#NOT REGRESS LIKE. IMPROVEMENT IS IN WAVES OR SOMETHING IDK

[maskedchip]

some asoryuu arts from when i tried really hard to have a "super clean" look >_<

[south-park-meta]

I think I agree with it as a character regression actually.

It feels like ever since the Post Covid there’s been this like… Undoing of a lot of the character development the kids have had. And I kind of get why they’ve done it- characters like Stan and Kyle for example felt like they’d been written into a miserable wall where it was hard to approach them in new ways. And like, this was because they had built on and on with this rising action of character development for them and then just… Sort of gave up on it? And we got Post Covid to “resolve it”, and dgmw I love Post Covid but it hardly was enough to meaningfully fix the damage between Stan and Kyle’s relationship the last ten seasons or so, or their own issues that have just built on to be worse and worse and weigh on them more and more heavily.

And so like. Idk where I’m going with this. I get why they reversed it to bring the show back to feeling fresher and more like a bunch of kids going through crazy little adventures rather than the depressing reality they’d written them into. Like, I don’t hate seeing them act more naive and innocent and happy as opposed to the broken messes they’d both became (and other characters as well, though I do feel like it’s just so especially prominent with Stan and Kyle specifically) but it’s kind of frustrating at times? To see them relearn things or to have never gotten any real conclusion or closure on where their characters had been going for a long time? I’d loved to have gotten a real resolution to any of that but. Idk.

Idk if this exactly matches your perspective on this, but idk, I’ve definitely felt similar to your thoughts here! Sorry to ramble about it in ur ask box lmao

Yeah I think it comes down to Post Covid, too. They've hand waved a lot of Stan and Kyle's issues which is like fine, I guess. Like, whatever, they've never been great at discussing their problems so there's arguably been improvement by Stan admitting jealousy outright recently... though Stan's also been VERY consistent in having emotions build, dumping them out when they're too much to handle, and then not really doing anything more with them lol which...is the same thing that happened with regards to being jealous over Kyle and Tolkien.

Whatever though, I guess.

Stan in particular I feel is The Problem with the show growing. He actually HAS to be regressed quite a bit to reset the show the way they want to. This isn't something that's really true for the other boys because the catalyst to their friendship breaking apart...was Stan. Of course there were fissures, there were REASONS, but those things are irrelevant. The other kids, on a whole, were fine with the status quo. If their friendship ultimately completely broke apart into smithereens based on the Pre-Post Covid episodes, it is CLEAR that Stan is the one who's going to end it. No matter how the other kids feel or don't feel, it's Stan who's pulling the plug.

How do you keep going forward with the main character who's willing to end ALL of his meaningful relationships when you don't want to do anything but band-aid fix the problems that he's had? South Park has a major story problem and it is, primarily, there is no REAL new reason for Stan to stay friends with people he thought 'didn't like each other'. The narrative problem is Stan. Fixing the narrative problem means dialing back Stan's relationship growth, it means tamping down the depression they've been building (even in terms of situational depression regarding Tegridy this has been dialed WAAAAY way back).

Stan IS the problem with fixing things.

Unfortunately putting him in a place where things can be magically fixed also means completely jacking up his growth pretty much from around season 15/YGO.