Objectified
is a Horror Webcomic created by Chester Fernandez. Taking inspiration from works such as Battle for Dream Island and Inanimate Insanity, Objectified focuses on a number of Animate Inanimate Objects at home in The Rings, a series of four circular districts.
Except there's a parasite apocalypse brewing. A Junji Ito styled apocalypse.
It all starts with a breaking news broadcast. So-called "mutant objects" are attacking Center Ring, the largest (and only) city in the region. These Eldritch Abominations resemble warped objects with fleshy, uncontrolled growths all over. And they're spreading fast. Order breaks down as residents are banned from going outside, violent riots overrun the streets, and entire swathes of the population vanish nearly overnight.
That's just the beginning.
The comic subsequently follows several Action Survivors swept up in the disaster. Each has their own individual goals, perspectives, and reasons for being in Center Ring.
Besides the visual similarities to most other Object Shows, Objectified is notable for expanding on many of their associated tropes (such as respawning), then using these for worldbuilding even beyond the scope of an apocalypse.
New episodes are released every other Friday, as well as the occasional Bonus Comic providing more insight into the world and its characters.
Objectified contains examples of:
- A Dog Named "Dog": Subverted. While most objects are simply referred to by their common names, they also each have unique "brand" names. Razor's name is Astra, while Gum's is Lendia.
- And I Must Scream: Assimilated objects retain their own souls, but also cannot be respawned, implying that some part of them remains alive. Carrot - or what's left of him - emits constant shrieking, and he is apparently coherent enough to beg for death. Painkiller obliges.
- Animal Motif: Bestial or "monster" objects have the limbs, diet, and mannerisms of a real-world animal.
- Atrocious Arthropods: The assimilated have insectoid features, such as wings and legs. They're also massive and absolutely horrifying to look at.
- Art Shift: Happens from time to time.
- The tale of Pilobolus is drawn with simple backgrounds and softer outlines, like a mythological storybook.
- Both Sugarcube and Brandy's Dream Sequences are stylized differently. The former lacks dialogue and is stark and expressionist, while the latter has a painterly, Deliberately Monochrome feel.
- Cast Full of Gay: Spool is a demiboy and gay, while Citrus is the latter, and Minty is gay and a trans male as well. Razor, Gum, Dragonscale, and Sharps are lesbian, with the last one also being a trans female. Mushroom and Dynamite are biromantic, Brandy, Painkiller, and A5 Wagyu are panromantic, Fossil is aromantic, and a demi girl. Comet is also a demigirl, but is quoiromantic, meaning she struggles to differentiate between platonic and romantic love. Fuzzball is an abroromantic, meaning her romantic feelings are fluid. Really, the only known straight characters are Sugarcube and Cattail, Mushroom's father, as there are many other LGBTQ+ characters all though-out the story.
- Closed Circle: Trains running to Center Ring are halted as news of the infection spreads, preventing the possibility of escape. The Rings themselves are surrounded by the Outskirts, which are vast and empty enough to make travel nearly impossible, especially for carnivores (who would risk certain starvation). This reason in particular is why Brandy and his family choose to stay within the city.
- Content Warnings: Episodes that contain particularly graphic violence or other heavy themes (such as drug use or transphobia) have content warnings showing the chalk drawings of the main characters in the episode.
- Crapsack World: The Rings, post-outbreak. From the hordes of assimilated objects that infect on-contact, bands of violent bandits, dwindling resources, inevitable chance-based insanity and extremely hostile weather shifts, only the most determined and luckiest objects survive the earliest and easy stages of the outbreak.
- Death Is Cheap: Downplayed. Respawn terminals can bring a dead object back to life, but only the wealthy can afford to use them. Unfortunately, even the collapse of Center Ring doesn't make them any more accessible, as most of the city's terminals only produce assimilated objects. Razor and Gum team up specifically to search for a functioning terminal.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The world around Wagyu rapidly loses color when he's rushed by an assimilated object, and the saturation only returns once the object wanders off without harming him. In a later episode, Brandy's Dream Sequence is rendered entirely in simplified grayscale.
- Dissonant Serenity: The pillars of smoke coming from the Center Ring don't concern Comet at all, she even remarks the city looks pretty from a distance.
- Erotic Dream: After taking a faceful of chemicals trying to make fertilizer, Painkiller passes out and starts hallucinating Carrot, who they've been hearing about from Fossil, but have only known personally as an assimilated screaming mass. Hallucination Carrot is not only more than cool with the fact that Painkiller mercy killed him, but starts coming onto and caressing them.
- Eyeless Face: Infected objects have black voids for eyes.
- Kill It with Fire: The most effective way of killing the assimilated is with fire. Brandy and Minty use molotov cocktails while Dragonscale uses her fire blast.
- Marijuana Is LSD: Briefly, when Dragonscale forces Gum into smoking one of her joints.
- Mushroom Samba: Gum and Dragonscale's trip is nothing short of a saturated fever-dream as they dash down colorful, shifting hallways lined with sheets and glowing stars. Gum herself is even briefly replaced with a real stick of gum.
- Parasitic Horror
- Parasite Zombie: The assimilated.are basically this.
- Predation Is Natural: Carnivorous bestial objects must eat meat to survive. As revealed in "Order and Law", a world full of talking, sentient objects does not spare one from another, and Razor's family acts much like a wolf pack while hunting live prey. Bestial objects living in Center Ring eat farmed meat, animal products (such as eggs) and "dry crunchies".
- Dynamite struggles with this a lot. Once the pre-packaged meat spoils, there's only so many sources of meat left in the Rings...
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Zig-Zagged. Both Citrus and Mushroom have red eyes, but while Citrus is a cold-blooded killer that feeds on souls, Mushroom is markedly less hostile (though still very strong in her own right). Apparently big red eyes are a common trait of faux objects, who often have some "special secret trick" up their sleeves.
- Sickly Green Glow: Threespines' egstrom soaks Center Ring in a thick green flood, spreading eggs and parasites everywhere.
- Synthetic Plague: Objects respawned from most terminals are automatically infected. Parasite larvae are themselves made from printer materials, meaning someone deliberately coded The Virus.
- Voice Changeling: One of the advanced parasites, ID_SHROUD, has the ability to mimic other object's voices for the purpose of luring in prey.
- The Virus: Parasites turn whatever they make contact with into Eldritch Abominations.
- Working with the Ex: Minty and Brandy are forced into cohabitation with each other and their daughter after their divorce. First due to Maple Syrup's unexpected leave, and then because of the apocalypse.