Girl Says Goodbye to Gravity Falls
Maya can feel herself drifting off to sleep in the bay window. As she leans against the cold glass, her hair just barely pillows her head. She thinks that Riley’s pillow must be much more comfortable, because Riley’s pillow is her lap. Maya feels warm and loved, and can feel sleep consuming her. She welcomes it.
Then, she hears Riley shriek and can feel her flailing around on her lap. That wakes her up really quickly.
“Riles,” Maya says, “Riles, are you alright?” She’s worried that something bad happened, or that there’s an intruder or-
“They canceled Gravity Falls!” Riley shouts. She sits up and looks at Maya with big, sad puppy dog eyes. Maya can see the beginning of tears in her eyes.
“Oh,” Maya says, “oh god.” She can feel herself beginning to panic. The fact that Gravity Falls had to be ending soon was one of those things that Maya tried to hide from Riley, like Pluto’s planetary status or the fact that Hermione Granger wasn’t the protagonist of Harry Potter. She’s not sure how Riley’s going to handle this, but she knows that it won’t be good.
“Are you sure that it’s true?” Maya asks, “like, you can’t believe everything that you read on the internet.” She prays that it’s not from a credible source, like maybe Riley just read it on some random person’s tumblr? She remembers the time that Riley read a tumblr post that said Josh Peck had been in a car accident and freaked the fuck out until they looked it up and saw that it wasn’t true. Riley has a tendency not to double check things.
“It’s on Alex Hirsch’s twitter,” Riley groans, and then Maya knows that there’s no coming back from this. Gravity Falls is ending, and Riley is torn up. Maya loves the show. She’s thinks that it’s funny as hell and that the characters are really cool, but she doesn’t love it the way that Riley does. Riley sees herself in Mabel Pines, and that’s been hard on her lately. Maya remembers how torn up her girlfriend was over the hiatus, and then the Stans, and then the snow globe incident, but now that she’s finding out that her favorite show is going away forever? Maya can totally understand why she’s worked up this time.
“Do you know why?” Maya asks, “did Disney just pull the plug or?”
“No,” Riley says, and she’s obviously trying to hold her tears in, “Alex said he wants it to end.”
“The writer wants to end it?” Maya asks incredulously. She couldn’t imagine an artist to stop making the things that they love. It would be like her deciding to stop drawing Riley or something.
“Alex said that he wanted the show to be like a summer,” Riley says, “finite.” Her voice cracks a bit on that, and she looks petulant as she slams her phone into her lap.
“Well,” she says, looking Maya in the eyes, “I don’t like finite things.” Maya half expects Riley to ask her to get them to keep making it, but her girlfriend doesn’t. Instead, she leans her head against Maya’s shoulder.
“Why do things have to end?” she asks. Maya runs her fingers through Riley’s hair, and hopes that this thing that she has with Riley isn’t one of those things that have to end.
“Thing change,” Maya says softly, remembering a quote from that episode where everything went to hell, “Summer ends.”
“Don’t you make us parallel Mabel and Dipper,” Riley scolds.
“What?” Maya asks in genuine confusion.
“This was a conversation between Mabel and Dipper from the show,” Riley says.
“And?” Maya asks. Riley always likes it when she quotes the show. Maya’s really confused about whatever’s going on here.
“We’re girlfriends,” Riley says, “and they’re siblings and it’s just.. weird. It makes me think of pinecest.” She says the last word with the disdain she would bullies or the people that decided Pluto wasn’t a planet. Whatever this thing is, Riley must really hate it.
“Pincest?” Maya asks. That sounds like one of those weird, ship names that Riley uses all the time. But she’s definitely not familiar with that one.
“I’ve seen stuff you can’t even imagine, peaches,” Riley says, sounding deathly serious.
“Are you gonna tell me what this is?” Maya asks.
“You really don’t want to know,” Riley assures her. She lies against Maya, burying her face in Maya's shoulder.
"I just wanted it to go on forever," she mumbles.
“At least Gravity Falls had a good run?” Maya says, trying to make her girlfriend feel a little better.
“Maya,” Riley says, her voice muffled because she has not moved her head from it's spot on Maya's shoulder, “just let me lie here and be sad, please.”
“Alright, pumpkin,” Maya says, rolling her eyes fondly. She plays with the other girl’s hair, and hopes that her girlfriend will get to feeling better by morning, or at least by Monday. Riley won’t even get to enjoy the next episode if she dwells over the fact that this will be the penultimate installment.