Transcript for Episode 22: The Cartoons That Made Us Gay

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the the gayest moments from 80s cartoons. If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here. The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.

Announcer:  He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! 

He-Man:  I am Adam, Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Grayskull. This is Cringer, my fearless friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, "By the power of Grayskull! I have the power!" 

Drew:  Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about LGBT episodes of classic sitcoms—but that is not actually what we're talking about today. Today is an episode we have not done before, where we're talking about not just one cartoon but many cartoons from the '80s. I'm Drew Mackie. 

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin. 

Drew:  And today we have a special guest. Glen, introduce our guest. 

Glen:  Ted Biaselli. Hi!

Ted:  Hi. How are you? 

Glen:  Welcome. Welcome to Atwater. Oh, my god. I just told everyone where we live. 

Drew:  They know, but—sorry. You told me what your job title was—[laughter]. 

Ted:  Director of Original Series at Netflix. 

Drew:  And I was looking at your IMDb profile before we got started, and the "Properties" reads like a segment list on an episode of I Love the '80s, including but not limited to Pound Puppies, Elvira, Transformers, R.L. Stine, Clue, G.I. Joe, Castlevania, and you even voiced "Business Jerk/Scumbag" in an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

Ted:  That is true. 

Drew:  Is that two characters or one? 

Ted:  It's one. The business jerk becomes a scumbag.

Drew:  Okay. That makes sense. Okay. 

[???]:  Drop him! 

[Business Jerk/Scumbag 00:01:37]:  You'll be hearing from my law-yaaaargh!

Ted:  And actually, what's not on that IMDb list—because at some point Netflix took our credits off of the episodes—is Glow. I was the guy that actually was the network executive on Glow at Netflix. 

Drew:  That is an extremely good, appropriate property for the stuff we talk about. 

Glen:  Why did they rob that of you? 

Ted:  You know what? It's actually very uncustomary for network executives to get credit on projects. Netflix started it when we first started things, but eventually it just became industry standard. We just were like, "Meh. Nobody else does it, so we shouldn't do it either." [laughs]

Glen:  Well, now we know. 

Drew:  So you are credited for A Series of Unfortunate Events—the first two. 

Ted:  First season. Yes. Exactly. When we told Sonnenfeld that we were taking our credits off, he goes [imitating Barry], "Why? Do you not like it anymore?!" I love Barry, but that was his first reaction [laughs]. I was like, "No. Of course I love that show!" I actually think that show gets better every season. I think Season Three is just—I loved working on that show. 

Glen:  I would agree with that. 

Ted:  I loved it so much. 

Drew:  I had a profound, emotional reaction to many things, but mostly Lucy Punch was the perfect realization of Esmé Squalor. 

Ted:  Isn't she amazing? 

Drew:  She is amazing, and I want her to be in everything, and I hope that something that's mainstream enough [will] help kick her into more stuff. 

Glen:  I'm just always so amazed when casting child actors works out. 

Ted:  Barry had just worked with Malina in Nine Lives, and he walked in, and he was like, "I've got our Violet." And we sat down with her, and we were just like, "Yep." And then Klaus was a little harder to find. We did a big talent hunt for Klaus all over. We publicized it and everything like that. And at the very last minute, we found Louis who just brought the intellectual side of Klaus that—and he's just so charming. But the real win is Presley as Sunny Baudelaire. That's only one baby. That is not twins. 

Drew:  Oh! Oh, that's hard. 

Ted:  That is one baby. I used to call her Meryl Streep because girl hits her marks. She emotes. She understands. She was so fun to work with. 

Glen:  Do you think she's a reincarnated witch? 

Ted:  [laughs] Yes. She is definitely—a Druid had literally taken someone's soul and just placed it into that child for safekeeping. 

Glen:  So we'll get into the love of cartoons, but you sort of got your entry into the industry through animation. 

Ted:  Yes. I actually went to school for animation. I went to the University of the Arts in Philly for animation, and I realized very quickly I hated it. I could not see myself drawing 24 drawings for a second of film. It was just like, "This is tedious!" What I wanted to do was tell stories, so I switched my degree and majored in theater and focused on directing there where I was like, "Oh. This is understanding character development and story structure and all those things that go into making really rich narrative with compelling characters." When you're there, you have to take acting lessons, and I would never in my wildest dreams thought I wanted to be an actor—but I liked it. I had a lot of fun. And then I started doing all the voices [for] my friends who were still in the visual arts department—for their senior films, and I graduated with a reel. And my parents—my mom was very much like [imitating Mom], "This is your calling. You're supposed to be a voice actor. That's what God wants." So [I] moved to California. Loaded up the truck and [laughs] head to Beverly—

Drew:  I will point out that you've already done two different voices in this episode. Most people just have the one. 

Ted:  [laughter] I do that a lot. I slip into things when I'm having conversations with people, especially telling stories. I slip into their voices. I don't know why. It's like a Tourette's. 

Drew:  It's like you liked telling stories. 

Ted:  I did like telling stories. 

Drew:  Oh. The thing that's fascinating to me is talking to queer people about the media they took in when they were young and maybe not even aware that they were any other sort of sexuality other than heterosexual cis-gendered. I like to ask people, what's the earliest memory you can think of, of experiencing something different than the other kids? 

Ted:  I have a very vivid memory of this, actually, on my shag carpeting at home. On our console television, I was sitting on the floor watching Silver Spoons, and I turned over to my dad and I said, "Do you think Ricky Schroder's cute?" And my dad goes [imitating Dad], "Ask your mother." [laughter] And at that moment, I realized that boys don't think other boys are cute, and that was a really profound moment for me. I kind of suppressed it for many years after that, but it was Wesley on Mr. Belvedere; it was Ricky Schroder; it was Kirk Cameron—the sitcoms of my youth. I saw myself either as them or with them [laughs]. 

Glen:  The episode of Silver Spoons where—what's his stepmom's name? Kate?—where Kate has moved into the house, and he moved into the guest house, and he's going to the shower. And he throws the towel off, and she walks in on him naked. That affected me—

Ted:  Yes. I think that might have been the episode [laughs].

Glen:  Yeah. It was a good episode. 

Ted:  And then in Silver Spoons you have Erin Gray, who is a diva, and you just—you love her. 

Glen:  I think that's actually interesting you bring her up because I think what we're going to get into when we talk about these cartoons from the '80s that affected us is that yes, there are attractive male characters in these shows that affected us and gave us body dysmorphia, but it's also—like, almost 50 percent for me is the strong women that were in these cartoons. And to Drew's question, I think, when I realized that I was taking in media differently than my male peers was when I would want to pretend to be the female characters from these shows. Like, I'd call dibs on Cheetara. 

Cheetara: I am Cheetara. In my heart, I know I'm the strongest of my kind, the pride of my people. I am unique in this universe, and I will not be defeated! 

Glen:  And I'd want to play She-Ra and not He-Man, and so I think to me that was sort of—before "gay" became a thing, it was like, "Oh. You're a girl." That's what the kids would call you. 

Drew:  Yeah. They were like, "Do you want to become a girl?" You're like, "No. I just like girls, but not in that way." 

Ted:  For me, it was Sorceress on He-Man. I don't know. I want to open up my arms and have feathers. Like, that's amazing. And she had telepathy, and she was the most powerful creature on Eternia because she had all the power of Grayskull. She kept that shit down. He-Man just borrowed it every now and then. 

He-Man:  Before you go, Sorceress, I want to thank you for all that you've done, not just today but for all of those years you patiently waited, protecting Castle Grayskull. 

Sorceress:  It has been the highest honor, He-Man, and it has been—and always will be—a joy for me to call you my friend. 

Duncan:  She's a very special person, He-Man. 

He-Man:  Yes, Duncan. She is. She's very special indeed. 

Sorceress:  [falcon calls]

Ted:  She had it. 

Drew:  That's interesting because that's a sort of power that I think a lot of little boys wouldn't even take note of because she doesn't get to interact with other characters like—she's not punching people. She doesn't just swing a sword. She doesn't have a weapon, really. 

Ted:  No. She turns into a bird! 

Drew:  She turns into a bird. She's awesome [laughter]. 

Glen:  So let's dive into He-Man. I think it is the—

Drew:  Best place to start. 

Glen:  Prototypical '80s cartoon that made a lot of us gay. 

Ted:  Yeah. I mean, I used to joke that my root was—I was the biggest He-Man fan. I still am. I still have a massive Masters of the Universe collection. And when I was a kid, I had He-Man sheets, and during my formative years I slept on a sinewy, half-naked man every night. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Ted:  I mean, if that's not going to do it, I don't know what is [laughs]. 

Glen:  According to Brave New World, that's how a form of learning happens. 

Ted:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  It's weird to think of—basically no parents would have perceived it as being anything other than completely appropriate for little boys, even though it was these super idealized bodybuilders with tiny waists and revealing clothing in an almost homosocial universe. They were like, "Yeah. That seems right. I don't see anything wrong with that," and—yeah [laughter]. 

Ted:  Literally, the opening sequence, Adam actually says—

Prince Adam:  Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, "By the power of Grayskull!" 

Ted:  —"Fabulous secrets were revealed to me." He's got this beautiful pink tunic on, purple tights—but that was totally fine [laughs]. It was totally fine. 

Glen:  He's a prince. He doesn't really do anything other than sort of lounge around with his exotic cat. 

Ted:  Big, green tiger. 

Glen:  And his secret power is that he turns into an even more muscly, tan, beautiful man.

Ted:  If you dig even deeper, if you have this sort of foppish kid who is a disappointment to his father—his father wants him to be something else. He wants him to have responsibilities. He wants him to take his place at some point, and he's not that. But secretly, deep down inside, he knows he's the most powerful man in the universe, and I think that there is something so psychological for—I don't think it was intended this way. Absolutely not. But I think in hindsight, there were a lot of gay kids that that tapped into. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Ted:  There was something about them that felt like they were a disappointment, but deep down they knew that they were something special, and I think that there's resonance in that. 

Drew:  I like how you say "felt" in the past tense. 

Ted:  Yeah [laughter].

Glen:  Well, because as gay men, we have killed our feelings.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You would know, actually, if there's ever been any sort of discussion with the creators specifically about the homoerotic elements of the show. Have they ever said, "We didn't really see that until after the fact"?

Ted:  There's been so many documentaries on DVDs and stuff like that that you watch, and I think—I'm sure that in the B-roll that's been cut to the floor, somebody would have asked them that. I honestly think that they really just didn't even—it wasn't even on their radar at that point. I think they just felt that they needed to strike a dichotomy between Adam and He-Man, and they wanted the—I don't think they did it in a derogatory sense where they made him the limp-wristed guy, because he wasn't. He just was—

Drew:  No. He's wearing pink, right? 

Ted:  He's just wearing pink. That's all it is. But I think they wanted to really strike the difference between Adam and He-Man. I truly believe that they went into it with the best of intentions. I don't think they went in to make a statement, and I don't think they were trying to say anything negative. I just think that that's where—they were making something for kids, and I think that that was first and foremost their idea. 

Drew:  There's a podcast called Super Gay! that's specifically about gay issues in comics. It's a very good podcast. I think they said one of the reasons that Skeletor was also a muscleman—even though he's a skeleton, and that's kind of confusing—was reusing a body type—a body cast. 

Ted:  That is true. 

Drew:  So again, that's the reason it's like that. But when you're looking at it on screen, it's a very weird thing to be about why does this skeleton have a bodybuilder body? 

Ted:  Well, there's retcon. They went back, and they've given Skeletor an origin, which is actually a really good origin. 

Glen:  It's very Hamlet. 

Ted:  It's so Hamlet. So Keldor is Skeletor's real name. He was actually Randor's brother, and there was this thing—the last mini-comic that came with the figures that was ever included was called The Search for Keldor, and it was about Randor looking for his brother. And the very last panel of it was Skeletor saying, "Randor must never know the secret of Keldor, or it will undo me." And that's all it was—1986. That was the end of it, and it was this insinuation of "Oh, my god. Is Skeletor King Randor's brother?" And then they never explored it. Cut to the 2000 Masters of the Universe series. They did the opening three-parter that told the origin of Skeletor, and it was King Randor's brother. He wanted the throne, and Randor didn't have a—then in the DC Comics just last year, they went even further, and they said that basically Keldor was their father's child out of wedlock. Even though he was the firstborn son—he was with another race of people, which is why he's blue. And the common theme is that he made this bargain with Hordak to take the throne and in doing so lost his face—lost his humanity. The end. 

Drew:  Talking to you is like talking to Wikipedia. It is amazing. 

Ted:  [laughs] It's funny because when I listen to this podcast, I'm like, "God, these guys—they know everything about sitcoms. I can't remember that at all." So I was like, "Oh, my god." I am so not on my game coming into this [laughs]. 

Glen:  Technically, Drew knows it. I just sit down. 

Drew:  But you guys both know this subject matter better than I do. But anyone with even a superficial awareness of it could probably answer the next question I'm going to ask, which is: Excluding the major players, who do you think is the gayest supporting player in the He-Man universe? 

Ted:  Fisto [laughs]. 

Glen:  Yeah. Everyone's going to say Fisto. 

Ted:  There's this thing. You have characters like Fisto—

Boy:  Wow. What a nice story. Hey, thanks!

Fisto:  Yeah. You're welcome, and anytime I can give you a—a hand, just let me know.

He-Man:  And when Fisto offers you your hand, Boy, that's a big offer.

[characters laugh heartily]

Ted:  Ram Man? I mean—

Drew:  Yeah. 

Ted:  Snout Spout? [laughs]

Drew:  Oh. 

Glen:  Mekaneck. But you know what? Look. I think it's hilarious. It's just fun. There's a camp to it. And what I loved about the 2000 version is they took all that camp stuff and they found a way to keep the fun but ground it and make it a point of view that was really understandable. And they insinuated that Fisto is actually Teela's father. 

Glen:  Really? 

Drew:  Oh!

Ted:  Bum-bum-bum! Well, in the 2001, they made Fisto and Man-At-Arms brothers. 

Glen:  Oh. 

Ted:  And Man-At-Arms was her adopted father, but in a flashback it's almost like they said that Fisto was the one that got the Sorceress preggers. 

Glen:  Oh!

Drew:  So not gay, despite all appearances. 

Ted:  Correct. Yes. 

Drew:  I don't like that. 

Ted:  He could be bi. 

Drew:  We don't erase bisexuality on this podcast. 

Ted:  That is true. 

Glen:  Drew, would you say that your mustache is modeled after Man-At-Arms? 

Drew:  I think you're probably making a joke, but that's actually an interesting thing for me to think about where when I was a kid, I thought mustaches looked gay and didn't like them on anyone and just was like, "Ugh." And then I grew this mustache because I was a groomsman in a wedding, and now that I've kept it I actually like it. I think I came back around to it where it's like yes, it does look gay. But now I like that. It just took me 30-something years to understand that. 

Glen:  It's okay. Beautiful. So He-Man-but-gayer would be She-Ra. 

Drew:  In the way we were talking at the beginning, like, "Yeah. Sexy guys, they're one thing. But empowered women? There you go." That's what really makes you gay.

Glen:  Yeah. And that's the thing I always tell people. Like, She-Ra is He-Man but better. 

[She-Ra theme song plays]

She-Ra:  I am Adora, He-Man's twin sister and defender of the Crystal Castle. This is Spirit, my beloved steed. Fabulous secrets were revealed to me the day I held aloft my sword and said, "For the honor of Grayskull!"

Glen:  They gave her more powers. Her sword turns into things. She can breathe under water because it turns into a helmet. 

Ted:  She can heal animals. 

Glen:  Yeah. She has telepathy. Do you think that the creators had to do that to make her cool enough to engage with the young male audience? 

Drew:  Oh!

Ted:  That's interesting. I don't know. I never actually gave it that thought. I just was like, "Well, of course she can do that because anything boys can do girls can do better." 

Glen:  Also Adora—who is She-Ra, if you somehow don't know this.

Drew:  Spoilers!

Glen:  She also had the way-better backstory—kidnapped at birth, raised by an evil empire, and then discovered that she's secretly good. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Ted:  That story was so rich. Even back in 1987 standards, the bad guys run this planet. There's only one free colony in the entire planet, and that's bleak. They're fighting for something, you know? There was actual stakes involved in She-Ra, and I was so riveted when that came out. I'll never forget when I saw—it was a comic insert, this thing that said Secret of the Sword, and it was He-Man holding his sword and She-Ra holding her sword. On one side it was Skeletor's villains; on the other side was Hordak's villains—Castle Grayskull and Crystal Castle on either side. But I didn't know anything. Who the hell was this woman holding a sword that looked like He-Man's sword with a stone in it? 

Drew:  Oh. That's the first time you ever saw her? 

Ted:  That was the first time I ever saw it. There was no internet back in 1987, so it was like, "What the hell?" And I bought the comic book. I don't even remember what the comic book was. I don't even care because it had this advertisement in it for Secret of the Sword coming soon to theaters, and I was like, "What is this?!" And I showed my mom, and I was like, "Mom, look! He-Man's got a wife!" [laughter] It didn't even dawn on me, "Oh, no. It's his sister." I was like, "It's his wife!" And I became obsessed with her. I knew nothing about her, but I became obsessed with her. And then when I saw the commercial for the movie, I demanded that we go into town to see the movie Secret of the Sword and was just—I was just in awe. It was one of those moments that you remember vividly. And then I kept looking for the She-Ra figures only to find out that they were not going to be in the He-Man section. They were in the Barbie section of the store, and I was with my mother—again, vivid memory—with my mother. We found the She-Ra figure, and I grabbed She-Ra, and I grabbed Bow. We walked to the register, and I put them on the belt, and the woman looked at me and looked at my mother, and she looked back at the toys. And my mother went, "It's He-Man's sister," and, like, wall of mama bear came out. She was like, "Don't you say a fucking word that this is in bright pink and glitter packaging. Don't you say a word." So. 

Drew:  Do you think that those toys would have sold more if they were not so gendered in their packaging? 

Ted:  Hard to say. That was the '80s. There was a girls' section, there was a boys' section. You know? 

Glen:  I was very mad at how—I say effeminate—they made Bow's figure when really it was just a very realistic body type. But he didn't have the mustache, and that made me upset. 

Drew:  Oh. Why not? 

Ted:  The mustache was added by Filmation. Again, this is such a thing about those Filmation designs versus the Mattel toys. They were developing them simultaneously, but there is this thing in the toy industry: making something toyetic that it has to be something—little girls will want to play with their hair and the clothes and all that stuff makes something toyetic versus different in an animated series or a movie or something like that. And Mattel had clear divides on what the TV show was doing, and they decided to make their own designs for the toys. That's why they look so different. Almost that entire first wave looks completely different from the ones in the show. 

Glen:  Bow's special feature was a beating heart. 

Ted:  His heart beats for She-Ra. That's what it says on the box. 

Drew:  Does it, like, glow? Or—

Ted:  No. It's a button. 

Glen:  It had a button. 

Ted:  You push the button, and a little [imitates heartbeat] [laughter]. 

Drew:  Huh. What an odd value add. 

Glen:  Ted, I think how you felt about Sorceress and He-Man, I felt about Shadow Weaver. 

Shadow Weaver:  This takes too long. My magic will rout these rebels out. Darkness and lightning turn the tide! Destroy the stones behind which they hide. 

Glen:  And I had a red robe [laughter], and I ran around in that red robe, and I was always hissing—like a very breathy voice. 

Drew:  You still do that. 

Ted:  I was going to say [laughs]. 

Glen:  It's different. And I was doing the—and I love how her magic—she had two hands that she swirled around, and then two swirls became one. So it really spoke to my dramatic flares and my love of geometry [laughter]. 

Ted:  Your inner Spice Girl [laughs]. 

Glen:  And—yeah. Bow was a very iconically—sort of—gay character. 

Bow:  What do you mean, "Please don't hurt me"? You're a dragon. 

Dragon:  But I'm afraid of everything. I'm even afraid of you. Isn't that silly? [laughs bashfully]

Bow:  What is that supposed to mean? Do you have any idea who you're dealing with, Dragon? 

Dragon:  Uh, whoever you are, you sure have a pretty dress [laughs bashfully]. 

Drew:  I like Castaspella. She was the one I was always drawn to. She's weirdly stately. I don't know—that's a weird adjective for a  child to be drawn to, but—

Ted:  Well, she sounded like Katharine Hepburn. Like, that was, you know [imitating Castaspella/Katharine Hepburn] every time she talked, she spoke like this. It was so funny. 

Castaspella:  Mortella's spell is lifted, and it's all thanks to you two. Oh, thank you, my friends. 

She-Ra:  But—but who are you? 

Castaspella:  I am Castaspella, True Queen of Mystacor. And now that I have returned, let my kingdom be as it was once more. 

Ted:  And she and Frosta both had a crush on Prince Adam, which always made for a  great dynamic. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Ted:  And who—oh. Sweet Bee also had a crush on—oh, no. That's the one—Adam had a crush on Sweet Bee, and there became a love triangle between Frosta and Sweet Bee and Prince Adam. 

Drew:  Sweet Bee we have not seen in the new version. Not in Season One. 

Ted:  Not yet. Correct. 

Glen:  I also just want to give a shout-out to Madame Razz, who's, like, the best drag mom imaginable [laughter]. 

Madame Razz:  Sounds like they're getting very dependent on She-Ra. 

She-Ra:  Oh, I'd better get going. 

Madame Razz:  And let She-Ra save them? Oh no, child. If you go, they'll never learn to take care of themselves. 

She-Ra:  But I can't let them charge off into danger, either. Oh, Madame Razz! What can I do? 

Madame Razz:  Well, if She-Ra saves them, they'll always be looking for the Princess of Power to pull them out of trouble. But Adora could go along. 

She-Ra:  Yes, just to keep them on the right track. 

Glen:  I would have loved for her to take me under her wing. 

Ted:  Really? She didn't really—she didn't know what she was doing. 

Glen:  Mm, I think she would have known. If you ran into her at a gay bar when you were sneaking in at 18 with a fake I.D. and she just grabbed you and was like, "I'm going to show you the ropes," I think—

Ted:  [laughs] [impersonating a drag mom] Deary. 

Glen:  Yeah. And her broom—

Ted:  And her broom [laughs].

Drew:  The first time I ever heard Cyndi Lauper speak—not sing, but just talk—I was like, "Oh. She talks like Madame Razz," which she does. 

Ted:  That's amazing. Noting for when I eventually do the live-action She-Ra. We'll cast Madame Razz with Cyndi Lauper. There we go. The end [laughs]. 

Drew:  Thank you. 

Glen:  Yeah. I'd watch that. So I know you didn't have direct involvement with the new She-Ra. 

Ted:  No. Just a fan. 

Glen:  It blows my mind as a gay man in my late 30s, and I've only seen Season One. Season Two just came out. 

Drew:  Yesterday. As of yesterday—

Ted:  Yeah. Correct. 

Glen:  I went into it knowing that it would be gay, but I didn't know how gay it would be and how just unapologetically queer that world is. And I just can't imagine—we're talking about a bunch of shows where we read into it, all these gay meanings; to be a child that has shows that are explicitly gay—

Ted:  But I think that's the beautiful thing is by its own definition, it's not queer. This world, it's just how it is. Like Spinnerella and Netossa have a seat at the table together, and that's just the way it is. And Bow has two dads, and that's just the way it is, and I think that's what makes that show so special is that it's a world where—it's not playing into the politics or the culture or the battle at hand. Again, it's a planet that's struggling for its own freedom. The last thing that matters is who Bow's dads are, or are these two people right for each other versus these two people. There are bigger things to worry about, and I wish that our world [laughs] understood that there are bigger things to worry about than who's in love with somebody else. 

Drew:  Right. So even though that is the world and it's just a non-issue there—and that is aspirational—treating it as a non-issue in a world where it still is an issue almost everywhere, that is a big deal. I don't know if you can comment about the production, but was that an anxiety on Netflix's end of things about, like, how are people going to feel about this? 

Ted:  I wasn't directly involved, so I don't really know. I'm not even sure that—because it's the relationship between DreamWorks and Netflix, and it's a DreamWorks-produced show. I'm not even sure how much was discussed between all the entities. I wish I knew more. 

Drew:  Cool. Yes. New episodes up now. I have not watched yet. Very much looking forward to finding out what new levels of queerness they're going to trick a bunch of straight families into watching at the very least. 

Ted:  [laughs]

Glen:  Shall we dive into, I think, the second-gayest series of the '80s—ThunderCats? 

Ted:  Oh! That's your second? 

Glen:  We can argue about what you think is second, but—

Drew:  I would have said Jem second. 

Ted:  That was my second right there. 

Glen:  Okay, well—

Drew:  Let's go with—we're going to talk about the three of them. 

Glen:  I guess with ThunderCats, it's the same ground as He-Man. You have these fabulously attractive men and women just running around with awesome powers and—

Ted:  And literally, in the first episode—naked. 

Glen:  Yeah. They're all naked. Cat people can be naked though, because fur is not counted as—I don't know. I don't want—do you think for some people who are furries this was their first step? 

Drew:  Yeah. I think it's a weird thing to be confronted with a non-human entity that's still weirdly sexy and be like, "Okay. How far does it go for me? Where's the drop-off for me?" And so for some people it's pretty far out there. 

Ted:  I mean, super sexual. They were so—they were even more ripped than He-Man, in my opinion. The designs—especially in the opening title sequence, which was animated by a different studio than the actual show—your mind fills in the gaps. If you actually go back and watch the original ThunderCats show, the opening title is spectacularly animated, and then you get into the episodes and it's missing frames, and it's kind of awful. But even in that first episode, they were just so beautifully drawn. 

Glen:  I think the unique aspect that ThunderCats had—aside from cat people—is that Lion-O was an adolescent boy who suddenly woke up in an adult male body. 

Lion-O:  Oh. The suspension capsule. But how did it get to be so small? 

Snarf:  I was really worried, Lion-O. I was sure it was all going to turn out—

Lion-O:  You look a lot smaller too, Snarf. What's going on? Oh! And my hands! Look at the size of them!

Glen:  Looking back on it, that's complicated because he has romantic relationships on the show, and they sort of forget in the later seasons that he has not matured mentally to adulthood. And so I think there is something interesting about that, like the mindset of a boy running around in this man's body. And we as gay men have to tackle with delayed adolescence. 

Ted:  I mean, that's what we're tagged with, like, "Oh. Well, you like toys because you're gay and you have arrested development," and it's like—no. I appreciate the artistry involved in all of that [laughs]. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Glen:  Yeah—I mean, aside from our rich, hobbied lives. I do think there is something to not coming—your body and your romantic maturity aging at different rates because we can't fumble around in middle school and high school as we are coming into our own. That's a later thing. For me, my sexual awakening was my 20s—like, mid 20s. So I do think there's something to that. 

Drew:  How old is Prince Adam supposed to be? 

Ted:  Well, in the 2001, they made him about 16. But I think in the original, he's probably about 20. 

Drew:  Oh. Interesting. If you think of Prince Adam being on the younger—it's a weird parallel between the two of them. You have these people leading dual identities as not-fully men yet and grown-up men with the same brain? I don't know if He-Man gets smarter when he transforms. 

Ted:  Yeah. I wonder if it's like Shazam!—when he says the word, he gets the Wisdom of Solomon. So even though he acts like an adolescent, he's still smart in some respect. And I loved the movie by the way [laughs]. He was much more of the 12-year-old throughout the whole thing. 

Drew:  It's a lot more interesting to watch. 

Ted:  Yeah. It's certainly more fun. It's big. Who doesn't love that? 

Drew:  So Jem was—there's another I'm going to mention quickly later, but this was a big thing. I was not supposed to watch this show, and it was something I had to watch on the sly. And also, we didn't get it. So I grew up in the boonies, and we didn't get all the channels, so the channel that had Jem was only viewable at my grandmother's house. It was especially hard to watch this thing because my brother would be hovering around. I was drawn to reasons I could not explain, and now as an adult I was like, "Oh. She has her regular life and then a super, more glamorous secret identity that's activated magically. Yes. I understand completely why I was attracted to this, and also why any girl would also be attracted to it." But I don't know—when was Jem? 

Ted:  1985 or '86 was when it first launched. 

Drew:  So I would have been in kindergarten or something, and that was probably when I got it in my head that there are some things that boys are not supposed to like, and that's a weird thing. That's a shitty thing for any little boy to have to learn and then deny themselves something that you're really into because you're worried about getting made fun of. 

Ted:  The thing about Jem was—I think it was every kid's first exposure to a soap opera. It was so juicy. There was romance, and there was two-timing and backstabbing, and there were villains, and it was so heightened. It was so crazy. I'm a little older than you, so I remember when I was in school and there was a kid named Santos—very attractive young man—and I remember at lunch he asked me what's my favorite show, and I just said Jem, and he went, "Oh, my god. Me, too. I thought I was the only person that watched that show." And I was like, "I love it so much," and we both were sitting up, and we both had this moment of "Oh, my god. Jem is the best show in the world. Why doesn't anybody know it?" It was so crazy. And then we had this beautiful moment where we talked about all the things we loved about it, all the excitement—the romance, the plot points, all the twists and the turns—and then we never talked about it again. And then he would never acknowledge it. I would try to say something like, "Hey, did you watch Jem this morning?" because it was on before we came to school, and he would just be like, "No," and just walk away. And it was one of—it was this weird heartbreak that I had in fifth grade [or] fourth grade, and I didn't understand why. 

Drew:  Have you ever tried to find Santos? 

Ted:  No. 

Drew:  See how his life turned out. 

Glen:  Actually, do you think that these shows for us and other gay kids were a way of finding like-minded souls? Like, was this our Hanky Code when we were kids? 

Drew:  If you had the courage to talk about it, yeah. But this is not something I ever talked about to—I don't think I talked about it until well after high school when I was like, "Oh, yeah. I used to really—"

Ted:  Yeah. Same here. I think there was—I remember my dad at one point was like [imitating Dad], "You got to let all this cartoons and toy shit go. This is dumb. This is old. You're too grown up for this," and I was like, "Oh. Okay." 

Drew:  Nope!

Ted:  [laughter] And it wasn't until a couple years later—sort of at the dawn of the internet, actually—I found a group that was a He-Man fan group and started making friends on the group and then slowly in the chats and slowly in the conversations find out that the people that I was talking to—there was a lot of people who were gay in those chats. And they're still some of my best friends. For Power-Con—for those of you who don't know, Power-Con is the He-Man and She-Ra fan convention that happens every year, usually in the late summer or early fall. This year it's in Anaheim. It's usually in Torrance, but this year it's in Anaheim. 

Drew:  Oh. That's very exciting. Yeah. That must be like gay pride for a very specific sort of person. 

Ted:  The first year it was at the LAX Marriott, and it was quite a blast—or the Hilton. It was at the Hilton. And it was a blast, and it was so small. It was so small. We were like, "This is never going to happen again." And then they surprised all of us the following year by adding ThunderCats and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers—no—ThunderCats and Ninja Turtles. 

Glen:  [gasps!]

Ted:  And then it moved to the Torrance Marriott, and it was huge. And then the following year, they did the same thing, and it was so big. And then they pulled back on the Turtles and ThunderCats because there was nothing new happening at the time. It was before Nickelodeon had done anything, and ThunderCats wasn't happening on Cartoon Network, so it was just He-Man and She-Ra, but it still was big. And now it's just He-Man and She-Ra, and it's huge. We love it. 

Glen:  I think I was lucky because I did—I think through roleplaying ThunderCats and He-Man on the playground, I did find a friend—a male friend who approached those subjects the way I did, and he did turn out to be gay. And thinking back, our friendship—obviously, it was chaste, but we were doing very typical—we approached games the way gay men might approach games. Like when we played with Lego, we built a law firm [laughter], and things like that. 

Drew:  Why? 

Ted:  You built a law firm?! 

Glen:  We were—yeah, our Lego characters. We were partners in the law firm, and we built the law firm and took on cases in Lego Town. 

Ted:  I'm more curious to think why you think that is a very gay way to play with Lego. 

Glen:  Because then we were leading fabulous lives. Because we were lawyers, we were going out to the nice restaurants we built and oftentimes leaving our Lego families at home. Anyway. 

Ted:  [continues laughing]

Drew:  I have never heard this story before. That is fascinating. 

Ted:  This is amazing. 

Drew:  That is a very specifically proto-gay-yuppy form of roleplay. 

Ted:  Yeah. 

Glen:  I think in the '80s, though, "gay" was sort of synonymous with "yuppy" in a lot of ways. 

Drew:  Oh, we're going to get to that—Pierce Thorndyke III. 

Glen:  Oh!

Ted:  Oh, my god. Pierce!

Drew:  But that's later. Do we have anything else about—

Ted:  Jem? Only that she's outrageous—truly, truly, truly outrageous. 

Glen:  I think it's interesting to be in a love triangle with yourself. 

Ted:  Yeah [laughs]. 

Drew:  Oh! Yeah. 

Glen:  Like, Jerrica—first of all, her name's Jerrica. 

Ted:  Which is amazing. 

Drew:  Yeah. Those names are really on point.

Glen:  Extra J. So Jerrica was in love with—her boyfriend was Rio, but Rio had feelings for Jem, who is also Jerrica, and Jerrica didn't tell him. 

Ted:  But more importantly, she also knew that Rio had feelings for somebody else and was okay with it for the most part. It was bizarre. 

Jem:  Thinking about Jerrica? Rio, do you—do you like me? 

Rio:  I hardly know you! And you won't even tell me who you are. 

Jem:  Maybe I should tell you. Rio, I'm—

Drew:  I can think of a lot of gay men who are just thinking, "I'm just going to be okay with fact that he has feelings for someone else. Whatever. That's pretty widespread." I think a good thing—so even though there was good female villains on He-Man and She-Ra, I really liked the Misfits on Jem. But also—was Pizzazz the green-haired one that wasn't—

Ted:  She was. 

Drew:  Was she the one that wasn't as bad as the other ones? 

Glen:  No, no, no. That's Stormy. 

Ted:  Stormer. Stormer was the one that had a little bit of a heart, and she and Kimber, when they were both rejected by their respective bands, they sort of united and became a thing. 

["I'm Okay" by Kimber and Stormer plays]

Ted:  And in the comics—if I'm not mistaken, in the new IDW comics that actually happened. Kimber and Stormer became a thing. 

Drew:  Like a kissy thing? 

Ted:  Like a romantic thing. Yeah. 

Drew:  Oh. I like that. I also like morally gray female characters where it's not heroes or villains, it's someone somewhere in the middle, and you just got to decide what you want to do with her. Are there morally gray characters in He-Man and She-Ra? Or are they pretty black and white? 

Ted:  [sighs] The only character that I could pull from is probably Zodak, who is the cosmic enforcer. The one  in the TV show was very much inspired by Metron from the Fourth World—the Jack Kirby character. 

Glen:  He even has a floating chair. 

Ted:  A folding chair, like where he just sort of travels the cosmos and tries to keep everything in balance, which usually means helping the good guys because the bad guys should not be in power—but that's what balance is. So that's the only thing close to morally gray. The thing I was going to say about Pizzazz, though, is that character was so fascinating because on the surface she's just mean and she hashes out everything, and she's spoiled, and she's rotten. And then somewhere late in the first season, you meet her dad, and you see the relationship between her dad and her and you start to see the cracks in Pizzazz and why she acts out the way she does. And I'm not going to say it makes her a totally empathetical character, but what it does is, you understand her a little bit more. And at that time I had never seen a character where she's been the bad guy this whole time, and then you see one episode and you start to feel bad, and you're like, "Oh. Wow. She doesn't have a really good relationship with her dad. That's why she's so mean to people." And again, 1987—like, what?! [laughs]

Drew:  Yeah. That's pretty ahead of its time. It was not until way later in my childhood that we started to get any sort of empathetic backstory for any villains that I can think of. 

Ted:  Yes. Well, that's Christy Marx. Christy Marx, who created the animated series for Jem. She didn't create the idea of Jem. Hasbro created Jem. But Christy filled out the bible and the world and the characters. Christy was a writer. She started on Transformers and G.I. Joe, and she was an action writer. She was one of the only women who was writing action comics—or action cartoons. And Hasbro, at the time, gave her this toy concept, and Christy created, basically, the entire world, and she always came at it from a character point of view. She wrote some of the best episodes of Joe and Transformers and Jem.

Drew:  I did not know that she had that background. I only knew her as the Jem lady. Huh. 

Ted:  She was on that whole animated run from the Marvel Studios and Sunbow and all of that. Christy was very deep in that world. 

Drew:  Was she always the only woman in the writing room? 

Ted:  Most of the time. Yeah. 

Drew:  That's amazing. 

Ted:  And she's so cool. She's such a nice lady. 

Drew:  I'm glad she's nice. 

Glen:  Does she have a biography? I would like to read it. 

Ted:  She doesn't. She doesn't. She's just—I cold-called her one time in my last job and was just like, "Hey. I'm a big fan of yours. Would love to take you to lunch next time you're down in L.A., and she did. She came down, and I went to lunch with her and her husband Randy, and it was lovely. 

Drew:  Oh, my god. I always forget that we could also technically do that. We'd be like, "Well, this is my job. I'm a journalist, and I have a podcast about this subject matter, and I'd love to talk to you." And if someone has a free afternoon, they'll be like, "Maybe. Sure. I'd love to do that." 

Ted:  Buy people lunch. They love it.

Glen:  I, too, love a free lunch. 

Drew:  I love lunch [laughter]. 

Ted:  I did that with Lou Scheimer, too. 

Glen:  Oh, my god. 

Ted:  The very first person I did that with was Lou Scheimer. When I got my first development job at Disney, I cold-called Lou Scheimer and was just like, "You were instrumental in putting me on my path. Can I take you to lunch?" And I did. I went to lunch with him and heard stories. He was hilarious. This was the early 2000s, so maybe 2002 – 2003. He was in decent health then, and he was just so spry and sharp and just an absolute delight. 

Drew:  Explain for the audience in case they don't know who—

Ted:  Oh. Sorry. Lou Scheimer. He created the animation studio Filmation. 

[Filmation's xylophone music plays]

Ted:  For those of you who cannot see, I am wearing a Filmation t-shirt—very much on brand for the episode. And Filmation has an amazing story about how they actually got their place in the world. They were the studio behind He-Man and She-Ra and BraveStarr and Ghostbusters—not the real Ghostbusters, but technically the real real Ghostbusters. Very complicated story there. But they were just an amazing studio. They had done some of the great classic DC stuff—Superman, New Adventures of Batman, Aquaman, all of those. 

Drew:  It's crazy. 

Glen:  On our road to gay, do we want to tackle Rainbow Brite? 

Drew:  I don't have that much to say about Rainbow Brite aside from the fact that there was a girl who really liked that, and I had to play with her when I was a kid. The one I was always drawn to was the purple one, who is Shy Violet. And that was another thing I learned, like, purple's a gay color. Purple's not even necessarily a girl color—it's a gay color. Not supposed to like purple things. I was always drawn to purple things. Like when you're talking about Care Bears, the only Care Bears I ever had were the purple ones, like Bright Heart Raccoon. That's my only real in with Rainbow Brite. 

Glen:  I feel like most of my relationships are going to be modeled on Doomy and Gloomy. Was that their name? No. Murky and Lurky. 

Ted:  Murky and Lurky, not Doomy and Gloomy [laughs]. 

Glen:  I feel like most of my gay relationships are going to be Murky and Lurky. 

Drew:  Explain who they are. 

Glen:  They are the villains in Rainbow Brite. One is short and angry with dark hair and facial hair, and the other is this lurking—

Ted:  Big, hairy beast. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Lurky:  It's the Flower Festival. Everything looks so pretty. I loo-ooo-oooove flowers!

Murky:  I hate flowers. Yech! Flowers make me sick!

Ted:  And their goal is to take all the color out of the world. I mean, that's really rude [laughs]. 

Drew:  That is an interior design strategy—militant about it, which a lot of gay men are. 

Glen:  I don't know. I just really like that partnership. Maybe I just see myself as a shriveled up, mean little guy. 

Ted:  They did have a very dom-sub relationship in there, but I think by no means the gayest villain ever, which that award goes to the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak from Strawberry Shortcake. That's a son of a B.

Purple Pieman:  [sings a little jazzy scat tune] Away, berry birds. Steal me berries! I need berries for my pie! Berries! Berries! [laughs]!

Ted:  So, that character. If you really think about it, it's this mean old man who terrorizes little girls. Okay, what? And then late in his story's run, they gave him a girlfriend, Sour Grapes. 

Purple Pieman:  Who—who are you? 

Sour Grapes:  [warbles]

Purple Pieman:  Sour Grapes? 

Sour Grapes:  [laughs] Oh, Purpy. You do remember me—your old partner in crime, come here to help you chase Strawberry Shortcake out of Strawberry Land.

Ted:  With her snake, Dregs—a wine reference.  

Drew:  I never even thought about that. Oh, my gosh. 

Ted:  And she has a niece named Raisin Cane. 

Drew:  Raisin Cane!

Ted:  Which is a great name [laughter]. 

Drew:  Did she appear in the cartoons? 

Ted:  She did. Yes. 

Drew:  Okay. When I saw a picture of her, I was like, "Who is that? I need to know everything about this mean little purple girl." 

Ted:  [laughs]

Drew:  And then the fact that she was named Raisin Cane and she was purple, I was like, "That is perfect. That is everything I want in—" The only kind of punny I can really deal with is basically a good roller-derby-girl name and an evil, purple little girl. That's what I kind of aspired to be, actually. 

Ted:  By the way, the name Raisin for a little girl—amazing. And then—it just works on so many levels. There's so much going right for that character. I love that character. 

Glen:  I almost just want to pause the podcast so I can look her up, but I'm not going to. 

Ted:  She's amazing. 

Drew:  Just so people know, if you don't know what the hell we're talking about, I'm going to include an explanatory gallery of all these references. So if you want a visual reference, we will provide it for you. That will all be on the website. Actually, do we have anything more about Strawberry Shortcake-slash-Rainbow Brite? 

Glen:  They're sort of in the same—

Ted:  It's almost the exact same thing except one is desserts and the other's colors [laughs]. 

Drew:  I don't know what year it was—it was maybe first grade. But our teacher made little newsletter books where we would all answer the same question and she would include all the kids' answers, and in December the question was "What do you want for Christmas?" And I said I wanted a My Little Pony. 

Ted:  [gasps!]

Drew:  That did not go over well when it was put in print, and a lot of people—still! One of the reasons I don't really like talking to people from my hometown is there are people who still will remind me of that. I'm like, "Yep. I remember." I did get that My Little Pony, to my parents' credit. But yeah, [it] did not occur to me that that was—I think it was Lickety Split, was who I got. It did not occur to me that that would be an inappropriate toy until the world told me that you're not allowed to ask for My Little Pony. I should have lied. 

Glen:  The first tough decision I ever had to make in my life was I had the My Little Pony castle, which was pink, and I really wanted the She-Ra castle—

Ted:  Which was pink. 

Glen:  And my parents were like, "Well, you can't have both. If you want the She-Ra castle, you're going to have to donate your My Little Pony castle." 

Ted:  [laughs] Were you Joan Crawford's child? 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  There's a weird math of, like, "One is fine, but two is just outrageous. What will people think?"

Ted:  "Two? You can't have two pink castles in the house!" 

Glen:  In retrospect, I made the poor decision because I find the My Little Pony castle to be more classic. It probably would have held up better. 

Ted:  Mm, the She-Ra castle is amazing. 

Glen:  I mean, I loved the table with the map in it. 

Ted:  The table with the map! It has a little treasure chest. It has that little thing where you put the sword and the shield. She has a throne that rises up through the top of the thing, through the skylight—I mean, come on. She-Ra's castle—

Drew:  Really? 

Ted:  Yes. She-Ra's throne is the elevator. So literally, she sits down in the chair, and she has to sort of side-straddle the chair because she can't really sit. And she goes into the bottom floor, sits down. It goes up to the second floor and then out to the top. So it's amazing. 

Drew:  Not even as being a gay little kid, just as a kid, you'd be like, "It's what? It's both? Oh, that sounds like an amazing toy. I want that!" 

Glen:  I mean, you just described Transformers. 

Drew:  I have an interesting point about that in the very near future, actually. But 45 minutes into this little talk, we're going to take a commercial break. 

Glen:  Commercial break. 

Drew:  Commercial break! 

["Jealousy" by Jem and the Holograms plays]

[Gayest Episode Ever promotes Blake Cedric's show at A Love Bizarre and Gayest Episode Ever's Patreon]

["Who Is He Kissing?" by Jem and the Holograms plays]

Drew:  Hi. We're back. Glen, tell us about the Paw Paw Bears—or the Paw Paws? It's both? 

Glen:  Well, first I'll say, now we're going to do some deeper dives. So I listed Paw Paw Bears as a sort of queer awakening show for me because—I know. So Paw Paw Bears is a show about these Native American little bears that live in the forest. 

Drew:  Teddy bears [laughter]. 

[Paw Paw Bears theme song/intro plays]

Glen:  Probably a very offensive show, looking back on it. 

Ted:  In hindsight? Oh, yeah. 

Glen:  Very offensive. Tom Bosley is the villain. 

Drew:  Well, that makes sense [laughter]. 

Glen:  And I just thought that Brave Paw was very attractive. 

Drew:  Explain who Bright Paw is. 

Glen:  Brave Paw. 

Drew:  Brave—[grumbles]. 

Glen:  He is just like your generic jock do-gooder, and these—

Ted:  He's Hefty Smurf. Yeah. He's Hefty Smurf—but a teddy bear.  

Glen:  Yeah. He's light tan, pants and shirtless all the time. And even for a little teddy bear, they gave him—

Ted:  Pecs. They gave him pecs. 

Glen:  Yeah. They gave him pecs. 

Ted:  So he had hairy pecs and biceps. 

Drew:  Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. 

Ted:  And he's a Native American—you know, stereotypical garb. He had these little buckskin pants that were very tight, a little feather in his cap or in his little headband. 

Glen:  And the princess in the show had a magic amulet to summon totems to life. 

Princess Paw Paw:  Oh my, oh my. I never realized how smudgy the Totem Bear had gotten. 

[?? 00:54:00]:  Well, after all, Princess, it's been standing here for about a zillion years. 

[?? [00:54:05]:  I wonder where it came from. 

Princess Paw Paw:  It was built by our ancient ancestors, the Pre-Paws.

Drew:  I have something to say about Princess Paw Paw. 

Glen:  Go for it. 

Drew:  Do you know Susan Blu? 

Ted:  Of course. Yes. 

Drew:  Susan Blu is someone that I feel like a lot of gay nerdy people should know about if they don't already. This is actually one of the first voice roles she ever did, but she went on to do Nanny Smurf—

Nanny Smurf:  Well, any Smurf can see that the bridge Smoogle's on wouldn't hold a feather!

Drew:  —Arcee on Transformers—

Arcee:  I was afraid you'd be trapped outside the city. 

Hot Rod:  Hey, I wasn't worried for a microsecond. 

Arcee:  Then you probably didn't understand the situation.

Drew:  —this random Tiny Toons character, the Sphinx, which was not a major character, but she had one episode where she got something to do. 

Sphinx:  These cages are made of steel. We'll never get away from that unwonderful wonder. 

Drew:  All voiced by Susan Blu—

Ted:  Who is Stormer on Jem and the Holograms. 

Drew:  Oh, is she? 

Ted:  Yeah. 

Drew:  I must have missed that one. 

Ted:  She was Flim-Flam on The 13th Ghost of Scooby-Doo. 

Glen:  [gasps!]

Drew:  That makes sense.

Glen:  They just finished that up finally. 

Ted:  They finally did! Tim Sheridan wrote that. That's somebody you should have on—Tim Sheridan. 

Drew:  Wait. They just finished 13 Ghosts—

Glen:  Because they didn't get to the 13—

Ted:  There's a new direct-to-video movie called The 13th Ghost of Scooby-Doo.   

Drew:  What?!

Ted:  Yes. 

Drew:  Did it just come out recently? 

Ted:  Yes. Like, a month ago. 

Drew:  This is completely—this did not come across my social media dashboard at all. How—

Ted:  It's literally Vincent Van Ghoul. It's the whole thing. And they really address it, that it was only Daphne and Shaggy [laughs], and they go, "You guys were off at summer camp." 

Drew:  I am shocked. This makes me so happy. I probably should watch that. So Susan Blu also plays the mother in Friday the 13th VII, which is the one where there's the psychic girl. She's the psychic girl's mother who gets killed. She's kind of a badass and lesbian and married to the sister of Mike Teavee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is just—that is the craziest thing in the world. Like, what must they talk about at family gatherings? 

Ted:  What!

Drew:  So Mike Teavee—I can't remember the actor's name. But he does mostly voice acting, and it's through that that she met his sister, and now they are married. 

Ted:  Look at that. 

Drew:  How nice for them. She's just really cool. And if you just look her up online, she's given a ton of really cool interviews, and she's also given interviews about being openly gay and having this job for such a long time. If you are kind of sort of our ages, you probably have experienced something that she had some creative control over because she also does voice directing—is that right? 

Ted:  Mm-hmm. She's a great voice director. She has a super iconic rasp that as soon as you hear you're like, "Oh. That's Sue." Arcee was the one that I think most people would just associate with her, especially if you've seen Transformers: The Movie. She is just so iconic in that role. 

Glen:  Drew, did you have one to talk about? 

Drew:  Yeah. Pierce Thorndyke III is a very gay-seeming villain—in the way that Alexandra kind of is the villain on Josie and the Pussycats—character on a show called Beverly Hills Teens. 

Ted:  Beverly Hills Teens! Oh, my god! I love that show!

Drew:  Very few people remember. I thought it was amazing. It's like Richie Rich plus Beverly Hills 90210 or Dynasty because it pre-dated Beverly Hills 90210 by several years. It's about fancy, rich teens living in Los Angeles—sometimes it kind of accurately depicted Los Angeles—

Ted:  Very much so. 

Drew:  Like now I'd be like, "Oh. I know what neighborhood they're in." And it's absolutely silly, and characters—aside from Pierce, who's the gay-seeming villain—

Chester:  Who are you teaming up with, Pierce? 

Pierce:  Only the hottest hot-dogger in all of Beverly Hills. 

Chester:  Really? How did you arrange that? 

Pierce:  Simple, Chester. I programmed C.A.D. here to locate the prettiest and best surfer in the entire area, and it came up with this. 

C.A.D.:  Miss Amanda Crenshaw, 17. Hair: Blonde. Eyes: Hazel. West Coast Surfing Champion for the past three years, and she deserves better than you. 

Pierce:  Just the statistics, please, and never mind the editorial comments. 

Drew:  Character names: Wilshire Brentwood, Blaze Summers, and Bianca Dupree—

Bianca:  Troy doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be my surfing partner today. 

Wilshire:  How can that be, Bianca? He already told you he's taking Larke. 

Bianca:  Wilshire, You don't understand the first thing about girls, do you? The more a boy rejects us the more we want him. [gasps!] Wait! Stop! That's it! That's the bathing suit that's going to change Troy's mind. Once he sees me in that creation, he'll dump Larke like yesterday's caviar. 

Drew:  —who is the villain. She is the Alexandra. 

Ted:  She is Alexis Carrington. She is so that character [laughs]. 

Drew:  Dark hair, spoiled, narcissistic—everything's about her. I don't know why anyone hangs out with her because you'd think they would just kick her out of the group for being awful, but she's just there—always. And something that I think a lot of little gay boys would have imprinted on—the one conversation I ever had about this show was there was a girl in seventh grade. Someone's mom had a baby girl, and this girl I'm talking to and her sister convinced her parents to name the child Bianca because they loved Bianca so much, and I was like, "That's really interesting that of all the characters on that show you would have picked her to be the one to name after your sister." That little child grew up. She became her namesake. 

Ted:  The hero character's name—her name is Larke. 

Drew:  Larke.

Ted:  I was like, "What the hell is a 'lark'?" and I didn't know that it was a bird [laughs]. I was a kid. I was like, "That's a stupid name for a little girl—Larke." 

Glen:  It's like "Mark," but different. 

Ted:  Yeah. And then my crush—Troy. Troy was the hot guy on the show. And then there was—what was the nerdy science kid's name? Was it—

Drew:  Chester McTech. 

Ted:  Chester. That's right. 

Drew:  McTech. 

Ted:  McTech. And he created a digital girlfriend for himself. It was amazing. 

Glen:  Total incel. 

Ted:  That show was everything [laughs]. 

Drew:  He also had a sister named Switchboard whose only job it was to be a gossip reporter on the high school, reposting from high school classmates' activities. She was just always interviewing—it's a very sad existence for her. Didn't get to do a whole lot of fun. 

Glen:  Does this show stand out—because it was, like, just a cartoon soap opera. And so in a decade of shows about adventures and heroes, like, "No. We're just people with fabulous lives." 

Ted:  It was the era of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Dynasty. It was all of that, and somebody said, "Hey, why don't we do that for kids? Let's show kids what it's like to be rich." And it was—I remember when that show came on, that opening music, that [sings] doo-doo-doo—

Glen:  The limo with the pool in the back? I mean—

Ted:  Yeah. Iconic. That music just hit me. I was like, "What the hell is this?" 

[Beverly Hills Teens theme song plays]

Ted:  And it was so fun. That opening song is amazing. I love that song. 

Drew:  It is beautifully animated. The show is actually not badly animated. 

Ted:  It's actually not bad. Yeah. 

Drew:  But that opening sequence looks fantastic. Yeah. When you think about millennial-retro throwback aesthetics, I'm like, "This has everything. This should be your bible, children." 

Ted:  It really does. It really does. 

Glen:  But children are stupid. 

Drew:  They are. I say that—I dump on millennials as being the oldest possible millennial you can be. 

Glen:  Oh. Okay. I want to talk about Care Bears, specifically Care Bears II: A New Generation. 

Ted:  [gasps!] The New Generation? I almost said "the new breed," but that was Gremlins 2. 

Glen:  So this was my first favorite movie. I rented it maybe once a week. And if you haven't watched it—it's not really a sequel. It's a prequel. It tells the origin of Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins, and there are two characters—True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse that—I think canonically, Noble Heart Horse is male, but they're not gendered in the movie itself, and I thought they were two women. 

Noble Heart:  Oh, look!

True Heart:  The caring meter! Someone must need our help down on earth. What'll we do? 

Noble Heart:  Why, go and help them! Oooh, hurry! Hurry! 

True Heart:  Quick! Let's go—

Noble Heart:  Wait a minute. 

True Heart:  Hold on. Wait. 

Both:  Oof! But who's going to look after the cubs? 

Glen:  And when you start the movie, they are taking care of all these orphans—the Care Bears and the Care Bear Cousins—and I thought this was a lesbian couple raising all these orphans. 

Drew:  Did you know what lesbians were? 

Glen:  No. But I knew—I just thought, "Oh. These are two women who are married, and they're taking care of these children." And at no point did that stand out to me. 

Ted:  What year was that? Was that '85? 

Glen:  '85, I think. And they go to great length to defend these babies from, basically, Satan. The villain in the movie is Dark Heart, and he's just a dark red cloud who can take any form he wants, and he takes the form of a boy who fucks up a summer camp—which if I had fabulous powers, I would not be fucking with the summer camp. But whatever. 

Drew:  You have grander visions than that. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  That makes sense. 

Ted:  I remember it had good music in it. I remember it had really good songs in that. 

Glen:  It had great music, yeah. And one of the songs—when they first discover the Care Bear Kingdom, Care-a-Lot, there is a song to introduce all the characters, "Flying My Colors," which is a gay anthem. 

["Flying My Colors" plays]

Glen:  There's just rainbow rivers everywhere, and it's talking about "Are you going to like me, even though I'm different?" And it's like, "I'm flying my colors for everyone to see," like, "I'm just going to be out and proud." And so—I don't know. I doubt it was intentional, but this movie's very gay. 

Drew:  It was that time before, I think, a lot of straight people realized that gay people had started to use the rainbow flag as a symbol because they just lived in the suburbs and didn't have to see that. But yeah, I kind of like that the gays got to steal the rainbow. 

Ted:  I remember seeing that in the theaters, actually, when I was a kid, and loving that movie. And I remember the songs. Was it Ricky  Jones that wrote the music for that? 

Glen:  I think so. The songs are fantastic. 

Ted:  Yeah. I remember really loving the music. 

Glen:  The music was so good. The closing credits song will make me cry. Do you want to talk about Vanity Smurf? 

Drew:  No. I want to talk about—no. I want to talk about The Get Along Gang. 

Glen:  Oh. Okay. Let's just do it. 

Ted:  [sings] The Get Along Gang get along, gang. 

Glen:  I love that song. 

[The Get Along Gang theme song plays]

Drew:  The idea was they are friends. That is the synopsis. Animals are friends and do stuff together. 

Ted:  Mm-hmm. Cats and lambs, they get along. 

Glen:  In a '50s aesthetic. 

Drew:  Is it '50s aesthetic? 

Glen:  It's absolutely—

Ted:  Well, their clubhouse is a caboose. I mean—eh, that's not—

Glen:  It's absolutely a '50s aesthetic!

Ted:  That's not a modern concept. 

Drew:  You can live in a caboose in any decade. 

Ted:  [laughs]

Glen:  Montgomery the Moose is wearing a letterman sweater. 

Ted:  A tracksuit—oh, no. No, that's right. That's right. 

Glen:  And they hang out in a malt shop, so it's either Riverdale or the 1950s. 

Drew:  Right. The character that made the biggest impact on me was Dotty Dog. So Dotty Dog, she's dressed like a cheerleader? Or just a preppy girl? 

Ted:  No. She's a cheerleader. 

Drew:  She's a blonde-dog cheerleader, and if you google image search her now, you'll see a lot of eBay listings for people that are trying to sell the doll, but she doesn't have any clothes on. You're just like, "Oh!" [laughter] I don't want to look at that. 

Ted:  And those dolls are weird because they were actually plastic dolls, and just the ears were fabric. It was so weird. So this half-naked, plastic doll with a dog head is just really nightmare fuel [laughter]!

Glen:  There were three tiers of Get Along Gang toys. So they had little PVC figures, and those were fantastic. And then the main four had their eight-inch dress-'em-up dolls. And then they also had stuffed animals, and I have a kind of queer story about the Dotty Dog stuffed animal. So I would often take her clothes off and—do you remember K'NEX? Those flat, plastic triangles that were not Lego that connected together? 

Ted:  Of course. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Glen:  And I made Dotty the most fabulous outfits with K'NEX. They form fit her. She had a tennis outfit with a wonderful sunhat. She had an evening gown. My brother and I, we had stuffed animal Oscars, and her red carpet look for the Oscars in, I believe, 1987—I wish I had a picture of it. 

Drew:  I wish you had a picture of it, too. 

Ted:  Me, too. I had done the same thing with She-Ra for years. I cut up my mother's good robe—

Drew:  [laughs]

Ted:  She had this beautiful, white, plush robe, and now She-Ra has an arctic outfit, and She-Ra has a camo outfit, and she had all this stuff. And my mom was like, "You need to stop making the clothes for She-Ra." That was a real issue for her. I don't know if it was more because I was cutting up her clothes, or if it was because I was making clothes for She-Ra [laughs]. 

Drew:  It can be two things. 

Glen:  I think it's the former. She should have just taken you to a fabric store. 

Drew:  So Dotty Dog was my imaginary friend when I was a kid. I could have picked anything. I could have invented something, like most kids usually do make up their own thing, but I didn't do that, which is maybe a predictor for what my life would become—synthesizing stuff from existing pop culture rather than building it from the ground up on my own. And I think people were confused as to why my imaginary friend was a character from a TV show, but also a dog named Dotty who didn't have any discernible personality characteristics, other than being cheerful. 

Glen:  What sort of things did you two do? 

Drew:  People couldn't sit by me because Dotty Dog was sitting there. 

Ted:  Oh [laughs]. 

Drew:  Which, again, has weird implications for what kind of adult I would be. I was like, "I don't have any room for you in my life because of pop culture," which is something I've indirectly told a lot of people. 

Glen:  And now you have an actual dog for this. 

Drew:  I do. So now Thurman's actually sitting there, and he will bite you. But, yeah. Yeah. And that's something I probably should talk to my therapist about. 

Ted:  Or just more like, "You just can't sit with us." [laughs]

Glen:  I just thought it was—I, too, would love an imaginary friend who was this gorgeous, popular dog-girl who probably just knew all the secrets of everyone because they would just tell her because she's well liked. 

Drew:  I think I used her to inflict my will upon people—like indirectly give my opinion, like, "Well, Dotty Dog says this," because I didn't want to say the thing. But if Dotty said it, it made it okay. It's weird how kids are—

Glen:  Well, Dotty Dog thinks your bangs look terrible [laughter]. 

Drew:  Basically. 

Glen:  I'm going to use that now. 

Drew:  That's my Get Along Gang story. That's all I got for that one. 

Glen:  Oh. Well, let's talk about Rocco Rabbit and Braker Turtle. They were tertiary Get Along Gang characters. 

Ted:  Oh, yes. 

Glen:  Rocco Rabbit, who was a bruiser, wore this red and yellow striped t-shirt—I'm coming off as a furry in this episode. That's fine. 

Ted:  Really. 

Glen:  But he wore ripped jeans and had a Band-Aid over his nose, and he was—

Drew:  Oh, okay! 

Glen:  He was the bad kid from the wrong side of the tracks in the Get Along Gang, and his best friend was this nerdlinger Turtle—Braker Turtle. He wore a little cardigan and glasses. 

Drew:  The tortoise and the hare are friends. 

Ted:  Aw!

Glen:  Yeah. And again, this is probably my most idealized gay relationship—I want to be Braker Turtle and just have some sort of jock rabbit who will defend me but also love me. 

Drew:  That's very touching. 

Ted:  Aww. I love that. 

Glen:  Is that touching? I think it's still kind of—whatever. 

Ted:  No. I think it's beautiful, and way more deep than the shirttails [laughs]. There was nothing with the Shirt Tales. 

Glen:  No, other than words appeared on their [shirts], although my brother had a Shirt Tales stuffed animal—a walrus in a pink shirt—and he would use it to beat me up. Like, he'd put his fist over Wally Walrus's fist and punch me and was like, "Well, I'm not hitting you. Wally's hitting you." 

Drew:  How do you feel about walruses today? 

Glen:  I love them still. I still cry at that scene from that show where they're all jumping. 

Ted:  What show is that? 

Glen:  That new—let's just—

Ted:  Off the rails—aaah!

Drew:  Glen, talk about SilverHawks—quick!

Glen:  Oh. I mean, I wanted Steelwill to choke me. There's not a lot to say about SilverHawks. It's basically ThunderCats in space. 

[SilverHawks theme song plays]

Glen:  And there's a space mob, which is kind of fantastic. 

Drew:  But they're not birds. They're humans that wear metal.

Ted:  Bird armor. Yeah. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's even less clothing than ThunderCats, because technically they're—they do wear clothing over their steel bodies—

Drew:  Which is weird. Like, they don't have to. 

Glen:  When they're wearing tracksuits, it's like—they probably don't sweat, but they were all very—

Ted:  But they were cyborgs, right? 

Glen:  Yeah. There was, though, speaking of my love for eccentric villains—Windhammer. He had flowing blonde hair, awful goblin face, but he was beefy—

Ted:  Really ripped. Jacked. 

Glen:  Yeah—and had that dirty tunic. And his weapon was a tuning fork that summoned lightning. So of course I would steal my dad's rake and just smash the shit out of it on the ground, trying to summon lightning. My dad was like, "You've got to stop breaking my fucking rakes." But I just loved it, and I'd just go in the driveway, smack a rake against the ground, and gesture towards my father as he was trying to do yardwork. 

Ted:  They weren't as sexy as the TigerSharks were. 

[The TigerSharks theme song plays]

Ted:  TigerSharks were the fish versions of ThunderCats and SilverHawks. Do you remember these? 

Drew:  I don't remember them. 

Glen:  I remember. 

Ted:  So the leader was this guy named Mako. He turned into a shark. There was this magical pool that they would all go into, and they would go from humans in these tight unitards into these half-man-half-fish people. So Mako would turn into a shark. Dolph would turn into a dolphin. Walro would turn into a walrus. And the chick turned into an—the chick—

Drew:  She turned into an octopus? 

Ted:  She had an octopus for a head [laughs]. 

Drew:  That's not how octopuses work at all. 

Ted:  So her hair was all her tentacles. But it was weird because she still had a hot body, but she just had an octopus for a head. But those guys—Mako and Dolph were so freaking hot, and they were swimmers, so they had that nice swimmer's build that I like. 

Glen:  Broad shoulders, thin—

Ted:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  I shall have to check this out. Do you guys know who—who's the lead female character on SilverHawks? 

Glen:  Steelheart. 

Drew:  Do you know who voiced Steelheart? 

Ted:  Was it Sue Blu? 

Drew:  No. 

Ted:  Oh [laughs]. 

Drew:  No. It's a random thing. 

Glen:  Was it Meg Ryan? 

Drew:  It's a blip on her acting resume because she's almost exclusively done live-action stuff. 

Steelheart:  Relax your rivets, Commander. We haven't had a tanker raid for months. 

Commander:  Ha! Don't count your satellites before they're in orbit, Steelheart!

Drew:  Maggie Wheeler, who played Janice on Friends was the voice. 

Ted:  Oh!

Drew:  She also played—there's a female villain that's the opposite of her character. 

Glen:  No. The female villain Melodia is the opposite of Bluegrass. 

Melodia:  [cackles maniacally] This is one landing you'd better not bungle, Professor Power!

Professor Power:  You'll never get away with this, Melodia! Why, the SilverHawks!

Melodia:  Ah! The SilverHawks won't find out about it until it's too late. 

Drew:  Okay. That's it. 

Glen:  I also pretended to be Melodia a lot. 

Drew:  She also voiced Melodia, and I like that this is this random thing that she also did this. 

Ted:  [imitating Janice from Friends] Janice! 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. 

Ted:  Okay. That's fun. 

Glen:  Melodia was a fantastic—

Ted:  Melodia is a great villain. 

Glen:  She's this punk-rock girl with a keytar that shot lasers. 

Ted:  They never made that action figure. I have a complete SilverHawks collection, and they never made a Melodia figure. It drives me nuts. 

Glen:  Oh. You have the Hardware action figure, too?

Ted:  Mm-hmm. The women always got shafted in those things, especially the female villains. We don't have a Shadow Weaver figure. We don't have a Melodia. 

Glen:  Well, we do now. There's two—three. 

Ted:  Now. Now we do. 

Drew:  Yeah. I was going to talk about Duke Igthorn from Gummi Bears and Knights of the Zodiac, but—

Glen:  [gasps!]

Ted:  I was going to bring up Kidd Video, if you guys remember Kidd Video. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Ted:  That was my first real crush—that boy. 

Drew:  Explain. 

Ted:  Kidd Video was a show also from DIC—the Canadian animation studio. 

Drew:  It's pronounced "dick." 

Ted:  Is it? 

Glen:  No, it's not [laughter].

Ted:  In this house, it is! But it aired on NBC, and the first season—the premise was a real band in the real world, these three guys and a girl who were playing music in their garage. And this guy came into their mirror named the Master Blaster, and he says, "I'm taking you to the Flipside," and he pulls them through the mirror where the villains—the Copycats—come out after them. And their truck turns into this hovercraft that is on a magical roller coaster, and there's a little fairy named Glitter who sneezes and becomes super strong. I know it sounds like I'm on drugs right now [laughs]. 

Drew:  I kind of think you're just improv—making this up, and I'm like, "Sure. That's—"

Ted:  Nope. It's real. And by the way, it had a real live opening sequence. 

["Video to Radio" plays]

Ted:  And the guy that played Kidd Video was breathtakingly beautiful [laughs]. 

Glen:  How does he compare to Captain N/Kevin? 

Ted:  Oh! He's a little older than Captain N, but super-hot. He had beautiful blue eyes and this reddish-brown hair, and he had this sleeveless shirt on, and he would play his guitar into the mirror, and he was like, "Yeah!" And the music was great. So then they would have these things where they pull him into the mirror, and it would go into this animated universe. And everything was music themed. All the villains were music themed, the things that they would encounter are music themed. And the goal was for the Master Blaster to take the music from them. Like, Master Blaster wanted to take the music from them, and his henchmen were the Copycats. But at the end of every episode, they would do a live-action music video with this cast. 

Drew:  Perfect. 

Ted:  The interesting thing—to tie it back to our amazing podcast that we're on about sitcoms—is one of the kids was Robbie Rist, who was Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch. 

Drew:  Oh! 

Glen:  Wow. Good for him. 

Ted:  He played Whiz, the smart kid, and he was the drummer in the band—or no. I'm sorry. The girl was the drummer. He was the keyboardist. 

Drew:  He does voice acting—

Ted:  He does. Robbie Rist does a lot of voice acting. Yes. 

Drew:  He's in the episode with Baby Doll of Batman. 

Ted:  Oh, wow. That is true. 

Drew:  I talk about Baby Doll a lot, but—

Ted:  Because she's one of the most amazing villains ever made. 

Drew:  He plays a very Cousin Oliver-like character who grew up to be a musician. 

Glen:  Yeah, and it's even drawn like him. 

Ted:  Yes. I think it was inspired by him—like, they were on the show together. 

Glen:  I'd like to talk about Eric from Dungeons & Dragons, briefly. 

Drew:  Tell us. 

Ted:  Aw. 

Drew:  I'm actually not very familiar with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show. Briefly explain it because I feel like some other people may not—

Glen:  So it's about a group of human children who get on a roller coaster, and that roller coaster takes them to the world of Dungeons & Dragons, and this was—

Drew:  Is it a Dungeons & Dragons themed roller coaster? 

Ted:  It is. 

Drew:  Oh. 

Ted:  It literally—and the opening theme actually has somebody saying, "It's the Dungeons & Dragons ride!" And they all get in the ride, and they go in, and they go, "What's happening?" The track goes crazy, and they go into a magical universe. 

Drew:  This sounds—was that a thing that—was there ever a Dungeons & Dragons ride? 

Ted:  No. I don't think so. 

Drew:  Oh. Okay. 

Glen:  Because this was also in the '80s, so there was that Satanism panic around Dungeons & Dragons. It was weird that they even had this cartoon show. But I think that was them trying to say, "Look how safe this is." So Eric is one of the human children. He becomes, I believe, a Cavalier. 

Ted:  [imitating the show] The Cavalier!

Glen:  Because they can't say Paladin of the religious aspects related to it. Anyway, he is spoiled and prissy and just generally not likeable. 

Eric:  Well, hello Sleeping Beauty. It's nice to know somebody kept warm last night!

Lorne:  [yawns] Morning. Thanks for the loan of the cape, Fancy Pants. 

Eric:  Speaking of fancy, I'm simply dying to know the name of your tailor. 

Lorne:  Oh, yeah? Maybe he could sew your mouth shut—if you ever get your foot out of it. 

??:  Here we go again. 

Presto:  I don't believe last night. Six straight hours of putdowns! Those guys ought to take their act on the road. 

Sheila:  Hmphf. You'd think they were identical twins. 

Diana:  You mean identical twits. 

Ted:  Voiced by Donny Most from Happy Days. 

Glen:  Oh. 

Drew:  Is that Ralph Malph? 

Ted:  Yes!

Glen:  And I wonder if—I feel like this is a trope of the spoiled prissy kid—the unlikable one. Do we think that's coded for queer? 

Ted:  I mean, it's Pierce. It's the same kind of character. It's Alexander from Josie and the Pussycats. It's Vanity Smurf. He really is that guy. That's really interesting. Wow. We're just putting this all together towards the end of this podcast [laughs]!

Drew:  Yeah. So briefly—Vanity was on here—but how else are people supposed to interpret this character other than this—he's into himself. He's lacking proper masculine characteristics. He's not even necessarily a sissy, it's just this man who is lacking. And that's a really weird thing for kids to take in. But you did not dislike this character, though? 

Glen:  No. I did. 

Drew:  Oh, you did? 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Okay. 

Ted:  He was meant to be dislikable. He's the character that the entire group had to carry through the thing. Every now and then he would pull out a win, but he was the one that sort of just was whiny and cranky and got in the way. 

Glen:  So I think to pull it back to He-Man, these shows on one hand gave us these idealized males that were sometimes expressing—like Prince Adam and Lion-O, these boyish characters who finally get to be the men they envision. But then more grounded in reality, these shows also gave us a lot of characters that were probably closer to who we were, like these very opinionated, sort of quiet, upfront-but-kind-of-bitchy, little prissy boys. And it's just weird because I look back at myself as a child and I was probably a Vanity Smurf or an Eric. I was nice, but I was also not that nice. 

Drew:  If you want to get psychoanalytical about it, you could say that that prissy bitchiness that maybe a lot of little proto-gay boys might exhibit—and these characters certainly do. It might be a reaction to them trying to figure out how to exist in a world that is constantly telling them that they're not right, and they're like, "Fuck you, guys. I'm turning this back onto you. This is what's wrong with you. You want to tell me that everything that's wrong—" I'm projecting, though. 

Ted:  No. I think you're right. Look. His weapon that he was given is a shield, and that "I'm going to hurt you before you hurt me" attitude was prevalent in a lot of young gay depictions in the early '80s—just sort of building a wall around it. It's a wall of snark and protectiveness, and if that comes off as self-indulgent, then that's what it is. 

Drew:  Okay. That's really good. 

Ted:  Oof. Deep. 

Glen:  I'm fine with ending on that. 

Drew:  [laughs] I'm good. I'm good. This is as much cartoon and as much gay as I can put out in the world in one sitting. 

Glen:  Yeah. I feel bad. I should have just—we're recording this on a Saturday morning. I should have gotten cereal. 

Ted:  [gasps!] We should have had Froot Loops while we did this. 

Glen:  Whatever. 

Drew:  My goodness. 

Ted:  Or Lucky Charms. 

Drew:  Just load up on sugar, and then see what happens. 

Ted:  [exclaims!]

Glen:  Ted, is there anything that we should know—I don't know—about your life? Is there anything you'd like to plug from Netflix? Any cartoons you guys got going on that you think are going to—

Ted:  The next big thing that I've been working on for the past four and a half years is the new Dark Crystal series—Age of Resistance—

Drew:  Oh!

Ted:  —which will be coming very, very soon. And it will be out this year. You guys are going to lose your minds. It's so good. 

Drew:  Okay. And if people want to keep up to date with all your latest creative efforts, where can people find you on social media? 

Ted:  My Instagram is all pictures of my toys. 

Glen:  And they're fantastic!

Ted:  [laughs] It's the word "animate"—A-N-I-M-A-T-E—Ted—T-E-D—at Instagram, or—

Drew:  I get it!

Ted:  You get it? It's "Animate Ted," not "Animated." Animate Ted. 

Glen:  Drew, where can people find you? 

Drew:  I am on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. And I'm on—I don't think I ever mention that I have Instagram. Instagram, it's @KidIcarus222—that is a videogame reference. It was obscure at one point. It's not anymore. Glen, where can people find you online? 

Glen:  I'm on Instagram @BrosQuartz—BROS Quartz. Yes, it's a Steven Universe reference. And on Twitter, @IWriteWrongs—I, "write" with a W, and then "wrongs," also with a W, unless you don't know how to spell "wrongs."  

Drew:  You can follow this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode. We're on Facebook @GayestEpisodeEver. Listen to all previous episodes at gayestepisodeever.com. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. We have a bunch of other shows, including two others that I host. Find out about all those at TableCakes.com. If you want to give us money, give us money—patreon.com/tablecakes. 

Glen:  Ted, thank you for coming in on a Saturday morning. 

Ted:  Thank you for having me. 

Drew:  We appreciate it. Podcast over. 

Glen:  Bye forever. 

Drew:  Bye forever. 

["Eyes" by Clio plays]

Katherine:  A TableCakes Production.