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INTEREST: Sailor Uranus & Neptune Make It to LogoTV's Character Semi-Finals

Nights1stStar wrote:

What annoys me is that some of the earlier candidates in the tournament were actually NOT confirmed as gay or lesbian in their shows. If you look at the list: Velma from Scooby Doo? Buttercup from Powerpuff Girls? Gaston and Genie from the Disney movies? Daria from Daria?!

I think many, if not all, of the characters that are being listed here are considered "gay icon" characters. They are characters from animation that kids who are LGBT tend to associate with because they feel they are "just like them" and so for many of these children the characters are "gay." Still, I'm not sure how Jigglypuff fits but Pokemon isn't a strong point for shows I know something about.

However, I do know why Velma from ScoobyDoo is considered "gay." The four main human characters from ScoobyDoo were lifted and re-imaged from a 1950's show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Velma and Shaggy are so clearly Zelda Gilroy & Maynard G. Krebs that even I picked up on it when I first saw the show on Nick at Night in the 1980s without knowing the full story(which has come out subsequently).

However, I do know why Velma from ScoobyDoo is considered "gay." The four main human characters from ScoobyDoo were lifted and re-imaged from a 1950's show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Velma and Shaggy are so clearly Zelda Gilroy & Maynard G. Krebs that even I picked up on it when I first saw the show on Nick at Night in the 1980s without knowing the full story(which has come out subsequently). Zelda was played by a actress who later grew up to become a gay rights advocate. I read a article where she mentioned that while she personally didn't realize she was gay until later (she was still a teen I think when she was doing the show) the shows production team and writers thought she was gay and part of the subtext for the character was that even though she was chasing the male lead from the show, Zelda was gay (part of the humor, which would be questionable these days IMO but not in the late 50s/early 60s). Also the boy chasing got this past Standards and Practices who wouldn't have allowed a gay character on TV during that time.

Anyway, the creators of ScoobyDoo have acknowledged that they lifted the leads out of the other show for theirs, with enough changes to make sure no one got into legal problems. However, it took Hanna Barbara almost a decade to get ScoobyDoo onto TV & Dobie Gillis didn't get re-aired on TV (or at least not re-aired in wide enough syndication) until the 1980s (I think it was lack of enough episodes for strip syndication and/or a legal issue that was cleared up until then that caused this). So many people, myself included, never caught on until later, while others who had parents who saw the live action show did catch on (Dobie Gillis was a huge show at the time it aired but my parents didn't seem to have ever watch it). So that's how many have come to think of Velma as gay.

I'm not sure why Betty Deville was there either