Pines, Mountains and the Bias
@birdsftw Please forgive me for using your reply as a headline but this question it’s very pertinent for the new kyman fans and also the ones unaware of the whole drama.
1 What is this mountains, pines and tie?
These are 3 names coined by tumblr users @yummykyman and @nicholesp, created to identify stereotypes on the kyman community (the original post can be seen here). Like all stereotypes they don’t serve to represent correctly one’s taste about anything, they are just exaggerations, parodies of recurring themes on fanfics and fanarts. The terms themselves never did any danger until @kylebiased came to the picture.
In very short words it’s a parody of most Top!Cartman works, Cartman is this domineering man, Kyle as many attributes from classic romantic manga protagonists (see Toradora as an example) and the main genre here is smut.
Kyle is the Top in this. He’s the ‘school prince’ athletic, smart, the gentleman. Meanwhile Cartman is the one to assume the heteronormative ‘female’ part in this stereotype, he’s sensible, misunderstood, short (also very similar to those manga protagonists but following a different archetype). This happens mostly in angst fanfictions.
The most well rounded stereotype. This doesn’t follow a heteronormative pattern and as Kyle and Cartman follow very similar steps to their canon counterparts. They are basically rivals in a comedy, like canon, but adding the romantic element to the mix.
As you can see none of this titles carry any deeper meaning or any implications, they existed for quite a while, the original post is dated from January 2018 and didn’t gain popularity until our friend kylebiased user came to the picture.
You see there’s something weird about labels and symbols. When you create one they can have the most innocent intentions for them and the most pure concepts however is the usage that defines the meaning and lai (kylebiased) sure made a show with this ones.
Lai appropriated this labels (around May/June 2018) and started treating them as Hogwarts Houses. Mountains were bad people because in her perception they supported abusive Cartman oppressing jews (namely Kyle), pines were good because they represented those who didn’t tolerate oppression, who wanted Kyle to be the ‘man’ and to be in charge.
This new meaning divided the community and created a toxic atmosphere because if you weren’t a Pine or Tie you were a Nazi basically and you would get for it, vague posting, mocking anons, scorn from other users.
As you may be aware my blog appeared last year to break this circle. I disagree fully that these terms can describe as people ship or should ship Kyman. They are just fun labels that were misappropriated and used to promote preconceptions and moral crusades.
In the end Lai deleted her blog, I don’t know where she went and honestly I don’t want to. I just want her and her sympathizers to notice that their views were flawed, that the moral meaning they inserted on top/bottom dynamics just plagued this community.
One is free to enjoy or dislike certain ship dynamics but no one as the moral ground to pass judgment on others tastes and act against them.
