Lady Business

Yep, I'm sure that is a interpretation of the choice the author made, even if I disagree with it and find it gross, irresponsible, and bad writing. But the thing is, we don't read in a vacuum. We should already understand the nature of the religion and society, and we're all, as English readers, fully aware of societal implications of being queer in certain religions. The book doesn't skimp on this at all. It's implicit in many ways about Vo's life, but it also gets really explicit, too. We don't need queer characters to die to make a point. The fact that queer characters have to die to make a point about the worldbuilding is exactly the problem. I'm tired of people like myself being an object destroyed to help the straight people reading something realize what a horrible situation the society is in. It's not about just this once instance: it's that this one instance is a long line in a series of instances, which other people have the privilege not to see, because they're not queer.