( not sure if first ask went through so sending again ) in a book i just read, two gay girls fall in love but one dies. it isn't bc they're gay though, the story would be similar if they were a straight couple, but i still feel weird about it as a bi girl. in your opinion is it better to include lgbt characters only to kill them off, or to replace them with straights? both suck but i'm trying to decide which one's worse.
i mean, in the âbury your gaysâ trope, it rarely is because theyâre gay within canon. the motivations or situations that cause those characters to die arenât normally motivated by the fact that theyâre gay. most characters who kill lgbt characters donât think âthereâs a lesbian! iâm gonna kill them!â itâs about their position, their power, their influence. any importance their death had to the plot does not excuse the fact that the showrunners (because characters donât have their own motivations) consciously made them gay, then consciously killed them off.Â
even if the story would be similar if they were straight, itâs not the same situation. there are things that exist outside of the work that affect that, like the fact that lgbt characters are underrepresented and have been systematically killed off in media for decades. i donât know. part of me wants to say itâs better to have them, because iâm that desperate for lgbt representation. part of me wishes that we could have sad gay stories where one of them dies (because i like those stories in general) and it doesnât have any weight beyond that.Â
