A Complete Disgrace | 25/25 | 118K Words | M | Gen-ish (canon SP parent pairings feature heavily; particularly Gerald Broflovski/Sheila Broflovski. Additionally there's some past Gerald Broflovski/Laura Tucker and an ongoing-ish it's complicated!Gerald Broflovski/Stuart McCormick thing)
"An overworked big-city lawyer returns to his hometown for the holidays. Along for the ride is his equally burnt-out — and arguably more competent — wife. All they have to do is clean out his parents’ house, survive a barn dance, and not self-destruct spectacularly."
Essentially a prequel set during the High Holiday season, showing the events leading up to Gerald and Sheila moving to South Park/the Main 4’s births. It's also a Hallmark Movie sendup.
Gerald and Sheila-centric (chapters generally alternate between their POV's), while Randy, Sharon, Stuart, Carol, Liane and Laura also all feature heavily. Most of the main families, with the exception of those who canonically moved later (Stoches, Valmers, Daniels) have at least one family member who've cameoed.
📖Work(s) In Progress
We'll Make it, I Swear | 9/12 | 69k+ Words | E | Gerald Broflovski/Stuart McCormick
"Gerald Broflovski isn't quite sure what he expected when he invited his best friend out to the East Coast after high school graduation, but it definitely wasn't this. A story about trying to figure out what the fuck to do after you accidentally fall into bed with the one person you can't afford to lose."
An AU in which Stuart tags along with Gerald when he heads off for "fancy" community college and they “accidentally” start a romantic relationship. The story goes from a vague late 80's time period up to about the mid 10's/the "modern South Park" era. Though the focus is on the romance, I will also be looking at how the town changes when two of the Main 4 don't exist.
POV alternates between Stuart and Gerald. There will also be some additional pairings as we go as well.
Note that while both fics are standalones, some backstories and OC's overlap.
Sick of Seventeen | 3/? | 18K+ Words | M | Kyle Broflovski/Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick/Nichole Daniels, Shelley Marsh/Kevin McCormick starts with both Stan Marsh/Wendy Testaburger and Kyle Broflovski/Nichole Daniels, more to be added
"All things considered, Junior Year was is going great for Stan Marsh. His sister skipped town, the SATs are looming, and a secret from his best friend has just launched him headfirst into an existential crisis. Everything is completely fine."
Set in the modern day, though the main pairing is Style, the POV's will rotate through quite a few characters, all dealing with their own drama and perspectives on things.It can be read as a follow-up of sorts to "A Complete Disgrace" but it's written as a standalone.
🍵Extras
Faceclaims
The Broflovski Family (Gerald, Sheila, and their Parents/Siblings)
A little bit of the next chapter, featuring stuart's older brother and sister.
Content warning for canon-typical antisemitism and mid 00's Catholic homophobia.
Two months after he and Gerald had told Mr. and Mrs. Broflovski they were together, his older sister Maggie called them. Gerald had been the one who picked up, sure that it was his parents or Randy. He'd first reacted with confusion, before slipping into the same polite voice he always used when he was trying to kiss ass. He'd briefly covered the speaker to mouth "I think it's your older sister" before a bit more polite small talk about Colorado weather, probably to give Stuart time to adjust to that bombshell.
Finally, Gerald handed Stuart the receiver, then grabbed some of his work files, and sat down next to him.
"It's been a while," Stuart had said. "Ten years? How'd you even get this number?"
"You still cut right to the chase," She'd said with familiarity he felt she hadn't earned just yet. "Friend of a friend."
Which meant either Randy or the Broflovskis gave it to someone. Randy was loud enough for it to slip, but Mrs. Broflovski used to be a teacher and had the network for it. He supposed in the end it didn't really matter.
They talked a bit. Small talk, and then…
"The man before…."
"Gerald." Stuart said, finishing the sentence for her. "You were still at home when we started hangin' out."
"Right." A pause. "I heard some things. Things I'm sure aren't — that it's just the two of you splitting rent, because I know how expensive it is out there —"
So that had been her reason for calling. To find out if her little brother was some kind of godless deviant, guilty of grave sin.
"— Yeah, it's expensive. But that's not the only reason we're sharin' a place."
The line went quiet for long enough that he could hear a kid yelling somewhere on her end, and a TV. Gerald, who'd already been half-listening as he'd been going over a case file next to Stuart after handing the phone to him, suddenly sat up.
"…I'll pray for you," she finally said, like it was the kindest thing she could possibly do. That was the worst part. "Both of you. I mean that."
"Yeah, of course you will."
"Stuart. You know what you're doing. What it is. You were raised in the same house I was."
His throat went tight. He tried for something diplomatic. "Wasn't raised with much of anythin', Maggie after Mom was gone. You'd remember that if you'd stuck around for it," is what came out instead. Gerald reached his hand over, just in case Stuart needed to take it.
There was a long period of silence, but Maggie didn't hang up.
"Is that why?" she finally said. "I've heard that sometimes, same-sex attraction is far more likely when the father doesn't —"
"— The fuck?!" Stuart said, loud enough that Gerald jumped. "Are you fuckin' kidding me?!"
"…Right then," she said in a way that made it clear what she'd decided. The reason Stuart was with the one person in the world who'd always made sense to him, no matter how different they were, was because of that bastard.
Then she'd asked, stiff and formal, if he was happy. He'd said yeah, reaching over to hold Gerald's hand. She'd said she was glad, while sounding like someone who wasn’t glad at all. They'd hung up not long after, and then he'd bitched about the whole thing to Gerald.
"Hard to say what's worse," Gerald said with a wry grin, "your sister thinking shitty parenting makes people gay, or my mom bringing up fisting in the middle of Le Bernardin."
They spoke maybe two or three times a year after that. Just like the first time, it was almost always a fucking ordeal. But she cared, in her own bent way. Yeah, she thought he was going to hell, but hey. By her Good Catholic standards, he'd probably been hellbound long before he'd ever gotten to know Gerald in the biblical sense.
Stuart spoke to his older brother Pat a bit more regularly, which wasn't saying much. He'd first called about two weeks after Maggie. That time Stuart got it himself.
"So Maggie gave me this number."
Of course she fucking had. Probably figured if she had to suffer through it, Pat might as well get a turn.
"She did?"
"Yeah. Didn't say nothin' else, though. But Dad's been runnin' his mouth that you're some rich jew's kept boy." A pause. "He didn't say it that nice, neither. Said somethin' other than 'jew'." A pause. " …That true?"
It pissed Stuart off at the time. He was doing fine for himself as a journeyman — better than fine. Gerald's new salary just happened to be about double that.
…Except, there was one place where he had a leg up on Gerald.
"He ain't so rich when he's a hundred grand in the hole from that fancy fuckin' school," Stuart said, sharp and defensive. And even though he wanted to say something about the whole 'kept boy' comment, Gerald was working in the other room. So once he did, the smug asshole would probably want to have to have a whole fucking conversation about it, and how all the handyman work he did around the apartment more than made up for any differences in income… and that was really the last fucking thing he wanted.
"That so?" A beat, and Stuart felt a fleeting feeling of relief. "Real shame. Was just gonna say, if things were good out there, maybe you could float your big brother a little somethin'. Times've been tight."
Of course that was what this was about. That set the pattern, more or less, for the next decade. Pat called when Pat needed something. The calls always started somewhere else — Dad, the town, somebody who'd died or gotten arrested — and always ended in the same place, with Pat asking, never quite directly, if Stuart could help him out. As Stuart and Gerald both started climbing the ladder at their jobs, the asks got bigger and the lead-up got shorter.
Stuart sent some, the first time. A few hundred. He and Gerald had fought about it. Probably one of their worst ones.
"He's using you, Stuart." Gerald said in his insufferable lawyer-voice. "He doesn't call to talk to you. He calls to invoice you."
"Yeah, well." Stuart had heard himself say it before he could stop it. "Not everybody gets to grow up with a goddamn pharmacist daddy and a college fund, Broflovski. Some of us help our family out when they got nothin' instead of lookin' down on them."
Gerald had gone still at that. Hadn't argued after, which meant that he'd actually been hurt. It'd taken about a couple days for things to fully go back to normal. After that, they never fought when Stuart sent over money. He just sighed, said "it's your family, do what you want", and went back to whatever he was reading.
In quite a few ship fanfics I have read, people portray Sheila Broflovski as homophobic.
Rant coming up.
Gerald is definitely homophobic due to the SkankHunt42 thing (he used homophobic slurs) but just because he is doesn't mean his wife is.
Making Sheila homophobic honestly feels like she was just homophobic to have like stakes as like 'Kyle's the gay or bi son who's in love with another boy and has a bigoted mother, oopsies' which isn't in character for her AT ALL.
If Gerald acted that way in front of her, I don't think she'd tolerate it. Hell, she'd hate it.
Sheila is protective of Kyle and Ike and VERY reactive, especially to stuff that's 'harmful' (like the Terrance and Phillip thing in Bigger, Longer & Uncut and many more things) but she has shown no signs of homophobia whatsoever.
If you want a homophobic conflict in your Kyle x any male character/OC fanfic, then make a bigoted OC or find some other homophobic characters (there's plenty of side characters like this)
If you still want the homophobic parent conflict, then just have Gerald being an asshole since he has shown some signs of being a homophobe (which is him being a huge hypocrite because of that one episode with Randy but that's not the point of this rant)
At the end of the day, 'Sheila is homophobic because Kyle needs a homophobic parent' has never made much sense to me. It feels less like an interpretation of her character and more like a plot device.
“Don’t make the only Jewish woman a homophobe make the only Jewish man one aren’t I so progressive tee hee”.
Gerald and Sheila are probably Reform Jews, neither are likely to be structurally homophobic. Additionally, it’s clear Gerald was a mouthpiece for Matt and Trey’s pov on that word in that scene (see also: "the f word") so like… I feel like people truly didn’t get what that whole part of S20 was about, or comprehend GenXers much at all (in general it’s an example casual homophobia than deeply held bigoted beliefs in most cases). He’s likely to be Weird potentially, but not violently homophobic. Overall Judaism, especially Reform Judaism is deeply accepting.
If you really desperately need him to be bigoted, his deep and persistent classism is right there.
Don’t fucking make the Broflovskis homophobic, and do an ounce of research into Judaism. It’s not that fucking hard.
I don't know how to answer without sounding stupid so I'm gonna just be honest instead of worrying like 'perfect apology that will make people feel sympathy.'
So anyway, to start off, this whole rant was nothing to do with the family being Jewish. But even so, even if Reform Judaism is known for being accepting, that doesn't mean every Reform Jew is the same. Their religion is nothing to do with their personality. Religion is beliefs, not a personality check.
Second of all, homophobia doesn’t have to be violent to be real. Using slurs like that is still homophobia and I'm saying this as a queer person myself. It still does hurt.
But it was once and I'm pretty sure everybody has said fucked up shit in the past. People move on and change. So that's my fault there.
What I meant by Gerald being an asshole was me wording it wrong, I meant like having mixed opinions on it. I really don't like Gerald as a character so I was harsh with him instead of thinking. I apologize for that. I shouldn't misuse the word 'homophobic.' It's a sensitive subject that should be handled with care.
I’m just clarifying what I meant — you don’t have to agree with it.
The issue here is that regardless, the family is Jewish, so them being such always plays a role in any depictions. They are canonically usually depicted as the only Jews in town. Choosing to make the only Jewish father homophobic (when you’re pairing Kyle with a Catholic, which all the other boys in town are) in your fanfic is just as potentially loaded as doing so with the only Jewish mother. It’s something that I don’t really trust most of the fandom with, many of whom are young and lack experience with this to handle in a respectful way. It would be equally loaded to make Steve Black homophobic.
Additionally, while for various reasons I don’t say too much about my offline identity, we are on tumblr so it’s safe to say that most people are likely some flavour of queer (also a loaded word in some circles) here lol. I do appreciate the apology and explanation.
In quite a few ship fanfics I have read, people portray Sheila Broflovski as homophobic.
Rant coming up.
Gerald is definitely homophobic due to the SkankHunt42 thing (he used homophobic slurs) but just because he is doesn't mean his wife is.
Making Sheila homophobic honestly feels like she was just homophobic to have like stakes as like 'Kyle's the gay or bi son who's in love with another boy and has a bigoted mother, oopsies' which isn't in character for her AT ALL.
If Gerald acted that way in front of her, I don't think she'd tolerate it. Hell, she'd hate it.
Sheila is protective of Kyle and Ike and VERY reactive, especially to stuff that's 'harmful' (like the Terrance and Phillip thing in Bigger, Longer & Uncut and many more things) but she has shown no signs of homophobia whatsoever.
If you want a homophobic conflict in your Kyle x any male character/OC fanfic, then make a bigoted OC or find some other homophobic characters (there's plenty of side characters like this)
If you still want the homophobic parent conflict, then just have Gerald being an asshole since he has shown some signs of being a homophobe (which is him being a huge hypocrite because of that one episode with Randy but that's not the point of this rant)
At the end of the day, 'Sheila is homophobic because Kyle needs a homophobic parent' has never made much sense to me. It feels less like an interpretation of her character and more like a plot device.
“Don’t make the only Jewish woman a homophobe make the only Jewish man one aren’t I so progressive tee hee”.
Gerald and Sheila are probably Reform Jews, neither are likely to be structurally homophobic. Additionally, it’s clear Gerald was a mouthpiece for Matt and Trey’s pov on that word in that scene (see also: "the f word") so like… I feel like people truly didn’t get what that whole part of S20 was about, or comprehend GenXers much at all (in general it’s an example casual homophobia than deeply held bigoted beliefs in most cases). He’s likely to be Weird potentially, but not violently homophobic. Overall Judaism, especially Reform Judaism is deeply accepting.
If you really desperately need him to be bigoted, his deep and persistent classism is right there.
Don’t fucking make the Broflovskis homophobic, and do an ounce of research into Judaism. It’s not that fucking hard.
Broflovski family headcanons in honour of Kyle Broflovski (and Matt Stone)'s Birthday
A fair bit of this is from A Complete Disgrace, which ends with Kyle's literal Birthday. This isn't an exhaustive list, just a few that popped up for me.
Early Life/Religion:
Kyle's full name is "Kyle Brandeis Broflovski". He was named in honour of two of Sheila's grandparents (her maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather). Gerald hadn't had anyone deceased on his family's side that he knew well enough to honour, so he went with Louis Brandeis, a trailblazing Supreme Court Justice.
He is a rainbow baby. Sheila and Gerald had an early second-trimester miscarriage that was deeply traumatizing for them both (not to mention that they'd been casually "trying" for about 2-3 years prior to that and had just started to get serious about it). One night like a month after it, Gerald suggested they get drunk, and that's how Kyle was conceived.
The fact that it happened both quickly and unplanned is one reason why both his parents are pretty overprotective of him.
The reason the two Kyle's share the same name is that Sheila shared a list of names she liked with her (also pregnant) younger sister when she was pregnant the first time (mostly "k" names for both sexes). Though it was never a set name for the baby, it was a whole Thing since her sister never asked permission. When Gerald and Sheila found out they were having a boy, 'Kyle' was the one name that felt right for the kid. Sheila talked to her sister about it, and the conditions were essentially that her baby was 'Kyle 1', and that their Hebrew names had to be different.
Kyle B's Hebrew name is "Akiva" and Kyle S's is "Eitan" (a name from his father's side of the family).
Like Gerald's family, Kyle's Reform. Sheila grew up in a Conservative family, but when they moved to South Park to start a family, they opted for the Reform synagogue that Gerald's family had always gone to.
Because Gerald was from a lower observance family, while Sheila was from a higher observance one, they have split the difference to somewhere in the middle. They'll keep kosher for holidays, and occasionally Shabbat but (at least Gerald, Kyle and Ike) won't for the rest of the year. They also probably do about every other week for synagogue.
Though primarily Ashkenazi, Kyle's actually a quarter Irish (Gerald's mom converted prior to marrying his Dad), and also has some Sephardic ancestry through Sheila's Dad.
He had trans neonatal diabetes mellitus (TNDM) as a baby, which is another reason Sheila's very overprotective of him. He's generally been fine since then but he lives in fear.
Familial Relationships
He's close to his mom, but it's... complicated (hey, the movie of it all). He probably fights with Sheila more than Gerald (since they both have similar tempers and trigger points), but she's also the parent who's more likely to give him all the love and validation she can, which Gerald isn't always great with.
Despite... the S20 of it all, Kyle and Gerald genuinely have a solid father-son relationship. He knows his Dad has many flaws, but at the end of the day, he's still a solid dad... even if the rest of him can be a bit of a dumpster fire. He's also probably more likely to go to Gerald if there's some sort of gigantic problem than to Sheila because Gerald is less likely to lose his shit.
When it comes to romantic relationship stuff, he would honestly rather die than talk to either of his parents. It's just too awkward. Sheila I feel like is that parent who overshares, while Gerald is like "yeah let's never talk about this".
Both of his parents would 100% cheerlead almost any relationship he ends up in. Embarrassingly (especially on Sheila's end) Unless that person is like... genuinely bigoted/antisemitic in which case, there'd probably be a lot of genuine worry.
Ike thinks he's the best big brother ever. Even when he gets older and a bit more cynical, he still thinks that Kyle's solid and while he knows he can do plenty of wrong, he still thinks he's good at heart.
Overall, he has the most functional home family life of his friends, which he is acutely aware of. In some ways, this is difficult because he feels like he can't complain when things frustrate him (and they definitely do), which isn't the healthiest thing. Tolkien and Wendy in turn often become two people he'll talk to more about those things.
Hobbies/School
Definitely in that AP/all-around well-rounded high achiever group with Tolkien and Wendy.
Like his father, Kyle's on the debate team in high school. That being said, Gerald usually tries to dissuade him from doing law since he thinks he'd hate it. But Kyle loves debate.
He's a solid basketball player, and remains so all throughout high school. While he doesn't have what it takes to go pro or get athletic scholarships, he's still a very respectable amateur.
He probably also does track. He's a good runner!
While he likes TTRPG's just fine (especially if he's playing with his friends), he's a really big CRPG/MMO guy. And he'll almost always get into games that none of his friends give a fuck about.
Likes playing characters that are completely different from him in MMO's and CRPG's, so he ends up playing girls (or someone nonbinary if the game allows) a lot of the time, often of some fun fantasy race that isn't a generic human.
Took psychology as an option to figure out what the fuck was wrong with everyone in his life, but actually found it to be super interesting.
Does do some synagogue youth group activities and Jew Scouts. He's not always the most patient with younger kids not named Ike, but he's trying.
