Reincarnation edition! Because this is a good excuse to hammer out some ground rules for my understanding of reincarnation in TAU-verse and also indulge in my apparent love of creating r!characters.
1. Memories can leave imprints on a soul, but only if they are tied to something of enormous personal importance and a truckload of emotion, usually with a little magic to seal the deal. Usually this only shows up in a reincarnation of the individual the impression originated from as momentary déjà vu or a sense of having forgotten something that was just on the tip of one’s tongue, and only if triggered by a specific set of circumstances or stimuli (scent is usually the strongest trigger). Occasionally it can manifest as a knee-jerk feeling of trust or dislike towards another person, a place, or a thing/concept. These usually fade after a lifetime or so; no such ‘impressions’ have been recorded as lasting for more than two. It’s a highly uncertain field of study, however, and as with everything, there are anomalies.
2. Each individual lifetime is a start from scratch, a blank slate, which while informed by the soul’s own preferences towards appearance, interests, etc., is a new individual with their own life and experiences, their own preferences and interests and beliefs. However, despite this, Dipper has noticed that people who were close to him as Dipper Pines – and others who were in Gravity Falls during the Transcendence – seem to have a higher incidence of similar life experiences and consistent personality traits across reincarnations. He’s not sure if this is somehow a result of the Transcendence, or if he’s somehow doing it subconsciously because he doesn’t want to completely lose his family and friends.
3. Souls tend to group in clumps of about 500, which will usually reincarnate together or in close proximity to each other. If they don’t, their incarnations will often cross each other’s paths later in life. It’s rare for different groups to intersect, but sometimes individuals from two separate groups will become meaningful to each other and either one will join the other’s cluster or the two clusters will split and a new one will form.
4. Wendy does eventually recover from her whole ghost fiasco, but it takes getting munched on by Alcor and multiple decades, and none of her reincarnations ever pick up an axe again.
5. All of Gideon’s reincarnations have an inexplicable Southern accent. All of them. Every single one. Good, bad, somewhere in between, regardless of where they’re from or what language they grow up speaking. If they ever learn English, it comes out with a heavy Southern accent. Apparently it’s meaningless.
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