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Basic Trope: A plot about an LGBTQ character admitting their LGBTQ status.

  • Straight: The novel Alice's Identity features Alice coming out as a lesbian in the climax.
  • Exaggerated: There are 10 gay characters, and they all come out.
  • Downplayed: The book is about Alice accepting her own identity- coming out to herself.
  • Justified: The book is a story of Alice's entire life, and she has to come out sometime.
  • Inverted: Alice is already out, and the book is about her re-convincing everyone that she is in fact straight due to homophobia at the college she now goes to.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice is setting up to come out, but then she gets cold feet and is still closeted by the book's end.
    • Or, she gets unexpectedly hit by a car and dies closeted.
  • Double Subverted:
    • ...but then comes out in the epilogue.
    • ...then comes back as a ghost just to tell everyone she's a lesbian.
    • Alternatively, someone discovers her lesbian status in her diary after her passing.
  • Parodied: Alice puts on a giant concert and sings a whole song about being a lesbian in the climax. The book is not about her building up her courage, but rather learning how to sing.
  • Averted:
    • All the gay characters are out by the beginning of the work.
    • All the gay characters are still closeted by the end of the work.
    • Everyone is straight.
  • Enforced:
    • The producer learns that the main demographic of his works are gay teens, and he thinks gay teens will respond best to something they can relate to, so he writes one of these.
    • Alice has been Ambiguously Gay for a while and the fans demand she become unambiguously so.
  • Invoked: Bisexual Ellie talks Alice into coming out, knowing that if she does, Ellie can use her parents' reactions to Alice as a litmus test.
  • Exploited: Ellie, aware that Alice has come out, tells her own parents about it to gauge their reactions.
  • Defied: Ellie tells Alice not to come out under any circumstances, worried that something will happen to Alice if she does.
  • Discussed: "Of course Alice is going to come out. In books, no LGBTQ character doesn't!"
  • Conversed: "Ugh, I've seen so many of these coming-out stories and they're all the same!"
  • Deconstructed: When Alice comes out, no one treats it like a big deal because they all love Alice anyway. It's nowhere near as big a plot point as it should have been.
  • Reconstructed: Alice's parents and brother have verbally expressed their homophobia before (i.e, when talking about other gay people, gay rights stories on the news, etc), making it a real challenge for Alice to come out.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice comes out as a lesbian, but she isn't actually a lesbian, she's straight, but then turns out she's actually bisexual, and she never comes out as that, but then Bill outs her, and then Alice comes out as a pedophile and goes to jail.
  • Implied: In one scene, Alice's parents Claire and Devon say that they can't wait for Alice to marry a man and have cute babies. Two scenes later, they mention Alice marrying a woman, leading the audience to believe that she came out.
  • Played for Laughs: After Alice comes out, her relatives all start telling funny stories about how they always knew she was a lesbian.
  • Played for Drama: Alice's homophobic parents reject her and kick her out of the house.
  • Played for Horror: Claire, Devon, and Alice's brother Bill show her a traumatizing amount of homophobic hate, so she becomes a serial killer who murders homophobes, starting with Claire, Devon and Bill.
  • Lampshaded: "And this is the part where Alice comes out."

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