#sharrakor

[callmearcturus]

@sharrakor replied to your post “so is akechi in tactica or not”:

As paid DLC only

​is that a joke or

[wool-string]

@sharrakor I actually did think about Kou in this au!

maybe Kei’s mom forces him into some kind of group therapy for people who became disabled and Kou who was partially paralyzed was also in it 😭 though I admit I can’t imagine Kou ever sitting still in a wheelchair. So ig it could also work as him just volunteering there after years of physical therapy helped him enough to get out of the wheelchair but he still wants to help encourage others who were in his situation. He’s such a good boy but he and Kei definitely still fight often

Au where Kei never dies, he just looses his arm during the accident. He grows super depressed so Kai goes over often to keep him company and does lots of little things for him to make it easier.

He’ll open his drinks, help button on his sweater, and feeds him if Kei is holding something.

[swordmouse]

hi there, just wanted to take a moment to apologise for getting shouty on that video essay post you made...

Thank you so much for getting shouty on that post. SOMEONE had to, and I'm glad it didn't have to be me. Ty and enjoy being right about RWBY

[ninawritesastory]

So, I started following you because your posts on Creek are fantastic and have fueled headcanons for days but I've recently stumbled into enjoying Style (I'm new to this fandom) and a tag on one of your recent reblogs leads me to ask: what do you think needs to happen in order for Style to work? What growing up and experience do you think they need? And, in the end, how do you ultimately see them once they've achieved that?

Holy crow, thank you so much! I’m glad you’re enjoying all of the Creek, and I’m glad you’re getting plenty of headcanons out of it. Half the time I feel like I’m just rambling nonsensically into the void and none of what I’m saying makes any sense, so it’s always nice to hear that it’s making sense to someone! xD

And welcome to the South Park fandom, by the way! I think this is one of the chillest, least toxic fandoms I’m part of (so long as you stay away from. like, the Kyman vs. Style ship wars; maybe it’s calmed down a bunch, but it used to be fairly…interesting) and there are TONS of awesome artists and writers, as I’m sure you’re discovering. I hope you have lots of fun and find some good stuff.

Now, thing about Style is that, after the events of You’re Getting Old/Assburgers in particular, there’s a clear shift in the maturity levels between Kyle and Stan. The main problem here is that, for all intents and purposes, Kyle is a lot like Cartman. The key difference is that Kyle is always convinced he’s morally superior while Cartman doesn’t really give a shit about moral superiority.

There have been multiple instances throughout the show where Kyle has demonstrated a definite lack of emotional sensitivity to the point where I’d consider it largely canon that he has trouble empathizing with others. His treatment of Stan in You’re Getting Old and Assburgers is pretty much what had me pushing back my realm of feasibility for the Style relationship. Kyle can’t empathize with Stan’s developing depression; he outright says that Stan’s worsening mental health is toxic to him. And while I can understand that, to some degree, the fact that Kyle was willing to abandon Stan once his depression was starting to worsen really turned me off from canonical Style.

I have depression myself, and I know from experience how shitty it is to have the people you care about turn their backs on you because you’re no longer smiling and laughing at the same stuff you used to. Depression fucks with you in ways that drastically alter who you are. And if you decide to seek out treatment and keep up with it, who you become as you recover is fairly rarely who you were before you spiraled. If you’ve ever seen Inside Out (which has a FANTASTIC way of showing what depression feels like), think of the Personality Islands going dark and crumbling away. It’s a lot like that: what interested you, what you valued, what you loved, you’re likely to lose your connections to those things and even once you begin recovery there’s a chance that you won’t be able to reestablish those interests, or at least to the same strength that you had them before. Depression more or less chews you up and spits you out, and when you start recovering, you’re essentially a blank slate in terms of your interests.

And Stan…never actually gets any real treatment. Personally, I was really confused when Stan’s obvious descriptions of depression were immediately linked by Mr. Mackey to Asperger’s Syndrome. (Which made it really difficult for me to keep up with the rest of the episode, because it kind of felt like they just wanted to make the Ass Burgers joke and went from a depression-focused storyline to an autism-focused one.) But, the only “treatment” Stan gets at all is alcohol. It’s literally poured down his throat without his consent. Even once the episode comes to a close, Stan never receives any actual treatment and so has to rely on the only “solution” he was exposed to.

But, anyway, from those episodes onwards, there’s been a distinct imbalance in Stan and Kyle’s relationship. Their “Super Best Friends” status is starting to feel more and more superficial. Because Stan is fairly emotionally intelligent. He’s highly empathetic, even if he can be self-centered on a semi-regular basis. And Stan is definitely in the processing of growing up just a little too fast due to his issues with depression, addiction, and substance abuse. He’s taking responsibility for himself at an age when he really shouldn’t have to—at least, not in those areas.

Meanwhile, Kyle doesn’t really have anything pushing him to grow. (Prior to last season, at any rate.) He’s ten and there’s nothing in his immediate experience that is forcing him to think more maturely. The closest he ever comes is with Ike, but since Ike is not someone he has to take care of on a regular basis, any maturity he shows in those moments is fleeting and kind of superficial. Kyle doesn’t have any reason to reevaluate how he relates to people, his empathy is severely underdeveloped, and he has a hard time understanding anyone else’s point of view.

In other words, Stan’s in the process of maturing. Kyle (prior to last season) is nowhere close. It’s possible that Kyle’s experiences with Heiman and the nuking of Canada may help push him into that phase of his development, but I don’t think I can really say that definitively until the next season comes out.

So, for what I feel needs to happen for Style to work. On Stan’s end, he needs to get some actual treatment for his depression. He seems to have gotten the whole addiction and substance abuse thing more or less under control thanks to his chat with Satan, but I’m not sure if his depression has been managed as effectively. I also think he needs to have a Come to Jesus moment in terms of his relationship with his dad. Honestly, I heavily empathized with Stan in Ass Burgers when he was finally making progress in dealing with his mental health only for Randy to yank the rug out from under him at the last minute. I just get the sense that Randy’s presence in Stan’s life is essentially what keeps Stan from progressing in terms of his mental health and development. That whole, “Stick to what you know” thing isn’t going to help Stan because sticking to what he knows involves a flash of booze stashed in his underwear drawer and no actual attempts to seek either medication or psychiatric help. So Stan needs to develop enough to pull himself out from under Randy’s influence.

For Kyle…Kyle needs to mature emotionally. He needs to learn how to empathize with other people and get out of his self-centered focus. I think he may be on the way to that, if he learned his lesson from the M.A.C./Canada nuking situation. I also think that what would help Kyle most is just getting out of South Park and away from Cartman. Everyone says college is pretty much a different world from grade school, and in a lot of ways they’re right. Depending on what college you go to, your likelihood of being in classes with people you know from grade school is slim to none. The structure in college is also different; a lot of it relies on you being accountable to yourself and your coursework. The mix of people you interact with is almost never the exact same sort of mix you grew up with. Which would go a long way to helping Kyle develop the necessary self-awareness needed to make the Style relationship work.

The way I see it, Kyle and Stan having some sort of a falling out in middle school or high school. They don’t hang out that much anymore, their friend groups shift enough that their daily interactions are minimal, and they develop apart from each other for the first time in their lives. They go their separate ways after graduation—Kyle to college and Stan to the military—and don’t really call or talk or anything after leaving South Park. Give it at least a semester, better a year or so, and they reunite during break. Kyle’s done a shit ton of growing up, Randy’s shadow over Stan’s life is drastically reduced, and they’ve have a chance to grown into themselves. Kyle’s got a better understanding of mental health, Stan’s got a firmer grip on his depression, and they’re finally back on even ground. That’s when a romantic relationship between the could work out.  

[southparkks]

just want to say sorry for what is probably a tonne of note spam over the last few days. I just found your blog and, well, I love anything Stan or Kyle related!

lmao mood! don’t worry omg, i don’t mind spam and stuff!

[chibigaia-art]

commission for @sharrakor! ✨ c: Thank you again!!! This was such a cute thing to work on

Commission info

[ninawritesastory]

(1/2 - sorry for the long ask) Oh wow. Thank you for welcoming me to the fandom and thank you for writing what was essentially an in-depth essay! I definitely didn't expect! I understood the majority of what you were saying, even if I was hazy on the particulars of the episodes you mentioned (I'm really far behind, in sequential order, but trying to catch up!). I especially understood your points about Stan's depression - I've been there myself too and I also found Inside Out an apt depiction.

First lesson, dude: I do not know how to shut up. I will word-vomit for hours unless someone stops me. Especially if I have a lot of thoughts/opinions/knowledge of the topic at hand. (And that’s fine; I was only able to binge the show in a few days because I was horribly sick and bedbound for nearly a week.) So don’t feel bad about long asks, either!

In terms of the parallels you’re asking for…hmm. That’s an interesting question, honestly, because the dynamics at play in each relationship are very different—at least in how I write them. Tweek and Craig have a fairly ideal balancing act between them: what Tweek lacks, Craig’s good with, and vice-versa. There has never been a point in their lives pre-relationship where their personalities and viewpoints were practically identical. They weren’t friends from an early age, and they definitely weren’t joined at the hip by any means prior to dating. Unlike Stan and Kyle, Craig and Tweek had plenty of opportunities to develop themselves outside of each other before getting together.

Stan and Kyle have been more or less interchangeable in canon, particularly in the earlier seasons. Although, I think they started to develop unique personality traits after the Season Without Kenny. Which is a good thing! However, taking their canon dynamic into account, one really good parallel would be Stan keeping Kyle’s moral compass pointed due north. Kyle’s the sort of person who will let his more extreme emotions run away with him, and Stan’s developed into someone who’s gotten pretty good at preventing that. Kyle’s kind of been stagnating development-wise over the course of the series while Stan’s pretty much had to mature or risk destroying his life. (Considering who his dad is, it’s no wonder Stan seems to have decided to do literally anything he can to not end up like that.)

It’s kind of hard for me to compare these two ships because, the way I write/interpret them, it’s like comparing apples to oranges. BUT. I can definitely hook you up with some quality Style headcanons.

- They end up renting an apartment together a short distance from where Kyle goes to college. They furnish it with stuff that other people had put out on the curb for the garbage truck

- Stan ends up going to trade school and studying to become a veterinarian. At first he’s not sure whether he wants to specialize in medium/small animals or large animals, so he ends up going with both. (Kyle would prefer he go with small animal exclusive and specialize in a particular type of animal, like birds or reptiles, due to the increased earning opportunity, but Stan’s more interested in just taking care of animals.)

- Kyle starts out on a pre-med degree track, but ends up burning out about halfway through. He switches to accounting and business, and ends up managing the vet clinic Stan takes over.

- Stan has a tendency for bringing in strays. He rescues two dogs, three cats, and an injured blue jay before Kyle finally puts his foot down.

- There’s not really a starting point to them being a couple. Like, they go on a lot of outings that most people would interpret as dates: going to get coffee (the machine broke), visiting museums (research for school), visiting the zoo (Stan’s in school to be a vet), and so on. It kind of just…hits Kyle out of the blue one day when he realizes that he thinks Stan’s adorable when he’s sleepy. Kind of one of those, “Dude, are we dating?” ��…I guess so?” sort of things.

- Once they decide they’re dating, nothing really changes. They still keep their own bedrooms because having your own space is just kind of nice, y’know? But they do end up crashing in the same bed more often than not. Typically Kyle’s, because it’s harder to drag him away from the books than it is to drag Stan away.

- They’ve developed different tastes in food over the years; Kyle’s taken a greater interest in healthy eating due to his diabetes and the fact that he’s only got one functioning kidney (which he still tries not to think about due to its origins) while Stan would live off fast food, dry cereal, and soda if he could. Funny enough, Stan’s the better cook between them.

- A good portion of their interests still overlap even after all these years, so it’s not often there will be something one wants to do that the other has no interest in. However, it still happens; Kyle’s still a diehard basketball fan while Stan’s still more of a football fan.

- Stan tends to play guitar when he senses another depressive episode coming on. Kyle’s never really been much of a music fan (no rhythm to save his life), but he’s pretty fond of Stan’s acoustic covers. Stan notices and starts to play some before bed if Kyle’s been particularly stressed. It’s one of the most surefire ways to make sure Kyle gets enough sleep: Stan plays the right melody for roughly five minutes and Kyle’s out like a light.

- They end up just getting married by a Justice of the Peace after dating for roughly four or five years. Kyle’s mom throws a fit about it, but neither Stan or Kyle wanted a fancy wedding any way.