Basic Trope: A gay character is prompted towards much introspection and angst as a consequence of their sexuality and people's reaction to it.
- Straight: Alice frequently broods about being lesbian and the problems it has caused her in her life.
- Exaggerated: Alice's homosexuality has caused her nothing but trauma and anguish, and she has attempted suicide on several occasions.
- Downplayed: Alice Coming-Out Story has some of the traditional bumps along the way—a female friend who freaks out about, "I've changed in front of you!" and some sighing from parents who want grandchildren—but it wasn't the end of the world, the stress from that is in the past, and she doesn't worry about it much anymore.
- Justified:
- Traditionally, homosexuality has been subjected to widespread societal prejudice, disapproval and disgust.
- Alice was raised in a deeply conservative and homophobic household and, after realising that she's a lesbian, starts to suffer from self-loathing because her internalised homophobia leads her to feel that she's dirty, sinful and a bad person.
- Inverted:
- Alice is relentlessly cheerful and optimistic about being gay.
- Alice has angst about being straight, because it is considered nigh unacceptable in a setting where being gay or bisexual is the norm.
- Subverted: Alice struggles with and broods over her sexuality for a while, but decides that would be to let the homophobes win. She becomes happy and proud about it.
- Double Subverted: Alice's girlfriend is killed in an act of homophobia and she succumbs to despair.
- Parodied:
- Alice has had an easy life and is surrounded by supportive, encouraging people, but nevertheless she complains endlessly about being gay.
- Alice is not actually gay, but still complains about suffering from this trope.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's level of Gaynst varies from day to day.
- Averted:
- Alice feels and demonstrates no excessive amounts of angst about being lesbian.
- Alice is not lesbian.
- Enforced: The author is himself gay and is drawing upon his own difficult experiences in writing Alice's character.
- Lampshaded:
- "How ironic that gay used to mean happy, Alice. You've given it a life of its own."
- "Just because Alice is gay, that doesn't mean her life sucks!" "I think you mean it shouldn't mean her life sucks. And yet here we are."
- Invoked: Alice is bullied because she is gay.
- Exploited: Alice knows the girl she's interested in is gay, but unreasonably secretive of it. She deduces that she must be going through a tough time because of this, and uses this knowledge to get closer to her.
- Defied: Alice refuses to let those who have attempted to shame and oppress her dictate how she lives her life and builds her character, and remains optimistic.
- Discussed: Alice has read tons of dramatic and introspective yuri manga on her time, and can directly relate to those (doubly) fictional situations in her current angst-ridden position.
- Conversed: "Huh, my favorite show is introducing an LGBT character. Cue his or her life being so horrible that I'll end up needing anti-depressants in three… two… one…"
- Deconstructed: After coming out to a few people who are close to her, Alice tries to talk about her gayngst with said people. However, they just don't seem to understand, and the people she's out to usually become confused or annoyed when she brings it up. So she decides to keep quiet about it. Forever.
- Reconstructed: Alice eventually meets some other gay people, with whom she can discuss gayngst.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice's Gayngst is a weak point that Bob exploits to manipulate her; a few choice lies here or there, a well-placed molotov through her window before offering to help her rebuild, constant disparaging of "breeders" in his conversations with her and insisting that nobody but him can understand her, until it boils into full-blown misanthropy that Bob can direct where he pleases. Alice ends up Bob's most fanatical and dangerous lackey.
- Alice is a "queer elder" who went through Gayngst as a young lesbian years ago, and is frustrated when she feels as though young queers who do not have to go through the same level of oppression and misery she went through. This leads to a disconnect between her and gay communities which skew younger.
- Played For Laughs: Alice sees Gayngst as a rite-of-passage, and is shocked...nay, offended when her tragic fantasy doesn't play out: her parents and friends see no issue with her sexuality, she doesn't lose her job or end up the victim of a hate crime and her life just goes on as normal. She ends up trying to actively invoke this, grasping at straws and finding homophobia in literally everything, coming off as an irritating, wangsty, buffoonish Conspiracy Theorist to gay and straight people alike in her antics.
Back to Gayngst.
