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South Park (the TV show and related media) have clear SFF elements such as the Crab People, the Marklar civilization, the anal probe aliens, zombies, the mysterious multiple deaths of Kenny, as well as crossovers from the Cthulhu Mythos, the legends of Santa Claus, kaiju films, and others. Unlike most SFF works, however, there is a serious lack of continuity that makes it difficult to talk coherently about a specific element as it exists across the entire South Park canon.

To what extent is South Park on-topic?

  • Is it completely on-topic?
  • Is it on-topic only with specific respect to SFF elements of the show (e.g. asking about South Park's portrayal of the capabilities of Santa's sleigh would be on-topic, but asking for the names of Kyle's grandparents would be off-topic)?
  • Is it completely off-topic?

Marklar will be on Marklar awaiting your marklar. All marklars are acceptable if they are good marklars for this marklar and conform to the basic marklars of Marklar.

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    Option 2; see here for guidelines
    – Radhil
    Commented Apr 12, 2018 at 1:56
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    @Radhil I’d probably say it’s more option 3 than it is option 2. SFFnal elements hardly seem like a major defining feature of the show although episodes exist which involve them. Asking about Cartman’s family history should never be on-topic on this site. However for fully on-topic works, asking about such non-SFF-nal aspects is OK.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Apr 12, 2018 at 5:44
  • Yeah, basically a dupe of the linked question
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 12, 2018 at 6:03
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    @Edlothiad - Agreed. I meant Robert's option 2, rather than the linked. More coffee....
    – Radhil
    Commented Apr 12, 2018 at 10:51
  • Ah yes, my apologies, @Radhil
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Apr 13, 2018 at 9:03

1 Answer 1

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South Park, like many other animated TV shows of the same ilk (The Simpson, Family Guy, American Dad, etc) is a mixed bag of tropes, shifting from straight-up drama into science fiction, film parody and played-for-laughs horror without any explanation for the change in tone other than they've run out of ideas this week and have decided to do a concept episode.

As with all shows that contain elements of science fiction, our general principle is that it's on topic to ask about those specific bits that contain scifi or fantasy, but not about the show in general. So, for example it would be perfectly acceptable to ask

"What fuel powers the Marklar's ships?"

or

"What is the principle on which the Marklar are able to achieve FTL flight"

but it wouldn't be acceptable to ask

"What is Cartman's favourite flavour of pot pie?"

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    For the record, the answer to the three questions posed are "Marklar", "Marklar" and "Chocolate Chicken"
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 14, 2018 at 12:37
  • The relevant policy here is from How should we handle questions that are about non-SF/F elements in a SF/F work?. Mike's answer with a net +27 score says that if the work is on-topic, all questions about the work are on-topic. Cartman's favorite flavor may be a boring, uninteresting question, but it's fair game.
    – phantom42
    Commented Apr 14, 2018 at 15:41
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    @phantom42 - I disagree with that being the appropriate policy. The show isn't largely on-topic with some off-topic elements, it's largely off-topic with some on-topic elements.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 14, 2018 at 15:42
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    @phantom42 it's not an SF/F work, as the above answer says it's a mixed bag of tropes in which SF/F is included.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 6:08
  • By policy, works that have occasional sf/f elements are considered on-topic. If you don't consider works with things like aliens, crab people, talking poo, genetically altered animals, giant monsters, and gods who live amongst people, all in their everyday world (not in special non-canon episodes like the Simpsons), as SF/F, we've just got fundamentally different definitions of SF/F that we're never going to agree on.
    – phantom42
    Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 11:31
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    @Phantom42 - Except that they never mention those things in-universe outside of the episode in which they occur. Except when it's funny to do so, obviously.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 14:01

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