If you are going to kill them, make their death reasonable and for the love of everything stop using stray weapons. Not to mention that nothing communicates that «the wage of sin is death» quite like killing off your queer character, am I right? Even if you as an author do not share this idea, by killing your queer character in the worst way possible that is the message that you are conveying. Going back to the 60’s, the message of this trope was pretty simple and straightforward: queer people don’t deserve to be happy. Like, at that point if more of a dick move than something for shock value.
Especially if this the only time we’ve seen that character be truly happy. Whether it’s by “accident”, suicide, a crazy lover, or any other unfortunate circumstance you can think of, lesbians and wlw (women loving women) in general have a hard time surviving out there.Īnd if you have to kill a queer character, even if your world is one where anyone can die (except for a selected few who can get a spear to the chest and somehow walk it off), don’t kill them after a moment of pure joy. This trope also has the alternate name of the Dead Lesbian Syndrome because I don’t know if you have noticed, but lesbians tend to get kill a hell of a lot more than other characters. As I said before, the problem is not them being killed (especially in a world where anyone can die like Game of Thrones) the problem is the ratio of death, and the way they are executed. I get it, people die, heroes die and blah blah blah. These make people raise the argument that they weren’t killed solely because of their sexuality but for the greater good. For example saying the character was too good for this sinful earth and is better in heaven, or the Magical Gay Hero who sacrificed themselves to save the straights. Unfortunately, just like the “kill the black character first” trope, the “bury your gays” trope has being disguised in multiple ways to make it look like something else. Even though later it became fully legal to depict queer characters being able to have happy endings, the trope is still present in our modern day literature and media. Back in the day it was basically illegal to depict a queer character having a happy ending, so the writers had to either kill them, make their partner abusive, or have them be miserable. This trope can be traced down to older works of literature, specifically the beginning of the 20’s but it wasn’t named until the 60’s. If you want a more thorough explanation and origins of this trope, I recommend you visit to get a more insightful experience.