The X-Men Found a Genius Way Around a Problematic Trope
One of the longest running, and most controversial, media tropes is the «Bury Your Gays» narrative, where LGBTQ+ characters are unceremoniously killed off by straight authors in ways that rely on tired tropes and problematic plot developments, but the current era of the X-Men from Marvel Comics has found a way to bypass the more problematic elements of this trope. The Krakoan Era is finally acknowledging the sub-textual queerness that has existed in the X-Men franchise for decades, bringing LGBTQ+ characters to the forefront of their stories, while Marvel is simultaneously uplifting the voices of queer writers and creators.
Research has shown that the «Bury Your Gays» trope has been around in media narratives, particularly novels for nearly 130 years, beginning in the Victorian Era of Great Britain where queerness was explicitly outlawed, and novelists like Oscar Wilde were jailed for the simply act of loving someone of the same sex. Interestingly, it appears as though the «Bury Your Gays» trope (which has also been prevalent in Hollywood movies for decades) actually started as a way for queer authors to include queer characters in their stories, but not be banned or censored by editors or publishers, because they could have one queer character die, allowing the other to «realize» they are straight.
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Since LGBTQ+ people and identities have gained some acceptance since the 1950s, queer creators have used the «Bury Your Gays» trope less and less, opting to instead tell realistic, genuine stories of queer people, while straight and cisgender writers have continued to use this literary trope without any regard for the negative consequences they create
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