BURY YOUR GAYS by Chuck Tingle

Book Review

Matthew Johns

In the near future, the big Hollywood studios are ruled by algorithms – carefully calculating what will keep the audiences entertained and making sometimes quite big changes to achieve what seems like marginal gains, but when you’re dealing with billions of dollars, a percentage point or two can make a big difference.

Misha is a scriptwriter – he’s seemingly got it all. He’s successful and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But behind the scenes, he’s a little jaded by it all. He’s a closeted gay – hasn’t had the courage to come out and admit it due to childhood trauma and good old-fashioned fear, and has a very understanding and patient boyfriend who puts up with that. The studio he works for is releasing a film that has an entirely AI-generated lead character based on a dead actor, and he’s feeling like things are getting out of control.

His successful series has openly gay lead characters, and he’s just been given an ultimatum by the studio head – kill off one of the gay leads to appease the algorithm, or be cancelled and “never work in this town again”. Naturally, he sticks to his guns and refuses to kill off his gay character, but then finds that things start to get a bit weird, and he realises that there’s more at stake than just his job. He finds himself confronting what he first thinks are fans cosplaying characters from his TV show, but soon realises that perhaps there’s another explanation…

‘Bury your gays’ is a literary trope that has been around for over a century – it refers to an LGBTQ+ character being killed off. Sometimes they’re the only queer character, sometimes they’re part of a same-sex couple, and when one of the lovers is killed off, the other suddenly realises that they weren’t gay and immediately falls into a heterosexual relationship, living happily ever after. It’s received a lot of coverage in recent years and, thankfully, has become a little less common in our more (mostly) inclusive times.

Tingle (I rather suspect that Chuck Tingle might be a pseudonym, but what a great pen name to use!) creates a very believable world here. It’s really not that far from our own – social media is rife, everyone is recording everything all the time, and big business tracks this for their own ends. Misha is a great character – a flawed genius, understandable, easy to empathise with and relate to, coming from humble beginnings. He makes mistakes (lots of mistakes!) but lives with them. The narrative makes him confront a traumatic childhood and learn from that, helping him grow as an individual.

The writing is excellent – it’s a great horror tale that takes you on a journey through a Hollywood that you might almost recognise. It’s knowingly satirical at times – Misha knows horror, and he knows the characters that he wrote, so he uses that knowledge in his bid for survival. This is edge-of-the-seat stuff at times, and Misha’s journey is hard, but it’s a great read. Misha learns, grows, and becomes a better person – able to embrace himself and forgive those who wronged him in the past.