Dipper Pines

"When life gives you lemons, extract the juice and use it to draw a treasure map in invisible ink. That really works! Seriously!"

- Dipper Pines.

Mason "Dipper" Pines is the main protagonist of the Disney XD animated series, Gravity Falls. He first appeared on the unreleased unnamed pilot created by the series' creator, Alex Hirsch which he used to pitch the show, and then appeared on the first episode "Tourist Trapped". Ever since, Dipper and his twin sister Mabel Pines star in every episode of the show.

He was voiced by Jason Ritter, and designed by and loosely based on Alex Hirsch.

Role
Dipper is a 12-year-old boy who, alongside his sister Mabel, are sent by their parents to spend their summer with their grand-uncle Stan. Grunkle Stan runs a tourist trap called the Mystery Shack and upon meeting them, they quickly discover that he is a showman, falsifying the the mundane into "evidence" of the strange and supernatural. Intrigued, but unimpressed with his Uncle's claims, Dipper goes looking for his own evidence of the paranormal. By chance Dipper finds a hollowed out tree-stump, with a journal inside. The Journal, was written by someone who had started similar research, but with several more years experience, and confirmation of actual supernatural occurrences, once which he/she says are drawn to the region. By following the Journal, Dipper quickly starts finding his own confirmations. Sometimes due to shaky evidence, sometimes due to jaded or dim-witted locals, and sometimes due to association with his grunkle, Dipper almost never is able to prove the existence of the spectacular, to the public. Though this exasperates him sometimes, Dipper has adapted by just trying to document the supernatural for knowledge-sake. Mabel has a well stimulated imagination and so humors the supernatural aspects of the town almost instantly. Once Dipper's Journal is confirmed, Mabel and Dipper start accepting the Journal as hard fact, and use it as a reference point for anything even slightly out of the ordinary so as not to be caught unaware. Though Stan is jaded to the supernatural and sees rational explanations for most of what his grand-nephew and niece find due to the ease with which he fakes similar phenomena, the Mystery Shack repairman, Soos frequently follows along, being easily lead but concerned with the kid's safety enough to follow them on their adventures. While the Pines twins also occasionally get help from Mystery Shack employee, Wendy Corduroy. Dipper has an initial crush on her and gets too nervous to associate with her on most of his endeavors.

Enemies and Rivals
Dipper encounters all manner of strange creatures, phenomena and forces from episode to episode. However there are three returning ones, two of which are normal humans that have it out for Dipper personally. The first semi-antagonist Dipper encounters is Robbie Valentine. Robbie is Wendy's boyfriend, who absent-mindedly bullies others to define his own sense of self, but also has picked up on Dipper's crush on his girl-friend and so has targeted Dipper in particular. Robbie and Wendy would eventually split-up after Dipper discovers Robbie found a song, that subconsciously conditions girls to fall in deep love with certain guys like him once they play it for them, but Wendy is more upset that Robbie would try to manipulate her than with the nature of the actual manipulation and likewise with Dipper for trying to use the break-up to move-in on her. Robbie and Wendy are teenagers and so Robbie is more often than not beaten by his own angst/self-hatred than anything Dipper does, but he is physically and emotionally quite a capable of harming Dipper is allowed to and so the to have an extended cat-and-mouse rivalry. Dipper's second antagonist is Gideon "Lil' Gideon" Gleeful. Gideon proves far more of a real antagonist for Dipper as opposed to rival/bully. Gideon falls in love with Mabel at first sight and tries to win her over. When Mabel asks Dipper to let him down for her, Gideon interprets Dipper as an obstacle, one he is totally prepared to remove to get to Mabel. Dipper later finds Gideon also has a Journal. The two each have discovered various supernatural elements around town thanks to them, but unlike Dipper, Gideon uses his his for personal gain such as convincing the town he is a psychic and charging them for his services or using spells on his parents to get his way without restriction. To combat Gideon Dipper frequently needs to problem solve a situation. Dealing with Gideon though gives Dipper a dark-mirror of what he could be if he gives into to pettiness. Dippers last recurring antagonist and one of the most threatening in the show is Bill Cipher, an extra-dimensional demon. Dipper first met Bill when he was summoned by Gideon to look through Stan's mind while he slept to find out how to access the Mystery Shack's safe to get the deed to the property. When Dipper meets Bill he quickly finds that Bill not only has little to no concerns for earthy matters, and was helping Gideon largely out of boredom, but also that Bill has unfathomable levels of power. Bill is very firmly outside of Dipper's figurative weight-class and so dealing with Bill has to do with either games of cunning or simply running, because in a straight fight Bill automatically wins, his sense of sadism being the only thing that keeps Dipper alive rather than being instantly crushed.

Personality
Dipper is a introvert where Mabel is an extrovert. He has poor social skills but a passion for uncovering the unknown. While Dipper does try to look for rational explanations he is not a-non-believer. Very little is needed to get Dipper to accept a situation is supernatural, but once he does, he always tries to sort out the logic of it. Dipper's crush on Wendy defines most of his early motivations. Eventually after Wendy and Robbie's break-up, Dipper starts to realize he might be as bad as Robbie, by only thinking of Wendy as a potential love interest and starts opening up to her as a friend. By the episode "Into the Bunker" Dipper has a heart to heart with Wendy and realizes the romance will never happen, that Wendy was wise to Dipper's feelings the entire time and was intentionally letting them play-out without acknowledging them so he could work through them without her having to reject him. Dipper gets along well with Soos, and remain amicable but wary of his grand-uncle. Dipper has an initial hatred for Mabel's rival Pacifica Northwest, the local spoiled rich-girl, but after she calls him in to preform an exorcism for the episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery" he soon sees the human-side of her and sort of family life lead her to become the way she is and the two become friends. In general Dipper is always willing to learn, both intellectually and in terms of social growth.

Abilities
Dipper's main skills are largely problem solving - he treats everything like a mystery waiting to be solved. Dipper has little in the way of strength, even for someone of his age. He is capable of holding his own in tussles with Mabel and Gideon in brawls but nothing beyond that. With the Journal, Dipper passively picks-up a variety of skills, such as how to cast base spells, preform exorcisms and attract/repel certain monsters. As for the spells, Dipper reads them as he would an instruction manual, he does not commit them to memory and can not perform them without consulting the Journal; such spells include necromancy, creating wards and banishing ghosts. Dipper tries to think outside-the-figurative-box, but becomes so involved in solutions to complex problems he frequently overlooks simplistic resolutions, for this and reliance on gut instinct, he often relies on Mabel, far more in-tune with such concepts. Because Dipper and Mabel are so close they often help the other with their short-comings, Dipper with following his feelings and Mabel with confronting logic problems.

By the end of the series, Dipper had been matured, and learned many lessons from his adventures.

Quotes
"Ah, summer break. A time for leisure, recreation, and taking 'er easy. Unless you're me. My name is Dipper. The girl about to puke is my sister Mabel. You may be wondering what we're doing in a golf cart, fleeing from a creature of unimaginable horror. Rest assured, there's a perfectly logical explanation. Let's rewind. It all began when our parents decided we could use some fresh air. They shipped us up north to a sleepy town called Gravity Falls, Oregon, to stay at our great-uncle's place in the woods. My sister tended to look on the bright side of things. But I was having a hard time getting used to our new surroundings. And then there was our Great Uncle Stan. That guy. Our uncle had transformed his house into a tourist trap he called The Mystery Shack. The real mystery was why anyone came. And guess who had to work there. It looked like it was gonna be the same, boring routine all summer. Until one fateful day."

- Dipper's First narration. "Our uncle told us there was nothing strange about this town. But who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked."

- Dipper's Second narration. "If you've ever taken a road trip through the Pacific Northwest, you've probably seen a bumper sticker for a place called Gravity Falls. It's not on any maps, and most people have never heard of it. Some people think it's a myth. But if you're curious, don't wait. Take a trip. Find it. It's out there somewhere in the woods, waiting."

- Dipper's final narration.

"You're the worst."

- Dipper to Pacifica. "Bill thinks there's no heroes in this world, but if we work together and fight back, we can defeat him. You wanna be Mabel's hero? Stand up to Bill, and let us save her!"

- Dipper.

Trivia

 * Dipper is based on of the series creator, Alex Hirsch. The adventures of Dipper and his sister are inspired by the childhood of Alex Hirsch and his own twin sister, Asriel Hirsch.
 * It is revealed in the Gravity Falls episode Dipper vs.Mannliness that he listens to a girly Icelandic pop band named Babba, which is a parody of ABBA.
 * Dipper's original hat, in the pilot episode Tourist Trapped, was tan and taupe with a star in the center.
 * In Journal 3, it is revealed that his real name is Mason Pines.
 * As a character, Dipper has been critically well received. He appears in various Gravity Falls merchandise, such as on clothing and in video games.
 * Dipper was born on August 31, 1999.
 * The name Dipper originated from the star with the same name, which he has a birthmark of it on his head, hence he earned the name "Dipper" and everyone, including himself, consider it his real name.