Contents:
- THE LAST OF US PART 2 BURI ITS GAYS BEFORE RELEASE (AND MAYBE THAT’S OKAY)
- THE LAST OF US’ GEO GAY LOVE STORY COULD NOT BE MORE TIMELY
- HBO’S THE LAST OF US IMPROV ON THE GAME’S IMPLIED GAY ROMANCE
- ‘THE LAST OF US’ CONFIRMED THAT BILL WAS GAY YEARS AGO
- EVIL: GAY MEN REPORTEDLY HAVE THEIR BABY KILLED AFTER SURROGATE GETS BREAST CANCER
THE LAST OF US PART 2 BURI ITS GAYS BEFORE RELEASE (AND MAYBE THAT’S OKAY)
The Last Of Us Part 2 Buri Its Gays Before Release (And Maybe That’s Okay). As a queer woman, yeah, I hate watchg gay people die thgs. NYR1[Spoiler] It's que te that LGBT characters die, but the ndown of precise inti by the prev menter is somewhat misleadg, makg seem like all of the queer characters are potentially progrsive, posive reprentatn sufferg only om a se of Bury Your Gays.
What we got stead was a psule episo, and a particularly bracg one, given the show’s opprsively bleak mood th far: The hour is dited to the love story of Bill and Frank, a gay uple who—due ially to Bill’s skills as a bunker-stockg, booby-trappg, Don’t Tread on Me survivalist—manage to build a largely happy existence together an abandoned and eventually fortified ral hamlet for almost 20 years.
Wh Bill and Frank, we were given a portra of love—specifilly gay love—that feels surprisg and urgent.
THE LAST OF US’ GEO GAY LOVE STORY COULD NOT BE MORE TIMELY
In our own 2023, we are not exactly lackg for media imag of whe gay men. For one thg, we see gay sire portrayed all s plexy, but wh a touch as light as a breeze playg through curtas.
Bill’s is not a “type” of gay man I n say I’ve ever seen mastream media before, and watchg him slowly reveal and epen that aspect of himself wh Frank’s help—sexually, y (Hollywood: more hairy bear love scen please!
HBO’S THE LAST OF US IMPROV ON THE GAME’S IMPLIED GAY ROMANCE
But Bill and Frank create somethg else, a ltle oasis of their own that’s regnizably gay, full of quiet bety and joys the size of new strawberri. Frank wants to fix up the block and some of the “not stupid” shops—the we and furnure stor, the clothg boutique—bee he hop they might one day have unfected guts (which they eventually do, the form of Joel and Ts), but really bee makg thgs nice, pecially when nicens isn’t valued, is one of the great gay llgs.
‘THE LAST OF US’ CONFIRMED THAT BILL WAS GAY YEARS AGO
As an echo of the gay experience wh AIDS, is, as veteran activist Peter Staley put a Facebook post, a ftg tribute to the “tenr love & bravery gay men summoned when facg ath durg the plague years, cludg those who did so on their own terms. How powerful, then, to see not only a gay uple given an entire hour of a marquee show, but a gay uple who are held up as the keepers of civilizatn, as stewards of bety, as emblems of human digny and possibily. She told CNN that, while playg the game for the first time, her “gaydar pged” when Bill mentned his “partner, ” but by the time she read Frank’s suici note, she wonred if she’d misunrstood – maybe the pair were jt bs partners and nothg more, she thought.
” Riley MacLeod of the Washgton Post noted that however movg their story was to viewers, Bill and Frank still “fall to well-worn gay ath trop” – a gay man phg another gay man, sickened by an unknown disease, a wheelchair; an image often shown storyl about HIV-posive characters – and are seemgly the “only two queer people the world.
A cric for Logo TV wrote that the game rced Bill to a “punchle” after Ellie jok about a gay porn magaze she fds. Fanbyte reported on Bill’s stg the TV seri as a “gay (the show) will probably bury. ” Even the wily praised 2022 remake of the game was a “remr of s ‘bury your gays’ romance, ” said Ja Kg of The Gamer, an article that year.
EVIL: GAY MEN REPORTEDLY HAVE THEIR BABY KILLED AFTER SURROGATE GETS BREAST CANCER
(The “bury your gays” trope refers to the equent killg off of gay characters media. “To get almost two full s wh someone you love is a gift, and to get a time of so much ath and stctn feels even more special, so ’s really nice to see happen for gay people, ” she told CNN. Bill is gay the game, but ’s referenced so vaguely that plenty of players missed .
The cisn to keep muted, hted at a sgle le of dialogue and a hidn letter, was both praised and cricized — was easy to overlook, but also avoid a lot of gay-character trop, and allowed Bill to be a human and not “a maniftatn of sexualy, ” as Polygon’s Danielle Rien put at the time. The game’s storyle don’t avoid trop altogether, though: It was cricized for “buryg s gays.