A similar situation is playing out on The 100 where a popular lesbian character, seconds after she consummated her relationship, was killed by a man who disapproved of them.

Linekin says female characters getting killed off hurts even more because it’s happening on TV, which has long been viewed as a safe haven for women, and it comes at a time when women are making strides towards pay equality in Hollywood. “They’re just confirmation that Hollywood values white male characters more because Hollywood is run by white males,” she said, noting TV writers are 71 per cent male and 87 per cent white.

“Until the balance of power shifts, or white male writers just get a clue, we’re going to see more casually sexist TV.”

Audiences won’t always get the story they want, that much is true. Characters we love will die, stories will take turns we neither expect nor want. This is a part of life. However, audiences do deserve to be treated with respect, care, and empathy. We deserve stories that make sense and deaths that make sense. We deserve stories and storytellers that neither exploit nor harmfully manipulate us, that may explore but do not actively advance damaging stereotypes.

While we cannot control the narrative, we deserve storytellers who are aware of the history and context of problematic tropes, who are willing to listen to how their stories have impacted their audience and perhaps even make adjustments based on what their audience says. We deserve real apologies and storytellers who own their mistakes rather than whitewash or dismiss them. We deserve ethical storytelling, not perfect.

Writers do have a responsibility to their viewers to recognize that what they create has real-world implications. And in the case of “The 100,” these implications were pain, anger and hurt from fans. In other words, if there is a trope about killing lesbians, writers should not perpetuate that trope. “The 100” should be a lesson to other television shows about how to handle minority representation.

It’s a case in which a lesbian couple is introduced, given no characterization, and then revealed as murderers. One of them even murdered another lesbian, which must be some kind of TV hat trick!

It’s messy. The male gaze is omnipresent; it’s so universal it’s the default position of the camera, which means that a lesbian character challenges the camera merely by existing. No surprise that many shows hit a snag on a narrative that precarious. But this go-round hits so many lesbian tropes that eventually you just start laughing. Technically Marissa wasn’t killed because of her sexuality, I suppose—a very rare scenario in which one can assume that—but in having her murdered by another lesbian, we head right into Evil Lesbian territory (a lesbian of color, no less). And her district-attorney wife is an even more evil lesbian, who didn’t even kill in the heat of the moment, but instead participated in systemic abuse of the judicial system…and also killed a woman in a drive-by.

The stories we tell, particularly about underrepresented groups – like queer people and people of color and people with disabilities and the like – matter. They feed into a cultural narrative which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – both for LGBT people and how the outside world views LGBT people. It really isn’t much to ask that the majority of stories told about queer women not be tragic.

The media, specifically, how we tell stories in the media, play a huge role in shaping cultural bias toward minority groups. They tell the wider audience that these people over here are good and these people over there are bad. Stories influence feelings, assumptions, actions, and beliefs. When we fail to recognize or acknowledge the power the media has over society we become careless in its use, which leads to harmful consequences. However, when we put it to better use, it can have real life benefits as well.