Bury your gays

A recurrent pattern in the media portrayal of LGBTQ people is that queer characters face tragic fates, including death, much more often than straight characters. Viewers have called this trope "bury your gays" or "dead lesbian syndrome".

This reflection of once widespread homophobia drew mainstream attention in the 2010s through publicized examples such as the death of the character Lexa in the The 100 television series. The controversy and discussion resulting from these examples led some creators of popular fiction to consciously avoid harmful tropes and present more positive portrayals of LGBTQ characters.

Prevalence

Across media, gay or lesbian characters tend to meet unhappy endings such as heartbreak, loss, insanity, depression or imprisonment. In many cases, they end up dying, either through suicide, homophobic attacks, illness or other means. Viewers have called this trope "bury your gays" and "dead lesbian syndrome".^[5]

This happens especially often in television shows.^[6][7] According to Autostraddle, which examined 1,779 scripted U.S. television series from 1976 to 2016, 11% (193) of them featured lesbian or bisexual female characters, and among these, 35% saw lesbian or bisexual characters dead, while only 16% provided a happy ending for them. Similarly, among all lesbian or bisexual characters in ended series, 31% ended up dead, and only 10% received a happy ending.^[8] In a study of 242 character deaths in the 2015–2016 television season, Vox reported that "A full 10 percent of deaths [were] queer women."^[9] In one month of 2016, four lesbian or bisexual women were killed in four shows, further showcasing the prevalence of this occurrence on screen.^[7] Such statistics led Variety to conclude in 2016 that "the trope is alive and well on TV, and fictional lesbian and bisexual women in particular have a very small chance of leading long and productive lives".^[2]

GLAAD's 2016 TV report stated:

While much improvement has been made and TV remains incredibly far ahead of film in terms of LGBTQ representation, it must be made clear that television – and broadcast series more specifically – failed queer women this year as character after character was killed. This is especially disappointing as this very report just last year called on broadcast content creators to do better by lesbian and bisexual women after superfluous deaths on Chicago Fire and Supernatural. This continues a decades-long trend of killing LGBTQ characters – often solely to further a straight, cisgender character's plotline – which sends a dangerous message to audiences. It is important that creators do not reinvigorate harmful tropes, which exploit an already marginalized community.^[10]

LGBTQ characters also go through similar things in other fiction, such as video games, where, according to Kotaku, LGBT characters are "largely defined by a pain that their straight counterparts do not share". Facing challenges that "serve as an in-world analogy for anti-LGBTQ bigotry", these characters are defined by tragedy that denies them a chance at happiness.^[11] While games like The Last of Us or Life Is Strange forward LGBTQ representation in the gaming sphere by featuring queer lead characters, they still fall victim to tragedy or death. The Last of Us DLC features lead character Ellie engaging in a brief moment of queerness not long before her love interest dies, and the game's sequel features Ellie as an openly queer woman yet continues to emotionally torture her.^[12]

Reactions

The death of Lexa in the CW's The 100 sparked viewer outrage and widespread controversy, becoming one of the first deaths to draw mainstream attention. Fans took to the internet to voice their frustrations and spearheaded initiatives to help bring about change.^[2][1] The 100 showrunner Jason Rothenberg later admitted to his mistake of perpetuating the trope, stating: "I would've done some things differently."^[13][2]

In an attempt to combat this, the writers of the show Saving Hope, in collaboration with LGBTQ activist organization The Trevor Project, established the Lexa Pledge, a plea to showrunners and TV writers to do better by their LGBTQ characters. The pledge details numerous ways that writers can better represent the LGBTQ community by providing queer characters with meaningful storylines and to avoid killing them off to forward the plot of a straight character.^[14] The pledge was met with support with writers from shows like The Catch and Rookie Blue signing the pledge.

However, some showrunners, most notably Grey's Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff, acknowledged the importance of the pledge in raising awareness but felt it could limit storytelling abilities and halt progress in terms of onscreen representations of queer characters.^[15] When the final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power premiered in 2020, showrunner ND Stevenson said that he could not "see another gay character die on TV for the moment. Maybe one day we can have a tragic gay romance again, but that has been, like, the only norm for so long."^[16]

Avoidance

Increasing awareness and criticism of the trope has influenced creators to attempt to avoid it. In 2018, Star Trek: Discovery aired an episode in which a gay character played by Wilson Cruz was killed. Immediately after the episode aired, Cruz, GLAAD, and the showrunners released reassuring statements intimating that the character's death may not be final, with specific reference to avoiding the cliché.^[17] In the following season, Cruz's character returned from the dead by science-fictional means, and Cruz was added to the main cast.

Elsewhere, Schitt's Creek writer and creator Dan Levy acknowledged that he wanted the relationship between David and Patrick to steer clear of tragedy and heartbreak in an open response to the growing trend of unhappy queer characters across the media landscape.^[18] Cast members of the show Yellowjackets were relieved to hear that the show chose to avoid the killing or mistreating of LGBT characters unfairly and were willing to take a stand to ensure the appropriate treatment of the onscreen queer characters.^[19]