Representation is important and popular media has gotten better about showing more diversity. However, the LGBT+ community has some complaints about how women that are attracted to women are portrayed. If you’ve never heard of the “Bury Your Gays” trope, there’s a troubling trend in pop culture in which women that are not heterosexual have a terrible tendency to die. While it's not just female gays that get buried, lately the trope seems to apply to female characters more often than male characters. Creators don’t seem to like letting their sapphic women live very long and they often die just after getting with their female love interest.
Here is a list of queer women that are still kicking. Granted, most of these are all still ongoing series, so we may lose some after this is posted. It’s a dangerous world for fictional sapphic women. So, with as few spoilers as I can, here are women that love women that haven't been killed off.
1. Clarke Griffin (The 100)
In The 100, Clarke and 99 other delinquents get sent to Earth after a century of humans living in space. Things are dangerous for them on Earth and Clarke steps up to lead her people alongside Bellamy and she's always trying to save everyone. When a new character is introduced later in the series, it’s revealed that Clarke is bisexual. Not everyone Clarke falls in love with is still alive, but Clarke is the main character and she seems to be one of the few that are safe from death on this show. Unfortunately this show does use the trope with one of the queer characters, but at least Clarke is still alive.
2. Callie Torres (Grey’s Anatomy)
Dr. Calliope Torres is no longer on the show, but she is on it for many seasons. At first we only see her attracted to men, till she goes through a journey of self-discovery, realizing she likes women, too. Unfortunately she faces biphobia from a certain someone that thinks she isn’t gay enough, but she does have multiple relationships with women and men and when she leaves the show, it’s not because she was killed off. Instead, she leaves happy and alive.
3. Sara Lance (Legends of Tomorrow)
If you watch Sara Lance's beginnings on Arrow, you may be disappointed as some not so great things happen to her. Her life gets a lot better when she moves to the spin-off Legends of Tomorrow. She's a strong leader and holds her team together while kissing men and women in different time periods. She's got a rough past, but remains kind and compassionate while having the ability to easily beat people up when she needs too.
4. Tracer (Overwatch)
Tracer is upbeat with an endearing cockney accent. She is the face of the video game Overwatch and she's been controversial since the beginning. At first people were upset about her butt, then people got upset when it was revealed she's gay. It was revealed in the comic “Reflections” that she has a girlfriend named Emily.
5. Addy Carver (Z Nation)
Addy is good with radios and can hold her own in the zombie apocalypse, wielding a metal bat with spikes while keeping her sense of humor. Addy is shown having attraction to both men and women. We mostly only see her with a man, but she also has female love interests.
6. Korra (Legend of Korra)
Korra is the next avatar in the cycle after Aang from the original show Avatar: The Last Airbender, which makes her the savior of the world. She has the weight of the world on her shoulders and throughout the series there is one character that helps her make that weight seem less heavy. Korra is a bisexual character with male and female love interests. Due to censoring she and her girlfriend never got an onscreen kiss or anything like that, but the ending did as much as it could to establish that they’re together while still being acceptable for the censors. Comics will even be coming out this year that continue the show and are allowed to make their relationship more obvious.
