Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.
 

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale—"for the algorithm "—Misha discovers that it's not that simple.
 

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right—before it's too late.

Bury Your Gays’ title alone is one way to get someone’s attention followed by an earnest bit of social commentary on media culture wrapped up in a comedically ridiculous premise. Sub 300 pages complimented by a casual and functional prose, Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays is a light campy horror novel that is easy to like and has a lot of things going on. With bits of body violence/gore, homophobia, and child neglect, it’s not always a rosy read, but it’s still quick and generally light-hearted. Despite appreciating its aspirations and blend of different elements, I personally found it to be a bit dry to read and disjointed in content. It’s certainly ambitious with its themes and plot, but it feels like it was trying to do too much without excelling at any one area.

An established screenwriter known for campy horror movies/tv-shows with underlying queer elements, the narrative switches back and forth between the present day in LA vs Misha’s memories of his upbringing. Without giving away too many spoilers, these flashbacks are told out of chronological order and are meant to give the reader insight into how Misha’s interest in storytelling was shaped by a tumultuous childhood where he grappled with his sexuality. These memories break up the main storyline in the present where characters from his past movies and tv-shows are seemingly coming to life and intent on killing him in-character to how they were written. At the same time that this is all happening, Misha is nominated for an Academy Award for a short live action movie he wrote and is tasked with writing the finale to a tv-show he created, one in which he is forced to “bury the gays” by killing his queer main characters for ratings and the algorithm.

Creative on paper, in practice the two parts didn’t quite mesh well for me. The loose horror/thriller story in the present was quite campy and purposely over the top, which was quite tonally different from Misha’s childhood memories which were far more serious and dramatic. I frequently found Misha’s memories to be far more interesting due the personal reflection and unfortunately common experiences many queer kids go through, and while their effects on his work and characters were creative on paper, something about the excitement and interest got lost in the process. The main horror/thriller element was also in an odd spot where I wanted it to either be pulpier and even more campy, or I wanted it to lean heavier into the psychological horror of being hunted. The horror was usually fairly mild and of PG-rated eerie situations, but then out of nowhere it would get pretty graphic in terms of violence and body horror. There are a few parts where the horror/thriller element was excellent (I particularly enjoyed when Misha is trapped on an in-flight airplane with one of his creations) but the horror largely felt inconsistent. The last third of the book also involved a science-fiction edge related to AI, technology, and algorithms which is loosely hinted at, but the sharp scifi pivot felt underdevelopment. The reveal, plot twist and direction itself was ambitious and quite creative, but it felt rushed and felt implemented purely as a plot device with many details omitted or skimmed over. The story goes in a pretty unexpected direction with surprisingly relevant commentary at its conclusion, but I found it to be too brief. The entire closing chapters could have easily been expanded to at least 50 pages or more to really nail the commentary on queer culture and the media it was trying to reflect on. That being said, it’s length and simplistic take on the material certainly makes it very accessible to read and as mainstream as you can make it with this premise.

Speaking of commentary, Bury Your Gays has a lot of great commentary on queer culture and experiences. The commentary and relevancy to the entertainment industry in particular, feels very appropriately LA-based. Before even getting into the LGBTQ+ elements, Bury Your Gays takes a meta swing (pun intended) at the use of AI for celebrity likeness, dictating artistic choices based on the perceived AI algorithms and ratings, perceived capitalism over art, and of course sentient technology. Chuck Tingle pulled basically every contentious element in the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes and made an entire horror thriller based off of them. That alone would make a compelling story, but he also layers that with themes involving queer erasure from the entertainment industry and media, being quietly or conveniently out, and perhaps the most interesting one, sanitized pure queer representation purely for the sake of mass 21st century appeal. I found the commentary to be relevant and well done with the current media trends, especially the extreme “yaaasss” culture often pushed by executives who have no clue what they’re doing.

Despite the commentary and ambition, I unfortunately didn’t really get into the book itself. I found the horror to be one of the weaker elements of the story that really needed to be darker or more comedic, which is a problem when it’s the main focus. I also found Misha’s relationships with his best friend Tara and his boyfriend Zeke to be underdeveloped as well, which weakens the suspense and urgency when they’re caught as collateral during Misha’s stalking. As a character and boyfriend, Zeke is completely cookiecutter and politely supportive despite his relationship with Misha being a crucial part of Misha’s adult and out life. Outside of Misha, the character work in general felt a bit weak and I could see lots of opportunities where a little more time and pages spent in places would have pushed the book to new levels. Childhood classmate Ritchie during Misha’s high school reunion felt like it missed a major character growth moment for Misha and actress Blossom who starred in Misha’s past film also could’ve been used for even better commentary after her indie film project involving queer teenage trauma is introduced and never revisited (apart from a two paragraph mention during the book’s climax, I actually forgot she existed until this happened). I get that Bury Your Gays primarily focused on the horror and Misha’s growing confidence with his identity which these other characters have limited contributions to, but it’s still a bit of a letdown that it didn’t do more with these opportunities.

As a whole, I liked Bury Your Gays. However I felt like I ultimately appreciated what it was trying to do on paper more than reading the actual story itself. While not weak by any means and actually being quite good, it felt like the book needed at least another 100 or more pages to really push into the great category. I can see this being very well-received by readers looking for more queer representation (or books commentating on representation) which is one of the stronger elements of the book, but if you’re picking this up for the horror or science fiction angles, I might recommend tempering down those expectations.

As a side note in case you’re wondering, considering Chuck Tingle’s infamous for his mostly gay (and general queer) absurdist monster erotica, Bury Your Gays has no romance or spice involved. Bury Your Gays plays its genres straight, no butt-worshipping or pounding erotica today (sorry not sorry, that dad joke was far too tempting).