#that's it that's all the relevant tags i'm putting

[feshsticks]

Such Beastly Things clothing variants, bc inspiration hit me hard n fast tonight apparently lol. i'm lost deep in the sauce lads 😩😩

[incandescentflower]

I'm seeing the whole "If you don't like something stay out of the fandom tags" commentary again. Honestly, it bugs me quite a bit. I would say that I try to not piss in people's cheerios often. I try to not just complain for the sake of yelling about something. I do believe everyone should get to enjoy what they enjoy whether I like it or not.

but I also think people who like a certain kind of story and watch things with the hope they will get what they like, and then are disappointed, also deserve community.

I think the opinion that all people are doing this to troll or because they enjoy complaining is a bad take, at least in the fandoms I'm in. When I get that stubborn about a show it's because I genuinely loved something about it and I now have passionate opinions about it. If I didn't care, I would not be posting about it. I would just forget it.

And yes, there are different levels of critique that are productive and others that are not. But having people be like - have your feelings but keep it to yourself or only your dash where others may or may not have the same feelings - maybe are harmless when you are annoyed that an adult show has all the plot points of a high school story, but are concerning when the post is talking about the pair the spare where there is no recognition that they had painted the antagonist as an assaulter and are now rehabilitating him with no effort at all. When you start dictating what is acceptable and unacceptable fandom opinions, you start walking the line of censoring voices that should be boosted.

In my opinion, fandom is at its best when you are hearing other points of view and gaining more understanding of media by listening to other voices. It's another part of the transformative nature of fandom.

And It's so easy here to block people or filter people and tags if it's really something you don't want to see. The expectation yet again that someone else should be responsible for your experience is beyond my brain capacity.

I do know how hard it is to see a huge fandom reaction that doesn't align with yours -I have experienced it both in loving something and hating something. But that is why we all need to find our community and well, on tumblr, it's in the tags.

[meddwlyngymraeg]

Vocabulary - to want

A few different ways (that I know) to express wishes and desires.

eisiau - to want. One of the standard ways of saying you want something, all across Wales. In truth, it’s not actually a verbnoun like many others, it’s really a noun. That’s why you don’t need the ‘yn’ before it ad you would for any other verbnoun: ‘yn mynd’, ‘Dwi’n mynd’. ‘Dyn ni’n aros.’ Etc.

‘Dwi eisiau cysgu.’ I want to sleep.

I believe the reason for this is an older construction that is used in literary Welsh, but that got shortened and dropped off over time in colloquial Welsh. ‘bod ... ar [rhywun]’ was the construction used, roughly meaning to have ‘a want upon you’ (very roughly).

Double checking this with Wiktionary (beloved), they do have a credible literary source demonstrating this: the Welsh bible (which thanks to a frenzied linguistics and orthography-fuelled spiral down Wikipedia, and oddly enough, the Welsh comedian and radio broadcaster Elis James (unrelatedly), I know was first translated in the 1500s and directly led to the loss of the letter ‘k’ from the Welsh alphabet).

‘Yr Arglwydd yw fy Mugail; ni bydd eisiau arnaf.’ The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Close enough to colloquial Welsh to understand, that's using ‘eisiau arna (i)’. Over time, colloquial Welsh has dropped the ‘ar’. The example sentence above could've been 'Dwi eisiau cysgu [arna i]'.

A note. Some people have a misconception that eisiau should cause a soft mutation in the word following it, because it is an exceptional case of an action (of sorts) that doesn’t need an ‘yn’, and so must follow a pattern similar to a few other conjugations out there like ‘dylu’ (should).

‘Dylet ti ddweud rhywbeth’ (You should say something), ‘Galla i wneud rhywbeth amdano fe’ (I can do something about it), ‘Ga i rywbeth?’ (Can I have something?), the past tenses of gwneud, ‘wnaethon ni ddysgu Cymraeg’, ‘Mae rhaid iddyn nhw dduhino’n gynnar!’ (They must wake up early!)

And so on. This isn’t the case, as eisiau is not a conjugated verb. It’s just a noun for desire! (*not exactly. I’m trying to explain this as best I can)

There is a south Walian usage of ‘eisiau’ that makes this idea clearer.

In some southern dialects, the construction ‘mae eisiau i…’ is used to mean that someone needs something. E.g. ‘Mae eisiau i ti fwyta’ means ‘you need to eat’. What it literally means is ‘there is a need for you to eat’, and so you can see the noun eisiau (a need) in use.

North Walian Welsh uses the same structure, but with the noun angen instead. ‘Mae angen i ti fwyta.’ ‘Mae angen iddyn nhw sosban’, literally, ‘they are in need of a saucepan’.

Speaking of dialect differences, especially in north Wales Welsh, you might come across spelling variants of eisiau: ‘isio’, ‘isia’, (N) ‘isie’ (S), ‘isho’, etc. Perks of a phonetic language are that nothing’s a misspelling really if it sounds alright when said out loud. I did raise an eyebrow at the last one a little, ‘sh’ isn’t the English ‘sh’ in Welsh, is it? (Is that Wenglish?)

Other forms!

moyn - to want. Used pretty much only in the south and valleys, but this one is a regular verbnoun. ‘Dwi’n moyn cwpla fy ngwaith gytre’n fuan’ (I want to finish my homework soon)

(Just realised there are a Lot of dialect words in that sentence! Cwpla -> gorffen, gytre -> cartef)

It seems simpler than the exceptional eisiau construction, why isn’t it more widely accepted?, you ask. (Most people I’ve said it to say it immediately places you geographically to them because they never hear anyone else say it.) It derives from an older verb, ymofyn, which itself comes from the word gofyn (to ask), ‘ym’ + ‘gofyn’ = ‘ymofyn’, which sort of goes away from the original idea of wanting, and into one of asking. Still, language evolves, and so you will still hear moyn in South Wales. In fact, the Say Something In Welsh course teaches it (which is how I know it. Probably worth giving a disclaimer that I’m simply mad about linguistics and Welsh alternative bands, before anyone starts to think I live in Wales just because I occasionally write long grammar posts!)

Awydd - a desire. Used similarly to eisiau, no ‘yn’ precedes it. The whole point of making this post was that I just came across this sentence: ‘Ti awydd mynd i Gastell Caerfili?’ Meaning, do you want to go to Caerphilly Castle?

And those are the ones I know!

[seaweedstarshine]

Sometimes I think of Amy Pond, who grew up being called mad by those who wielded the word as a tool of exclusion and shame —

Amy Pond, who though forced into the hands of four psychiatrists, still clung to that which they called madness until those systems which elevate psychosocial conformity above humanity stripped it from her —

Amy Pond, whose imaginary friend reappeared for a single hour after twelve years and reignited that faith before disappearing for two more years —

Amy Pond, who spent those those two years under the same implicit threat ingrained in her through psychiatric violence, and thus began to believe the man who stopped the invasion was “just a madman with a box,” only for him to agree, and to also call her “mad, impossible Amy Pond,” reframing madness as non-negative for the first time in her life —

Amy Pond, who ignored the disembodied voice of her imaginary friend even as she ran away with him for real, who still lived each day with the traumatic internalization of deviancy dictated upon her by the psychiatric-industrial complex that shaped her from childhood —

Amy Pond, who wouldn't acknowledge the Doctor's voice, such that it took an Angel in her eye that was literally killing her to ensure she couldn't reality check herself —

Amy Pond, who stood before a room which muttered about “the psychiatrists we brought her to,” and though afraid, escaped their rigid parameters of acceptable existence.

[sosadraws]

Anyone has Mynah fanfic recomendations?

Or at least fanfics where they're plot relevant or recurring characters. I'm not picky regarding genre or ships

[amporella]

KYLE BROFLOVSKI, STAN MARSH, AND THE FEMININE/MASCULINE QUESTION

(Or; In defense of feminine Kyle and masculine Stan)

(OR or; how Matt and Trey's outdated views prove their intentions for their characters...

...part 1.)

Normally, I would kick off the part of an essay like this above the ‘read more’ with a short summary, but given the complexity of this topic, I don’t think I can summarize it in the way it deserves in just a paragraph. Instead, I’ll start with this: it’s been a little over a year since I was freed from Tumblr shadowban hell, and nearly as long since I made my first original post on South Park tumblr. Since then, I’ve developed a pretty obvious brand in support of feminine Kyle, but I’ve never actually posted a meta justifying it. As such, consider this not a response to any discourse related to it, or a way of undermining the valid opinions that are being and have been shared, but instead as a long-overdue explanation as to why I see Kyle the way that I see him, and why I believe that interpretation is equally valid and equally progressive.

Thanks to everyone who’s shared their time and thoughts with me over the past year, regardless of how long I’ve known you, and let’s get into it!

INTRODUCTION:

Okay, HERE’s the introduction! As I type this from top to bottom, I expect it to turn out fairly long, so bear with me here: we’re going to need some exposition to explain the way I plan on going about this. I’m going to try and be concise!

i. A Bit of Background

Feminine Kyle has been a controversial topic within the South Park fandom for well over a decade, cementing itself as arguably one of the oldest ‘fanon vs canon’ debates within the fandom. Supporters, a wide group consisting of some of the most notable artists and writers in the fandom, insist the evidence is there; naysayers argue that not only is it not there, but that the mere existence of feminine Kyle reinforces old yaoi tropes, homophobia within fandoms, and most recently, antisemitic stereotypes. 

For better or worse, such a portrayal has dwindled in popularity within recent years, with fanart and portrayals from the earlier fandom days becoming the subject of ridicule. Several other portrayals accompany feminine Kyle into forced obscurity - jock Stan and edgy Craig, to name a few - but only the former has drawn such politically charged discussion. Needless to say, there is plenty to discuss when examining its validity. I intend to try and cover all my bases, but first, some clarification:

This is not an unbiased analysis: this is a meta in staunch support of feminine Kyle. As such, not every single moment for or against such a portrayal will be mentioned here: I intend here to establish why feminine Kyle is a reasonable interpretation, not why the opposite may also be true. I also do not intend to prove that feminine Kyle is absolute fact, or the only valid interpretation; while I personally choose to base my portrayal off of what I’ve listed here, choosing to disregard it is also a perfectly fine conclusion. These characters are ten, after all; there is no objectively correct way to portray them!

Secondly; this is a Kyle-centric meta, but it’s also going to include a fair bit of Stan. Declaring Kyle feminine has no point if we have no character to contrast him against; femininity requires masculinity to mean anything, and vice versa. There has to be some point of reference. As a result, this meta will unintentionally make a declaration on Stan’s femininity as well; just like above, accept and reject it as you wish! ‘Correct’ characterization in the South Park fandom is understandably murky.

Speaking of characterization, we first need to discuss why a long-winded meta like this one is even necessary. Why can’t we decide whether Kyle’s feminine? Surely that should be pretty obvious, right?

ii. Why can’t we come to an agreement?

Well… not really. That’s the problem!

Nearly everybody in this little section of the South Park fandom (by which I mean the non-dudebro section) is progressive, which is a good thing. But that also makes femininity a really difficult concept to nail down. Here’s what Oxford Languages has to say about it:

Okay, straightforward enough. But what attributes are characteristic of women? That’s where we come across our problem; there really aren’t any. Many of the traits (at least personality wise) society used to consider characteristic of women are misogynistic stereotypes, or exist solely as a way to justify gender roles; as such, we can’t designate femininity based on personality traits, which is a great thing for society as a whole and a bad thing for the simplicity of my South Park meta.

Consider this example: being easily grossed out to the point of fear was, in the past, considered to be a trait typical of women. Consider all those boomer comics you’ve seen about women being afraid of mice. Surely then a reasonable conclusion would be that Kyle’s irrational disgust/fear of pee would be a feminine trait. But that conclusion actually isn’t reasonable, because we now know that isn’t necessarily a female-exclusive trait; as such, that interpretation is misogynistic and can be disregarded. Do you see what I mean? It’s really not that easy.

But I actually have a way to make that work. It is going to require some inception. Keep that in mind while we segue to another relevant question:

iii. What is effective characterization?

We talked about characterization a little bit above, but now we need to talk about it again: namely, how do you characterize a character? How many times will I say the word character in this essay?

This question doesn’t just apply to South Park: I mean this for all shows, but most specifically the long ones, and the ones with questionable track records in episode quality. We have all watched something and thought “he would not fucking say that”, even when the person who made him fucking say that was the creator themselves. How do we reconcile that with our vision of a character, especially when such a character assassination is often unintentional? Do we take everything the character does or says at face value by rating all of their behaviors as equal in the characterization scheme, or do we look deeper?

I think the answer needs to be the second one: we need to take characterization by intention, rather than what the character actually says. Generally, a creator will have an intention for their characters, whether that’s in personality, arc, or both. They typically have a plan for some aspects of the character, even in episodic shows like South Park, and they try not to diverge from that plan. For example, Kyle’s reaction will often differ as he is faced with differing events (as real life people do), but he reacts in a similar way, fueled by his consistent morals: he never responds in a Kyle way one episode and in a Cartman way in another. He always reacts like Kyle would, and rarely wavers from his fairly consistent characterization. It is clear that when planning Kyle’s responses to things, they do not start with a blank slate.

That’s the perspective we need to take on when viewing this; we need to look at these characters from the way Matt and Trey intended for them to be looked at, and we need to look at them with the perspective that Matt and Trey had. Segue over: let’s go back to the main point. Keep that in mind.

iv. How do we fix our dilemma?

You don’t really need to keep it in mind, because I’m going to say it again right here: we need to view the characters with the perspective Matt and Trey had. This applies to everything characterization related, including femininity. What makes Matt and Trey’s perception of femininity different from our own?

Well, that’s easy: they’re from a different generation, for one. They’re old white guys, for another. They naturally have different views on femininity than we do, because they have different (often shittier) views on women than we do! Matt and Trey have had some good takes, but their takes on women rarely fall into that category. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to deal with those takes for now if we want to draw a conclusion, because those are what we have to go by when deciding femininity. 

We’re putting on the Matt and Trey goggles for this meta. What do they think femininity is? How would they portray a feminine character? What would a feminine character look like in their eyes? When judging characterization by intention, which I plan on doing throughout this meta, we need to Become Old White Men. 

(That same reasoning is why I’ll essentially be using women and feminine people interchangeably throughout this essay; Matt and Trey tend to associate femininity exclusively with women or flamboyant gay men, and the way they portray them is often the same. Needless to say, those terms are not interchangeable in real life; I only use them as such here both because of the above reasoning and to try and shorten this behemoth of a meta.)

From Matt and Trey’s perspective, it would be much less ludicrous that women would be more easily grossed out; that is the common consensus among men of their generation, and they haven’t proved themselves to be more enlightened than the rest, so we’ll go with that common consensus. From their perspective, Kyle disliking pee would be a feminine trait; therefore, giving that trait to Kyle implies that, in that episode, Matt and Trey viewed him as feminine and intentionally portrayed him that way. This argument becomes stronger once the rest of his traits are considered, which we’ll do throughout this essay. From this point forward, I'll clarify that this is from Matt and Trey’s point of view less often for brevity; assume that unless I clarify it's from mine, it's from theirs. 

Understandably, there may be some issues with this, namely: doesn’t temporarily taking on this perspective and then proceeding to label Kyle as feminine based on stereotypes imply that you agree with those stereotypes? To which I say: no, not really. You can take the intention (femininity, in this case) and disregard the bad that comes along with it: you can essentially claim Kyle as a feminine character without acknowledging what may be flawed reasoning on behalf of the creator, and choose to draw your own conclusions based off of that. I’ll explain this in more detail at the end. 

So, that’s the introduction! But we still have one more thing we need to talk about before we can move onto the actual meat of the essay.

We need to talk about creek.

THE CREEK INTERLUDE.

Why do we need to talk about creek in a Kyle-centric meta, besides that I like talking about creek? The answer is that Matt and Trey’s views on creek answer a very reasonable question, that being: Why do we have reason to assume that Matt and Trey would intend for any of them to be feminine? Why do we have reason to believe the idea of femininity in relation to their male characters would even cross their mind?

Creek is our reason! 

i. The Masculine/Feminine Divide

Consider Matt and Trey’s audio commentary for Put It Down, starting at :52. "One person wanting, which is usually the woman... who flips out a bit more about things emotionally, and generally the man is a bit more, like... not responsive to emotion, and just wants to problem solve. And we have had experience with that…"

Through that commentary, Matt and Trey have already assigned ‘roles’ to Tweek and Craig within the context of the episode; namely, Tweek being the woman and Craig being the man based on their behavior throughout the episode. Obviously, the stereotypes they suggest above very often aren’t true, and a gay man in a relationship is in no way ‘the woman’ regardless of femininity, but they reference them nonetheless, and this helps our case for three reasons:

It confirms that Matt and Trey view some characters as more ‘woman-like’ than others, even just within the context of a single episode: ie, more feminine than others. It shows that they take femininity into account when viewing character behavior, and it is possible they have done so with other male child characters than Tweek.

Furthermore, it shows that the above behavior is intentional; they’ve intentionally made one character more ‘woman-like’ than the other. Matt and Trey admitting that they “have had experience with that” implies that they, on some level, based the episode off of their own experience: hence, Tweek was intended to play the role of ‘the woman’ from the beginning of the episode. It is therefore possible they intended this with other episodes.

The parallels between Stan/Craig and Kyle/Tweek, and on a larger scale, style and creek as relationships, are obvious. The fact that creek exists in the Matt and Trey collective brain as a masculine/feminine relationship implies that their platonic parallel, Stan and Kyle, has the potential to exist in the same way. 

I don’t personally think that Tweek is at all intended to be feminine throughout the series in the same way that Kyle is - Tweek’s meth-driven paranoia is a far cry from Kyle’s natural neuroticism (a trait which, while not inherently feminine, is obviously such within the eyes of Matt and Trey) - but within the context of that episode, the point stands. It also gives us something to look for: contrast. If Kyle is feminine, going by Matt and Trey’s way of portraying relationships, he must have a masculine counterpart. This part is easy. 

STAN MARSH, ALL AMERICAN BOY:

When looking for traditional masculinity within the main four, Stan is our guy. Despite possibly being the most sensitive out of the group, the remainder of Stan’s traits, behaviors, and interests line up exactly with the typical perspective of what masculinity looks like. His consistency with this makes Kyle’s deviation even more remarkable.

i. Personality

So far, we’ve mostly talked about masculinity and femininity in reference to personality, so it only makes sense to start there with Stan. First, let’s consider the trait that Matt and Trey explicitly mentioned they consider masculine:

“Not responsive to emotion, and just wants to problem solve.”

We don’t even need to look through the series for evidence of this one: South Park Studios themselves confirmed it on Stan’s SPandMe results, a quiz intended to connect quiz-takers with their respective South Park character. 

“You are an average all-American person, and despite your crazy surroundings, you remain levelheaded.” 

Remaining levelheaded in crazy surroundings essentially boils down to being not responsive to sudden, situation-driven emotion, especially in the context of Put It Down, where Craig is able to step back from Tweek’s emotion-driven response to a crazy situation and consider it in a levelheaded way. Stan often tends to perform the same duty for Kyle as Craig does for Tweek in that episode, serving the role of someone to vent to in stressful situations.

Now that we’ve checked Matt and Trey’s explicitly mentioned perception of masculinity off the list, let’s consider some other traditionally ‘masculine’ personality traits: regardless of whether they’ve been explicitly mentioned, it’s a fair assumption that they’ve considered a few other traits within the ‘masculinity’ vein. 

Quick to Threats: Stan has a tendency to be levelheaded, as mentioned above, but when angered he can jump straight to threats of violence; this serves as a contrast to Kyle, who tends to respond verbally instead. Consider this moment in Passion of the Jew: 

While Stan actually gives Cartman a fair amount of time to ‘take it back’ before he resorts to active threats of violence, he still does so much quicker than Kyle has ever done in the past; Kyle, by comparison, tends to insult normally. Stan, when pushed by Cartman, responds with threats within a few lines of dialogue: Kyle, when pushed by Cartman, has only legitimately snapped a few times over the course of 25 years of harassment. 

Another example would be in Cash For Gold, where Stan jumps to telling the jewelry salesman to kill himself without any prior conversation; unlike Kyle, who typically makes efforts to negotiate first, Stan resorts to threats.

Also consider Stan’s behavior in Stick of Truth, in which upon the character’s arrival into the Elf Kingdom, Stan is immediately ready to get into a fight to defend Kyle; as the character approaches Kyle, he threatens them by punching his fist. His method of protectiveness often boils down to violence on behalf of the people he cares about, and he takes personal affronts, or affronts to those people, extremely seriously. Kyle, on the other hand, is defensive rather than offensive in terms of protectiveness, and cares more about the wider populace instead of mostly the people directly relevant to his life; we’ll get into that more later.

This is a trait heavily associated with masculinity throughout history, and throughout media: masculine characters in shows, books, and movies are often the ones shown to pick fights rather than verbally negotiate. This trait is even shown through Craig, who’s already established as “the man”; throughout the first few seasons especially, he threatens other characters once aggravated instead of communicating. 

Leadership Ability: Obvious disclaimer is that this trait in particular is not exclusively male, or even largely male (just like every other trait I’ve mentioned), but the world continues even to this day to associate leadership qualities with traditionally masculine qualities, and I have reason to believe that Matt and Trey do the same thing. Let’s go through a few episodes in which Stan is staunchly placed as the leader for some examples:

Stan, as a character who is often the protagonist of the show as a whole, naturally falls into the leadership role within The Boys. In this way, he once again serves as a contrast to Craig, who is obviously the leader of his own game; the official wiki goes so far as to call them Craig and Those Guys. An example of this would be in South Park Is Gay, in which Stan approaches Craig first to try and one-up him, and another more subtle example would be in Good Times With Weapons, in which Stan’s leadership is demonstrated just by him being front and center in front of Craig’s door.

He also serves as the lead detective in Lil’ Crime Stoppers, and tends to be the leader of his respective sports team, being chosen as both quarterback and pitcher in football and baseball respectively. On a larger scale, Stan becomes Captain in Whale Whores, where he is revered for actually making things happen in comparison to the previous Captain. 

South-park-meta also has a great description of why Stan’s a leader which you can find here, which mentions a few things that I haven’t. 

Stan in a leadership role comes up over and over again, and while I normally wouldn’t consider this a strong enough piece of evidence to bring up on its own, Stan’s other masculine traits (which I’ll be getting to shortly, outside of the personality department) make me believe that it’s intentional. This is especially relevant when the leadership within the girls is also considered: while the groups of boys tend to have a very obvious leader, the girls fluctuate often between Wendy and Bebe, with Matt and Trey unable to even keep the leader of the Pleases and Sparkles Club consistent. The fact that the boys tend to have leaders and the girls don’t leads me to believe that Matt and Trey do see leadership as a masculine trait.

Superficiality & Ego: To be clear before we start this section, I do think that Stan is legitimately very sensitive. He is my sensitive little guy. But he does have a tendency to be superficial with some issues, often unable to grasp the bigger picture, especially when failing to grasp the issue tends to benefit him specifically. 

Consider his behavior in A Scause For Applause. Initially, Stan has no clue who the farmers are or what they stand for, and is labeled a hero simply because he likes his wristband and doesn’t intend on taking it off. However, as soon as he essentially becomes a celebrity, he pretends to be extremely passionate about the cause, despite the fact that it is all “bullcrap” to him. Stan is hugely empathetic, but only towards people that are close to him, or issues that are relevant to him (such as the whales, as he loves animals): he couldn’t care less about the farmers in Belarus, but relishes in the attention he’s getting because of it.

Another example of this would be in Butterballs, where Stan behaves in essentially the same way: he joins the anti-bullying campaign not because he is passionate about the issue, but because he’s being taunted and he wants to prove that he’s a leader, or, as Bucky Bailey says, a “big man”. His pride is extremely important to him, which is part of the reason why he steps up. As Stan starts to make the anti-bullying video increasingly about him, Kyle sees through him and points it out.

Once again, his ego drives him rather than genuine passion for the issue: his actual interest in it is superficial at best and serves only to fuel his ego. Both qualities are heavily associated with masculinity, and toxic masculinity in particular: as Stan gets pissed at Kyle in both episodes, that side of him and the anger accompanying it begins to show. We’ve now accepted those traits are generally bad, but they were often praised as a key part of manliness in the past: them continuing to be associated with masculinity in Matt and Trey’s mind would be very plausible.

ii. ‘Manly’ Interests

Stan’s one of the most fleshed out characters throughout the series in terms of interests, but he does have one that shows up more prominently than any other: sports! I’ve gone into exactly how frequently it pops up for him in my Jock Stan meta, so I won’t go into it now, but I highly suggest reading that if you’re interested. Furthermore, that’s also why I’m not going to be using basketball as a masculine justification for Kyle; from what I’ve found, it’s just not as relevant to his character.

Sports are widely considered to be an interest associated with men, and particularly, masculinity; while the gender split among people who are passionate about sports is much less divisive than the media would lead you to believe, few people associate anything other than women’s sports with women. Football in particular is typically considered a man’s sport, and has its heavy associations with toxic masculinity: the traits valued within football tend also to be the traits that our society values specifically within men, those traits typically boiling down to strength and competitiveness. As mentioned above, the desire to compete and show off (particularly with Craig, also considered to be the respective ‘leader’ of his group) is a trait much more heavily associated with Stan than Kyle; it leads me to believe those traits and his interest in football paired together are not a coincidence.

Another one of Stan’s larger interests are animals, which he consistently feels passionate about, but more specifically dogs. He’s shown to love Sparky dearly, with the first Stan-centric episode of the series having Stan’s crisis about Sparky as a main factor, and he even accompanies Stan in Stick of Truth for one of his attacks. I mention this because while a love of animals is often associated with women, or femininity, dogs specifically are consistently associated with men; when the term “man’s best friend” was coined, they were not considering ‘man’ as the wider mankind. Dogs are so heavily associated with masculinity that people naturally assume dogs that they meet are male, and that the large majority of dogs in fiction ARE male. The association between dogs and masculinity is actually a necessity for Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride to work as an episode: Stan valuing “butchness” and wanting Sparky to behave in such a way acts as his main conflict throughout the episode.

While this last one is not quite as relevant to Stan’s overall character as the previous two, it’s frequently brought up as a “counter” to Stan’s sportiness, so I still find it relevant to bring up. Board games, which are certainly less associated with manliness than sports, are still an extremely male sport, particularly dominated by white males (with 93% of board game designers being white men); I am inclined to believe that Matt and Trey knew this, which was why Nichole, and the rest of the girls, stood out so much. They even address this within the episode, which has most of the boy gamers (excluding Stan, who is more open to girls joining the group) rejecting the girls who want to play. Even Stan’s least traditionally masculine interest is centered around manliness within the episode.

Is it coincidence that when Matt and Trey selected interests for their characters, they chose interests heavily associated with masculinity for Stan? Probably not. Again, these interests aren’t necessarily male-exclusive, nor do they even necessarily lean towards men in reality, but from the perspective of two older men like Matt and Trey, they ARE masculine traits. The fact that Stan is given those traits specifically while the other characters are not is heavily indicative of their intention; namely, to make Stan an obviously masculine character.

iii. Appearance

I swear we’re almost done with an insanely long Stan section in what’s supposed to be a Kyle meta. I may have to change the title.

The last thing we’re going to be looking at with Stan in regards to masculinity is appearance: how does he present himself? When he chooses roles in games, how traditionally masculine are they? Let’s start with his Stick of Truth role: Stan Marshwalker.

During Stick of Truth, Stan serves as Kyle’s devoted, protective knight: as I already mentioned above, he’s ready to pick a fight with the player just for looking at him. But even beyond his behavior, his appearance is undeniably masculine; knights were the ideal of manhood and masculinity for quite a long time, hence the trope of a knight saving a princess from a castle. Especially back when knights were a Thing, there was nothing more traditionally masculine than waving a huge sword around and fighting a dragon to defend someone’s honor. Stan doesn’t defend the honor of any princesses in Stick of Truth, but he does offer to duel Tolkien on what’s implied to be Kyle’s behalf, which could be easily interpreted as a parallel.

The knight motif comes up again in the episode Make Love, Not Warcraft, in which Stan’s selected character is this: a muscular, masculine presenting knight. I’m leaving this section a little short because I’m going to be bringing it up again when we get to Kyle , but keep Stan’s appearance here in mind. 

Stan’s next most relevant character is Toolshed, from Stick of Truth:

Stan’s TFBW costume, who is essentially a handyman, is less ingrained in society as traditionally masculine than a knight, but still is a heavily male dominated field: in the United States, 96% of handymen are men. While less symbolic than a knight, handymen can be considered masculine even considering only that trait; they are heavily associated with men, which is essentially the definition of masculinity from the Matt and Trey perspective.

Stan has a ton of alter egos throughout the series, but we’re already at 4k words so I’m going to keep this section as brief as I can. The only other real thing of note here is that Stan seems to associate ripping off his sleeves with strength, as he opts to go ripped sleeveless in both Good Times With Weapons and as Stan The Man in W.T.F. 

iv. Conclusion

What can we conclude from the above information, and how does it have any relevance at all to Kyle?

Firstly, we can conclude that Stan Marsh, in personality, interests, and appearances, was given traditionally masculine traits by Matt and Trey. Furthermore, we can conclude that due to Matt and Trey’s mention of masculinity and femininity within Tweek and Craig, this is not a coincidence; his masculinity was intentional. Finally, we can assume that Matt and Trey genuinely believe these traditionally masculine traits to be legitimately masculine: as in, it is unlikely they gave him these traits with any other intention than making it clear he was a masculine character.

Okay, so we’re done with Stan! Mostly. He’ll come up a little more later. But why did we need to spend this long talking about the character who isn’t even the main guy in this essay? I know I talked a little about it above, but surely I have more of a reason than that? Well, it’s because of what Matt and Trey said in the commentary for Kenny Dies, around the 42 minute mark.

“A couple weeks before this, the idea was that we were going to kill Kyle, remember, and we'd make it a big thing - we'll kill Kyle, and Butters will step in... it always seemed to us that Kyle and Stan were really similar... so let's kill off one of those two."

As of Season 6, Stan and Kyle were too similar. In order to justify keeping Kyle on the show, they needed to draw an actual distinction between the two of them. Before this point, Stan had already been established as South Park’s masculine, golden football boy since his very first episode, so what would be the most effective way of differentiating Kyle from Stan in a consistent way?

The answer would be to give Kyle feminine traits to contrast Stan’s masculine ones. It required leaning hard on some aspects of the character, but it obviously worked: Kyle is still here, widely loved, and often very different than the way he was before season 6. If we can prove that Stan was intentionally given masculine traits, we have even more of a reason to believe that Kyle may be given feminine traits to separate their personalities, and we’ve already proved that! Now we need to prove that Kyle was actually given those feminine traits, and we’ll start right now.

...by which I mean tomorrow, when I post the second half of this. Please hold your applause and/or complaints until then, because you really need the second half to tie the whole thing together and actually come to some concrete conclusions.

You can read part 2 here!

[mechsbrackets]

Hello and welcome to the Best Mechanisms Quote/Line Bracket!

Linked at the bottom of this post is the form where you can nominate quotes and lyrics you want to see included in this bracket. It'll be open for a week, and when that week is over I’ll begin the actual bracket with polls, here on Tumblr.

Here are the rules for nominations. They’re in the form, but I’ll put them in the post too:

You can nominate both quotes and song lyrics. For the purposes of this form I'm just gonna use quote as the general term, but both are completely acceptable nominees!

You can nominate as many/few quotes as you want, but please, only nominate each quote once!

Make sure quotes are no longer than 4 lines please! 4 and under is ok, but anything above will be shortened.

Please include the source of the quote - whether it be person or song! The ideal format is "Quote." - Person, but honestly just make it understandable and it'll be fine.

The most nominated quotes will be the ones who get to be in our bracket and battle it out to see what the best quote truly is.

Notes:

This is going to be a 32 single elimination bracket again! As always, please share this with your friends so we can get a nice large pool of competitors!

This form will be open from Sunday April 23rd to Thursday June 1st!

My inbox is open, so if you have any questions or want to know how your favorite is doing, feel free to shoot me an ask!

And now, finally, the link:

https://forms.gle/wy1Snm6x3RsrhyMXA

Go forth and nominate!

[ladyjmontilyet]

listen, i'm very sorry to be a cunt but i saw a very funny post and the last line of it is just sending me:

"[imagine if] dao had an elven god come down to us and grant us the power to slay the archdemon. it's bad!"

DAO is a game where the elven goddess Mythal saves you from certain death in the Tower of Ishal, gives you treaties that grant you the power to establish an army, and then sends her daughter to do a ritual that saves your life and cleanses the god you're going to fight. The post also completely ignores that we have been fighting gods since the very beginning - the archdemon Urthemiel is a god who was actively worshipped.

like, how can you end your post with that line when that's exactly how it happened lmao

[welcometogrouchland]

Also in the replies of the Steph concept art on twitter announcing she was gonna be in a new project at DC (posted by Travis Mercer), there were at least 3 comments saying "will Tim be there?" I don't care how hard you ship timsteph I'm exploding you with my eyeballs if you do that on my girls post again

[sparky-is-spiders]

It's been a hectic couple of days but I FINALLY have this one done!! For JE week day 2, up too late/vampires, which is definitely today and not two days ago and I will not hear a word otherwise.

I'm a sucker for both pre-S1 Jonelias and Jonjonah so I couldn't resist adding them both.

This is intended to be semi-chronological (time travel nonwithstanding)? with pre-S1/S1 Jon on the left with S4-S5 Jon on the right, but you could read them as separate AUs. I enjoy Jonjonah with time-travel shenanigans where full Archivist Jon meets Jonah, who is waaaay too invested in flirting with eyeball monsters in Jon's personal opinion.

Can't decide if it would be better for the Beholding to improve Jon' better's vision or if it's still terrible but there is no conceivable glasses design that would not be massively annoying for them (just a constant mesh of glasses frames over their field of vision. I honestly think I'd go insane). Either way they glow slightly naturally but are glowing even more to help them see the document (and also because I think green light effects are cool; sue me).

Also went with the Scottish Wildcat for Jonah's fursona! Some artistic license was taken on the design, but most of it isn't very visible.

[impishtubist]

I am once again begging writers to stop using AO3 tags like Tumblr tags.

[crowsdove]

.

[james-stark-the-writer]

the difference between the fourth wall breaks of something like the Deadpool movies compared to something like Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is that every joke in Deadpool feels masturbatory like the writers think they're so hilarious for doing a fourth wall break like that's never been done before whereas both of the other two not only feel right at home with the characters' personalities but are much more natural and much more well done compared to the jokes in Deadpool or its sequel. (do not get me started on Deadpool 2, the movie sucks ass in basically every way except for the characters of Domino and Yukio. every single joke in it was outdated before it was even written. they were making fucking dubstep jokes in 2018. it was a 2012-ass script made way too late and riding on the coattails of the first with even less effort into being actually good.)

but the difference between those properties is that Deadpool wants to be congratulated for being some insanely crazy shocking movie that's pissing off the studio system or whatever but every single joke in it was approved by those people because it makes them money like it's so antithetical to the entire point they're trying to make and it makes for a very infuriating watching experience sometimes. the cognitive dissonance is hard to swallow with that one. but the way BOPATFEOOHQ and She-Hulk do their bits feels so much more authentic and less self-congratulatory and also just like they're clearly done with so much more passion and effort and care? when I watch either of the Deadpool movies, I feel like I'm watching a bunch of executives jerking themselves off. when I watch the other two, I feel like I'm watching a passion project that the executives clearly didn't give a shit about and thus the creative team were actually allowed genuine creative freedom with not a lot of oversight. that's a little less true with She-Hulk (especially in terms of that glorious finale although even that feels more authentic and artist-driven than most things in either Deadpool movie. Kevin Feige's boring, sanitized ass does not have the range to do that finale) being a MCU property although Phase 4 was so fucking experimental and it was a joy to behold even if not everything hit but it's still true and more authentic for the most part. with Deadpool it feels like the only person who really really cared about it was Ryan and like maybe a few of the other actors who actually did do commendable work with what they were given but with the other two projects, it feels way more collaborative because every single person showed up and cared deeply about what they were making.

(this is an addition to the tags bc I ran out [apparently i forgot there was a 30 tag limit] but. anyway the point is. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is a phenomenal movie in basically every single way and you should watch it.)

[phoenixyfriend]

A few days ago you wrote about being worried your Barriss Offee writings were controversial. I feel that deeply, since I write for her as well. Almost exclusively. Really though you can't mess her up more than the end of season 5 already has. A Muslim and lesbian coded character becoming a terrorist bomber? Yikes. Write her as angsty as you like, feel liberated. Exercise sympathy and sensitivity, of course. She's really a great character with a lot to unpack. I could write her a thousand stories and still not be done.

the post

Yeah, I get that. It's just... difficult. Because how do you separate characterization that builds on the cynicism that was introduced with the terrorism plot?

[gachaparadise]

ahhh the Penacony leaks are really coming in now.

*chuckles* I'm in danger.

[kaikama]

Today is a confusing day for my gender. I want to (genuinely) thank some people on Tumblr for that, but I don't know how. I know many people consider their blogs as being a sort of public diary, but I've never used mine like that before. I reblog art and memes, and sometimes ramble in the tags, but almost never make posts of my own, and certainly don't talk about anything important when I do.

However sometimes the best way to get ahold of something slippery that's swimming around in your head is to first get it out of your head. I may not even post this, though contrary to how I present myself on this blog, I do very much love talking about myself (especially when I can indulge my inner 12yo-fanfic-author and be a bit dramatic and poetic about it) so we'll see.

However, to the anxiety of making a long, eventually emotional post I will cede the small victory of a readmore:

I guess the place to begin is with the lovely @dduane. In particular with the recent post she reblogged talking about @redgoldsparks's book Gender Queer. I was reading through the comic therein when I remembered that I actually had the book e was talking about sitting on my "to-read" shelf... okay, one of my "to-read" shelves. No avid reader with disposable income should be surprised I have so many such books, nor that any book could get lost in such a pile, no matter how... personally relevant it is.

I picked it up one day, not at my usual book store, but actually at a local comic book/board game store. It caught my eye of course by presenting the words "GENDER QUEER" in big, bold letters, and and further enticed me when I flipped through it briefly and saw it didn't censor itself unnecessarily. In a graphic novel that's largely about gender, it was relieving, for example, to see bodies being addressed without fear that showing them was too obscene.

So I bought it but, as I mentioned, it sat on my shelf for at least months, probably a year or more, if the time dilation typical of the pandemic period can be assumed.

Then today, after seeing that post, I decided to finally take it out. It only took a short while to read, maybe an hour or so. Unless you include the time it will spend lingering in my mind, in which case I may never finish reading it.

I related to it in many ways. In ways that were the same, but upsidedown – since I was amab, but could still feel a connection to the ideas within. Technically a different wavelength, but... a harmonic of the original. But one point in particular is the whole reason for this post. Page 189.

If you don't have the book, well firstly I highly recommend you go get it now and simply read through it to see the page in question. But in case you can't, I'll describe it here:

In panel 1, the author laments about wanting to switch pronouns, but that "they/them" doesn't feel quite right. In panel 2, e asks eir conversational partner what e uses. In panel 3, as you have probably guessed, e tells the author that e uses "e/em/eir" and, important to my story, uses them in a sentence: "Ask em what e wants in eir tea." In panel 4, e reacts with a huge smile and starry eyes.

Here is where I'll pause and mention that reading that passage gave me a shiver down my spine. I love seeing people explore their identities – or in this case, eir identity – and that especially goes for things I could never wrap my head around, such as neopronouns. As much as I respect them, I never could understand. To me, gender has usually been a nuisance. Something that I have to perform. If I don't, people will assume some performance anyways, one which is usually wrong. I wish I could just work backstage. Or maybe it's more like I wish everyone had a program guide, so instead of having to constantly tell people I'm not a man, they can just see the description in the guide for themselves. I'm just so tired of it. So tired.

But! That's why I get shivers like this, since it warms my heart to see people like me, also pushing through. E shouldn't have to struggle to be known. E does. But that strength inspires my own, which I hope inspires others, in a cycle of propping eachother up!

Then in panel 5 e says "I love those pronouns! I just got the biggest tingle down my spine."

And I recall my spine tingle.

And I'm really confused.

Do I want those pronouns? I've been using "they/them" for a while now, and I've known about (and had friends who use) "e/em/eir" for some time now. Surely I would've realized they fit me sooner than this, right?

Then again, I think, I have been kinda growing dissatisfied with "they/them" for a bit now. But I always just felt tired of gender as a whole. I don't want pronouns that even fewer people will understand, I said. At least with "they/them" I can point at the neutral usage everyone uses them for. Anything more obscure would just be all the more effort. All the more tiring.

...but does that make it untrue? Or simply unfair? Everything to do with being queer is unfair, sorta' by definition. If I wanted it to be easy, I could stick to "he/him", but that would only really be "easy" for other people, I realized. Neither "he/him" nor "they/them" are easy for me. Neither "male" nor "female" nor "non-binary" are easy for me. Neither the old gender binary nor the new gender trinary are easy for me. I'm just so tired.

I wish I had an answer to finish with. Not for your sake, but for mine. I have a sort of modus operandi I like to use: "prepare for the worst, but hope for the best, and expect something in-between." It's a bit of a compromise between the phrase"high hopes, low expectations" and my optimism. Well, I forgot to do that here. I had hoped that I would've found my answer by the end of this post, but I forgot to "prepare for the worst," and as such had no middle ground to set my expectations.

Maybe the answer is to stop caring so much? But that seems like it would be a disservice to myself and my wants and needs. Also it seems impossible. Or at least like clinical depression, which shouldn't be anyone's goal.

Maybe I should try using different pronouns? None of my friend would care. But they would make mistakes. It's extremely rare for one of my friends to slip up now, but it does still happen. And using something new would give me those small rock-in-the-shoe, scratchy-shirt-tag irritations that @redgoldsparks mentioned in eir book all over again.

...or maybe "they/them" is dorta' doing that now, and I've just gotten used to it? I remember when I switched I hadn't realized that "he/him" wasn't great until then. Not because I felt bad hearing it, but because I suddenly felt good hearing "they/them." I still think I don't feel especially disphoric over "he/him," but now that I know the euphoria I could have, it feels worse in comparison. Maybe the same would happen if I switched again?

My how many thoughts I have about this. I want an answer. There is no simple answer. Life is work. I love life. I hate work. I'm so tired. But it's worth it.

I think that's most of my metaphorical brain-fish on the topic disgorged for now. If you listened, thanks for listening. If you're confused, imagine how I feel. And if you think you felt like you resonate at some harmonic of this, please go read @redgoldsparks's book Gender Queer. It probably won't have clear answers, and the feelings it evokes probably won't be exclusively positive ones, but if you've read this far into my ramblings, then I can promise you it will be a valuable read.

Thanks for your time! -Kai