Sunday, September 09, 2018

'The Loud House' Plans to Continue Luna's Bi-Sexual Story Arc

According to GLAAD, the world’s LGBTQ media advocacy organization, there’s been “a significant increase in new family programming which included LGBTQ characters.” Some of them include Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra, which ended with Korra and Asami, two of the shows female characters, embarking on a romantic relationship, with fans endearingly calling the couple 'Korrasami', and the McBride dads on Nickelodeon’s The Loud House. Although progress has been slow, LGBTQ representation in kids TV is getting better.


Avatar Korra and Asami on The Legend of Korra

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly for their From Steven Universe to Voltron: The fight to bring LGBTQ characters to kids' shows article, Michael Rubiner from Nickelodeon's hit animated series The Loud House revealed that he is confident in the progress made. He served as story editor until he took over for showrunner Chris Savino, but he says “there wasn’t any kind of feedback” from the network that he remembers when they introduced Clyde McBride’s two dads or when Luna Loud was revealed to have a crush on a female schoolmate.


Clyde McBride with his parents, Harold and Howard in Nickelodeon's The Loud House

“I do think that as the culture has progressed toward being more and more accepting, it’s easier now than it would have been five years, or certainly 10 years ago,” Rubiner says of incorporating these characters. With the McBrides, he points to a line before their introduction in the episode “Overnight Success” when Lincoln, talking to Clyde on a walkie before their sleepover, says, “Time to make history.”

“We meant the greatest-sleepover-ever history… It was this inside joke where we knew we were making kids animation history,” Rubiner says.

The showrunner reiterates that The Loud House is still a kids show geared towards children between the ages of 6 and 11, so even kisses between members of the opposite sex have to be treated in a certain manner — often times with comedy.



Luna Loud in Nickelodeon's The Loud House

Still, as the show continues its third season ahead of an official fourth on Nickelodeon, Rubiner says there are also plans in place to continue the arc of Luna, who was revealed to be Bi-Sexual when she sent a love letter to a girl named Sam in the episode "L Is for Love". He doesn’t have “any end point in mind for the two of them,” but “with 10 girls in the family,” it seemed natural “to explore one of them being LGBTQ.”

“We’re just taking it one episode at a time and sprinkling things in among the various seasons of the show,” he says. And that is always something to celebrate.

The Loud House was nominated in the 29th Annual GLAAD Media Awards earlier this year for the shows positive LGBTQ+ representation.

You can read Entertainment Weekly's full article, From Steven Universe to Voltron: The fight to bring LGBTQ characters to kids' shows, which also includes interviews with Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls), Joaquim Dos Santos (Voltron: Legendary Defender) and Daron Nefcy (Star vs. the Forces of Evil), here on EW.com.

More Nick: Nickelodeon Launches Year-Round 'That's Me' Campaign!
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