So after what happened with 100, I’ve been seeing posts about the Bury Your Gays trope. It’s a very important conversation to have, and I’ve definitely seen people on my dash talking about how they are just completely done with queer female characters dying in media. I’ve largely missed out on queer representation in media growing up, so I haven’t been overexposed to this trope.
But I have noticed black characters being killed off so much that I’ve been utterly done with the killing off of black characters in media in a similar fashion as I’ve seen people feel about the above trope. Does this have a trope name? And is there a similar list like there is with the bury your gays that I saw on my dash recently? I’ve been actually trying to find one to fully articulate how I’ve been feeling about that, but it definitely doesn’t feel like my place to make such a list… not to mention how large a task it is.
Well I’m white in a country that’s 99,9% white but even before the internet we used to call it ‘Black Guy Dies First’ because that was what happened in all the US movies that were ‘progressive’ (for the day, sadly they were, media moves so fucking slow) for including a black character in the main cast at all. Black guys were the obvious Redshirts.
Maybe try that on TV Tropes?
That helped actually. I think their lists might be sorely lacking. But thank you. Gave me a place to start.
The problem with this trope is that it is specifically a ‘first’ death, and my problem is simply with the vast amount of deaths. How I have to worry every time a black character steps on screen so long as it’s a show that sometimes kills off black characters. Once Upon a Time comes to mind. If a black character is on that show… well… I can only think of three exceptions of that here, where they survive, even with minor characters. They’re not always the first, but they don’t really survive. There’s a show I’m particularly angry with on this front, but I don’t know if it’s actually first deaths, and it’s in the middle of a series. It felt particularly cruel the way it was executed. 😦
Thoughtfulfangirling 