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You have a show you like a lot. Or a comic series, or a book, or a movie, or some piece of media you enjoy. One of its characters is at some point revealed to be into people of the same gender. Hey, that's pretty cool. That character might even have a significant other! They might even appear on screen together once or twice! And while you, yourself, are straight, you're totally fine with this. Heck, you've even written some well-received slash fic/drawn some well-received art/etc. at some point! You're not one of those straight fans! Certainly not! You are a good straight fan and you are totally fine with this and happy for your fellow fans who aren't straight! They've got representation! This is a good thing!
But then one or both of the characters in question just... up and gets killed off.
Usually shortly after they're confirmed to be a couple. Sometimes under questionable circumstances, and/or as the result of weirdly OOC decisions made by one or both.
Well, you think, that sure sucks but characters get killed off all the time, right? And the show goes on, and it's a useful way to demonstrate how high the stakes are for these people, and that's just how it goes in stories like this sometimes.
But then you log on to your online fandom gathering spot of choice and... people are unhappy? Very unhappy? Angry, even? Really angry? Ragequitting the the show/game/movie/whatever angry? And you oh-so-helpfully try to explain that you understand people getting attached to characters and even ships but really, is this amount of angry even called for?
And that... that is not well-received by your fellow fans who aren't straight. At all.
What the hell just happened here?
*pulls up cushy chair next to fireplace*
*sits down*
*lights pipe*
What happened here, my friend, is that this show just straight up (no pun intended) pulled a Bury Your Gays, and your fellow fans who aren't straight are sick of this shit and rightly so, and you felt the need to insert yourself into the conversation to tell them that from your straight-person POV this was really not that big a deal and they just need to get over it.
"Bury Your Gays? I am not familiar with this term, please enlighten me."
The short version: this shitty thing that keeps happening in media, where LGBTQ+ characters get written out of the thing so the writers don't have to worry about how they're going to show a same-sex couple or a trans person on screen in a way that won't upset their straight fans for the rest of the movie/season/book/whatever--and they usually do this by killing 'em off. Frequently in... really stupid ways.
For the long version I'm going to direct you to this post which goes into great detail about the history of the Bury Your Gays trope, and why it is so shitty for any bit of media to still be doing it in the year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen. Yes, that particular post is kind of fandom-specific, but the history lesson therein is applicable to pretty much every instance of this bullshit.
Now that you know something about the history of this Godawful trope, perhaps now you understand why your fellow fans who aren't straight are pissed.
"So... they're mad because... their ship got sunk? But that happens all the time."
...
Friend, if you think a negative reaction from LGBTQ+ fans to their show pulling a BYG is about shipping, you have clearly not been paying attention.
"OK but all this angry meta is disrespectful to the creators!"
Yeah, you kiiiiiind of sort of have a point on that one because fandoms these days... wew lad. Listen, folks: it is never okay to scream hate and abuse at people who create things you love. Okay? It never ends well for anyone. Please don't do it.
HOWEVER: creators do fuck up sometimes. And there is a huge ass gulf of a difference between screaming abuse directly at a creator, and fans talking amongst themselves about the shitty thing their favorite show just pulled. And it is in EXTREMELY poor taste for you, a straight person, to powerslide into a civil discussion not-straight fans are having amongst themselves about the shitty thing their favorite show just did to a LGBTQ+ character with your "OMG SHUT UP IT WAS PERFECT U GAYS ARE JUST MEAN" bullshit.
I saw way too much of this fuckery, almost all of it from straight slash fangirls, many of them otherwise reasonable people, in the wake of one of the most recent burying of gays by a show. Y'all need to stop that shit. You're entitled to your opinion. So are your fellow fans who aren't straight and who don't agree with you that the thing was perfect.
And let's be honest here. Are you really upset because you think LGBTQ+ fans discussing a creator's poor handling of LGBTQ+ characters is disrespectful to the creator? Smart money says you probably aren't and there's some other issue in play here and it might be something you need to sit down and do some serious self-examination on.
"Well, what do you want the creator to do? Retcon it?"
In most cases, unless the media in question deals with like... Homestuck-level time and space fuckery, or is Supernatural and the dead gay isn't a woman (ok tbh I quit watching after they killed Bobby off--have they gotten better about killing women off in shitty ways or nah?), bringing the dead character back probably isn't feasible.
So...we have to focus on how the creators will handle the issue in the future.
A genuine apology, one that indicates that the creator has listened to feedback from actual LGBTQ+ fans and knows what they did wrong, is a good start.
"well we didn't MEAN it like that" is not. Stomping on someone's foot and then saying "well I didn't MEAN to stomp on your foot, gawd" doesn't magically make the foot be unstomped.
"Sorry you're mad about your ship" is not. Again, if they'd been paying attention they would know it isn't about goddamn SHIPPING.
"The network wouldn't let us have gays :(" in a show targeted at teens, young adults, and adult adults, in which straight characters have smooched on screen, is not. Not when there's an onscreen same-sex wedding in a show aimed at grade schoolers over on the Cartoon Network.
"Sure we spent weeks/months/years hyping this relationship and there's promo art of the characters together and we talked at great length about their relationship in interviews and stuff but we never planned on it to be that big a thing, we don't understand why y'all got so attached to it" is definitely not. Come on. What the fuck.
"We dropped the ball on this, we are sorry, we are listening to you, and we will do better" is.
(Also giving the survivor a new possible love interest and maybe not fucking killing this one off could help too, because The Forever-Mourning Celibate Gay trope that so often comes riding in on the coattails of Bury Your Gays is pretty shitty too. I am just saying.)
"Beefgnaw, you can say [insert name of show/book/movie/etc here], it's okay"
........yeah, okay, this rant has in fact come after a couple of weeks of being extremely salty about a thing that happened on one specific show and if you look at my interest list you can probably guess which one, but look, it's not just that one. It keeps happening, and it is time for this trope to go away. And until it does it would be super cool if you straight fans could be a little more understanding about why it's so goddamn upsetting when shows/etc. keep fucking killing off characters like us. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
But then one or both of the characters in question just... up and gets killed off.
Usually shortly after they're confirmed to be a couple. Sometimes under questionable circumstances, and/or as the result of weirdly OOC decisions made by one or both.
Well, you think, that sure sucks but characters get killed off all the time, right? And the show goes on, and it's a useful way to demonstrate how high the stakes are for these people, and that's just how it goes in stories like this sometimes.
But then you log on to your online fandom gathering spot of choice and... people are unhappy? Very unhappy? Angry, even? Really angry? Ragequitting the the show/game/movie/whatever angry? And you oh-so-helpfully try to explain that you understand people getting attached to characters and even ships but really, is this amount of angry even called for?
And that... that is not well-received by your fellow fans who aren't straight. At all.
What the hell just happened here?
*pulls up cushy chair next to fireplace*
*sits down*
*lights pipe*
What happened here, my friend, is that this show just straight up (no pun intended) pulled a Bury Your Gays, and your fellow fans who aren't straight are sick of this shit and rightly so, and you felt the need to insert yourself into the conversation to tell them that from your straight-person POV this was really not that big a deal and they just need to get over it.
"Bury Your Gays? I am not familiar with this term, please enlighten me."
The short version: this shitty thing that keeps happening in media, where LGBTQ+ characters get written out of the thing so the writers don't have to worry about how they're going to show a same-sex couple or a trans person on screen in a way that won't upset their straight fans for the rest of the movie/season/book/whatever--and they usually do this by killing 'em off. Frequently in... really stupid ways.
For the long version I'm going to direct you to this post which goes into great detail about the history of the Bury Your Gays trope, and why it is so shitty for any bit of media to still be doing it in the year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen. Yes, that particular post is kind of fandom-specific, but the history lesson therein is applicable to pretty much every instance of this bullshit.
Now that you know something about the history of this Godawful trope, perhaps now you understand why your fellow fans who aren't straight are pissed.
"So... they're mad because... their ship got sunk? But that happens all the time."
...
Friend, if you think a negative reaction from LGBTQ+ fans to their show pulling a BYG is about shipping, you have clearly not been paying attention.
"OK but all this angry meta is disrespectful to the creators!"
Yeah, you kiiiiiind of sort of have a point on that one because fandoms these days... wew lad. Listen, folks: it is never okay to scream hate and abuse at people who create things you love. Okay? It never ends well for anyone. Please don't do it.
HOWEVER: creators do fuck up sometimes. And there is a huge ass gulf of a difference between screaming abuse directly at a creator, and fans talking amongst themselves about the shitty thing their favorite show just pulled. And it is in EXTREMELY poor taste for you, a straight person, to powerslide into a civil discussion not-straight fans are having amongst themselves about the shitty thing their favorite show just did to a LGBTQ+ character with your "OMG SHUT UP IT WAS PERFECT U GAYS ARE JUST MEAN" bullshit.
I saw way too much of this fuckery, almost all of it from straight slash fangirls, many of them otherwise reasonable people, in the wake of one of the most recent burying of gays by a show. Y'all need to stop that shit. You're entitled to your opinion. So are your fellow fans who aren't straight and who don't agree with you that the thing was perfect.
And let's be honest here. Are you really upset because you think LGBTQ+ fans discussing a creator's poor handling of LGBTQ+ characters is disrespectful to the creator? Smart money says you probably aren't and there's some other issue in play here and it might be something you need to sit down and do some serious self-examination on.
"Well, what do you want the creator to do? Retcon it?"
In most cases, unless the media in question deals with like... Homestuck-level time and space fuckery, or is Supernatural and the dead gay isn't a woman (ok tbh I quit watching after they killed Bobby off--have they gotten better about killing women off in shitty ways or nah?), bringing the dead character back probably isn't feasible.
So...we have to focus on how the creators will handle the issue in the future.
A genuine apology, one that indicates that the creator has listened to feedback from actual LGBTQ+ fans and knows what they did wrong, is a good start.
"well we didn't MEAN it like that" is not. Stomping on someone's foot and then saying "well I didn't MEAN to stomp on your foot, gawd" doesn't magically make the foot be unstomped.
"Sorry you're mad about your ship" is not. Again, if they'd been paying attention they would know it isn't about goddamn SHIPPING.
"The network wouldn't let us have gays :(" in a show targeted at teens, young adults, and adult adults, in which straight characters have smooched on screen, is not. Not when there's an onscreen same-sex wedding in a show aimed at grade schoolers over on the Cartoon Network.
"Sure we spent weeks/months/years hyping this relationship and there's promo art of the characters together and we talked at great length about their relationship in interviews and stuff but we never planned on it to be that big a thing, we don't understand why y'all got so attached to it" is definitely not. Come on. What the fuck.
"We dropped the ball on this, we are sorry, we are listening to you, and we will do better" is.
(Also giving the survivor a new possible love interest and maybe not fucking killing this one off could help too, because The Forever-Mourning Celibate Gay trope that so often comes riding in on the coattails of Bury Your Gays is pretty shitty too. I am just saying.)
"Beefgnaw, you can say [insert name of show/book/movie/etc here], it's okay"
........yeah, okay, this rant has in fact come after a couple of weeks of being extremely salty about a thing that happened on one specific show and if you look at my interest list you can probably guess which one, but look, it's not just that one. It keeps happening, and it is time for this trope to go away. And until it does it would be super cool if you straight fans could be a little more understanding about why it's so goddamn upsetting when shows/etc. keep fucking killing off characters like us. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
