Why Kyman is the Slash Pairing Most Likely to Become Canon: An Essay
Okay so this isn’t meant to bring down anyone’s ship - shipping isn’t about what’s canon it’s about what’s fun! Ship what you wanna ship dude - I ship Steidi and that’s never gonna be canon.
It’s something I’ve talked about with multiple mutuals and I finally wanna do a write up on it for the world to see. Kyman is obviously a contentious pairing in the fandom - just go into the tag and you’ll see. However, I feel a lot of people who are very staunchly anti-Kyman misunderstand South Park as a show, and what M&T truly intend it to be, because in looking at South Park as a show and its ethos and philosophy I’ve come to one conclusion. This isn’t me trying to push my OTP, this is me talking off the shipper goggles and trying to speak as objectively as possible.
Looking at South Park, its sense of humour, and the material presented in the show - I believe Kyman is the slash pairing most likely to become canon.
Firstly, the ship teasing in the show itself; most ships with large followings have had their moment or episode - S/tyle had Follow That Egg, C/andy had Chef Goes Nanners, Bunny had Going Native, B/uttman had Cartman Sucks (kinda), K///2 had…. I’ll not say anything else less I piss off the K///2 shippers. But with Kyman? It’s more like an avalanche of episodes. This ship has been teased constantly for years, and even people who don’t ship it have to acknowledge the obvious homosexual subtext.
Cartman wanting Kyle to suck his balls in Imaginationland (which Trey insists isn’t supposed to be gay but c’mon), them being mistaken for a couple in Tonsil Trouble, Cartman saving Kyle in Smug Alert, Kyle saving Cartman in Jewpacabra, Cartman calling Kyle his “little monster” in It’s A Jersey Thing, Cartman telling Kyle he loves him and trying to kiss him in Le Petit Tourette, Kyle looking at Cartman’s picture in Weiners Out, not to mention his clear jealousy of Heidi, which continues well into Season 21. And do I even have to mention Crack Baby Athletic Association, You’re Getting Old/Assburgers, and Cartman Finds Love? Sure the subtext in Imaginationland may have been accidental but by this point it has to be entirely intentional; I mean, you guys have seen Cartman Finds Love right? Come on. I could go on and on but there’s already lists out there of Kyman moments and that’s really not the point I’m trying to make here, because this goes a lot deeper than ship tease. The point I’m really trying to make her is that by this point a whole sub-catagory of the show’s humor is based around Eric and Kyle’s obsession with each other, and that’s the main thrust of my argument.
At it’s core, South Park isn’t a show about characters - its a show about satire and comedy. And Kyman, as a relationship, is the fan pairing that fits best with that style of writing.
South Park’s political philosophy is very much of the “douche and turd” variety. “Both sides suck and here’s why.” Matt and Trey are of course, known Libertarians. And is their a bigger Libertarian move than pairing up the douchey liberal with the asshole bigot? I don’t think so. There’s a reason Kyle and Cartman’s interactions have become one of the shows main driving forces over the years - their rivalry literally represents the show’s political philosophy, and making their relationship romantic would just take that joke about the system to the next level.
Furthermore, Kyle and Cartman as a couple…. it was just be funny. South Park is a comedy and as such, everything it does is based around comedy. Stan and Wendy were meant to mock traditional grade school romances seen in cartoons. Eric and Heidi, initially, were meant to mock douchey couples who do everything together - and later on the joke came from how toxic their relationship was. Although there definitely are canon couples in South Park that aren’t driven by humor, M&T wouldn’t waste their time canonising a couple between two main characters that doesn’t have the potential for comedy. This is why I just don’t see S/tyle becoming canon (well besides the fact that their relationships reads more like brothers to me… and that they don’t interact much anymore… and that they’re based on Matt and Trey…); it’s quite simply that Stan and Kyle as a romantic couple doesn’t really have any potential for comedy that couldn’t be done better by another couple. It wouldn’t fit with the show’s tone (South Park isn’t a romance) and would just seem forced. But Kyman would fit perfectly.
They’d basically be the stock sitcom couple of “dumb somewhat-bigoted husband and smart naggy wife who bicker all the time” turned up to eleven. You wouldn’t even have to change much about the typical Cartman and Kyle episode; Cartman does some morally dubious scheme, Kyle gets mad and tries to stop him, they argue about it - just add that they kiss and make up at the end, while Stan makes a remark about how dysfunctional their relationship is. Adult Kyman as this couple that constantly argues about everything but makes up by screwing each other’s brains out? That fits perfectly with the tone of South Park as a show meant to satarise every aspect of American culture. Plus honestly, they’re so invested in each other, that really, I couldn’t see them being paired romantically with anyone else in an endgame sense. The Eric-Heidi-Kyle love triangle was more about Kyman than Heidi; if M&T ever did do a flash-forward episode, having them paired up with anyone else would just seem forced and unnecessary - they’d wind up sharing all their screentime with each other anyway, why not just add an extra wrinkle to their dynamic by making “they’re married” part of the joke. South Park cares about jokes above all else - and “Kyle and Cartman grew up and got married” would be a funny joke!
Simply put, no other fanon couple involving Kyle or Cartman, to me, has the intrigue or potential for comedy that would make Matt and Trey want to make it canon. Kyman however does; they already have the most complex, fleshed-out dymanic in the show, loads of gay subtext, and huge potential for comedy and satire - plus you could write them as a couple without fundamentally changing their characters at all, and still have it fit perfectly with the tone of the show.
Am I saying that Kyman will become canon? No. But what I am saying is that I would not be surprised if it did - for gods sake even normies have theorised about Cartman being in love with Kyle! Plus, their relationship is such a central focus of the show by this point, that it would frankly be narratively unsatisfying if they wrapped up the show without resolving it somehow - and flashing forward in time 20 years to reveal that they’ve become a comedic couple would fit perfectly with the tone of the show imo.
So there it is - why I feel that Kyman, objectively, is the South Park slash pairing most likely to become canon.
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