#official comic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

i-am-extremely-mad · 1 year ago

Photo

"#korrasami

#like the water tribe were very patriarchal in aang's time

#and katara ended up kick starting a movement away from that

#however beliefs like that don't disappear in just 70 years

#it's been 100 yrs since white women in the US got the right to vote

#and there's a handful of people that still think women shouldn't vote

#imagine how korra must have felt when she enjoyed learning combat over healing

#but the culture she grew up in had lingering beliefs that real women don't fight

#that only further isolated her from her people when combined with being the Avatar"

Actually, only the Northern Water Tribe was extremely patriarchal, Korra was under no pressure to choose between healing or fighting. In the Southern Water Tribe, there is no such pressure on women.

And even the Northern Water Tribe was no longer so patriarchal in Korra's time, let's not forget Eska, one of her cousins, who is frighteningly strong and a skilled waterbender, who together with her brother constantly foiled the plans of Korra and the others and eventually became one of the chiefs of the Northern Tribe.

So this is one of the most important parts of Turf Wars for me, and let me tell you why.

To begin, I have to go back into the murky depths of LoK fandom history. The year was 2012, and the episode where Asami takes Korra race car driving, The Aftermath, had just aired. This was obviously a huge moment for Korrasami, as any kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise. People were already shipping the two prior to this, but this was where it really took off. At the time I considered myself to be a multishipper; I kind of shipped Korra with everyone – I was equally cool with Makorra and Borra. So it was around this time that I added Korrasami to my list of ships I supported. I had not yet admitted to myself that I was gay at this time.

I had no idea then how important Korrasami would become for me, but in the next few months I became more and more attached to the ship. By the end of the year I was shipping Korrasami pretty darn hardcore, and thanks to the ship and its fans I had embraced the fact that I was most definitely not straight. (As an aside, even though I was clearly in this ship for the long haul at that point, I think I was still referring to myself as a multishipper – lol, the denial.)

At the time, LoK was receiving a lot of criticism. (I mean, when hasn’t it? Us fans are too passionate not to.) Book 1 had finished airing and people had a lot of different issues with it. I tried to be open to everyone’s opinions. Some critiques I agreed with, some less so. I was finishing up my last semester of college at the time, and I was taking a class on pop culture. For my final paper in the class, I wrote about fan culture – I split it between a discussion of AtLA and LoK fandom.

For the LoK fandom portion, I recall quoting a Tumblr post that was a critique of The Aftermath. The post detailed a concern that the episode was presenting Korra as someone who disdained femininity, or traditional feminine attributes and activities. It made the argument that Korra only warmed to Asami upon her engaging with Korra in a traditionally masculine activity – race car driving. This became a common critique in the fandom at the time. Some fans claimed Korra had unresolved issues with internalized misogyny, arguing that the show presented Korra as someone who refused to give Asami any respect until she found out that Asami also enjoyed something “masculine.”

This was a critique I was sympathetic to, although I couldn’t ever quite agree with it. To be fair, the show hadn’t yet given us enough interaction between Korra and Asami to really flesh-out all their thoughts and feelings for each other. I could understand how people were reading The Aftermath in this negative way. It’s vague enough that it’s a reasonable interpretation, and Korra’s lines about disdain over “makeovers” and how, after the car race, she apologies for thinking of Asami as being “prissy,” certainly don’t do anything to negate this interpretation.

But I just…I couldn’t accept it. I had a sense that the truth was deeper, and I held onto that feeling with all my might. I was frustrated, because I felt I couldn’t adequately explain to people why I felt the way I did. But I did. I related to Korra so intimately, and it’d always had to do with the fact that she wasn’t “traditionally feminine.” Even before I could say I was queer, I found myself seeing that in Korra, and it was the thing that always brought me back to knowing that she was one of my most favorite characters of all time.

I don’t think I present as masc-of-center as Korra does, but I feel it, I’ve always felt it. I’ve never been a makeup person. A fashion person. I’ve been a watch cartoons and play video games person. There weren’t any other girls like this in my school growing up. I essentially lost my best friend in elementary school when I got obsessed with Pokemon because she thought that was something that only “stupid boys” were into and started shaming me for it and wouldn’t let me talk about it. I didn’t understand why it was any different than Harry Potter, which we both loved, but hey. This shit is illogical. But that’s the whole point. Society tells us that girls can’t play or enjoy video games. Can’t behave a certain way. Can’t be, as Korra says, too wild, too emotional, too intense.

And that’s where it comes back to this Turf Wars scene. It’s not even about outwardly presenting as “masculine” or “feminine.” It’s about the way girls are told to behave. It’s not just that we can’t like what boys like, but we can’t express ourselves in the same ways. It’s not “ladylike.”

Korra felt relieved. Relieved. That to me is probably the most meaningful word that could’ve been chosen to describe this. The most meaningful word to describe why Korra and Korrasami have always meant what they do to me.

I saw myself in Korra from the very beginning. What The Aftermath did was let Korra see herself in Asami. That was it. That was the connection. I was devastated that people thought that Korra “hated” femininity just because she personally couldn’t connect with it all the time. Because I’m the same way. I don’t hate femininity. I don’t hate traditionally feminine things. But I’ve felt isolated all my life for not being a girl who’s significantly invested in those things, that just wanted to grab her Gameboy (it’s in the fuckin name - games are for boys) and talk about stupid Pokemon.

You find someone else like you? Someone you connect with? That is relief. Relieved is the perfect word. What Asami did for Korra was make her feel like she could be herself and she wouldn’t be judged for it. Made her feel like she had a real friend that understood her intimately, in a way neither Mako or Bolin really could. As a fellow queer woman. A woman who embraces traditionally feminine things and masculine things, because honestly, that’s true for just about everyone, whether society wants us to admit it or not. The irony is that people read The Aftermath as Korra judging Asami, but they had it entirely backwards – it was about Korra being relieved that Asami wasn’t, and never would, judge her. Not for her personality or her interests, for the way she presented herself to the world. Nothing. Not for having a crush on the same boy and making immature teenage mistakes. Asami never held that against her. Not because she’s “too nice,” but because she understands that Korra isn’t perfect, and embraces and loves her for it along with everything else about her.

It’s relief. It’s relief when you finally meet someone that gets you more intimately than anyone else. Someone that you feel like you can be yourself, your whole self, around. Someone who won’t judge you. Someone who really loves you for you. Someone that would never ask you to change, or pressure you to be something you’re not.

That’s who Asami is to Korra. And that might be something other fans can’t see, whether because of their own personal life experiences, because they aren’t as forgiving as Asami, or because they don’t understand Korra the way Asami does. It could be because they have their issues with Korrasami, thought it was too subtle in the show, or have bad memories (trust me, me too) of certain people who shipped Korrasami by hating on Korra back in the day. Or maybe because they just prefer another ship or another interpretation of the show. And that’s okay.

But this is canon. No one in Korra’s life ever got her the way Asami does. It’s the truth that I saw beneath the surface of Korra and Asami’s relationship way back in Book 1. The one I tried to articulate, but felt like I always fell short. Felt that I couldn’t convince people to see, because they just didn’t at the time. But the one that I believed and hoped would be revealed more clearly as LoK went on. And it was.

I wasn’t just relieved to see that everything I’d always believed about Korra, Asami, and their relationship had been true all along. I was, am blessed.

It means everything to me.

#LOK #korrasami #Korra #Asami Sato #goddesses #Turf Wars #official comic #gorgeous #beautiful #awesome #amazing #so gorgeous #so beautiful #so sweet #so adorable #OMG #otp

2K notes · View notes