[Ch 01, Into]

     Hello, my name is Dipper Pines, and you are my Journal. I decided to start keeping you so I could document all of my findings for this summer. I learned this trick from my two cool Grunckles, Stanley and Stanford. Grunkle is a contraction word for Great Uncle, it was a word my twin sister Mabel created when we visited last year for the summer. Last year, my parents shipped us off to a rinky-dink town in Oregon called Gravity Falls, where we stayed at a broken down tourist attraction called the Mystery Shack. Back then, I came up with what I thought to be the coolest burn, which was "the real mystery was why anyone came". I stayed up ages laughing at that, but I never told anyone. There, we lived with Grunckle Stan, who was operating under his brother Ford's name. That's a bit of a long story, but I'll get there eventually.

     Right off the bat, I knew that town was strange, and after finding a Journal in a hidden compartment in a fake tree, I was finding and battling monsters with Mabel, the Shack's handyman, Soos, and a redheaded daughter of a lumberjack. Her name was Wendy. I actually used to have the most embarrassing crush on her, and I can't believe it took so long to wear off. We spent a lot of our summer dealing with the supernatural, and we even came into contact with a demon. When Grunkle Stan almost got arrested closer to the end of the summer, and Great Uncle Ford coming out of a portal he ingeniously created, our summer took a wild turn. We ended up defeating the demon, Bill Cipher, the master of deals, and saving Gravity Falls. Mabel and I had our thirteenth birthday party there and went home.

     I have nothing too notable to say about my school year. School's school, you learn new things, teenagers are the worst, stuff like that. What I will say is that Mabel and I got better at doing our own things, and still being there for each other. She took up extracurricular courses in arts, crafts, and theatre, while I was moved up a grade. My science teacher, Mr. Nye, was one of the only people besides my sister that I came to school for. Mabel started to grow taller than me, and there was a different and new height pun every time it came up. She never makes fun of me about it, like when she first started growing. I'm not going to say I'm short, I'm not, Mabel just has a few centimetres on me. That only makes her substantially taller than me in Canada.

     Coming back to Gravity falls has been on my mind ever since we were on the bus to leave last year. I have been trying to do online research, but it hasn't been the most helpful. Not much of the world believes in the things I do, and most of the information people spread around is completely fake. I plan on completely documenting what I know about Bill Cipher in a different place, as well as all of my experiences with the insane isosceles.

---Timeskip Brought to you by Washing Clothes Being a Waste of Time---

     These first few days haven't actually been as exciting as I would hope. Seeing everyone again was great, and I love hanging out with them. I'm actually really happy things aren't awkward between me and Wendy. I was just hoping for more of that supernatural investigation monster hunting that filled our summer last year. We still see odd creatures, but there haven't been many new ones, and the ones that are seem to either be really boring to observe, and too easy to deal with. And that's coming from me, Captain Noodle Arms with the patience of steel.

     Returning to Gravity falls was more relaxed than my first time around. Sure there were still monsters to battle, mythical creatures to observe, and things like that, but it seems more laid back now. After Weirdmageddon, the world seems more mellow. After seeing the weirdest, most difficult and dangerous things for the first time, everything else seems to have lost that extra oomph. Great Uncle Ford seems to think that finding a new creature will show me, and Grunkle Stan thinks I should enjoy my summer like a "Normal Kid". Today, I decided to make my Journal look like Great Uncle Ford, the one I found in the tree. Only, instead of his six fingered hand in the middle, it'll be a pine tree.

     I'm hoping either of my Great Uncles are right, and this summer can take some kind of turn for the interesting.