Dipcifica

Ahoy! Welcome to Let The Ship Sail! This is your captain Loveseeker speaking! For our first voyage, we're setting sail for an animated series called Gravity Falls to check in on one of my favorite ships of all time, Dipper Pines x Pacifica Northwest. Also known as the S.S. Dipcifica!

 

Dipper Pines is one of the lead characters of the series. He's a 12-year-old boy who loves solving mysteries as well as other things that stimulate his brain like crossword puzzles and tabletop games like Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons. As you can imagine, he's also socially awkward, usually relying on his more outgoing sister Mabel to get him out of his comfort zone.

Pacifica Northwest is a snobby rich girl and the most popular kid in town. She specializes in putting other people down and doing whatever it takes to stay on top. In the first season of the show, she only made a handful of appearances, acting as a personal rival and antagonist for the other lead character Mabel Pines. 

Now on the surface, these two seem like they would be completely incompatible as a couple. In fact, they hardly ever even interacted with each other at all. But even so, there were some people in the Gravity Falls fandom who seemed to think they'd be good together. I, however, was not one of them. That is, until the season 2 episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery." 

In this episode, Pacifica enlists the help of Dipper to deal with a ghost that's been haunting her family's mansion. At first, he refuses because he thinks she's 'the worst,' but through battling the ghost together, the two of them learn more about each other and start to form a friendship of sorts. Dipper also learns that the reason the ghost is haunting her family is because her ancestors broke a promise they made by refusing to let the common townsfolk into their fancy party. A promise which they still haven't kept after all these years.

In the end, it's Pacifica who ends up saving the day by finding the courage to defy her parents' wishes and letting in the townsfolk, thus breaking her family curse and satisfying the ghost.

Northwest Mansion Mystery took a character that most fans were at least indifferent to and turned her into a fan favorite. It showed us that, for her entire life, Pacifica's parents had taught her to follow in her family footsteps of doing whatever it takes to maintain a high social status, literally conditioning her (with a bell) to do as she was told and never stray from that path. Which is why I can appreciate how much willpower it must have taken for her to resist her parents' orders.

The episode also gave birth to the rise in popularity of the Dipcifica ship. Fans overwhelmingly responded to the chemistry shown between Pacifica and Dipper with countless drawings, stories and animations. Everybody, including me, was eating it up. But one episode's worth of evidence could only take me so far, so I started thinking of more ways in which their relationship could work.

I've talked a lot about Pacifica already, so now let's talk more about Dipper. For the longest time, Dipper's main love interest was a 15-year-old girl named Wendy, who he was always so desperate to impress. He would always go to such extreme lengths just to get close to her, whether it was spending the night in a haunted convenient store, traveling back in time over and over again to win her a stuffed animal, or even cloning himself to make sure he had the perfect moment to dance with her. 

It wasn't until season 2 that Dipper finally started to realize that Wendy just wasn't interested in him romantically and tried to force himself to get over her. But anybody who's ever had a crush knows that it's not that easy to just turn off your feelings for someone else. That's why I think Dipper being in a relationship with Pacifica could be good for him. She could help him move on from Wendy completely and teach him to come out of his shell around other people.

I also feel like Dipper would be able to help Pacifica as well. Heck, he already has on two separate occasions. The image above is a page from the Gravity Falls comic book entitled "Lost Legends." It's a collection of four different stories and in the first one, Pacifica unleashes a face-stealing demon in the hopes of making her own face look perfect enough for an important photo. The demon ends up stealing Mabel's face, forcing her and Dipper to go after him together and save her. Pacifica's obsession with her own beauty keeps getting them into more trouble, leading them to have a heart-to-heart where she confesses that she feels like her appearance is the only thing that defines her.

Dipper assures Pacifica that she's much more than just a pretty face and that she shouldn't worry so much about what other people think. In this instance, just like the one before, he helps her to become more confident in her true self and not just the image that others have placed on her.

Image by greatlucario

So what would their actual dynamic as a couple be like? Well, the way I see it, they'd be constantly teasing each other playfully about their little foibles, which I think would be pretty cute. Just because they're dating, doesn't mean they can't still be a little snarky with each other. After all, that's part of what makes them so fun to watch together. Also, the website that was linked to the comic book, Shmeb-You-Unlocked, revealed that Pacifica has quite a few secret hobbies of her own. One of them is an online game called BloodCraft: Overdeath, in which she has a level 100 deathslayer and goes by the name PLATINUMPAZ. So that's probably something the two of them could bond over (provided Dipper doesn't mind getting his butt handed to him on a golden platter).

Image by Chillguydraws

Other official sources have shown that Dipper and Pacifica might actually already have feelings for each other, even if neither one is willing to admit it yet. In the official Journal 3 book, Dipper writes a section on his adventure with her at Northwest Manor, where he declares that she might not be as bad as he originally thought. There's also a crossed out part where he mentions that he likes how she looks in her evening dress and the way she smells when she hugs him. Then in the Gravity Falls coloring book entitled "Don't Color This Book! It's Cursed," Mabel draws pictures of a bunch of potential couples, one of them being her brother and her ex-rival. Dipper protests at first, but when Mabel explains that it's only after they've made friends with her, he seems like he actually starts to consider it.

There's also a part at the end of the first "Lost Legends" story where Pacifica feels the need to clear things up with Dipper about when she hugged him, stating that she only did it to wipe off some monster drool and not because she likes him. It turns out that she accidentally texted Mabel instead, who then starts teasing her about it, much to her annoyance.

Who knows? Maybe someday these kids will mature enough to actually acknowledge their feelings for each other and give it a shot. Until then, we can always dream.

That's all for now! Thank you for setting sail with me today. Until next time, this is Captain Loveseeker saying... Let the Ship Sail!