Butters – oh god Butters.

Butters is a weird one. He’s right up there with Cartman on how miserable he is. And like Cartman he hides it, but in a polar opposite of an attitude.

Butters outlook on life is, if I were to describe it in the most basic way, a facade.

I’d say he’s an optimist, and he is a lot of times.

But it’s kinda complicated.

Butters is that kind of character where it seems like he’s sweet and happy and dumb, but as we’ve seen in Butterballs, and Going Native, he can show some nasty true colors. Not to say that Butters is mean or nearly as mean as Cartman, but he does share some similarities with him. For example, Butters knows more than he lets on. He just prefers to disguise this knowledge with feigned ignorance.

Butters Very Own Episode was probably where Butters was the most genuine, just being himself and being honest. This episode was all about honesty and ironically, this is the episode where he learns the value of lying. Because Butters insisted that his parents be honest about what they went through, Butters is deeply disturbed. At the end of that episode we see a glimpse of what we continue to see in Butters’ character for the rest of South Park.

Butters: I really wish I didn’t know that stuff. I guess I learned that sometimes, lying can be for the best. Yup. Oh well, when I want a chipotle bleu cheese bacon burger at Bennigan’s, I forget all about my dad… bein’ queer and my mom tryin’ to kill me. I’m gonna be okay.
Stan: Really?
Butters: Naw, I’m lyin’.

And that’s just what he does most of the time. Between Linda and Stephen Stotch, Butters was raised in basically a nut house. His parents ground and isolate him if he does anything slightly bad, or just if they feel like it. As a child that needs social interactions, he’s basically under their heel, and the only way he can get out if he acts synthetically sweet. 

On the playground the rules are the exact opposite, and it’s jarring to Butters. In the boys’ world you don’t get shit if you’re nice. The only way to gain footing in their eyes is to show you have a spine. 

When a boy enters the main four’s gang, they go through a little bit of an initiation process. For Cartman it lasted years, and he finally stopped being oversensitive to being called fat and eventually turned into a ruthless exaggeration of what the boys wanted.

But Butters couldn’t really do that. If he were to try to be mean the way the boys want him to be mean, it’d just mean hell for him when he comes home. His parents are fuckin batshit and won’t tolerate anything but their son’s sweet facade. It causes a real problem in school because these boys don’t really seem to care about Butters’ situation. If anything it makes school that much worse for him.

But despite the fact that he gets shit on at school all the time, it’s much better than what his parents would do to him if he acted out. I mean god DAMN these parents these are the two psychiatrists they took him to

And they locked him up in the fucking basement and fed him humans because they thought he was a demon. After that I think a little playground bullying seems worth going through as an alternative. 

It’s implied that Butters gets shit on by the school as a whole. Both Stan’s gang and Craig’s gang pick on him and tell him he’s stupid dork or tie him to a tetherball pole, among other insane antics.

He’s been through his fair amount of shit with the boys and under reacted to all of it, even though they’ve disrespected and royally fucked him over consistently. 

Inside this makes him a bitter, cynical person toward the world who feels powerless most of the time, but takes pleasure in the idea of people on his shit list dying. This is clearly seen with Cartman in Pee.

This is in contrast to Kyle, who, with a similar sense of justice/revenge believes Cartman should be punished. And despite that Kyle just couldn’t stand to let him freeze to death in the cold.

But Butters is different. His revenge includes the cruelness Kyle’s revenge omits. He doesn’t second guess like Kyle – if there’s an opportunity, Butters seizes it.

And I don’t need to mention the obvious

and

and

Not to mention beating the shit out of Scott Malkinson out of pure, aimless anger. I’d say he did that because he knew there wasn’t a chance of repercussion from Scott because nobody likes Scott anyway.

But basically, I mean we all knew this, Butters has a shit ton of pent up rage. But I don’t think it’s just a breaking point thing. That IS part of his personality. His true self peeks through multiple times in little cynical ways, when after seeing Kyle drink a glass of pee, “Do you need to wash your hands?” 

And in Butterballs:

Not to say this isn’t justified. I mean… sometimes it isn’t. But I’m saying, the bitter, revenge thirsty cynical Butters will come out if he feels it’s safe enough. It’s a very opportunistic thing.

In Season 18 people were like “Oh, Butters wouldn’t burn down the gym! He’s to sweet! It was probably Cartman!” But no, that’s exactly what Butters would do.

This is completely consistent with his character. He thought he would be saying goodbye to that hellhole of a school for good. And he was so thrilled that he took full advantage of it. When he had the chance to beat the shit out of his virtual dad, you bet your ass he did.

(It’s debatable whether or not that Dad was actually virtual.) Butters, even though saying he felt dark and empty after beating up Dr. Oz, has a pretty opportunistic sense of vengeance. 

So in conclusion, Butters is aware of how shitty everything is for him, but he smiles and acts kind because he feels like he doesn’t have a choice. (And I think he feels like he’s being the bigger person a lot of times.) But if he does have a choice, he’s pulling out his shit list.