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The people of Gravity Falls knew Dipper only, and exactly, as he wanted to be known - as that strange, gawky young man, great nephew of Stanford and Stanley Pines, who was smart as a whip but anxious, awkward, reluctant to get too close to anyone outside of his close-knit little family and quick to rankle at perceived slights. A rare few citizens knew his real name, too - Mason - but only those who lived within the walls of the Mystery Shack knew the name that had been written on his birth certificate, which glowed hot and shameful in the back of his mind, a brand of his own abnormality. Those six letters, if revealed, would bare his freakishness to the whole town. Marcie, his dead name that had yet to die, kept alive by his parents' lips, and his teachers' and classmates' mocking voices.
That first, terror-filled summer, Dipper and Mabel had stepped off the bus to find their Grunkle, whom they had seen in photos but had never before met in person, waiting for them with a surly expression on his face. Dipper, wearing his most masculine clothes and with his long mane of hair tucked up and hidden beneath his cap, grabbed Mabel's hand and squeezed it, hard, though his face had closed off and betrayed nothing of his fear. They climbed off the bus, hands tightly linked, Mabel leading the way with the sort of smile on her face that she wore as armor to a battle.
"Grunkle Stan!" She yelled, jerking the old man out of whatever thoughts he'd been lost in. His eyes lit on Mabel and he broke into a grin that faltered just the slightest bit when he laid eyes on Dipper behind her.
"Kids!" Stan shouted back, pushing roughly past a couple of other people waiting for the bus to unload. He ushered the twins away from the bus, stopped, looked carefully down at them. "So you're Mabel," he said, nodding at the girl in her bright pink sweater, "and," he looked at Dipper and Dipper looked back, steeling himself, and the three of them spoke at once -
"Marcie?"
"Dipper!"
"Mason."
"Mason," Stan repeated slowly, his expression inscrutable. "Mason. You pick that out for yourself?"
"Yeah," said Dipper.
"*He* picked it out three months ago," added Mabel, stepping sideways to put herself in between her brother and her Grunkle.
"Huh. Mason. I gotta say, kid, it suits you a lot better than Marcie," Stan said amiably.
"You should tell that to my parents," said Dipper, cracking, for the first time, a smile.
"Sure," said Stan, bending down to pick up one of their bags - a bright pink thing that belonged to Mabel.
"Wait, really?"
"Yeah, kid, really. They sure as hel- uh, sure as heck didn't tell me about it. I guess they're not taking it well, are they?" He heaved the bag into the trunk of the car. "Huh, kid?"
"No, they're not - they're not, uh-" Dipper bit his lip. He resented his parents but - despite his Grunkle's apparent acceptance - he wasn't sure if he could get away with badmouthing them in front of the man.
Mabel, of course, had no qualms whatsoever with doing so. "They're being awful about it," she declared, swinging her other bag - just as pink and just as large - up towards the trunk. But she missed, losing control of the bag and slamming it into Stan's side, nearly toppling the man over. "Oh no! Are you okay, Grunkle Stan?"
Stan groaned and clutched his side, taking a moment before looking up to smile weakly at Mabel. "I'm fine, sweetie. Anyway, Mason - Dipper - I'll see if I can't bring your parents around, okay?"
It hadn't worked out, of course. His parents were stubborn and unrelenting and, as Dipper now knew, they were bigoted, and no amount of talk from Stan would change that fact. At least the anger from his first failed attempt had worked out well for Dipper, since his Grunkle had driven him into town, gotten him a boy's haircut, and bought him new shorts and t-shirts. This had proven to be one of the rare few instances over that particular summer when Stan would spend money on either of the twins.
After the madness of that first summer, when the twins lefts Gravity Falls for a home that no longer felt like home, Dipper took solace in his sister and his Grunkles, who regularly sent him all the things his parents refused to buy. Binders, boxers, packers, pants, and shirts all came regularly during the school year. Though his parents hated it, and railed against seeing "their little Marcie insisting on this nonsense," they never took these gifts away. Stan may not have changed their minds about anything, but Dipper got the distinct feeling that he had made some kind of threat with regard to the treatment of his great-nephew, and so his parents' disdain for his identity did not bleed often into something more forceful than Dipper could handle. In this way Dipper made it through all those interminable days under his parents' roof, waiting always for the shining summers spent in Gravity Falls.