#i didn't know much about korrasami yet (i didn't know they were gonna get together)

[byfulcrums]

I have this OC that is a girl from the Earth Kingdom, Amaia. She's supposed to be Azula's love interest

The story goes kinda like this: Azula gets somewhat better. She leaves the Fire Nation without saying goodbye. She goes to travel, doesn't take anything with her. On the way, she meets a nice Earth Kingdom girl from a small no-name village. She falls in love, and they both go to Ba Sing Se together. She spends years with her before she goes back to the Fire Nation (not permanently, though) finally says hello and goodbye to her old friends and brother, and then leaves again to return to the love of her life

[tuiyla]

So I was reading some of your old asks and saw you rank Korrasami above Bubbline and Brittana, which intrigued me. While I'm glad that Korrasami helped to pave the way for lgbt rep in American children's media, I also thought that the LoK writers could have given them more scenes together in Books 3 and 4. As it is, despite their cultural impact, I thought their relationship was underdeveloped compared to Bubbline and Brittana :/ So could you please expand on why Korrasami had an edge over the latter two ships in your opinion? 🤔

Also I hope that Korrasami question doesn't upset you 🙇‍♀️ I just love Bubbline and Brittana so much that I wonder what I might have missed about Korrasami that made you rank them higher than two of my favorite ships ever djdjsk

Not upsetting no worries, I just need to disclaim before I get into the meat of it that, at the end of the day, it's personal preference. It's why I never ever actually try to convince anyone. It's just whatever you prefer. I know stuff I like is never gonna be everyone's tea and I'd hate for someone to constantly be trying to convince me that stuff I'm not into for whatever reason is the Best Thing Ever, Actually. You can be curious and that's cool and I appreciate the interest, just a preamble before we start.

These three ships are indeed easily my top 3 of all time. So far, anyway. I think that ask must be a year old now haha but it stays true. First, I think it's really hard to actually compare something like Brittana to Korrasami and Bubbline, as it's a different medium and entirely different circumstances. Even though the three do mostly overlap in terms of their show's time on air (2012-2014, 2010-2018, 2009-2015) it's just difficult to say, exactly, what Korrasami's "edge" is - just that personal preference, at the end of the day. Because all three ships were major in their own leagues, that league arguably being the same for LoK and Adventure Time. And I adore Bubbline, like, to a degree that I've long tried to encapsulate and you can see if you go back far enough on this blog. I'll use any opportunity to highlight that even they paved the way for Korrasami! And not just the other way around. Before there was the LoK finale or even Book 3, there was the Mathematical controversy and Sky Witch and all that. I actually often lament that media outlets are so ready to credit LoK and Steven Universe before they do Adventure Time and Bubbline because Bubbline only got to reap the benefits years later. Bubbline was a slow burn but make no mistake, they very much created their own fortune.

Anyway, you didn't ask about Bubbline. But all that's to say, I don't measure in terms of groundbreaking representation or legacy or any of that because even with the two Western animation entries it's hard to compare. I adore Brittana but they're third probably because I was a latecomer to Glee and wasn't there as it happened, I don't have that kind of connection with it. I do with Adventure Time and I do with LoK. Bubbline are just, wow, again it's hard to summarize in a post like this what they mean to me. And yet I'd still choose Korrasami as my number one any day.

I know this isn't the best answer I could give or maybe even a particularly good one, and certainly not tangible in any way. But you just had to be there. I don't know how I'd feel about Korrasami if I wasn't there for The Legend of Korra from literally the first image revealed, if I hadn't watched every single week. If I hadn't spent the second half of 2014 in this fandom, trying to figure out where they were going with this relationship. I don't presume to know how you watched the show, but I think it's already a world of difference to watch it after it had first premiered, knowing what the ending will be. Having that expectation. We had no expectations in 2014. I loved every single Korrasami interaction as they happened, felt Book 3 was SUCH a breath of fresh air and looked forward to the girlies bonding more every week. I didn't ship them, I was telling myself, because one did not ship a Sapphic pairing in a cartoon in 2014. I loved them, of course, but I just hoped we'd get as much as possible of their friendship.

Because they were very much established a strong friendship first. That's the entirety of Book 3 on a Korrasami level for me, establishing their strong bond after the love triangle stuff is over for good. They really said, "let's make up for the previous two seasons" and they did. No shade, genuinely, but I always find statements like "they could have had more scenes" funny coming from years later. As it was happening, the fandom did the maths, and forgive me I don't remember the exact numbers but Asami spends about 90% of her Book 3 screentime with Korra. That number is quite high from Korra's, the main character's pov too, over 50%. Book 4 is a different beast but once they're reunited, even the infamous filler episode takes care to put the two together. So I don't think it's about the lack of scenes, I think it's about the subtlety of how it had to be in 2014.

But see, even back then, even when we thought this was impossible to truly be we all thought it was walking that line between subtext queer people read into and something actually intentional. I mentioned I wasn't a shipper because I didn't dare be one. By the time Reunion happened in Book 4, I couldn't help it. I knew it wouldn't lead anywhere but I've always been a shipper more interested in fleshed-out dynamics than Word of God, anyway. So I started calling myself a Korrasami shipper from that point, hoping against hope that the two would end the series - well, not together. Because again, that just seemed impossible. But at least with a bond that's so undeniably deep. And I really think it was, and is, because the writers did have to put that work in and build bit by bit because they weren't allowed to explicitly articulate the kind of attraction the characters were feeling.

And then... December 19th, 2014. I'll never forget. That's the kind of media moment I could never. The following few days, the following months and years and the eventual legacy Korrasami has now. The milestone that now, with series like The Owl House really pales in comparison. And that's a good thing because it tells us how far we've come. But Korrasami will never not be revolutionary to me and their story will never not be breathtaking. Far beyond what it meant for representation, it's what that story of polar opposites and against the odd and balance was. What Avatar is all about, at its core. And, yes, even beyond all that, what it meant to me, personally. Now that couldn't possibly be summarized here.

Again, I adore Bubbline and am holding myself back lest I go feral talking about them. Say the word and a 2k-word essay will drop lol. But Korrasami had two crucial legs up over Bubbline and that's franchise and timing. Franchise, because the world of Avatar will always be my favourite. Love me some AT, but nothing will ever compare to my inner 10 year-old watching any Avatar project. And timing, well, I've lamented it in this very post. I wholeheartedly believe AT kicked off this golden age of Sapphic animation in 2011 but LoK ended its run in 2014. It led somewhere sooner. I don't like admitting this, but by the time Bubbline kissed in 2018, it was "fucking finally." That part is what it is. It's just one factor in all this.

I know I didn't talk about Korrasami much, I'd be happy to get into the nitty-gritty of the story more and why I think it's anything but underdeveloped. This is less of a personal preference thing though still subjective, but I think they're more well-developed than either Bubbline or particularly Brittana. But you asked for my reasons, and it's that je ne sais quoi of personal preference, at the end of the day. Nothing will ever mean to me what Korrasami did. (That said, maybe you'll be interested in this little project I did a while back that covers both Bubbline and Korrasami, as well as Catradora. At least it's some of my thoughts and analysis on these characters and couples.)