I am so tired. I am deeply, spiritually tired of watching gay people suffer on screen and being told that's a love story.
At this point I actively avoid queer stories in media because I already know how it's going to go. Someone is going to die, or cheat, or get sick, or lose everything, or all of the above. The suffering is basically a given. And what kills me is that it doesn't have to be this way. We have proof. We have examples of queer stories that are actually good, that don't treat gay love like it comes with a mandatory tragedy attached. So why is the default still misery? Let me get into it.
This post contains spoilers for some of the films and series mentioned.
The Film That Broke Me (And Not In A Good Way)
I recently watched The Paradise of Thorns, a 2024 Thai film about Thongkam and Sek, a gay couple who pour everything they have into building a life together on a durian orchard. They buy back the land. They build a home. They have a whole future planned. And then Sek dies in an accident before you've even had a chance to breathe. What follows is Thongkam spending the rest of the film fighting Sek's family for their shared home, because same-sex marriage had no legal recognition in Thailand at the time, meaning he has zero rights to any of it.
Look, the premise is rooted in a real injustice and I get what the film is trying to say. But the execution just buries Thongkam under suffering, humiliation, and grief for the entire runtime. By the time the credits rolled I felt like I needed to sit in a dark room and rethink my life choices. I should not have had to recover from finishing a film. The argument about marriage inequality was strong enough on its own without the film also needing to throw everything else at this poor man.
Compare that to Matthias and Maxime, a 2019 Canadian-French film about two childhood best friends who are forced to confront buried feelings after an on-screen kiss unravels everything between them. It's not a perfect film by all means. The pacing is slow and the open-ended conclusion will frustrate some people. But it doesn't leave you feeling like you need therapy. Matthias showing up at the airport as Maxime is about to leave for Australia was a small, quiet moment, and it meant something.
The Side Character Problem
And it's not just the main couples either. Even when queer characters are side characters, they get done dirty. It's like writers feel entitled to use gay relationships as a dramatic device without actually caring about what happens to those characters. The relationship exists to create chaos, to shake up the plot, to give the main story something to react to. And once it's served that purpose? Disposable.
Elite is the most infuriating example I can think of. Omar and Ander had one of the best build-ups in the show's early seasons. A slow, careful story about a young man (Omar) terrified to be himself, hiding his sexuality from his conservative Muslim family, falling in love with someone patient enough to wait him out (Ander). By season three, Ander had cancer, Omar cheats on him during treatment, and the writers seemed determined to dismantle every good thing they had built between them, episode by episode. There was no narrative reason for it. It was chaos for the sake of chaos. They technically survived that season, but the relationship was already dead. They broke up not long after, and honestly it felt inevitable given what the writers put them through. I will never forgive them for that.
When They Actually Get It Right
Young Royals is my go-to example that it doesn't have to be this way, and the last BL series I watched and actually loved. A Swedish prince falls for a working-class student at his boarding school, and yes, there are real obstacles. The weight of the monarchy, the class gap, the very public nature of Wilhelm's life, a leaked private video used against them. None of it is easy. But the show never uses their queerness as the reason things have to fall apart. It uses their circumstances, their fears, their different relationships with identity and what it means to live publicly. When Wilhelm gives up the crown and runs to find Simon in the season three finale, it's the payoff for everything you watched those two go through. I watched the whole show twice and I would do it again.
The Handmaiden is a different case because it's not a romance in the traditional sense, but it belongs here. Park Chan-wook's 2016 Korean thriller puts Sook-hee and Hideko through genuine danger, betrayal, and manipulation. The difference is that they are never passive victims of their story. They outsmart every person who tried to use them, claim the inheritance, and leave together on their own terms. Their love is not a source of tragedy. It's the thing that gets them both out.
Red, White and Royal Blue (2023) is the lightest thing on this list but it deserves a mention. Alex, the son of the US president, and Prince Henry of England go from enemies to secret lovers to publicly out and happy, all in one film. It's fun, the chemistry is there, and it ends with both of them on a balcony in front of crowds celebrating their relationship. Kinda cute. It doesn't reinvent anything, but it exists as a queer romcom where nobody dies and nobody gets destroyed, and sometimes that's exactly what you need.
I'll also mention Heated Rivalry briefly, even though I came into the show having already read the Game Changer book series. It follows Shane and Ilya, rival hockey players whose brutal on-ice competition hides a secret relationship spanning nearly a decade. The show takes seriously just how terrifying it is to be a gay man inside professional hockey culture, and the ending actually delivers. No tragedy required.
So Why Is Suffering Still The Default?
Here's what I keep coming back to: queer relationships in media are almost always written with an expiry date on their happiness. The joy is loudest during the forbidden, secret, stolen-moment phase, when being gay is still a source of tension and drama in itself. But the second the characters come out, the second they settle into actually being together? Writers lose the plot. They reach for an affair, a tragedy, an illness, a cheating arc, because apparently two people being gay and in love and doing fine is not a compelling enough story on its own. But it is, and we have seen it done. The excuses are running out.
I'm tired of bracing myself every time I sit down to watch something. I'm tired of treating hope as a risk. Queer love stories don't need suffering to feel real. They just need writers who actually believe that queer love is worth something beyond the pain it causes.
What queer love stories have you watched that actually got it right?
Drop them in the comments. I'm building a list and I need recommendations that won't leave me needing recovery time afterward.
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