I still remember how it felt when Dana Fairbanks died. It wasn’t that I didn’t see it coming—she had breast cancer, after all—it was just that things were going so well for her. Not only was her pro tennis career taking off, but she was finally coming to grips with her sexuality, having healthy relationships for the first time in her life. It felt almost like she was being punished for being happy, and things like that weren't supposed to happen here. This was The L Word. Watching in my friend's apartment, I felt betrayed. It wasn't the first time; I'd felt the exact same way when Helena Cain was shot on Battlestar Galactica.

If you’ve been following television news lately, you know that some fans of The 100 and The Walking Dead are feeling the way I did in 2006. Each show lost beloved—and, more importantly, queer—characters in the last couple weeks. And while death iscommonplace on both shows, it hits a little harder when you already don't see many people like you on TV, and now there's one fewer.

It’s a trope known as "Bury Your Gays," and generally stipulates that LGBTQ characters often die after having same-sex relationships. It happens a lot—but when it happens on a show where the LGBTQ viewership feels safe, on a show that’s respected its queer characters and wouldn’t kill them off for sport, it cuts twice as deep. (Remember when Tara died on Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It's like that.)

The CW

When it happened a decade ago on The L Word, though, it was different: partially because the show was nearly all LGBTQ characters, but more importantly because fans were forced to grieve mutely, alone with their loss. Twitter had barely been invented; other than message boards and comment threads on AfterEllen.com, there was no place where voices could join the chorus. When it happened this year, however, people knew exactly where to sound off. Fans of The 100, who couldn't help but notice Lexa (Alycia Dubna-Carey) was shot almost immediately after sleeping with Clarke (Eliza Taylor), took to social media—the same place they’d been promoting the show left and right—and expressed their disgust. Lexa was dead and, as the hashtag stated, #LGBTFansDeservedBetter.

Fans Tweet. TV Listens.

Then, an amazing thing happened: The show listened. The CW wasn’t going to bring back Lexa, of course. She had to go be on Fear the Walking Dead (yes, the sister program of the show that had just killed off its own lesbian character). Hearts couldn’t be unbroken, but show-runner Jason Rothenberg, who had been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to the criticism of Lexa’s death, made a Medium mea culpa. "Despite my reasons, I still write and produce television for the real world where negative and hurtful tropes exist," he wrote. "And I am very sorry for not recognizing this as fully as I should have. Knowing everything I know now, Lexa’s death would have played out differently."

It turns out, it’s harder to bury your gays when they’re trending.

It turns out, it’s harder to bury your gays when they’re trending.

Now, not only are fans gathering on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other forums, but the people who make those shows are joining them. Fans undeniably have more power now. When they ask Kerry Washington questions during Scandal, she answers. (Go Gladiators!) They use show-generated hashtags to get things trending. Nielsen has an entire ratings system for Twitter now. Online fandoms spreading the gospel can make or break a show. Some have even equated understanding fandoms with "superpowers." (And it should be no surprise that Rothenberg lost some 10,000 Twitter followers after Lexa’s death.) That’s strength in numbers.

Can Fans Gain Too Much Power?

But that may not always be for the best. If TV were made by committee, there’d probably be a loud enough contingent to bring back Falcon Crest. And it’s impossible to please every fan—especially on TV. Also, as former Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles executive producer Josh Friedman pointed out in a series of tweets this weekend, being too aware of tropes could lead to writers shying away from LGBTQ characters and people of color (another group not well-represented on TV that lost a member on a recent episode of Sleepy Hollow) for fear they’d have to one day kill them off and inadvertently become part of the trope.

So what’s the answer? In a smart essay for Inverse, Megan Logan (a former WIRED fellow and the author of our binge-watching guides on The 100 and The L Word) made an excellent point. "Stories aren’t written in a vacuum, and when canon doesn’t speak to fans or give them what they need, it enables a power shift," she wrote. "Because on the Internet, endings belong to anyone willing to write them."

For years now, fans have been writing stories to resurrect TV's buried gays. So here's an idea: hire them.

Getting Minority Representation By Hiring Diverse Creators

That doesn’t necessarily mean Sleepy Hollow should do a talent search on Tumblr. But a diverse writers’ room might stop these things from happening in the future. Friedman pointed out as much on Twitter Sunday. "The problem will continue," he noted, "until we have more LGBT/POC show runners."

Proof of this, for those with a keen eye, can be found on Empire. Yes, Empire. The Fox record company drama also had two recent LGBTQ deaths with the passing of Camilla (Naomi Campbell) and her wife Mimi Whiteman (Marisa Tomei). For all intents and purposes, their deaths could’ve easily been the latest in a long line of unfortunate events on TV. However, on a show with a cast of all races and sexual orientations, it wasn’t a case of two of a show’s few minority characters meeting an untimely end, but just two characters completing their necessary arcs. And when Variety reached out to showrunner Ilene Chaiken for comment—the same woman who had co-created of The L Word and killed off Dana all those years ago—she knew exactly what to say.

"I think that we aren’t a part of that phenomenon or conversation," Chaiken said. "I would say that Camilla is not a lesbian character. Camilla was, if anything, an opportunist, which is quite different from being a lesbian. If anything, the lesbians should wish for a character like Camilla to be killed off since she just preyed on a powerful lesbian in order to fulfill her heterosexual ambitions."

Heterosexual ambitions or no, hopefully TV won’t be preying on lesbians much longer.