Bury Your Gays, by Chuck Tingle, is set to release on July 9, 2024.
Many thanks to Tor Nightfire for providing an eARC for review!
Thought-provoking, campy, and gruesome, Chuck Tingle proves that love is real once again in Bury Your Gays, an absolute triumph of queer horror that explores tropes, sexuality, and the impact of AI in the film industry and arts through up-and-coming gay screenwriter, Misha Byrne.
With the season three finale of Travelers (a queer sci-fi show in the same vein as The X-Files) on the horizon, not to mention an Oscar nomination, Misha Byrne is slowly but surely proving to be a queer (albeit closeted) star in Hollywood. Intent on creating the show he dreamed of seeing in childhood, Misha is adamant in his blunt refusal to stray from his grand finale: a confession, and shared kiss, between the lead lesbian detectives, the culmination of a subtle three-season-long slow burn romance. Despite his success, the algorithm – and Hollywood – has determined that the thing that will make the most money for Harold Brothers Studios is queer tragedy, but Misha will not bury the gays, not when the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be seen – and to experience queer joy.
When Misha decides that he will not be killing off his gay characters – fuck you very much – things get weird. A handful of ominous, eerie characters from his own works emerge in the form of freakishly accurate cosplaying stalkers bringing with them the past traumas from which they were created, and it is in these snippets – revealed through inspirational flashback chapters – that Tingle shines. Gritty, gruesome, and incredibly foreboding, Tingle seamlessly blends past, present, and dream in horrific, excruciating detail: it’s haunting, atmospheric, and downright eerie in execution as past trauma blends in with present fear in the form of chapter introductions written in screenplay format, as if Misha himself is nothing more than a role to be performed and dissected by Hollywood.
It’s frightening to know that all this – in some way or another – revolves around me, but there’s also an unexpected power that comes with discovering I’m the protagonist. I can be more than just the focus of this story, I can be the hero. I can drive the action.
– excerpt from Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays
Tension builds slowly, each chapter brimming with foreshadowing and unsettling suspense as we follow in Misha’s footsteps, navigating life through his eyes as he narrowly escapes death at the hands of his own creations: a mouthless, croaking, uncanny valley murderer; an innocent-on-the-outside eldritch horror; and, a mysterious and omnipotent sci-fi hivemind. Raw, real, and visceral, Misha’s fear, anxiety, and worry are palpable, propelling him to investigate cause and effect, aware, deep down, that this is the product of his own decisions, and that, somehow Hollywood is to blame.
Bury Your Gays is a terrifying countdown, a foreboding examination of art and technology in the entertainment industry – one that offers in-depth commentary and criticism on the impact of artificial intelligence and copyright. Gruesome, gritty and haunting, Bury Your Gays is explicit in its psychological and body horror elements, stemming from characters brought to life solely to make Misha’s a living hell.
Within the pages of this fast-paced, climatic romp, Tingle offers commentary on queer representation in media and the importance of seeing yourself in fiction and art, and brings yet another win, not just in the name of love, but in the name of asexuality. While Hollywood is quick to bury the gays, its even quicker to stereotype, dismiss, and infantilize asexual and aromantic characters, and Tingle knocks it out of the park through a seemingly inconsequential side character (a genius, intentional move on his part – one that only reinforces the idea he’s trying to make).
Some events are timeless, I guess, stuck between past, present, and future. They’re a different color than the rest. A different scale. A different tense. When you turn them into a screenplay or a song or a novel or even a piece of erotic fanfiction, these are the moments that will outlive your body.
– excerpt from Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays
Deeply atmospheric, action-packed, and simmering with latent, unsettling horror, Bury Your Gays is a cinematic masterpiece that dismantles queer tropes in horror (and makes many clever nods to TV and film), offers critical commentary on AI, identity, and marginalized representation in media and art, and encourages being confident and comfortable in your own skin. It’s a tale of corporate greed, capitalism, and queer erasure that ends on a hopeful, uplifting note that encourages found family and queer joy – a tale that blends styles through a bold, wry first-person perspective that is blunt, engaging, and incredibly real. Within the pages of Bury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle continues to make a name for himself as an exceptionally skilled writer that aims to prove that love is real in all forms.
Instead of staying quiet, I became a storyteller. I started raising my voice to anyone who would listen.
– excerpt from Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays
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