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27 LGBT Characters Were Killed Off TV This Year (SPOILERS)

Hope you didn't get too attached.

Did your favorite LGBT character die this year? They wouldn't be alone: A survey on The Wrap illustrates how often queer people met grim fates on the small screen in 2016.

They include Game of Thrones' Loras Tyrell, who died horribly when Cersai blew up the Great Sept of Baelor, and Orange Is the New Black's Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley), suffocated by a rookie officer in the Litchfield cafeteria.

Barbara Nitke/NBC

BLINDSPOT -- "If Love A Rebel, Death Will Render" Episode 122 -- Pictured: Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Bethany Mayfair -- (Photo by: Barbara Nitke/NBC)

Other casualties include FBI agent Bethany Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), shot and killed on NBC’s Blindspot; House of Cards' Edward Meechum (Nathan Darrow), who had a threeway with Frank and Claire Underwood before taking a bullet for the president; and Jack, a young boy who share a kiss with Jude on Freeform's The Fosters before being murdered by his foster father.

And there were multiple LGBT characters knocked off on Empire, The Vampire Diaries, Guilt and Pretty Little Liars.

In all, 27 LGBT characters were killed off this television season, a high rate considering we comprised just 4.8% of all series regulars this year. (Which is actually a record number for the medium.)

The trope of killing off LGBT characters, many of whom are written into shows to boost diversity and entice queer viewers, is frequent enough that it has its own name: “Bury Your Gays.”

It received national attention in February, after three female characters were killed off in the same month: Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) on The CW's The 100, Kira on Syfy's The Magicians, and Denise (Merritt Wever) on AMC's The Walking Dead.

The cliche has been a part of television for nearly a generation—going back to Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Marissa Cooper of The O.C.—but now viewers are demanding better.

Created by Saving Hope producers Noelle Carbone and Sonia Hosko, The “Lexa Pledge” asks creators to give LGBT character their due, and to stop “[killing] a queer character solely to further the plot of a straight one.”

As of yet, though, it’s only been signed by a handful of writers and producers.

There are some signs of improvement: Black Mirror, the cult Netflix anthology series about technology, subverted the trope by allowing its queer characters to find happiness in the afterlife: Kelly (Gugu Mbatha Raw) and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) meet in “San Junipero,” a Second Life community for the elderly and dying. They can decide to live out the rest of their existence in virtual reality or see what else is out there by dying a natural death.

Will TV do better in 2017? Let's hope the industry starts listening.

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