Celebrating Korrasami

[Winter]

I do think that while it broke ground and convinced executives it was safe that it already doesn't really hold up. There's subtext and queercoding but it's never directly acknowledged until the finale. Compared to newer shows like She-ra, Owl House, Dragon Age Absolution, or the current Willow series that just unapologetically have queer couples nbd it seems rather quaint. Which is freaking astonishing for how fast it happened.

Korrasami crawled so that those shows could fly. It's worth recognizing where the ancestry of queer animation came from.

Oh absolutely. I was more commenting on how fast it happened than anything. Cutting edge to old fashioned in less than 8 years.

I remember when I watched and thinking how amazing such a moment was and I was reminded of a scene from Doctor Who Dalek vs. Cybermen two parter. Where the Doctor goes over how such a tiny crack and slowly yet somehow quickly expand until the glass finally shatters. That is really the perfect metaphor for Korrasami and LGBT representation in Western Animation as it started a chain reaction that has completely altered how romances are handled in Animation here in the states. We now have character being openly queer and it feels like there are more nuanced relationships with Same Sex Couples then there are with Hetero Couples.

I mentioned this before but with Lumity over on The Owl House a few years ago the Higher-Ups would have made it near to impossible for a relationship like Lumity to happen and if it did the show would have been booted off the air right after Enchanting Grom Fright. But instead Disney was fully supportive of the relationship and the show being cut short was more due to how it was over serialized, at least according to Dana Terrace.

It's amazing how far we've come in 8 years. Hell it was amazing how far we came in 5 years with shows getting more bold and all thanks to two girls holding hands and gazing lovingly into each others eyes.

[Lazerlike42]

As I said, my entire family was able to pick up on the cues that these other pairs of characters were intended to be romantic interests from the outset, including children under the age of six, but even looking for the dynamics between Korra and Asami we didn't see it. For example, my wife happened to be looking over my shoulder as I was reading through the replies here and (unprompted) she exclaimed, "yes, she wrote a letter to her best friend. Have these people never had a good same sex friendship before?"

For instance, the dynamic of Sokka and Suki's interactions in her first episode were glaringly obviously intended to be flirtatious and tense romantically. It was mentioned that they "only" spent at most 7 minutes together in that episode, but we're talking about episodes with 23 minute runtimes and in that context 7 minutes is enormous. I think it's easy - not just with the two Avatar series, but with television and film in general - to misjudge just how much time is spent on things. TV series regularly develop enormous amounts of stuff within time periods which, when we look back at them, are incredibly brief. (It's a big part of what makes the difference between good and bad series, episodes, etc., actually: how adept are the writers at making something feel deep and well developed given only a few minutes' time?).

Think about The Inner Light. It's only a 45 minute runtime and a lot more of that than I bet most people remember is actually spent on the Enterprise. Yes, in that only probably 35 minutes plus which are spent with Picard as Kamin the episode does a masterful job of giving the sense of a whole lifetime passed, but far more impressive is how the episode makes the audience totally accept that Picard has entirely left his old life behind and integrated fully into the primitive society in only a very brief few minutes, therefore allowing the rest of the episode to have time to believably depict an entire lifetime.

My only point here is that Suki and Sokka spending at most about a third of an episode together is more than enough time to develop a sense of romance between them, and the writers of that episode absolutely pull it off.

I just don't see the same with Korra and Asami. There was more than enough time to do this stuff, but to me they didn't take advantage of it.

[clearspira]

As I said, my entire family was able to pick up on the cues that these other pairs of characters were intended to be romantic interests from the outset, including children under the age of six, but even looking for the dynamics between Korra and Asami we didn't see it. For example, my wife happened to be looking over my shoulder as I was reading through the replies here and (unprompted) she exclaimed, "yes, she wrote a letter to her best friend. Have these people never had a good same sex friendship before?"

For instance, the dynamic of Sokka and Suki's interactions in her first episode were glaringly obviously intended to be flirtatious and tense romantically. It was mentioned that they "only" spent at most 7 minutes together in that episode, but we're talking about episodes with 23 minute runtimes and in that context 7 minutes is enormous. I think it's easy - not just with the two Avatar series, but with television and film in general - to misjudge just how much time is spent on things. TV series regularly develop enormous amounts of stuff within time periods which, when we look back at them, are incredibly brief. (It's a big part of what makes the difference between good and bad series, episodes, etc., actually: how adept are the writers at making something feel deep and well developed given only a few minutes' time?).

Think about The Inner Light. It's only a 45 minute runtime and a lot more of that than I bet most people remember is actually spent on the Enterprise. Yes, in that only probably 35 minutes plus which are spent with Picard as Kamin the episode does a masterful job of giving the sense of a whole lifetime passed, but far more impressive is how the episode makes the audience totally accept that Picard has entirely left his old life behind and integrated fully into the primitive society in only a very brief few minutes, therefore allowing the rest of the episode to have time to believably depict an entire lifetime.

My only point here is that Suki and Sokka spending at most about a third of an episode together is more than enough time to develop a sense of romance between them, and the writers of that episode absolutely pull it off.

I just don't see the same with Korra and Asami. There was more than enough time to do this stuff, but to me they didn't take advantage of it.

The trope ''Heterosexual Life Partners'' is what I am thinking of most when I read this. I think a lot of people out there (probably who have never had a best bro) cannot picture in their head just how passionate, involved, personal and emotional a completely non-romantic relationship can actually be.

Have you ever watched any shonen anime? The relationship between Naruto and Sasuke for example can be read as HIGHLY gay. The titular character even had a big-boobed girl called Hinata running after him throughout most of the show's run and he didn't even notice. But boy-oh-boy did he notice Sasuke to the point of legitimately fainting when the guy was in trouble at one point. And this is a very common thing in anime.

Personally, I agree with you, I don't think the Korra relationship was set up well. That isn't to say that the cartoon isn't a milestone - but if it was written this way today I don't think it would get praise.

[Madner Kami]

I remember when I watched and thinking how amazing such a moment was and I was reminded of a scene from Doctor Who Dalek vs. Cybermen two parter. Where the Doctor goes over how such a tiny crack and slowly yet somehow quickly expand until the glass finally shatters. That is really the perfect metaphor for Korrasami and LGBT representation in Western Animation as it started a chain reaction that has completely altered how romances are handled in Animation here in the states. We now have character being openly queer and it feels like there are more nuanced relationships with Same Sex Couples then there are with Hetero Couples.

I mentioned this before but with Lumity over on The Owl House a few years ago the Higher-Ups would have made it near to impossible for a relationship like Lumity to happen and if it did the show would have been booted off the air right after Enchanting Grom Fright. But instead Disney was fully supportive of the relationship and the show being cut short was more due to how it was over serialized, at least according to Dana Terrace.

It's amazing how far we've come in 8 years. Hell it was amazing how far we came in 5 years with shows getting more bold and all thanks to two girls holding hands and gazing lovingly into each others eyes.

This didn't start 8 years ago. Clearspira points out why. I'd set the beginnings in the 80s, when japanese story-telling tropes made their way into the western minds.