The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché FAQ

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Title:	The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché FAQ
Creator:	Willowlicious and Kyraroc, with the help of many members of the Kitten Board.
Date(s):	Originally posted Sep 08, 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom:	Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Topic:	Willow/Tara, Dead Lesbian Trope
External Links:	The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché FAQ, Archived version Original post on The Kitten Board (archived link)
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The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché FAQ is "An examination of the "Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliche" in film, TV and other media. In particular relating to the latter episodes of Season 6 of the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"."

The essay was originally posted on The Kitten Board, a Willow/Tara forum, and later hosted on Stephen Booths site.

Some Topics Discussed

• History of Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché
• Unwittingly using Homophobia tropes
• Effects of Tara's death within the Buffy fandom
• Treatment of minority groups on Buffy
• Importance of representation on television

Excerpts

The setting and events leading to Tara's death also fall horribly into the storied lesbian cliché. One of the most overused features of the lesbian cliché is that the death is generally directly associated with the act of lesbian sex. Usually it occurs soon after a real or implied sex scene in order to cement the connection. Tara died at the end of an episode in which she was implied to have spent practically the entire time having sex with Willow; further, she died immediately after a scene of heavy sexual flirtation and beside the bed she and Willow had made love.

Tara could have been shot while pulling weeds - or looking for cameras - in the garden (like Buffy), but she was killed in the bedroom after partaking in the cardinal sin of lesbian sex. This has been done over and over again in film and TV with devastating results, it didn't need to be repeated on BtVS no matter what they claim their intention was.

Writing is about making choices. Mutant Enemy had plenty of opportunities to send Willow down her dark magic path before "Seeing Red," and they chose not to use them. They could have, for example, had Willow pulled into darkness by her own pride and/or her own insecurity, rather than choosing to pull her in through her anger and thirst for vengeance instead. Even if Mutant Enemy had its heart absolutely set on making Willow vengeful, Tara's death wasn't the only way to get there. It was the way Mutant Enemy chose. They deliberately chose the cliché when plenty of other possibilities were available to them. Not to mention that Willow's S6 vengeance storyline is merely an extreme retread of Willow's actions in S5's "Tough Love," in which she attacked Glory for brain-sucking Tara. Necessary forward progression? That's arguable.

Did ME kill Tara because she was gay? No. But intentions don't matter, results do. The sad fact is that most lesbian couples meet horrible ends in films and television and Willow and Tara met a horrible end, too. They were the FIRST and ONLY long-term lesbian couple on network television and now they are horribly lost. There is no other couple to replace them. ME killed the unicorn for a cheap plot device they swore they were above. All the straight main characters survived and have a chance for happiness just as they have each and every season of BtVS (Angel was brought back). Only the gay ones are dead/evil. As usual. Hence, the cliché. All of the gay characters to ever grace Sunnydale - Larry, Tara, Willow, and apparently Andrew - have ended up either dead or evil. All of them. One hundred percent. Also, the only two characters with bisexual undertones, Faith and VampWillow, are also mysteriously dead and/or evil.

Normally, it would have been wonderful to see Amber Benson in the opening credits. Her fans have been begging for her to be a regular for the last two seasons. She is the ONLY significant other of a Scooby to not have been made a regular. Her omission had become glaring. Unfortunately, Amber was included in the credits in the very episode Tara was murdered. Mr. DeKnight admitted that this was intended both as a goodbye present to Amber and to be "mischievous" to the fans. We cannot speak for Amber, but it seems to us that putting her in the credits for her final episode was a slap in the face. Why wasn't she included from the beginning of the season like all the other Scooby significant others like Anya, Riley and Oz? Too little, too late.

Furthermore, seeing how fans were already going to be shocked and hurt by the ending of "Seeing Red," ME did not need to heighten the pain by "mischievously" adding her to the credits, building false hope to make their plan of devastation more complete. It was a mean and crass move.

Origins

From an interview with Emma, a Kitten Board member, on the Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast.

An extract from Emma's original letter:

Obviously, the community was devastated as Tara’s death and Willow’s emergence as the big bad played out, so much so that the following FAQ was born and became, in my opinion, one of the most important pieces of writing on this issue.

From the interview:

Q: Can you talk to me a little bit more about the FAQ thread? That’s sort of how you and I came together, is that you shared that with me. What was—what was happening at that time?

At the time that it happened, obviously, there was a lot of processing and there was a lot of talk about, you know, this is part of the cliche and there were people who didn’t already know what that was. So there was a lot of kind of more scholarly people, you know, sort of talking about the history of gay representation on TV and cinema and that kind of thing. And then it kind of morphed into, there needs to be something written around how Willow and Tara fit into this. And you know, their place in the world and why they were important, and the damage that it’s caused. And how we kind of feel as a consequence of what’s happened. The authors were pained to point out that they didn’t feel like anyone at Mutant Enemy was homophobic or anything like that. But you know, kind of quite critical around things that had been said prior to Tara’s death around, you know, “she’s not going anywhere, she’s a big part of the show.” I don’t know whether at the time, they knew what they were gonna do.