The amazing trace: Comedy Central parodies reality TV with the animated--and queer-friendly --Drawn Together.

Everyone from our high school thinks we're gay," says Dave Jeser, who, along with his boyhood friend, Matt Silverstein, created Drawn Together, TV's first animated "reality" series. After the show premieres October 27 on Comedy Central, they'll have even more explaining to do.

The pair, fresh from stints on Greg the Bunny and Crank Yankers, have invited reps from every cartoon cliche to live in their animated house, including an action star (Captain Hero), a fairy tale princess (Clara), an anime thingamabob (Ling-Ling), and a Betty Boop-like black-and-white character from the 1920s (Toot Braunstein). Naturally, they all come equipped with the camera-hogging personality traits and unhealthy narcissism we've come to know from watching too many episodes of The Real World.

By the end of the first episode the sheltered Clara makes out with Foxxy Love, the female crime-fighting musician, in the inevitable hot tub scene; this time around, though, it's set to what seems to be a decidedly Disney-ish love anthem, until you hear the lyrics ("What's that in my mouth...?"). In the third episode, androgynous Xandir, who's on a "never-ending quest to save his girlfriend," is outed by his housemates. "The joke is that all the other characters have had way more gay experiences than he has," says Silverstein. "Captain Hero has done some weird things to get into the House of Heroes," adds Jeser.