Recently, the media has featured queer characters much more often in prominent roles that have been widely celebrated and recognized. For example, the film Moonlight, which is about a gay black boy growing up in Liberty City, Florida, won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2016. Additionally, the LGBTQ young adult novel What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera was recently released to critical acclaim, and is particularly notable because both authors have written books centered on queer characters before. However, what about television? To take a look at this medium’s recent history with queer characters and storylines, let’s examine both Supernatural and The Legend of Korra.

Supernatural is a dark fantasy show currently running on The CW; it is in its fourteenth season and has been airing since 2005. The show follows brothers Dean and Sam Winchester as they fight supernatural creatures such as demons, ghosts, and monsters. The show quickly developed cult status and a dedicated fandom.

The first convention dedicated to Supernatural was held in Nashville, Tennessee, in October 2006. The fourth season saw the introduction of the angel Castiel, and fans quickly accepted the written-in subtext and created the relationship name “Destiel,” which stemmed from the idea of Dean and Castiel in a romantic relationship. The homoerotic subtext continued, and by the eighth season, the shippers (fans who supported the romantic relationship) and queer fans were out in full force.

At a Supernatural Con panel in New Jersey in 2015, it became clear that Jensen Ackles (who plays Dean Winchester) did not want to discuss any questions having to do with either queerness or shipping. A fan said, “I just wanted to say, I love your character becoming more comfortable with himself this season. I’m bisexual, and I’ve noticed some possible subtext…” She was cut off at this point by Ackles, who said, “Don’t ruin it for everybody now.” The fan said, “I do not mean it as disrespectful at all.” Ackles responded, “I still don’t know what the question was. I’m gonna pretend like I don’t know what the question was. I’m going to take a cue and move on.” The fan was allegedly found crying later. Nothing in particular was done by the show’s creators or actors after this incident, and the show continued its habit of subtext without a romantic relationship to back it up.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the children’s fantasy adventure series The Legend of Korra, which ran on Nickelodeon from 2012 to 2014, embraced its modernity and pushed the boundaries of children’s television. A sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005 to 2008), Korra follows 16-year-old Avatar Korra as she masters Airbending and combats terrorism and anarchy in Republic City. Korra and her friend Asami are both shown to be bisexual in the show’s final shot, as they gaze into each other’s eyes in a scene similar to another romantic shot in the prequel series.

The Legend of Korra’s target audience of children, though aware of queer characters and relationships, were not rooting for them like the adults in the Supernatural fandom were rooting for Dean and Castiel. However, the series took time to build and break a heterosexual relationship of Korra’s, as well as show how she became close with Asami. Just in case it wasn’t clear, the creators, Michael Dante and Bryan Konietzko, confirmed the relationship on Tumblr, saying fans could feel any way they wanted to about it, but Korrasami was canon and a part of their show.

With those examples in mind, it is important to discuss how the shows affect queer fans.

Queer fans are constantly wary of queerbaiting, a practice in which show creators and writers dabble in queer subtext but quickly back off and deny any possibility of queer relationships. Supernatural has been continually derided for queerbaiting, and it hasn’t gotten better over time, even after the disastrous convention panel. The show is now in its fourteenth season, and even as far back as season ten, reviewers and fans were begging for changes that weren’t forthcoming. Notably, Destiel is, in part, formed by the writers and show creators, and their glass-half-empty attitude toward queer relationships is damaging to the fanbase and the show itself.

However, no one group of either the show’s creators or sections in the fandom is solely to blame for the representation mess that Supernatural has become. People in the fandom for reasons other than shipping saw Destiel shippers as “fetishistic,” wishing instead for more acceptance of platonic male relationships or more naturally-evolving relationships. Therefore, there can be a sense that Destiel fans have read too much into the relationships between the characters and are desperately hoping for something that was never going to happen and was never planned. On the other hand, even if the writers didn’t write in the full relationships, they did write in the subtext that the fans then latched onto. Overall, no one group is to blame.

The Legend of Korra managed to avoid all of this. It didn’t have the same type of fanbase as Supernatural, but it still got a lot of things right in terms of queer television, and in the show, queerbaiting is practically nonexistent. Korra and Asami both had failed relationships with boys before beginning their own relationship at the end of the last season, and the moments between them were seen as (and could be interpreted as) close friendship. Since both girls were established as being bisexual, it erased any kind of rigidity between being gay or straight. Though the show had romance, its main draw was its action and plot, and this ended up helping to draw attention away from the slowly building romantic relationship between Korra and Asami, which was a pleasant surprise for viewers and shippers alike.

As the world becomes more global and people continue to interact with, befriend, and develop romantic relationships with people in diverse ways, inclusive representation in media becomes ever more important.

In a way, it becomes especially important with television. When we binge watch four episodes of something at a time we are immersing ourselves in the characters’ world; we root for the main characters and become invested in their lives, their hopes, their dreams. Therefore, marginalized peoples deserve to see themselves depicted on screen. Diverse representation, whether that’s through sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnic identity, or anything else, is necessary for the world that ours is becoming. The practice of queerbaiting is harmful; it’s exploitative, makes a mockery of sexual orientation, and hinders gay rights movements and progress. Queer characters and relationships in media still have a long way to go, but as minority and subculture communities continue to speak up and out and tell their stories, the road doesn’t seem quite so long.