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ninawritesastory · 6 years

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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.

#nina answers asks #sharrakor #sp style #sp stan #sp kyle #stan marsh #kyle broflovski #hope that made sense!#if not we can try again |D #cw depression #cw alcohol

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