encounter more and more often as the series goes on. The other residents of the titular town of Gravity Falls, while definitely off-beat and weird themselves, seem oblivious.
Except for Gideon, that is. “Lil” Gideon Gleeful is a local celebrity and “child psychic” supported and promoted by his father, who also runs a used car lot. Stan Pines' hoax-filled tourist trap, the Mystery Shack, is the Gleeful's biggest competition, and Gideon would never miss a chance to make his rival's life more difficult. To the rest of Gravity Falls, however, Lil Gideon is a beloved American treasure and the gosh-darn-cutest thing they've ever seen. His perfect hair! His baby fat! His little blue suit and bolo tie! Everything about his persona oozes precocious southern charm. His performances at the Tent of Telepathy involve lots of singing, dancing, and sweet-talking, and even if his predictions aren’t exactly earth-shattering—“I sense you’ve been here before” and “You wish your son would call you more,” for example—the audience eats it right up. Dipper is skeptical of Gideon's “powers,” but Mabel walks away from his show impressed. He is pretty adorable, after all.
It doesn't take long for her feelings to get more complicated. After Gideon asks her to hang out, he makes it clear he's interested in being more than friends, and pressures her into going on a date with him. And then another, and another… Through a combination of puppy eyes, over-the-top public displays, and an impressive amount of peer pressure, Gideon manages to keep getting Mabel to “date” him. When Dipper tries to break up with Gideon for her, things go south, and fast. Gideon becomes convinced that Dipper is the only thing standing in the way between him and Mabel, and is fully prepared to get rid of him. He tricks Dipper into meeting with him late at night, where he uses the amulet in his bolo tie to control Dipper’s body through telekinesis. Mabel shows up to save the day before Gideon can do too much damage, and in the ensuing scramble the amulet is destroyed and Gideon is successfully and firmly dumped.
Angry, embarrassed, and without his telekinesis, Gideon turns to something else: an old journal labeled with the number 2. Gideon’s sights are set firmly on destroying the Pines family—unless Mabel changes her mind, in which case he’ll just destroy the rest of the Pines and the two of them can live happily ever after, obviously. In an attempt to take the Mystery Shack from Stan, Gideon tries tricking him into signing away the property, siccing cursed termites on the house, holding a (shrunken, thanks to a handy crystal Dipper found using his own journal) Dipper and Mabel hostage, and finally trying to shrink Stan himself. When all of these plans fail miserably, Gideon switches to breaking into the safe where Stan keeps the deed to the Shack. When that doesn’t work, either, Gideon consults the second journal and decides to use it to summon a “minion” to help. What he gets is Bill Cipher, best described as a peppy, omniscient hell-triangle. Bill and Gideon strike a deal: If Bill can steal the combination to the safe from inside Stan’s mind, Gideon will help him with something later on. The details of said “help” and “something” are left ominously vague, but Gideon, greedy and desperate, quickly agrees. When the twins save the day and (temporarily) thwart Bill, Gideon settles for plan B: dynamite. Finally, deed in hand, he takes over the Mystery Shack and publicly announces his plans to build “Gideonland” in its place.
While Gideon definitely, definitely wants to destroy the Pines family, that wasn’t his main motivation in taking over Stan’s property. After carefully studying the second journal, he comes to believe that the first journal was probably hidden by its original author somewhere near the Mystery Shack, and that bringing the journals together will open a “gateway to unimaginable power.” Gideonland’s construction and carefully guarded barbed-wire fences make the perfect cover for a thorough search. The Pines come to confront him, but Dipper ends up dropping his journal, which Gideon then takes. Gideon soon realizes that what he got from Dipper is the third journal, not the first, meaning there’s one more than he thought, and he still doesn’t have the complete set. Assuming Dipper tricked him and kept the other one for himself, Gideon chases the twins down in a giant robot (shaped like himself, naturally), a secret weapon he’d disguised as another feature of Gideonland. He refuses to believe Dipper doesn’t have the last journal and tries to kidnap Mabel, but when Dipper breaks into the suit Gideon promptly finds himself on the losing end of a fistfight.
The twins get away, but Gideon tries to frame them for attacking his “statue” and sabotaging his themepark. The townspeople, still thoroughly in love with their favorite “perfect and honest” celebrity, are ready to believe him. That’s when Stan Pines reveals something he already knew, but finally has the proof to back up: Gideon’s not psychic at all. In fact, the cute little pins featuring his smiling face are actually secret cameras, and he’s been spying on everyone wearing them. Public opinion quickly swerves in the other direction and Gideon, age 10, is sent to real-life adult prison, because Gravity Falls is the kind of place where marrying woodpeckers is perfectly legal and the “Finder’s Keepers” Law means that Gideon stealing the deed to the Mystery Shack really did give him full rights to the property. Either way, the Pines are happy to see him go, and the people of Gravity Falls, betrayed and heartbroken, let it happen.
In prison, Gideon has even more time to devote to his twisted anti-Pines plots and obsessive love letters to Mabel. Lots and lots of love letters. He knows it’s only a matter of time until he gets out—legally or otherwise—and this time, he won’t fail. Between all the muttering and scheming, Gideon attends several art classes, makes toilet cider, and manages to become the leader of a rag-tag bunch of gnarly criminals. Even though he lets more and more of his temper show now that he’s away from the cameras and regular citizens of Gravity Falls, his prison lackeys seem to genuinely care about him, and they treat him with the reverence Gideon is used to. And, really, besides overwhelming otherworldly power (and Mabel), what’s more important than that?
PERSONALITY:
There’s a reason Gideon is so popular, and it’s not just because the people of Gravity Falls are gullible and a bit dim—although that doesn’t hurt. He’s a natural showman and knows exactly how to use his looks and reputation to get what he wants and keep the momentum going. Although he was born in Gravity Falls, he apparently picked up a southern accent from his father, Bud, and from touring around the country. This just adds to his cutesy, polite persona, which he lays on thick. He likes referring to himself as “little ol’ me,” using folksy turns of phrase, and generally being about as non-threatening as can be.
Raised in the spotlight, Gideon is used to plenty of attention and adoration. All in all, the Gleefuls seem like an adorable, homegrown father-and-son talent team, but the truth is that Gideon is the one calling the shots behind the scenes. In true child star fashion, Gideon is extremely selfish, spoiled, and prone to temper tantrums so violent they leave furniture upturned and any throwable objects thoroughly smashed. In the Gleeful house, what Gideon says goes. His mother is a terrified nervous wreck and his father indulges him in almost everything. Not that he really has a choice—any pushback on Bud’s part just ends in screaming, threats (“I can buy and sell you, old man!”), and slammed doors. Whether his greed is all his own or something spurred on by the discovery of the journal is left vague, but it’s safe to say that over the years Gideon has started to go off his rocker.
As an act and an icon, Gideon is good at what he does because he tells people what they want to hear, plays it humble, and keeps his claws hidden. However, his carefully crafted veneer does sometimes crack when he’s in public. Delighted that he’s found a way to shrink Stan and steal the Mystery Shack, Gideon cheerfully tells a lady at the bus stop that he’s off to “annihilate my arch-enemy’s entire family!” He calls his fans “mouthbreathers” under his breath when they catch him at a bad time, is demanding with waitstaff, and yells “y’all are sheep!” as he’s carted off to prison. Underneath all the hairspray, Gideon’s not exactly a top-notch evil genius, but he’s smart for his age and willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead, which is dangerous in its own right.
Just because he’s a grudge-holding, ruthless little jerk doesn’t mean he’s above lesser forms of revenge, though. Any wrench he can throw into Stan’s life, no matter how small, is always a treat. From chucking tomatoes in Stan’s face to putting glue on his favorite pool-side chair, nothing is too petty for Gideon. He shows zero empathy for others, especially the Pines. He couldn’t care less about what effect his actions have on anyone else, even when his demolition of the Mystery Shack leaves Stan and the twins broke and homeless.
In the moments when Gideon’s able to drop his persona and isn’t also in the middle of a raging fit, he does seem to legitimately enjoy polite formalities, arts and crafts, and Mabel. Mostly Mabel. Seriously, he is fixated on Mabel. His cutesiness and southern manners seem to be genuine enough, even if in reality they’re sprinkled in amongst the serious rage issues, hunger for power, and obsession with… well, mostly revenge, but again, Mabel. Still, he’s incredibly mercurial and difficult to deal with. At the end of the day, the only thing Gideon is interested in are his own goals. Everything else is collateral.
Prison certainly isn’t doing much to lessen Gideon’s revenge fantasies, but it has gotten him an unexpected new group of followers. By showing up just as the prisoners needed a leader, being firm but demanding, and being endearingly small, Gideon has become the leader of a decently sized gang of men. He even had a short-lived public access television show about his attempts to support and nurture their talents while incarcerated, but it’s unclear how much of that was an act put on to help save his ruined reputation. When he’s not being filmed, Gideon can still be sweet with his new devotees, but tends to show the rest of his personality more easily with them. They honestly seem to care about him, and the truth is that he cares about most of them, too, even if he’s quick to snap when he’s caught in a bad mood. He’s especially fond of Ghost-Eyes, who he calls his “hench-angel.” Away from the pressure to constantly be perfect, Gideon is finally able to make connections just by being his normal craft-making, prison riot-having, bossy self. Sure, those connections are with a bunch of convicts, and later on in the series he’ll end up as the head of a Mad Max style outlaw road crew, but that suits him just fine.
POWER:
Luck manipulation: Can inflict mildly good or bad luck at will. Realistically, this means every day is a good hair day for him and that Dipper will be stubbing his toe and misplacing things a lot more often.
Power reading: Unless otherwise blocked by some aspect of their abilities, Gideon can tell what the specifics of someone else’s powers are as long as he can see them in person.
FINAL NOTES: Gideon is bringing a single page torn from the second journal, his orange prison jumpsuit, and his normal outfit.
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