Pitiful Excuses heard for killing off queer characters

[sasha_feather]

Feel free to add more in comments

--It's based on a true story
--It's more believable / realistic / serious / true to the narrative
--It has more artistic merit if it's tragic
--The actor was leaving the show
--It's a French story
"It's dangerous to tell the showrunner how to tell a story." --http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/bury-your-gays-trope-stumps-891596

--"Anyone can die in this show"

--"we didn't anticipate this sort of level of pain over this fictional death," --Jason Rothberg, the 100

--""It’s a really important thing to note that it wasn’t in any way an attempt to aggravate a social situation," Alycia Debnam-Carey, the 100

--"This was the ultimate compliment for her character to have a higher purpose. " --random commenter on Root (Person of Interest)

ETA July 2017:
--It's the noir genre

Comments

[davidgillon]

Remarkable how pretty much all of those were also trotted out by the writer/director/cast of "Me Before You" to justify disability-snuff. They even claimed it was the artistically "brave" decision (even though killing off the disabled character at the end has its own tropes entry: Bury your disabled). The whole of which was rather tellingly illuminated by director Thea Sharrock's comment that she decided not to show the reality of disability/being a quad (and she meant reality like not showing Will using a hoist, let alone toileting), because it 'isn't normal'. And isn't that an interesting line to shine on kill off your gays too.

Writers/artists/creators all emphasise how we should avoid cliche, but give them a minority character and they nearly all plunge their hands into the cliche jar and pull out a stinking handful. If they didn't they might have to do some research, and, horror, creative thinking.

[alwaystheocean]

Sort of covered by 'anyone can die' but 'oh, it's true equality/not discriminating, we treated them the same as the straight characters'

[owlectomy]

File under "it's more believable/realistic" - "It just isn't plausible for the queer characters to get a happy ending in the place/time of the setting!"

[amadi]

"This was always meant to be a short arc for the character." Words to that effect were used to explain the end for (one of?) the lesbian character(s?) killed off on Empire this season.