Why ‘Korrasami’ is More Than Just a Ship

Let me preface this by saying that I haven’t actually seen the last episode of The Legend of Korra (aside from a clip of the last 2 minutes). I haven’t even watched past the first season. Nevertheless, I teared up last night when I heard the news.

I was thirteen when the show first aired. I hadn’t planned on watching it until I heard a girl I liked talking about it in the hallway at school. My opinion of its first season was like the opinion of most: good, but not Avatar good. I quickly forgot about it after the first season wrapped.

I forgot about it, that is, until I saw my first Korrasami fanart. Up until that point, I had been like most straight shippers- only going along with whatever heterosexual ship was thrown my way. Korrasami was my first female/female ship. As a thirteen-year-old just beginning to question my sexuality, I cannot express how important this was to me. At that point, my only brush with queer representation had been through Glee and Modern Family. I hadn't felt connected to those shows in a way that allowed me to explore my identity, though, at least not in the way Korrasami did.

It wasn't long before I was thoroughly obsessed with the ship. At night, I lock my doors while spending hours in the dark digging through DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Fanfiction.net for any Korrasami works I could find. It wasn't quality that mattered. I was happy with any scrap of female/female work I could find; Korrasami was only the excuse to look. For me, it was something illicit, secret, something to be done behind locked doors when I knew nobody would ever see. In short, it was something completely different from any straight pairing I had shipped.

Maybe I hid it because of the way mainstream media likes to portray gay relationships as deviant. I’d like to look on the brighter side, though, and say it was because of the ship’s intimate relationship with myself. At that point, I had more than an inkling of my own sexuality but refused to admit it even to myself. Korrasami allowed me to explore my sexuality without having to admit it to myself. By using fictional characters, I could distance myself from it and explore it in a way that didn't force labels onto myself.

Time went on, and I moved on, past Korra to other fandoms. Over the next two years I shipped a dozen other gay pairings and was able to finally come to terms with my own sexuality. None of those pairings I ever expected to become canon, though. It was an unsaid rule among us queer shippers: the girl never ends up with the girl, and the boy never ends up with the boy. Have fun with your ships, because you will never see yourself in mainstream media. You do not exist.

And then the unspeakable happened. Korra and Asami held hands and walked away together into the Spirit World. A series ended with two girls unambiguously together romantically. And because that wasn’t enough for some people to be convinced of the relationship, Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino explicitly stated the two girls are a couple.

Is Korrasami perfect? Is this the shining standard of queer representation? No, of course not. Considering it’s the last episode of the series, they could have done more. But it’s a step in the right direction. If Korra can do it, maybe other shows will follow suit. Only time will tell. Is Korra alone going to make that much of a difference? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. But for thirteen-year-old me, just starting to question my sexuality and start looking for myself in the media, to finally see the girls end up together? Absolutely.

So in the long run, maybe it is just one pairing on a kid’s show. But for kids, some of whom may be beginning to question their identity, to see two girls unambiguously together? To see it normalized, to see that the girl can end up with the girl? It can mean a world of difference.