The Amazing Digital Circus: Gay, trans, ace, and nonbinary humans trapped in a sinister video game. With some voice artist d*cks

 

Link to the n*de dudes

The Amazing Digital Circus is an adult animated series where humans are zapped into a virtual reality pocket universe that looks like a 1990s circus-themed video game.  They forget their names and their human lives, except for a few random details.  Every day a crazy AI named Caine sends them out on "adventures," some frightening (explore a haunted mansion), some just soul-destroying (work a shift in a fast-food restaurant).  

Showrunner Gooseworx notes a debt to the Harlan Ellison story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,"where a sentient computer kills almost all humans, leaving a few alive to torture forever.  But here Caine does not intend to torture the "players": he is honestly trying to provide them with fun and excitement, but he is not at all rational, plus he has no idea what humans are like. 

The result is terror, pain, and a lot of existential angst.  What are we doing here?  How can you find meaning when you are "just a sort of thing in a dream," or in this case a video game?  

When the angst becomes too great for the characters to maintain consciousness, lucidity, or body shape, they are "abstracted," reduced to a series of barely-coherent spikes, and sent to the Cellar. 

The main players are:

Focus character Pomni, a court jester, a supermarket accountant in her old life. She tries to keep the others coherent while searching for an escape.

Pomni is voiced by Lizzie Freeman (cishet).

Jax, a tall, purple anthropomorphic bunny.  As a human, he was 22 years old, living with his abusive mother and paralyzed by doubts about his masculinity.  In the Circus, he is condescending, sarcastic, sometimes cruel, and claims to not care about anyone or anything -- except for his abstracted chum that the others are not supposed to ever mention.  They later come out as transgender and begin using she/her pronouns.

Jax is voiced by Michael Kovach, left (ace, heteroromantic).  In the live action shows, he is played by actor/model Izatillo Ishonov (gay), top photo.

Ragatha, a Raggedy Ann doll with a missing eye.  In her human life, she had a wealthy farming family and an abusive mother.  She tries to be optimistic and friendly to everyone.

Ratha is voiced by Amanda Huffman (nonbinary).

Kinger, a chess piece with a purple robe and wobbly eyes.  A computer programmer in his old life, he was the first to enter the Circus, and is now unstable and prone to amnesia.  He spends most of his time hiding in a pillow fort.

Kinger is voiced by Sean Chiplock (cishet).  In the live shows, he is voiced by Ben Bishop (gay, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Gangle, four red ribbons arranged in a humanoid form, with a tragedy or comedy mask (but the comedy keeps breaking). As a human, she was shift supervisor at a fast-food restaurant.  One night she was hit by a truck, and awoke in the Circus. She is timid and self-conscious.

Gangle is voiced by Marisa Lenti (agender, ace).

Zooble, a constantly changing assemblage of random parts resembling a ZoLo toy. As a human, they were a nonbinary tattoo artist, and worked at a LGBTQ-friendly bar.  They often rebel against the AI Caine, and refuse to go on adventures, causing him to send them to therapy (with Caine playing the psychiatrist).

Zooble is voiced by Ashley Nichols (nonbinary).

More after the break.  

Ryan Buggle: The youngest LGBT character on tv, star of a gay play on Broadway. But is he gay/bi in real life? With Drayer and Meloni d*ck

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I've never seen any of the 586 episodes of Law and Order: SVU (1999-) , because who cares about the Crime of the Week?  So I had no idea that it was so soap-opera like. It took a lot of plot arcs to for Noah Porter-Benson (Ryan Buggle) to get around to coming out as the youngest LGBTQ character on tv. And a lot of trauma:

Bon in 2013, after Mom Elle is assaulted by trafficker Johnny Drake.

She keeps the baby while working for Little Tino, but when she overdoses, he sells little Noah to a p*rnographer couple.

After detective Olivia (Mariska Hartigay) arrests them and rescues Noah, he is placed in several abusive foster homes.

Mom Elle turns up and tries to get custody, but she is murdered.

Olivia decides to foster Noah, but when she pulls him out of the way of a speeding car, he is bruised, and CPS thinks that she is abusive.

He is kidnapped, nearly kidnapped, and hospitalized with life threatening diseases (twice).

His biological father shows up for a custody battle, and is murdered.  I'm looking at you, Olivia.

Finally, a queer code: In 2019, ADA Stone (Philip Winchester, left, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) decides that Noah needs a "father figure," and teaches him to play baseball.  

After a few episodes, he gets tired of baseball and says that he would rather take ballet lessons.  This was Ryan's idea.  He tells Dance Magazine: "Dancing is my favorite thing, so I wrote a script over the summer and gave it to the writers, and they were happy to do it."

Although Noah mentions his ballet lessons and his competitive dance team on occasion, and has a plotline where Olivia hangs up on him when he announces that he got the lead in The Nutcracker (not because she disapproves), it's mostly back to trauma, diseases, an unspecified "family emergency," vaping, and getting to know Olivia's estranged brother Simon (Michael Weston), who dies of an overdose. How many parental figures have died on you, buddy?

On January 11, 2022, Olivia finds Noah in his friend Hudson's house, wearing a dog collar, eating dog food, and barking on command.  At first he claims that it was just kids being kids, but then he admits that Hudson was making fun of a nonbinary friend, using homophobic slurs.  So he defended them, and told Hudson that he was bi: "There's no shame in being true to yourself."  The bully didn't respond well.

Olivia praises him for standing up to Hudson.  

He explains: "Well, it's my truth.  I just haven't told anybody before."

Olivia: "Well, thank you for telling me." And they go on with their day. (Yes, she comes down on the bully.)

The episode received nearly universal praise (excluding the usual homophobes), and got Ryan a dozen interviews in everything from Cliche Magazine to The Today Show.  He was twelve years old, but Noah was nine, thus becoming the youngest self-identified LGBTQ character on televsion..  The runner up is Jude on The Fosters, who says that he is "not into labels" at age twelve, and "gay" at age thirteen.

As far as I can tell, Noah's bi identity never comes up again.  He  bonds with his half-brother Connor (real-life buddy Tre Ryder), gets a potential father figure in Olivia's ex Stabler (Christopher Meloni, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), and continues to suffer from soap opera traumas.  But there's always the future; Ryan hints that there are some "exciting plotlines ahead" for his character.

Ryan Buggle is now sixteen years old, with biceps.  I'm going to check the usual: any (other) LGBT roles?  Gay or bi in real life?    

More after the break

Dougray Scott: Gruff, gravelly-voiced macho man gets tied up a lot, plays four gay guys...no, three...wait, just one. With Denton and Lucas n*de

Link to the n*de photos

We're watching Batwoman (2019-22), with Bruce Wayne's cooler cousin Kate Kane taking over the cowl.  Dougray Scott plays her father Jacob Kane, whose ICE-like Crows "protect" Gothan City instead of the police. Jake is perfectly accepting of his daughter being a lesbian, but virulently anti-superhero, so she is unlikely to come out asthe Bat. Her ex-girlfriend Sophie, now in a lavender marriage, happens to be Jake's chief officer, so when he orders "find Batwoman, and shoot to kill," she's conflicted.

It gets more complicated: when Kate was twelve years old, Mom and sister went over the bridge into the Gothan River.  Sister survived, but was imprisoned by a face-extracting serial killer for 11 years before emerging as the "Why did you stop searching for me?" supervillain Alice.  You know, the one with the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, the magic mushroom.....

Well, let's not go down that rabbit hole.  I'm more interested in seeing the gruff, gravelly-voiced macho man tied up.  Which he is, a lot.  And maybe checking out his gay roles and beneath-the-belt equipment.

Dougray is Scottish: he was born in Glenrolthes, about an hour by car from Edinburgh, in 1965.  After secondary school he attended the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, and started his career on the West End.  His plays include Beckett, Welcome Home, The Power and the Glory, The Rover, This Island's Mine, and most recently Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

His on-screen acting begins with episodes of tv series like Zorro (1990), Lovejoy (1992), and Stay Lucky (1994), but fame came with Ever After (1998): The Grande Dame tells us about the real Cinderella, her great-great grandmother, the liberated Age of Reason Danielle de Barbarac. Dougray plays Prince Henry, her love interest and equal partner.

Some popular movies followed:

Mission Impossible 2 (2000), starring famous homophobe Tom Cruise. He plays the villain Sean Ambrose.

Ripley's Game (2002), a sequel that heterosexualizes the gay killer of  The Incredible Mr. Ripley (1999). He plays the main victim.

My Week with Marilyn (2011).  He plays playwright Arthur Miller. Spoiler alert: he dates Marilyn Monroe. 

Dougray shows his backside in Enigma (2001), about British spies during World War II.

And in Things to Do Before You are 30 (2005), about some 20-something buds facing "adult" problems like a pregnant girlfriend (Dougray) , a "crippled step-dad" (Danny Nussbaum) and being gay  (Shaun Parkes).

Both backsides are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Dougray's major tv roles:

Desperate Housewives (2006-07).  He plays Ian, who dates main character Susan until her boyfriend (James Denton, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) wakes up from his coma. 

Doctor Who (2013) as Alec, a ghost-hunter who helps the Doctor (Matt Smith) explore the haunted Caliburn House.  

More after the break

"Monsters at Work": 20 Years after "Monsters, Inc.", Has LGBTQ Representation Increased?

 Monsters, Inc. (2001) suggested that monsters have an economic motive for crawling out from under your bed: the psychic energy of children's screams is the main source of power for their society.   But scream-harvesters Mike and Sully (John Goodman, Billy Crystal) discover that children's laughter is more powerful, so the monsters change their tactics.  The two monsters are presented as a classic straight man-buffoon comedy team, like Abbott and Costello, and one of them has a girlfriend, but they still have a strong gay subtext.

20 years later, the Disney Channel is streaming Monsters at Work, an animated comedy set in the same universe: Tylor graduates from Monster University with a degree in scaring, only to find his skill set obsolete.  So he takes a job as a mechanic while studying comedy.  

Tylor is voiced by Ben Feldman, the Scott Baio lookalike best known for Superstore, who did a PSA in favor of marriage equality in 2012.  Could there be more open LGBTQ representation in the sequel?

I watched Episode 2, "Meet MIFT," in which Tylor goes to work for the Monsters Inc. Facilities Team.

Scene 1:  Tylor's first day on the job (last episode) was a disaster, so today Mom insists on driving him to work.  He doesn't care: the MIFT job is just a "temporary nightmare" while he is awaiting his move to the Laugh Floor (I knew lots of people like that in West Hollywood). 

Dimwitted tapir-monster Fritz (Henry Winkler) arrives and flirts with Mom. Then the orange blob-monster Val (Mindy Kailing), "Tylor's classmate at college and now his bff."  

She tries to hug him, but he shrugs her off.  I could do without the "Your Mom is hot!" stuff, but rejecting a girl is a nice way to start the day.

Scene 2: Tylor arrives at the Maintenance Department in the basement, where the team is waiting for an initiation ceremony: "When a part breaks down, we fix it.  If a machine needs maintenance, we maintain it.  We're the monsters behind the monsters!"   He protests that this job is just temporary.  "That's what we all thought. "

His first ceremonial task: "Wrench that nut!"  It sounds dirty, especially when he protests: "I don't want to wrench any nuts  I want nothing to do with nuts." Speak for yourself, guy.

Next he has to pass through the Doorway of No Return to the land of Infinite Commitment.  "But...this job is just temporary?" "That's what we all thought."

Scene 3: Mike from the original movie returns from an 18-hour shift of refilling laugh canisters. His boyfriend Sully, now the CEO, tells him to take a break, but there's no time: somebody has to keep the kids laughing.  Plus he has a comedy class to teach at lunch.  Sully: "You can't keep going like this." 

Scene 4: The MIFT team pretends that a break room table is Tylor's new office.  

Troublemaker Duncan (Lucas Neff) gives him an assignment: a cannister that needs refurbishment, or it will explode in 20 seconds.  It explodes.  Duncan laughs evilly.

Lunch time: Tylor goes off to his comedy class.  The others are upset: what does he need  to learn comedy for?  It's almost as if he doesn't plan to stay here forever.

Scene 5: The comedy class.  While Mike goes through a powerpoint presentation, "10 Rules of Comedy,"  Tylor complains about the MIFT team.  Surprise!  They followed him.

Left: Lucas Neff

Scene 6:  Mike leaves the rest of the lecture to the stern HR director, Ms. Flint,  and runs to a door portal.  His girlfriend warns him that it's not safe, but he goes through anyway, and is trapped!  His girlfriend? Mike is more obvertly heterosexual than he was 20 years ago.  That's not progress!

The MIFT team rushes into action.  They restore power to the portal and get Mike back, but now he's trapped on a conveyor belt.  The "reverse" lever is rusted shut; no one has the strength to turn it -- except -- Tylor!  The newbie saves the day!

Scene 7:  While they are celebrating, Ms. Flint arrives to pick up  coworker Banana Bread's things.  She was so impressed by his "nuanced insight into comic theory" during the comedy class that she is promoting him to the Laugh Floor.  

Ouch!  But at least now there's a vacant desk, so Tylor gets one of his own. And a wrench with his name on it. The end.

There's also a segment called Mike's Comedy Class, where Mike sings about the dangers of comedy: the kid could "bust a gut," shatter into little pieces, fall out of bed and hit their head, or have their butts fall off.

Mike and Sully:  The increased time given to the girlfriend reduce the gay subtext, although there is a glimmer  when Sully affectionately feeds Mike a cup of coffee.

Tylor and ?:  Tylor doesn't display any heterosexual interest, but I didn't see anyone for him to have a gay subtext with.  Maybe Fritz, who is very, very interested in welcoming him to the team?  But Tylor finds his attention annoying

LGBTQ Representation:  Still no open representation, just some tentative subtexts.

See also: "Population 11": Ben Feldman in an outback town with aliens, meat pies, secrets, lies, and dicks, doesn't get the Girl