Hmmm. Warning, this is gonna be a long post.

Right away, I’m thinking Stan’s a pessimist. It’s canon that he has an incredibly cynical mind. This is actually something I have in common with Stan. He doesn’t as much about pretty white lies as much as he cares about the cold hard truth. He couldn’t let Kyle believe cold readings were true, just like he couldn’t let himself become the leader of false hope. 

This line kind of blurs down the line as I believe that Stan, after Ass Burgers, seems to become sick of his own truths and begins to indulge in false happiness. This is plainly obvious in both Scause for Applause and Butterballs, and it’s actually kind of sad. I feel like there’s an inner turmoil that goes overlooked here. 

Stan yo-yo’s between being able to see through so many lies, and being moderately oblivious if not completely. I don’t think that’s a character inconsistency. I think, as a child, he’s trying to find a way to balance himself out so he doesn’t have to be so unhappy all the time. I think as smart as he is, he plays dumb, subconsciously if not intentionally, to achieve some kind of happiness. He plays dumb so that he might have the chance to indulge in what he considers to be everyone else’s stupid fun, to have some chance of enjoying himself. And sometimes this does work, sometimes he indulges too much and ends up jacking it in San Diego.

So Stan is a pessimist trying to disguise himself as an optimist, which at its worst makes him look either dumb or egotistical.

The realist of the group is… Kyle I guess. 

Kyle’s more of an idealist but there’s not really many other characters that fit the definition of realist as much as Kyle does. Kyle isn’t very good at being a realist when he gets emotional, but he does try his best to be a realist when he can. Similar to Stan, he is interested in the cold hard truth of the world, But the difference between Stan and Kyle is that he doesn’t let it keep him down.

More often than not Stan is the one letting things be, and Kyle is the one trying to shake up the system. He thinks about what he can do to make things change and tackles situations head on, doing whatever he can to beat the odds. And despite one or two breakdowns, he’s not about to let himself be swayed by the painful truth of anything. 

Kyle’s a fighter right down to his last cell, and he’s not afraid to show that he is. He often puts the truth in people’s face even if they react badly, because to him, truth is the second most important thing in life. Justice is the first.

But because he’s a realist he also second guesses himself. He shows sympathy to those who he thinks have done wrong but still have a chance to beat the odds, because he can be blunt, but he doesn’t want to be cruel.

He appears to others as a preachy martyr most of the time, but that’s simply because his image, when he gets in those justice induced states, are the last thing on his mind.

The optimist of the group is without a doubt, Cartman.

It might seem a bit odd to call the meanest, cruelest motherfucker in the group an optimist, and it might seem like I’m biased, but this is actually something I thought way before I plunged deep in love with Cartman.

Optimism is when you convince yourself that there’s always a silver lining, always a bright side to any situation. You might think Optimists can’t be mean characters, but when you take optimism to an extreme, well, you get Cartman.

Cartman is so optimistic he’s insensitive. His main focus of his optimism is keeping himself happy. Sure, he might rage, he might fall into despair sometimes, but if you rewatch the episodes, he ends up deluding himself into happiness or recovering and treating the situation with nonchalance.

In Kenny Dies, he legitimately sheds tears for Kenny, trying to hide the fact that he’s crying for Kyle because he’s so upset. But he only has a few moments before he starts insisting to Kyle that he’s going to cure Kenny. And he does attempt to do this until he thinks it’s too late for Kenny. At that point, Cartman scrambles for an opportunity to make something positive about the situation. ANYTHING positive. Even the smallest thing. He attempts to spread this happiness to the boys, foolishly thinking he won’t be seen as insensitive and somehow make the boys happy. 

Strangely enough, it ends up working for Stan – not in the way he wanted, but it did work. He cheered up. Kyle was pissed though. 

And in general his incredibly dark humor is what makes him so optimistic. Cartman is aware more than most kids in the show of the world’s woes and problems. He always knows what’s going on before the rest of the boys do, even the really terrible things happening in other countries. But instead of preaching to others about how to stop it like Kyle would, or admitting that he’s helpless to stop it like Stan would, Cartman turns it into a joke. 

Tragedy + Time = Comedy

The formula of humor is Cartman’s optimism. A lot of times minus the time part. Cartman does not give two shits about whether or not he’s being sensitive. He is that desperate for positivity.

Another good example of Cartman scrambling for the silver lining, but in a much sadder way, is when he got the shit beat out of him by Wendy. He thought he was going to be treated differently because of it, but his classmates unintentionally reassured him that nothing was going to change. Though this would make most people sad, he forced himself to save face by acting completely delusional in order to express that nothing had changed. 

A very important aspect of Cartman is that he ALWAYS recovers. In the Poor and Stupid episode, he has many downfalls where he’s sobbing about the fact that he can’t be what he wants to be, and despite his stupid reasons and discouragement from Stan and Kyle, he digs deep and finds a way to become inspired. The same thing happens when he’s at the hospital. He’s so discouraged that he even tells the doctor to pull the plug on him. But this is only a lapse in time. He eventually convinces himself to get right back up again and go for some arbitrary goal in order to feel happy.  

All in all, I think Cartman is so optimistc and so insensitive because he is painfully aware of how cruel he is and how cruel the world is. I think he feels like he’s in too deep, and if he ever stops telling himself that there are things to be happy about, he does become suicidal, despite not wanting to be.

Reminds me of this scene.

….Also holy fuck that got real.

I hope you enjoyed my ranting about these mofos.