i’m Across the past couple years, representation of people in the queer community in media has increased. From literature all the way onto the big screen, these numbers have grown. In fact, over the past year, 596 total characters in the LGBTQIA+ communities have been included across TV media. Of course, not all shows are going to stay up on the air. Many go down due to a variety of reasons, from bad writing to just a lack of money. However, a disproportionate amount of shows that contain queer characters exit the scene after just one season. In the past year, 54 queer shows went on the chopping block ending the stories of nearly one-fourth of LGBTQIA+ characters.

Many of these shows are released in Pride Month, captivating audiences and generally obtaining good reviews from critics. However, after their initial success these shows were abandoned. It makes sense, these companies want to make money and one solid way for them to do it is pull the attention of queer people into their services. Then they take those shows off the air after all their customers buy their content, leaving viewers with an unsatisfying conclusion to their show. It doesn’t make any sense for companies to do this especially when these shows are well reviewed. Shows such as “First Kill” and “Warrior Nun” both were on the top 10 list on Netflix, becoming popular in the queer communities, but ended up being canceled because they didn’t reach the minutes-watched required to stay up. Streaming services have made a habit of supporting shows with these wide and varied casts of queer people only to cancel them. 

People want to see representation of who they are, not all of the queer people who exist are white. The representation of people of color who were queer this past year was at 51%. The queer community is racially diverse as a whole, with people of color being with the community at the beginning, fighting for their rights. Representation of white people over the years has been excessive. It is good that the representation of different people has gone up as their stories are important and deserve to be shared. 

Queer shows, when supported, are very successful and win these institutions awards and top ratings lists in a variety of areas. “The Umbrella Academy,” “Yellowstone” and “Stranger Things” — all award winners — have been given the chance to thrive by their companies. They built large communities showcasing queer people and others. However, most shows in recent years haven’t had these opportunities to grow. This, alongside “queer-baiting,” which is when it is explicitly hinted that there are gay characters in the media, but they never show up or they end up being entirely irreverent, has been stirring up resentment of these services. Eventually, people are just going to stop caring about the new stories containing queer people, because we know that they aren’t going to go past one season and will just be incomplete. 

One way to help this issue is by reducing the amount of upstart queer content made. When you are releasing hundreds of shows, some shows are just going to earn more money than others. Instead of releasing multiple shows that are most certainly just there for a quick cash grab,  it would be better for the viewers if fewer new shows were developed and allowed more money to be spent on the development and expansion of these incomplete stories. Then, the trust of the people could be brought back.

Whenever it comes down to it, we have gotten better at including queer people as a whole in a positive light. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive to be better though. We shouldn’t just start the stories only to kill them off swiftly. We need to allow them to finish and give them the treatment they deserve.