Trope Question

[libraryofvalen]

Anyone is welcome for their perspective, though I would love my fellow queer writers' thoughts on this popular trope; dead/dying partnership in a queer relationship. It seems to be very common in lgbt+ marketed books that the happy couple is together...and then one dies. This has gotten so common there are entire parodies dedicated to this, but I do not entirely dislike it. Having someone pass away in a relationship can be a huge catalyst for a novel and character arcs/developments, but my question is this: how would you feel about a queer romance with reincarnation as a main theme?

It is a major plot of my novel with my main character being thousands of years old and mourning his lost love, and being reunited with him as his love has been reincarnated (Wuthering Heights was a big inspiration for the reincarnation themes) so instead of being a story about love lost, it's about love being so deep and real it cannot be separated.

If you were reading the blurb on the back of a book, would you feel like "oh one dies" or "ohhh one had died but came back to him"? Tropes are tropes for a reason, and I do love most of them, but how does the community feel about this particular one?

 

[Unimportant]

I'm sadly out of touch with the queer romance genre (it's well over a decade since I've read/beta read f/f romance, and I've read very little m/m romance at all), so I didn't know that the dead/dying thing was even a thing, let alone an overdone thing! I mean, sure, people die, but a romance that ends in the death of one partner rather than a HEA goes against everything I know about the romance genre and flat out wouldn't be able to be marketed as romance, AFAIK.

Beyond market expectations, I can't see any reason why the story you're describing wouldn't work. A love so deep it's death-defying goes all the way back to Orpheus. For me as a reader, it'd have to be listed/marketed as speculative fiction (because I don't personally believe in reincarnation), but YMMV.

What I (again just as an individual reader) tend to find more problematic (or maybe improbable) is the thousand year old character, someone who will have seen it all and done it all a zillion times over, who knows how relationships work and how they go wrong, improbably finding soulmate-type love with a naive, clueless, inexperienced young adult. Or, perhaps, with anyone: people change, people grow, people are shaped by their experiences, and if someone has remained static in who they are and what they want for a thousand years, they are probably a marble statue and not a person. So for that aspect, it really depends on how it's done and presented.

 

[dickson]

I can’t speak for the community, but it seems to me reincarnation lies on a different axis than “oh, one dies”. Certainly one wants the blurb to convey that, while not telling too much. A blurb should grab the unsuspecting browser’s attention, without giving away the store. See to that, and you’re golden.

 

[libraryofvalen]

I'm sadly out of touch with the queer romance genre (it's well over a decade since I've read/beta read f/f romance, and I've read very little m/m romance at all), so I didn't know that the dead/dying thing was even a thing, let alone an overdone thing! I mean, sure, people die, but a romance that ends in the death of one partner rather than a HEA goes against everything I know about the romance genre and flat out wouldn't be able to be marketed as romance, AFAIK.

Beyond market expectations, I can't see any reason why the story you're describing wouldn't work. A love so deep it's death-defying goes all the way back to Orpheus. For me as a reader, it'd have to be listed/marketed as speculative fiction (because I don't personally believe in reincarnation), but YMMV.

What I (again just as an individual reader) tend to find more problematic (or maybe improbable) is the thousand year old character, someone who will have seen it all and done it all a zillion times over, who knows how relationships work and how they go wrong, improbably finding soulmate-type love with a naive, clueless, inexperienced young adult. Or, perhaps, with anyone: people change, people grow, people are shaped by their experiences, and if someone has remained static in who they are and what they want for a thousand years, they are probably a marble statue and not a person. So for that aspect, it really depends on how it's done and presented.

It is a very overdone thing lol! Not only with gay romances but sapphic ones as well, it can be hard to find a book/tv show that does not have one of them pass away in the relationship. And wonderful point about the age gap, I completely agree. I was always a bit grossed out by the much older being/younger person dynamics, this is one where the reincarnated person knows they are, they asked in the afterlife to be allowed to come back, and he is essentially two people, his current self and his past self all at once. And with the reincarnation themes, it's about death but also evolving as people, that is also a big theme in the book that people change, and the past is not to be romanticized.

 

[libraryofvalen]

I can’t speak for the community, but it seems to me reincarnation lies on a different axis than “oh, one dies”. Certainly one wants the blurb to convey that, while not telling too much. A blurb should grab the unsuspecting browser’s attention, without giving away the store. See to that, and you’re golden.

Thank you! That is a part of this process I have struggled with, I was worrying myself with that

 

[Unimportant]

It is a very overdone thing lol!

Gosh, I must be even more out of touch than I realised. I just went to the GLBT romance small press I'm most familiar with and looked at the most recent several dozen books they've put out, and could not find a single romance ending in one of the couple's deaths.

Is there a particular publisher that focuses on this trope? And do they actually market it as romance?

 

[libraryofvalen]

Gosh, I must be even more out of touch than I realised. I just went to the GLBT romance small press I'm most familiar with and looked at the most recent several dozen books they've put out, and could not find a single romance ending in one of the couple's deaths.

Is there a particular publisher that focuses on this trope? And do they actually market it as romance?

I am not familiar with a particular publisher, but it is called the "Bury Your Gays" trope and a lot of these are marketed as romance unfortunately, there has been a bit more pushback from us in the past years because it was literally to the point any character that was even hinted at as being lgbt+ you'd know would end up being the one to be killed off in a book/show.

 

[Unimportant]

Thanks! Now I see, it's a trope in straight fiction -- kill the queers to show they're bad/ought not be happy, whereas the straight characters do get a proper romance plotline. It doesn't seem to be what established queer romance publishers are publishing as romance.

 

[libraryofvalen]

Thanks! Now I see, it's a trope in straight fiction -- kill the queers to show they're bad/ought not be happy, whereas the straight characters do get a proper romance plotline. It doesn't seem to be what established queer romance publishers are publishing as romance.

You are welcome! I have been on a hunt myself for a reputable list of queer romance publishers/agents to avoid being pressured into that particular trope, they would absolutely understand the aversion to it

 

[alexp336]

I feel like I've read a few queer books lately that had reincarnation as a theme. The names are escaping me now; one ended happily, another with the characters being once again "doomed" and having to go around another time.

To me, it's definitely different to the bury-the-gays theme. More along the lines of soulmates or fated-mates (honestly, they're not my favorite tropes either, though that's just personal preference). I think, like @dickson says, as long as you're being upfront in your blurb about the reincarnation theme then you couldn't be accused of misleading people. Though, as @Unimportant points out, you'll get pushback if you're marketing as a romance something that doesn't end with HEA/HFN.

(Bury-the-gays always seemed, to me, like an adjunct to the whole "oh, how doomed and miserable queer people are; we must really hammer that idea home by having at least one of them die, so that it's inescapably clear that Gay People End Up Miserable Eventually" perspective. Basically LGBTQ people being used as emotional set-dressing, so the straight characters can be sad, and emotional, and shake their fists at fate, without having to actually suffer themselves.)

 

[Sage]

If you have lots of characters in your novel who are LGBTQIA+, a single death is not going to hurt as much as if you have one character or a single couple.

With just the one character or couple, the death can easily be read as the Bury Your Gays trope, no matter how meaningful the death should have been to the story. With many LGBTQIA+ characters, a single death is going to mean what the death was supposed to mean, because clearly you are not burying the gays.

 

[libraryofvalen]

If you have lots of characters in your novel who are LGBTQIA+, a single death is not going to hurt as much as if you have one character or a single couple.

With just the one character or couple, the death can easily be read as the Bury Your Gays trope, no matter how meaningful the death should have been to the story. With many LGBTQIA+ characters, a single death is going to mean what the death was supposed to mean, because clearly you are not burying the gays.

Thank you! The majority of my cast of characters are lgbt+, this was written as a love letter to my community but then I got to worrying if I was just redoing the Bury Yours Gays trope in a more roundabout way

 

[libraryofvalen]

I feel like I've read a few queer books lately that had reincarnation as a theme. The names are escaping me now; one ended happily, another with the characters being once again "doomed" and having to go around another time.

To me, it's definitely different to the bury-the-gays theme. More along the lines of soulmates or fated-mates (honestly, they're not my favorite tropes either, though that's just personal preference). I think, like @dickson says, as long as you're being upfront in your blurb about the reincarnation theme then you couldn't be accused of misleading people. Though, as @Unimportant points out, you'll get pushback if you're marketing as a romance something that doesn't end with HEA/HFN.

(Bury-the-gays always seemed, to me, like an adjunct to the whole "oh, how doomed and miserable queer people are; we must really hammer that idea home by having at least one of them die, so that it's inescapably clear that Gay People End Up Miserable Eventually" perspective. Basically LGBTQ people being used as emotional set-dressing, so the straight characters can be sad, and emotional, and shake their fists at fate, without having to actually suffer themselves.)

I will have to look into those! And thank you (though I totally understand personal preferences), that is something to definitely keep in mind. And you are totally right lol, we have been used as emotional set-dressing and a lot of the times it just felt like cis/heterosexual authors were using us as a way to show how inclusive they are, but then they did not have any plot for the character outside of their sexuality so they killed us off in their stories. Now my personal preference for stories are horror/gothic/paranormal but from time to time I do just love to sit down with a cozy lgbt+ book that ends with a sappily happy ending too

 

[Bitterboots]

What I (again just as an individual reader) tend to find more problematic (or maybe improbable) is the thousand year old character, someone who will have seen it all and done it all a zillion times over, who knows how relationships work and how they go wrong, improbably finding soulmate-type love with a naive, clueless, inexperienced young adult. Or, perhaps, with anyone: people change, people grow, people are shaped by their experiences, and if someone has remained static in who they are and what they want for a thousand years, they are probably a marble statue and not a person. So for that aspect, it really depends on how it's done and presented.

So this brings to my mind The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue. Though not a queer story it was certainly about how an ancient immortal being could fall in love with a mortal because of her ability to evolve and change. And she in turn falls in love with a sort of hapless naive young man.

And I'm with @Sage. What is death bringing to the story? Generally I would say it's nearly always about the love being stronger than the loss. I mean, it's never part of the trope for the MC to say 'I wish I'd never met them' at the end. This story can be told over and over and as long as there's a good story then a good cry is nearly as good as a happily ever after.

 

[alexp336]

I will have to look into those!

So, I went back through my ebooks, and it turns out I was thinking about "The Emperor and there Endless Palace" by Justinian Huang, "A Dream of Saints" by Dorian Dawes, and "Forget Me Knot" by Emery Lee. Of the three, only the last one is explicitly billed as a romance iirc; the others are romantasy and fantasy, respectively.