Style On Strike
By Ben Barrett
Kyle approached Stark's Pond and looked around for his best friend. Stan had called him at 9:30, insisting that they meet up at the pond at 11:00. So Kyle had gone out of his way to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, knowing full well that getting caught would bring down the wrath of his mother on both of their heads.
"Dude, behind you," he heard someone whisper.
Kyle turned and saw Stan hiding in the darkness behind him. He rolled his eyes with a smile and walked over to him, amazed at how unusual his friend's behavior could be at times.
"Why the hell did you want to meet here at this hour?" Kyle asked. "Couldn't this have waited?"
"No, Kyle," the other replied, "it couldn't. I…need to tell you something and I can't wait anymore. I'm not really sure how you're going to take it."
"Oh, Jesus!" Kyle swore. "You are not going to tell me you're in love with me."
Stan looked genuinely hurt at his friend's outburst. Kyle had managed to see right through him and guess his secret and he was just as upset as he'd imagined he'd be. Stan was heartbroken but he couldn't back down at this point.
"Yes, Kyle," he said, looking down at the ground. His lip was quivering. "I guess…you're pretty mad at me, huh?"
"Mad at you?" Kyle ranted. "No, I'm not mad at you! I'm mad because yet again we're being written into a gay love story."
Kyle suddenly realized just how madly in love with Stan he was. He wanted to kiss, caress, and explore every crevice of his friend's….
"No, no, no!" Kyle screamed. "Gah! That does it!"
Stan and Kyle stood before two men who, because of the rules regarding real people in fanfiction, have to be known as "M" and "T". Kyle was ranting about how in love he was with…
"No, I wasn't!" Kyle countered. "I was ranting about this overused plot device."
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it over to M, who unfolded it and studied it before handing it to T. On it was a list of overused plotpoints, which he had the misfortune of constantly living through.
"What do you want from us?" T asked.
"I want you to put an end to this!" Kyle cried. "Every South Park fanfiction story in existence, or at least a good percentage of them, have the same basic plot. Stan and I usually fall in love with each other but don't realize that we both share the same feelings, so we end up moping around for ten chapters wishing how different things were."
"If it's not that," Stan added, "it's usually one of us making a completely reckless confession which destroys our friendship."
"Or," Kyle continued "one of us dies and has to come back and console the other."
M and T looked at each other, completely at a loss for words. They had gone on record saying that they never read fanfiction. They had absolutely no idea what was going on seemingly under their own noses.
"What exactly do you want us to do about it?" M asked.
"Put a stop to it!" the boys cried in unison.
"We can't help you," T replied. "Oh, it isn't because we don't have the power to; we just don't care."
Kyle was in a furious mood when the story transition carried him back to the main street of South Park. He hadn't finished bitching to M and T yet, but the writer of the story had moved things along to keep it from getting too boring.
"You son of a bitch!" Kyle screamed at the sky. "Put me back in the office!"
Kyle remained in the street, glaring angrily upwards. He blamed God, really, because he still loved Stan so much it was bordering on obsession. He fell asleep at night dreaming of what it would be like to have him alone on a deserted beach….
"Damn it! I do not dream about having Stan alone on a beach!"
Kyle looked around, suddenly aware that the love of his life was not with him. Where the hell had Stan vanished to during the scene change? Surely, the writer hadn't killed him off without telling anyone. Oh, that would be so crushing to Kyle, who…
"Don't say it, asshole!"
…who loved Stan so much it hurt.
Kyle finally snapped and tried walk out of the story, but since the writer is the god, Kyle just found himself in Stan's room, handcuffed to the bedposts. He was wearing what looked to him like a tunic made out of a potato sack and Stan was wearing a black leather bondage outfit. He had a very large whip in his hand, which he intended to use on Kyle if he misbehaved.
"Aw," Stan moaned, looking at where he'd ended up. "Awwwww!"
"Dude, uncuff me," Kyle said, thrashing around on the bed. "Uncuff me right now."
Stan knew that this behavior simply wouldn't do. Kyle would have to get a taste of the whip so he'd know who his master was…
"No!" the boys both shouted at the sky.
Stan suddenly realized that if he didn't do what he was told to do, the writer would do something awful to Kyle, like give him DKA….
"That's already been done," Kyle sneered, rolling his eyes, "by SomeRandomKyleBrovlofskiFan, as a matter of fact."
….or burn him to death in a house fire…
"Been done," Stan said.
…or have Cartman blackmail both of them…
"Been done way too many times," Kyle said.
Realizing the joke wasn't funny anymore, the writer changed the scene again. Kyle and Stan suddenly found themselves standing in front of the Mayor's office, waving signs and chanting angrily.
"Hell, no, I won't blow!" they yelled. "Hell, no, I won't blow!"
"Shouldn't that be 'hell, no, I won't go'?" a man passing by asked.
"No!" Kyle responded. "We're protesting because we refuse to be in any more stories where we have to perform oral sex on each other…or do anything else homosexual for that matter."
The man gave them a shocked look before walking quickly away, not glancing back once at them. After they had spent over an hour outside city hall, frightening everyone who came near them with their horrific signs and chants, Mayor McDaniels emerged. She looked royally pissed off at the both of them.
"What the hell is going on here?" she demanded.
"We're tired of being in gay stories, mayor," Stan explained, "we're tired of our names being merged into 'Style' and we're tired of recycled plotlines."
"I happen to be straight," Kyle said, "and I don't appreciate…."
The next thing they knew, the story had changed again. This time, Stan was draped over the edge of Kyle's bed. His pants were down, exposing his bare ass, and it was apparent by the red marks that Kyle had been spanking him. In fact, as the scene changed, Kyle found himself in mid-swing. He was unable to stop himself before his hand made contact with the skin of Stan's ass.
"Ow!" Stan cried as a slapping sound cracked across the room.
Kyle ran out of the room like he was on fire and immediately began dousing his hand in liquid soap. He scrubbed them clean, then lathered them up and scrubbed them again. Stan, meanwhile, was having trouble finding his pants as the writer had taken them and placed them in another story.
"God damn it," he said. "We're never going to win, Kyle. You know that, right? People want to read gay Stan and Kyle stories, no matter how straight we are."
"I'm never going to get my hands clean, dude," Kyle replied from the bathroom.
"Forget your hands. Until we give up and just go with things, we're going to be stuck."
Kyle finally came out of the bathroom and gave his friend a calculating look.
"Fine," he said, walking up to Stan and pulling him in for a long passionate kiss.
When they broke apart, Stan looked amazed, as though he had actually liked it. He turned away when his face began to turn red with embarrassment, and that's when he noticed that the writer had returned his pants.
"I guess things are gonna go back to normal now," he said.
"As normal as things can be in slash stories," Kyle agreed.