Placebo Effect: DVD Commentary

[ceu]

I want to talk about "Placebo Effect." It's hands down my favorite South Park story by me - overall, definitely ranking in the top three. I wrote it about two years ago.



Before

I'd mulled over the idea for probably a good week. I was trying to think of a solid plot to fit with the fanart. All I had was that Cartman wasn't in it - and then one day on my walk to work, or class, or something, I was like, "This is why Cartman's not in the fanart. Because he's dead."

I liked it. I immediately had the sentence, afterwards, "Cartman had died on a Monday." That's where I would start.

I didn't actually write the sentence until about a week later. During that week, I tried to fill in the gaps. Where the story went, from Cartman's death, to that moment on the hill, the rest of the boys on the car. That was my goal, to get from point A to - well, point Z.

As I thought the idea through, I only got snippets of what else I wanted to happen in the story. It could - possibly - be suicide. (It is.) Craig and Kenny would be a Thing. The story would start when the boys are twelve.

I took the idea, and I ran with it.

Writing

I didn't actually start writing the story until the day I finished it. I overachieve - I like to finish stories (especially longer ones) in as short of a sitting as possible, especially if I'm particularly inspired. I love the rush, don't want to lose it. I want it all the time. I don't have it with me, now. If I did, I would be working on Makoto/Haruka fic instead of writing this >->o

I started the story at work, Saturday afternoon, thinking I would just start it. Or, thinking I would finish it pretty quickly, since the upper word limit was actually around four thousand, or something like that. It's... fourteen hundred words. I overachieve. And am meticulous about pacing.

The day at the library was slow; I was at the service desk, this was pre-renovation, it was a game day, not much would interrupt me. I wrote maybe the first several hundred words at work. My pacing started slow and got faster. I was thinking more.

This would be third person omniscient. I would shift from Kyle to Craig exclusively, but not in a particular pattern - only when it was convenient for me. Batz mitzvahs. Kenny's dying thing. Coon and Friends, and Cartman.

These were the thoughts that were running through my head as I started the first several hundred words. I got off work around five, was free to leave the building and everything afterward.

But I was so caught up in my story, and writing on a desktop PC instead of my Macbook, that I decided to go to an ITC (/computer lab) upstairs and write some more. Maybe I would write in the library till I felt drained, and then go back home and write. Or write the day after. Or something.

So I wrote in the ITC. I kept writing. Then it was the Coon and Friends scene. Then Kenny was sucking Craig's dick. Then Kyle was doing badly in school. Then they were going on a road trip, and I was looking up the states you would pass through if you drove from Colorado to New York.

I did intentionally decide to throw in elements of episodes, City Sushi and 1% and Coon and Friends being the most opposite, Fatty Poo Poo and Broadway Bro Down being a little more subtle. (I guess?) I'm intrigued but not entirely sold on plots that are based around one South Park episode; but I lose interest if a South Park fic doesn't at least have a mention or influence or hint of inspiration from one, separate from the characters. It's a universe I do enjoy working with, where the kids are cruel and the adults are useless.

Twist

The twist at the end came to me almost unexpectedly - I felt like I knew it was coming, but I honestly didn't. The hints I threw in were things that I thought would help me discover the twist that I was looking for, which they did.

The hints were the mentioning of Cartman's dolls pretty early on, in the parenthetical during when Stan, Kyle, and Butters were playing video games. Also the mention of the weight loss, the ghost of Cartman's character throughout the fic, even though he wasn't physically present. I do love writing things like that.

When it came, I remember thinking yes and this is exactly where I was going. It felt too perfect for me, like somewhere in the back of my mind I must've known. A divine intervention. Whatever the fuck you wanna call it.

I mean, the twist is so short, and usually that's something that would bother me. I love it. I love it because it doesn't resolve anything. It just explains everything in very few words. There's nothing the characters can do about it. Which is kind of the premise of the whole story.

Theme & Characters

I very generally have this thing for stories that are about grievances. Cut the conflict and give me the consequence. I want to watch the characters suffer through the aftermaths; I don't really care for the actual action.

... I mean, that's not true, but. When it comes to things like death and loss, I'd prefer not reading how it happened if it's not going to have a happy ending. You can't bring people back, both literally and sometimes metaphorically. The latter I can relate to. (I've been writing several grief related stories this year.)

With Kyle grieving, I knew it. It was the subdued kind of - well, I've written enough South Park fic, or at least read, that I have had an extremely secure familiarity with their relationships and characterizations, at least from my own perspective. Kyle and Cartman's relationship has always been... complicated. Jewpacabra is what sold it for me, almost. I mean, it's fucked up, but there's something intriguing about it for me, anyway.

Stan was sad, but Stan is also a very passive character when it comes to things that don't affect him personally. I wouldn't say that Cartman wasn't his friend, but that throughout the show he's repeated so much that he doesn't care about Cartman, is a very self-seeking character, based on righteousness and morals - that, honestly, with how fucked up Cartman is, he would be shocked but not depressed. Depression, with Stan, is something that happens through a higher level, like opening your eyes, alternating your entire worldview. Not an isolated event that traumatizes you and fucks you up, like with what happens with Kyle.

I've been, for a long time, pretty comfortable with Butters, too. He's an INFP, like me (I would characterize him as one, anyway. Stan's an ENFJ? Kyle's an INFJ? Kenny's an ISFP? Cartman's an ESTJ?) so it's always been easy for me to write him, in terms of mindset. Well, that, and also I just enjoy writing in the voice of characters who have very obvious ways of speaking.

Kenny I want to say was easy for me, mostly because my characterization of him relied on omitting and Craig drawing conclusions through that. I guess, on a meta level, Craig's interpretation of him would also be my and the reader's interpretation of him, because Kenny's so depressed and removed from the story that the narrative goes through Craig as the medium to understand him.

Kyle's being indignant, his high vulnerability to acting on emotion without thinking, and just generally watching the way his character reacts on the show also made it pretty easy for me. I like Kyle; he's aggressive and confident but also very honest with himself; his aggression comes from his confidence and as soon as one of those falters, he questions himself before he feels solid again. Kyle relies on safety and acceptance. He relies on living in comfortable zones, because being forced out fucks him up. Death isn't something that's necessarily removed from the South Park universe, I should say; but that through the things I would imagine the boys would go through together, and Cartman's negative impact on Kyle's life, the relationship that turns more into abuse than rivalry - there's a gross codependence for aggression between the two, but it's codependence nonetheless. Kyle is confused when Cartman is gone. He doesn't know what to do without him.

Style

(Not re: Stan/Kyle. Haha.)

I like the way I wrote this. It doesn't push on the romance, or the relationship, or the grief, to very extreme points. It teases it and then concretes itself back into current events and situations. It doesn't linger too much on emotion, but the amount of waver and withdrawal is still substantial and enough, in my opinion!

Past tense. Minimalist. Vignette based, but not like staccatos, and not patterned, either. Actually, while I was writing, I kept telling myself that I would finish soon while keeping a decent pace. I guess that didn't really mean too much to me (either that or the restriction just allowed me to write more pointed scenes than any excess.) I hate feeling like things are rushed, unless the suddenness is for a sad empty ending. Which this story does have. But it also has a lot to take in throughout the middle that the end doesn't, in my opinion, feel unsatisfactory. You can't cure grief. You can only wait.

Ships

I like Stan/Kyle? I mean, of course I do. I had been debating with myself if I should add a kiss in the end, some sort of confirmation of mutual romance. Stan's affection is pretty standard for classic Stan-Kyle best friendship pre-slash sort of thing I usually see. But Kyle's story was so much more focused on grief than on his obvious crush on Stan that I decided to just let it go, let the relationship speak for itself. Kyle doesn't need requited feelings from Stan to still value his relationship and Stan as much as he does.

Craig/Kenny is something else. I'm not really a "shipper" in the sense that I necessarily care for it. I mean, it has its appeals, but the way it's depicted makes it feel too contrived for me. I like Craig/Stan and the vague rivalry/foeyay, or Craig/Clyde, annoying frat boy / cynical douche-nerd childhood friends thing.

So writing Craig/Kenny was easy, just not necessarily interesting for me. I suppose that's my attitude toward it. It's easy to ship it and like it, but there's too much - I wouldn't say agreeability, just.... nothing interesting enough in the way that they communicate for me to care about them outside this fic.

I do care about them in this fic, though.

What else I like

I covered how much I love the twist, the fleshing out, the spinning in elements of certain episodes to make this work.

I suppose I'll talk about pacing again. On some level I'm very into stories with slow paces, timeline wise (not style wise), but that means with stories with more time skips, there's something thrilling about it. This story has more time skips than my average. Yet I wanted to write enough necessary scenes that it doesn't feel like there isn't development and just plot. Filler episodes like this are to further the depth or width of a character.

Ah, and the title. I came up with the title a few weeks beforehand, deciding that I should use it for something. After finishing this and hunting for a title, I found where I'd scribbled it down and thought it was perfect.

And it is. Butters is a placebo for Cartman's absence. Everything is a placebo for Kyle and Kenny, who are stuck in their grief. Stan is not a placebo for anything, more like - well, the anchor. Craig, who doesn't experience the grief, feels like a placebo when he is really Kenny's anchor as well.

This story is about loss and replacement, which ties in with the idea of a placebo effect. The idea that something that actually doesn't have any affect feels like it does. The telling of this story doesn't lessen Kyle's grief. But it still tells it.