Southpark theory: Eric Cartman is gay and madly in love with kyle, even if he doesn't understand it (because of defensive repression)
I mean we all know that feeling when we're young, and have a crush on someone but because we're so inexperienced we can't show it in normal ways yet, i.e. when boys "bully" their crushes to show their affection, just the attention they give to them stems from their love and longing for even the simplest of interactions with them. Cartman suffers not only from this but also from the stigma of being gay and in love with a jew; it literally goes against everything he stands for, so even if he really DID feel this way he would pull every single mental gymnastics skill in the book to convince himself that he doesn't, even while showing affection (or intense "hatred" which is related) to kyle and longing for his attention which in and of itself betrays his true feelings.
There's many instances where we see glimpses of this going on: Cartman enjoying watching kyle "suffer" while bathing in the money he earned by beating kyle in a bet, and he keeps doing it all episode long but loses all interest as soon as Kyle shows that he doesn't really care (S6E8), cartman willing to go to THE ENDS OF THE EARTH just for kyle to suck his balls (S11E10)(*more on this later*), his only wish for saving southpark from the hippies being to make kyle watch him play with a toy kyle could never get (S9E2), cartman literally going over a sleeping kyle to monologue to himself about his genius plan of taking all the treasure to himself (S10E6), like there's so many fucking instances i haven't watched SP in ages and these are all from the top of my head, there's probably 1 of these in almost every single episode, etc.etc.etc.etc.
I mean we all know that feeling when we're young, and have a crush on someone but because we're so inexperienced we can't show it in normal ways yet, i.e. when boys "bully" their crushes to show their affection, just the attention they give to them stems from their love and longing for even the simplest of interactions with them. Cartman suffers not only from this but also from the stigma of being gay and in love with a jew; it literally goes against everything he stands for, so even if he really DID feel this way he would pull every single mental gymnastics skill in the book to convince himself that he doesn't, even while showing affection (or intense "hatred" which is related) to kyle and longing for his attention which in and of itself betrays his true feelings.
There's many instances where we see glimpses of this going on: Cartman enjoying watching kyle "suffer" while bathing in the money he earned by beating kyle in a bet, and he keeps doing it all episode long but loses all interest as soon as Kyle shows that he doesn't really care (S6E8), cartman willing to go to THE ENDS OF THE EARTH just for kyle to suck his balls (S11E10)(*more on this later*), his only wish for saving southpark from the hippies being to make kyle watch him play with a toy kyle could never get (S9E2), cartman literally going over a sleeping kyle to monologue to himself about his genius plan of taking all the treasure to himself (S10E6), like there's so many fucking instances i haven't watched SP in ages and these are all from the top of my head, there's probably 1 of these in almost every single episode, etc.etc.etc.etc.
