Adding and attributing death data to characters can be complicated. This is especially true when characters die more than once.
Are They Really Dead?
For the majority of shows, this is straightforward. Dead is dead. If someone fakes a death and shows back up later, we can correct this by removing the ‘Dead Queer’ flag and the date of death. Use your best judgement. If you think someone’s dead, flag them.
For SciFi and other fantastical series, death becomes a lot more complicated. In order to simplify this, we have made the following guidelines to help you determine if the death is real or not.
- The character must be dead for one complete episode unless the character dies in a series finale
- The death cannot be a ‘temporary’ medical death
- The character must be referenced by others as dead
- In the case of crossover deaths (I.e. Arrowverse Crisis), the character must remain dead after the conclusion
- In the case of characters who regenerate (I.e. The Doctor), death occurs per-character, as that iteration of the character is no more
- In the case of Sara Lance, she has to be dead for at least two episodes
Recording Death
When a character dies, the following steps are taken:
- Mark the show they died on as having the “Bury Your Queers” trope
- Mark the dead character with the “Dead Queers” cliché
- Add the date of death to the character
Date of Death
The date is best chosen as the episode in which the character died. For characters who appear to be about to die at the end of an episode, use the following episode, where in we learn the death is true.
For characters who are dead at the beginning of the series, and referenced as dead, use the first air date of the whole series.