#I need to talk to people lmfao

[deoidesign]

Ray of sunshine

(pre-launch page for their comic)

[guppygiggles]

This is becoming a trend, now… eheh.

The name he chose is Damon Faraday!

[cxtangerina]

k2 is such a funny ship to me, like it's just plausible enough to be kinda sorta realistic if you squint and pray and look at it sideways, not quite a crackship but not able to get off the ground as more than a particularly popular rarepair either. they had, like, one big episode together back in season 3, a handful of major moments over the years that people hold onto with an iron grip, and basically nothing else outside of a plethora of fantastic fancontent and dreams.

i think i like it for the exact opposite reasons that i like kyman, actually, they sorta stand as complementary ships in my mind. where k2 barely has any actual basis in canon & comes heavily from fanworks and speculation about how well the characters would match each other, kyman is practically canonical, at least when it comes to cartman's feelings, and is at least regularly joked about and referenced in-show. personally, i also tend to see k2 as a ship that is kinda miraculously requited, whereas kyman is usually stuck in unrequited hell, which...

...well, this gets into more specific character analysis, but a big part of this is that i tend to see cartman as having very fucked up views of both romance & sexuality that have especially interesting implications when you consider him to have a crush on kyle, specifically.

on the one hand, i think his cupid self is evidence enough that he has a very fairytale, idealized view of romance, based more out of the hollywood movie image of what love is supposed to be rather than anything in reality. south park adults being utter fucking idiots 99% of the time means that most, if not all, of the kids don't have a lot of good role models to base their actions off of. i'm not gonna talk out of my ass about childhood development more than i understand it, but i don't think it's too controversial (?) of a take to claim that kids understand & learn about the world through watching it just as much as interacting with it, particularly when it comes to their own parents.

cartman is a piece of shit, and while a lot of that comes from him and his own bigotry, he's still ultimately a kid in show and you can trace where some of his worst traits originate from in the people around him, even if he makes the personal decision to push it as much as humanly possible. i think the trend in recent seasons for many adults to try and at least appear more pc only makes this more obvious, actually (coughcoughrandy), though talking about that is maybe biting off a little more south park politics than i'm willing to chew for this particular post.

point is, cartman as a character in particular does not have a lot, if anything, to base his idea of what a healthy, happy romantic relationship looks like, which isn't only because liane is single though that may be a major contributing factor. love isn't work to cartman, it isn't about the maintenance of a relationship or communication or all the more realistic and slightly less pleasant parts of loving someone that hollywood doesn't find dramatic or interesting enough to show. rather it's a fantasy, something that happens to people that they have no real control over. i wouldn't be surprised if he believes in soulmates or love at first sight, even if the likelihood of him admitting that out loud isn't especially high.

on the other hand, i think his view of sexuality is greatly influenced by not just liane's sex work, but the way she is slut-shamed and treated like garbage by the rest of the town for it. i tend to view cartman as having a very transactional, cynical view of sex and sexuality, where sex is only used for personal gain (whether that be money or power, likely at the expense of someone else/the submissive party), and sexuality is an inherent character flaw, a weakness that must be overcome unless you are able to twist it and use it for your own (material?) benefit- see the streaming wars & cartman wanting his mom to seduce a rich man for money as a recent example of this.

it's a running gag in TFBW that cartman uses douchebag catching their dad fucking their mom as a tragic backstory, and doesn't seem to understand how reproduction actually works even when kyle basically says it straight to his fucking face. even as a joke, there's still a lot of underlying truth behind why he would believe this. cartman is aware of his mom's sex work, even if he may not want to fully admit/believe it, largely because of situations where he's specifically getting shit for it. he knows he has a father, and that he is (in)directly responsible for said father's horrible death & consumption, but he only really cares about that insofar as it means he's half ginger. sex has only ever been presented through its most vicious power dynamics to him- why would he see it as a good thing, as something that could ever be loving, especially when contrasted against such an idealized, purified view of romance?

(you could also extrapolate from this how cartman associates sexuality & romance with femininity & his brand of sexism to get some particularly delectable transfem cartman ideas, but i digress.)

ANYWAYS. this is all to say that cartman having a crush on kyle (or anyone, really, but kyle is obviously the most emotionally volatile example) instantly pits those two conflicting views against one another, like he wants something that he doesn't even think could ever exist: a happy, healthy romantic relationship, where sex is just a normal thing that they can choose to do or not. this is where a lot of kyman angst comes from for me, with cartman either trying to stuff that round desire back into the square hole of how he views the world, or having his ideals fall ever further apart when the feelings are unrequited. and, on top of that, none of this being actually said out loud because communication is impossible.

this is why i always see kyman as making each other worse, especially if they actually manage to make it into a romantic relationship. i simply Do Not see kyle being a patient enough person to help cartman work through the intricacies of all of his expectations and idealized fantasies and internalized fears surrounding such mutually screwed views of romance & sexuality- on the rare occasions that kyle does show some interest in romantic relationships it's usually pretty centered around himself, and to be frank i only see his interest in romance going down as he gets older.

i've heard some people talk about kyle before like he's the "moral compass" of south park or whatever and while that may be true by the end of the episode, one of the things i like most about him is the fact that he struggles so much to get to the best conclusions. this is kind of getting back into the k2 side of this analysis, but where kenny manages a much more effortless selflessness, even pushing it to the point of being both a strength and a flaw when kenny stops caring about himself for the sake of others, kyle is a lot more self-centered than he cares to admit and it influences a lot of his attempts at being a good person.

this is both my favorite aspect of kyle, that he really has to put in the work to be the good person that he wants to be, and also the primary bad trait that i think cartman brings out of kyle. by being such a notoriously horrible shithead, he gives kyle the perfect target to unleash his annoyance on, getting him so caught up in arguing and proving himself to be the better person that kyle forgets to actually listen to the people that he's supposed to be standing up for. cartman is a fantastic troll and, at least in show, kyle definitely has not learned to stop feeding him argument fodder yet.

sidenote: about kyman entering a romantic relationship... wasn't sure where to add this, but it's for this exact reason that i also see kyman (or this version of kyman where cartman gets worse with age, rather than better) only actually happening in the universes where kyle has lost all other meaningful connections, to the point that feeding a troll to get off on an argument is the best possible option, even if he's old enough to know better. especially if he's old enough to know better.

again, k2 is the opposite of this for me in that i see kyle & kenny as having a lot of potential to bring out the best in each other.

if kyle's worst trait is that he gets too caught up in his own feelings & desires to truly be the good, selfless, thoughtful person that he wants to be to actually do genuine good for the sake of others, kenny's problem is that he skews too far in the opposite direction. i kinda already said this, but to state it outright: kenny's biggest strength and his biggest flaw are the exact same, that he is selfless to a fault, to the point of consistently putting other people's safety and happiness above his own when he thinks it would be of help the majority/the people he loves. this was the key kenny trait that was established by the end of BL&U, and it has only gotten more prominent in the years since with his mysterion persona.

it is in this way that kenny both stands as someone that kyle can look up to & admire for how effortlessly he dedicates himself to the people he cares about the most, but also, simultaneously, as someone that kyle can take care of himself and offer the same help back to. and i don't even think kenny needs to say very much out loud to push kyle towards a lot of these conclusions, he kinda just has to exist and be noticed and kyle has the intelligence to figure it out himself, to recognize the shit that kenny puts himself through and his (usually) quite noble reasons for doing so, and want to offer him the same love and care and dedication that kenny never allows himself to have.

really, the difficult part of this is being noticed at all in the first place. again, i said earlier that k2 is kinda "miraculously requited," in my mind, specifically because the aspect that's missing in the show and almost always must be provided by fan content for k2 is that spark/push forward that gets them close enough to start talking and for kyle to notice kenny in the first place. it's just lucky that's one of my favorite things to figure out and write for those two, hehehe.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i feel like i'm a weird candidate for sex therapy bc it's like yeah on the one hand i grew up evangelical and repressed and on the other hand i've spent ten years doing queery theory and hanging out in more or less exclusively queer spaces and deconstructing everything to the point where i've got nothing left that makes sense so i can talk about gender and sexuality with a ton of nuance and understanding of historical and cultural context and also there's a part of my brain that still secretly believes i'm going to hell for it

but i have already done so much work on unlearning that to the point where i have circled around to a completely different issue, which is that i objectively believe it's fine to want whatever you want, and even though my instinct is that this doesn't apply to me i know that's unhelpful and i should ignore those thoughts because they're not true, but also i have absolutely no idea what i want and even less idea how to label it because i'm too aware that labels only describe our current cultural constructions of identities that actually don't adequately match how i understand myself bc i spent too much time thinking about premodern conceptions of gender and sexuality and got myself stuck in a corner with it

so like. i already therapised myself a lot. i've thought a lot about identity and how it works. i've done so much challenging of unhelpful thoughts and dealing with trauma responses and whatever. i have quite an advanced understanding on that front and frankly have probably taken it too far at times. but the basics of "what do you actually want, néide"? nah. fuck if i know

people who know this much about queer theory should be better at queer practice. unfortunately,

[stingreag]

‼️ follow me on twitter ‼️

[ashmp3]

I talked about this but i think me not making a move on someone is like a pendulum swinging between me genuinely not wanting a relationship because i am so comfortable with always being alone and between being deeply insecure and afraid of rejection. but i’m chilling

[evermoredeluxe]

.

[mamawasatesttube]

so we're calling "the trope where men act like they own their daughters like property" just being "girl dads" now are we? is that what we're doing? are we doing that now? is that really what we're doing now huh?? we're really just doing that now!!!!!

[moe-broey]

Sketch I accidentally put too close between other doodles

[rainofthetwilight]

CHAT I DISAPPEARED FOR LIKE 3 HOURS??????? 494 FOLLOWERS ALREADY?????????????

[kelin-is-writing]

Everyone, remind me to not trust my dad’s relatives with food and parties because they can’t do even that much the right way. The peoples are so questionable 💀

[pulchrasilva]

I am clearly much more insane about ursula le guin than either I or anyone else bargained for

[muirneach]

just saw someone call brokeback mtn ‘homophobic misery porn’ god forbid gay people have drama and tragedy. we can have sad movies too you know.

[strawberry-cow-sorceress]

strange & unusual

[sophiethewitch1]

ummm hiiii, can i say that i realllyyy adore your yan! batfam series? because i do! It's rare to see them as romantic so im screaming in joy and squealing everytime i read them hehe

in that note, i wanna also say that you reblogging about palestine had been a part of what pushed me to be unapologetically talkative about it to my family and friends! my granny wanted to go to "israel" to visit the "holy land" alongside with her church mates and it's been months of me speaking up about that they finally stopped this april from going.... also because i basically spammed them abt it TT

ghghgh hiii i am so happy it makes you so happy!!! the entire reason i keep posting it and working on it is because people love it so much... (even if i love it a lot too im just lazy) and you guys!! you guys got me squealing too!!! we are giggling and kicking our feet together anon

(also! i'm so proud of you for speaking up to your family! i know it's especially hard in dynamics you can't escape, and when you do this and make sure your feelings on the matter are heard and staunch you are doing the right and needed thing! you 'basically spamming' your family has made the world a better place, and you should be proud too!! we will see a free palestine!! in appreciation for you fighting the good fight ill make sure to donate again once my next pay comes!!)

[bright-and-burning]

also like . talking to ppl irl abt sports immediately reduces the anxiety this webbed site has been causing me recently LOOOOL. people r usually normal n i am capable of being normal its kinda crazy…