It isn’t the Bury Your Gays trope because there "isn't a happy ending." I'm sure we all can agree that would be a reductive/superficial take. While yes, historically speaking, queer representation in film is saturated with tragic endings, a tragic ending itself isn’t problematic. https://twitter.com/TracedThurman/status/1318048118844305408

The Bury Your Gays trope is about a larger truth: that even in *good* films and *good* TV, mainstream storytelling disproportionately dooms their queer characters and relationships to move the plot/benefit straight characters. Just read @VampAly's piece: http://filmandfishnet.com/bygtrope 

Tara and Willow are a pretty universally accepted example of BYG. A queer relationship, a tragic ending, and plot motivation for surviving straight characters. This is the most rudimentary understanding of the trope. These elements are all present in Jaime and Dani's story.

Maybe you can overlook that; at first I did. I thought it was beautifully heartbreaking when Jamie tries to drown herself and Dani, dead at the bottom of the lake, doesn’t take her. I thought, okay, so this negates BYG. Jamie has an actual chance at life; at eventual happiness.

But she doesn’t; the grief consumes her. Jaime is doomed to a life of solitude. Meanwhile, the children Dani has sacrificed herself for (a dangerous trope of its own) grow up with no memory of it. Owen wants to keep it this way, abruptly leading them out after Jamie's story ends.

You can say that gothic horror is supposed to be tragic, but that doesn’t account for all the characters it wasn’t tragic for: Flora, Miles, Owen, and Henry. Jaime watches the 4 of them joyfully dancing at a wedding (that she & Dani could have never had because it wasn’t legal).

What makes this ending suck the most? That Jamie finally finds happiness...in watching the happy endings the others got. As though her suffering, all of Dani’s pain, was worth it so that these 4 straight people can live happily and without the burden of her pain. And she SMILES.

GLAAD reports that queer characters die at a proportionally higher rate than heterosexuals. In fact, the last few years have been the deadliest for queer women (re: @VampAly's piece). That only reinforces the idea that queer relationships like Dani's are "intrinsically doomed.”

So why does any of this matter? We are a community who faces so much real life horror; more violence, higher suicide rates, the murder of black trans women. It isn’t just our stories that matter; it’s our endings. We need to encourage one another to think critically about them.

Am I saying Bly Manor is bad? No. There were moments I felt seen, moments I wept. It is entirely possible to both love imperfect material as well as interrogate it (why else would I be so enthusiastic about Sleepaway Camp 2?).

Take it from a dude who spent way too much money getting a degree in literature; this is not the only way to write an "authentic" gothic ending.

We need to start normalizing conversation about queer tropes in media. Especially in the stuff that we love.