LGBT Rep discussion in Object Shows

Yeah, I still don't know why some people make a big deal out of the voices to this day. I suppose there's always those people. I haven't seen TPOT but that makes sense.

II... Yeah. You know, I really wish in general that people would grasp that someone criticizing something they resonate with isn't a personal attack on them. I get this is a very delicate topic and all but I feel a lot of discussions LGBT rep or not would be a lot less annoying and more insightful if that was the case. With II especially it's a really big deal given that they are open about wanting to write more diverse characters. They mean well, but I'm not going to stick by the newer content with how consistent their issues have been.

It doesn't really surprise me that BFDI is the one that pulls it off given what I've seen of the others over the past few years. I don't know if I'm out of The Loop but I feel not confirming your information out of source material is a relatively recent concept. Definitely different from what I saw back in 2020.

my own object comic has a few queer characters but im not gonna toot my own horn about the rep being amazing or anything. i think something thats really important to internalize is that being queer isnt one uniform, universal experience. what one person sees as horrible representation could be extremely relatable to another, and thats just how it goes.
saying this, queer rep isnt something you should just tip-toe around. you dont have to have your character say outright "i am gay" for it to be good, but you also shouldnt just completely avoid discussing your queer character BEING queer.
admittedly i havent seen any newer object shows in a while and forgot alot of the ones i have seen cuz of my memory issues. but i definitely agree with yall above me that BFDI does it great. the simple act of having a character just casually use they/them pronouns and it not be a big deal is great. and thats not to say it can NEVER be a big deal, but yknow, its nice to have explicit nonbinary representation without an endless barrage of "gender freak" jokes. (looking at you, ii season 1...)
WebzForevz also already got mentioned but having a queer couple on screen is also a really good thing, regardless of how you feel about his work. personally i enjoyed Extraordinarily Excellent Entities but im not the biggest fan of THREEE. THREEE definitely does better than EEE in terms of actually showing Broomer and Chalky's relationship though. i dont think i can entirely blame Webz for not making it explicit in EEE because in his video revealing that deleted scene where every single character is confirmed queer, he said it was deleted because a lot of people were angry at him for having a large queer cast, and i believe he was pretty young at the time, so yeah.
sorry if this isnt very elegantly worded btw i really dont have much else to add to what's already been said! my main sentiment really is that the only real "bad" queer rep is queer rep that makes no effort to show even the bare minimum that a character is queer. thats just my personal take!
edit: i will also admit here that for a while, the characters of my comic WERE confirmed queer out of universe. recently though i realized how dumb that is. that, in my opinion, is a huge issue in the OSC and indie works in general. everyone wants queer rep, but nobody wants to put in the effort of animating a girl blushing at another girl. if your characters are supposedly queer but its only confirmed outside of the source material, how are people expected to know? thats free reign for headcanons and subsequently people being harassed for those headcanons for not knowing what the creator said on twitter. thats more of a problem with teenagers in fandom tbh. i say that if there isn't confirmation readily available in the source material (or even something related like a canon short or something), then it should be open for interpretation and you, as a creator, need to learn to be okay with that. good queer rep isnt one objective thing, but it certainly can't be good if it doesnt even really exist.

Oh god I still remember like the old days of my first object show, i was scared to ever confirm if characters were gay or not (i don't think I even knew about the rest of the sexualities until late 2019 maybe? i genuinely don't know how i survived on the internet)

regardless i fucking love LGBT rep, and i always try to throw in stuff that fits a character when I can. Its so fun that I can make unique people and not just [STRAIGHT GUY] or [STRAIGHT GIRL] like i used to

Before I lay any object show-specific thoughts out, I want to be clear re: my general perspective on "representation" in general. This is not required reading, but informs what I'm going to say (spoiler'd for your convenience):


I'll start with Battle for Dream Island. BFDI lacks any any romantic narratives, including heterosexual ones; thus, orientation is never involved. I don't think it has to be and therefore have nothing to say about this re: BFDI. Gender is largely superfluous in BFDI, and there is a notable lack of conventional norms in the series (in characters' voices, designs, roles, etc.), which I would consider a related plus. Nonbinary characters are incorporated seamlessly into the world, with no additional attention drawn to their being. The only other trans topic I can think of is Gaty's mention of her "girlness" as a decision made for herself (equated to "periwinkality") in The Worst Day of Black Hole's Life (TPOT E2). Given that the objects seen in BFDI lack any sort of sexual/gender dimorphism, the presentation of gender (to them, at least) as an arbitrary personal accessory akin to paint color is fitting. Overall, BFDI consistently and pleasantly surprises me when it comes to this topic.

At this point in my post, I have spared you all 1,559 words regarding LGBTQ representation in Inanimate Insanity. I have exceedingly complicated thoughts on it that might necessitate a different discussion altogether. Most (but not all!) of them are indifferent or negative. Like Pony, I'll get into it if there are any specifics that other people want to talk/hear about. =]

WebzForevz has been mentioned by several people here. I can agree that Broomer and Chalky are a nice inclusion. I think him going through all of his characters and assigning them specific labels outside of the show itself is excessive insofar as it does little for anyone (past maybe seeming nice if you're an LGBTQ teenager).

This isn't something I want to drag out as a topic, nor is it an indictment of his beliefs today (so behave yourselves), but Webz has an uninteresting history of fringe thought about other trans people (i.e. transmedicalism) that he's seemed to want to overcompensate for since he gave that up in ~2019. I don't think it's wrong to be apologetic (the opposite, actually), but he appears to have expressed this by assigning a slew of labels of his cast (an act removed from the context of the show itself), something that is not only a relatively "nothing" gesture, but takes up time that he doesn't need to waste. Ergo, you probably don't remember much about his other LGBTQ characters because the actual episodes he produces have very little, if anything, to do with them. I think it would be better if he focused on what he wants to include in his episodes instead of doing anything like this on social media/in other videos.

While by no means a perfect place (that is not one of the words I would even begin to use to describe it), one quality of the "object show community" that I do find amicable is the overall acceptance of LGBTQ characters. Most object shows in the vein of BFDI aren't going to include topics that exactly highlight some related concepts (ex. what I said about no romance =/= no "visible orientations,") and that's perfectly fine. The ones that do are generally inoffensive (in a good way) and respectful.

tbh i dont think Paintbrush and Bot are outright horrible but i can agree with the general consensus here that theyre... also not great. i think mainly i just dont like Bot as a character tho. its less to do with specifically them being bad nonbinary rep and more that i just think theyre a boring character in general and i really dont like their "mother/child" dynamic with Test Tube and Fan. feels a bit patronizing that out of the only 2 nonbinary characters in the show, one was revealed after nearly 2 whole seasons of distasteful gender jokes and the other is literally a robot who's more or less treated like a child and feels more like a half-baked trans allegory than an actual character (i mean, for a long period of time, they were quite literally written to make the audience think they were a different character... after the reveal that they're a robot it didnt feel like they were given any unique personality outside of BEING a trans allegory)

I agree that neither of them are good rep and you all have good points. At the very least Paintbrush had a personality and motivations, so when III came and got rid of a lot of their nuance I was sorely disappointed... Especially that ONE episode. It's a shame, because while the jokes surrounding Paintbrush were definitely not tasteful and they pretty much got their plot cut short in the second season, they had potential. I can at least understand why this resonated with so many people. I can't really name many other trans object show characters that had this level of relevancy. 7_7