AS KIDS, WE’RE taught to expect the happily ever after. Princesses escape towers with handsome princes, a young woman’s kiss turns the frog into a beautiful prince, the valiant prince’s kiss wakes the sleeping princess and they all live happily ever after. We love happy endings, we expect them, and a story without one is shock, a twist in the tale.
As we get older we switch from fairytales to romantic airport chases and unexpected candle-lit proposals. We all know the formula, and we all love it. Sure, there are sad endings, but for every sad story there’s a happy one.
Unless, of course, you grow up gay or bi or trans or any letter of LGBTQIA+. Then, you’re mostly stuck with sad endings.
Stories about queer characters are rare
Stories about queer characters are rare. The stack is growing, but it’s growing slowly and
all too often questioning kids find themselves stuck in a catch 22: would you prefer no representation or bad representation; never see yourself or never see yourself happy?
It plants a seed in our heads – a niggling little seed – that feeds on the tropes and the stereotypes and grows and grows and grows.
This isn’t a new problem or one without a clear root. During most of the twentieth century postal censorship in the US meant that anything sent via the US Postal Service could be examined and anything found to be “obscene” was prohibited.
Because of this any gay content being posted, as most books were, had to stick to tragic outcomes to avoid this censorship. Positive portrayals were seen as supporting or promoting a “deviant” lifestyle. Characters could not be seen to be both gay and happy.
Stories show us what our lives could be like
This isn’t to say that there wasn’t value in the books that were produced, they gave LGBTQIA+ writers the much needed opportunity to express the hardships of being a gay person at the time.
The problem we face now is that despite the fact that this particular censorship isn’t an issue anymore, we still haven’t balanced out the shelves. The sad narrative is still the primary one and if we don’t change the narrative we perpetuate and ultimately strengthen it.
Stories give us things to aspire to, they show us what our lives could be like. To so rarely find yourself in books and media is upsetting, being portrayed as a perpetual sidekick is demoralising. Seeing yourself only in tropes is hurtful, but seeing yourself as consistently doomed to tragedy is dangerous.
To put it simply, an at-risk and underrepresented group of people are turning to media to find themselves, and they’re finding futures paved out with sadness and loss and difficulty. So many LGBTQIA+ characters meet tragic ends in today’s television shows that the trend has a name: Bury Your Gays.
In 2016, Autostraddle, a massively popular website among queer women, set out to make the ultimate list of regular or recurring lesbian or bisexual characters in television history. They found 182 characters who had been killed off and only 29 who had happy endings. 29 characters from only 15 shows, in the history of television.
Queer stories are human stories
It’s time to start providing alternatives like the hopeful, uplifting stories that people who don’t identify as LGBTQIA+ get. A common argument to this is that showing how difficult it can be to be openly queer will help people who don’t identify this way to understand, to help them empathise or sympathise.
But we don’t need sympathy. We need to feel as at home and comfortable in this world as anyone else. Queer stories are human stories. If we can relate to elves and dragons and aliens, surely we can relate to each other.
In my short time as a published author I’ve learned one thing for certain: the YA writers community is a special one. People who write YA care, and care deeply. It’s a warm, welcoming group of people who care and love and want the best for readers. I don’t think this problem comes from a malicious or vindictive place anymore, and I firmly believe it’s something we can and will change. And we need to start making this change in books for young people before these hopeless narratives can take hold.
Sad stories and sad endings are fine, of course. They can be cathartic, they can make you more empathetic and change your outlook. All stories have power and value. But when it comes to LGBTQIA+ stories, it’s time to even out the shelves a bit.
With such a limited pool, every story counts and we need to choose carefully and wisely and with only the best of intentions. That’s not to say that no one can ever write another sad coming out story ever again, but that maybe we shouldn’t prioritise that story over one that shows a new happily ever after. We all deserve it, but some of us need it.
Meg Grehan is the author of The Space Between, a delicate examination of mental illness and new love between two young women.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say