YMMV / Universe Falls

• Awesomeness Withdrawal: A mixture of the author focusing both on her personal life and other projects as well as the increasingly long length of each chapter means that there are pretty lengthy periods of time in-between each chapter. Eventually reached its zenith when Word of God confirmed Universe Falls is now essentially a Dead Fic.
• Broken Base:
  • Some of the chapters are combinations of episodes of both shows, with many elements and even dialogue borrowed from them. While many readers love these kind of chapters, others have stated that they would prefer that the story itself be more original.
  • Some fans weren't happy with the Darker and Edgier direction the author took with "Sock Opera" and the aftermath, while others agreed with Jen that the show should have taken the events and the aftermath more seriously.
  • The Stonemason Arc, despite not being due to happen until the upcoming sequel, has proven to be polarizing among readers. Some like it, feeling it will be an interesting and original story direction, while others feel that it is too Grimdark and angsty.
    • As underlined under Adaptational Angst Upgrade on the main page, in practical terms this means a lot of the comedy plots/townie episodes from the source shows have been trimmed down (and usually made more tragic) or cut completely. Given that these sorts of non-lore related episodes were a contentious issue among the fanbase of both source shows, a similar divide exists for this fic.
• Complete Monster: In the Crystal Falls AU where Homeworld and Earth switch places, Bill Cipher, having long conquered Earth but restricted there, uses humanity as an army to conquer the universe. A sadistic despot, he has his soldiers capture Dipper Pines and has them torture and eventually downright mutilate the child for years on end. Once Dipper finally got reunited with his family, Bill manipulated the boy's resentment at his family for not searching for him to trick him into a deal. This universe's version of Bill Cipher is just as bad as his main counterpart and a truly horrific and monstrous tyrant.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Even well before she was properly introduced to the story, Amber (an OC Gem created for the Stonemason arc in UF2) was fairly popular with readers, to the point where she was paired up with Lapis as one of Dipper's surrogate moms in some version of the Water Mom and Gem Bros AUs.
• Fan Nickname: A lot of fans of this series started calling Lapis "Watermom" due to her interactions with Dipper. Jen herself sometimes calls Lapis that, and even made an AU in which Lapis escapes earlier than in canon and adopts Dipper.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Warp Tour", when listing off names of humans he knows to Peridot, Steven includes Wendy, Soos, and "Mr. Pines" on the list. Then in the Steven Universe season 4 finale "Are You My Dad?"/"I Am My Mom", we find out Homeworld has targeted all the humans Steven mentioned in that list to be taken to The Zoo. Which means Wendy, Soos, and both Stanley and Stanford (and possibly even Dipper since "Mr. Pines" would technically cover him too) are in trouble when MiniJen gets around to writing the Universe Falls version of "Are You My Dad?" in the fic's sequel.
  • Lapis's determination and reasoning for trying to leave Earth in Dipper and Lapis is almost verbatim her canonical reason for leaving Earth in Raising the Barn.
  • In "Lost and Found", the Gems react pretty badly to learning Rose Quartz had their memories of the Author erased, and why. Then "A Single Pale Rose" aired and revealed an even BIGGER secret Rose had been keeping from them: Pink Diamond is Rose Quartz, and faked her death. This is even true in the fanfic as well.
  • Steven's suggesting to Dipper in "Society of the Blind Eye" to use the memory gun to remove Dipper's trauma of Bill's possession of him in "Sock Opera" in becomes this in "Chille Tid, Part 2" when we learn that the reason Rose removed the Gems' memories of Ford and the portal was to remove their own trauma of being possessed by Bill. Like mother, like son indeed.
  • The UF chapter "Together Forever" has Steven and Mabel fusing for the first time and nearly getting stuck fused together. Then Steven Universe Future released an episode titled "Together Forever" where a lonely and directionless Steven offers to perma-fuse with Connie into Stevonnie.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "Keeping It Together", Amethyst is the Only Sane Man to Pearl and Stan while the three of them are chasing Peridot through the Prime Kindergarten. In the season 5 Steven Universe episode "What's Your Problem?", Steven describes Amethyst as the most mature of the Crystal Gems after all the Character Development she's gone through.
  • Keys to the Kingdom (Kingdom Hearts) recycles a lot of plot elements from Universe Falls, and it's a much darker fanfic than Universe Falls (which itself gets dark after "Jailbreak" due to how the Malachite situation affects Dipper, which says something.)
  • In "The Return", Old Man McGucket suggested they build another giant mechanical arm to give Peridot's arm-shaped spaceship a friendly handshake. Then in "Reunited", The Cluster gets into an arm-wrestling match with Yellow Diamond's arm-ship.
  • There is a fanfic based on the stories that has the characters singing various Disney/Animated Movie songs based on the main fic and the A Us. In "Don't Make Me Laugh", Jasper is trying to tempt Lapis into fusing with her and she threatens Dipper. In this fic's version of "Alone On The Lake", Jasper does threaten Dipper and for almost the same reasons.
• Ho Yay:
  • Dipper and Steven have their moments, particularly when Stepper gets involved. It's not helped by the fact that Dipper has been stated by MiniJen on her Discord to be bicurious. It probably reaches its peak in "Three's a Crowd", when Steven's levitation powers kick in as he and Dipper do a fusion dance, and the two literally dance on air as they form Stepper. At the end of "In Too Deep", Dipper also has an interesting reaction to Steven kissing him to heal his Malachite-inflicted wounds with his healing powers.
  • There's plenty of subtext in Ford and McGucket's reunion and eventual reconciliation in "Bot Battle", especially when Fiddleford saves Stanford when he falls out of Pearl's robot.
• I Knew It!:
  • Even before the reveal in the final chapter of arc 1, readers assumed that Rose Quartz and the author had some sort of history in the past. During their search for the second Light Cannon, the kids discover this was true.
• Memetic Mutation: Watermom Lapis^Explanation  Lapis's interactions with Dipper are nothing short of heartwarming. Many fans, as well as Jen herself, see their relationship as a mother-son relationship, and are treating Lapis likewise.
• Moral Event Horizon: Bill Cipher manages to already cross this in his first appearance by creating a nightmare that psychologically tortures Steven to the point where he eventually starts crying.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • A lot of Gravity Falls fans hated how Mabel was frequently blithely oblivious to others' feelings and rarely faced with the consequences of her actions in canon, and prefer Jen's take on her character, where she does face the consequences and overall has a clearer direction in her character arc.
  • A similar case can be made for Ford. While more of a Base-Breaking Character, he had several detractors who found him to be a nasty Jerkass, since even without taking his feud with Stan into account, he was characterized as a recluse with No Social Skills and an Insufferable Genius, traits that when combined, very nearly led to Bill's victory. Here, he's made into a much more amiable character, with his friendship with the Gems and being forced to face more of the consequences of his former actions, in particular amending his mistakes with Fiddleford, leading to him becoming much more soft-spoken and friendly. And on the subject of his feud with Stan, his reasoning for continuing it is made more explicit, and as a result, understandable, as he raises very good points as to why he's not going to just forgive a man who doesn't take his opinions into account and treats his interests with disdain, making him more sympathetic on that angle to boot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: You'd think Ronaldo, a walking Conspiracy Theorist stereotype, would fit in a Gravity Falls fanfic like a glove with its various mysteries, conspiracies, and cryptids, yet his presence is scaled back considerably compared to his various episodes from Steven Universe proper.
  • Connie gets this too, despite the fact she is known as one of the Mystery Kids, she appears way less often then Steven Dipper and Mabel, making anywhere from 2-7 appearences in the arcs, as such she misses out on a lot of the really big and important adventures. While the same can be said for canon, it feels a lot more egregious here as Steven now has two other same-age friends who are there for him during the most serious moments and she just feels like a hanger-on

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