A Korrasami Meta Analysis (handled with the deft touch of an Equalist glove)

Before I go any further, I need to state that this is a wild, way-out-there meta analysis satire. I will defend Korrasami like no other ship in fictional existence BUT this post is not meant to be read as an argument for the ship. (That’s my “Word of God” part anyway. If you want to run with this post in a “Death of the Author” sort of way then all the power to you!)

Warning: Some content may be NSFW (depending on your workplace; YMMV and all that). Also, it will eat up your bandwidth with poorly-worked Photoshop. And it is very, very long.

Preface

We know from co-creator Bryan Konietzko’s post-finale tumblr post that the idea of a Korrasami romance was only purposefully seeded starting in Book 3. Any moments before then, though amusing and maybe even convincing, were unintentional.

An animator was having fun here. Or the storyboarder. Or Bryan, the first Korrasami shipper.

We also have learned that the original plan, as they were throwing together Books 2, 3 and 4 concurrently, was to build Korra and Asami’s friendship. Bryke weren’t sure if they wanted Korra paired with anyone romantically at the series’ end. However, in the writing of Book 3, the idea sprung up organically that Bryke could realistically pair Korra and Asami as a romantic couple.

Probably my reaction if you told me during Book 1 that these two would end up together.

When did this change occur? When did the friendship become a different kind of ship? Korra may have referred to Asami as a “girlfriend” in 3x01 but only your imagination could allow you to run with that. They shared a laugh at Mako’s expense (3x01 & 3x02), fought side-by-side (3x03), sparred (3x04), and sat next to each other in various Zaofu meal scenes (3x06 & 3x08). Then we got a lot of little moments in “The Stakeout” with this imagery near the end:

If this scene occurred between two characters of similar age and opposite genders, there is a very high probability that it would be read as “romantic”.

One scene by itself, without anything being made explicit, cannot tell you much about a relationship. Throw in the fact that we’re discussing two young women around 18 (Korra) and 19 (Asami) years of age at this point in the series. What can you do to portray them as romantic on a TV Y7 children’s cartoon?

This brings us to Book 3, Chapter 10: “Long Live the Queen.” When it comes to the overall plot of the series, what happens in this episode has long-reaching effects. Zaheer’s assassination of the Earth Queen Hou-Ting is what makes Kuvira’s rise to power in Book 4 possible.



However, nearly half of this episode is spent with Korra and Asami in a plot that does not move the overall story forward at all! In fact, they end up back where they spent the majority of the previous episode: the Misty Palms Oasis. Why spend so much time on what on the surface seems like a Korra and Asami filler story if it isn’t trying to accomplish something else?

Source: Reddit post by Georeferencing. (x)

Remember Zaheer’s line in “A Breath of Fresh Air” (3x01) as he’s escaping from his prison: “When you base your expectations only on what you see, you blind yourself to the possibilities of a new reality.” One could say, from the very start of Book 3, Bryke were priming us to read deeper, to pay attention to the subtext. Those subtle looks and vocal intonations may mean something more. If something seems odd or out of place to you, maybe what you’re looking at is a metaphor for something that cannot be stated explicitly.

The Korra and Asami airship plot in "Long Live the Queen”, the plotline that doesn’t make narrative sense to the season’s overall story, is where Korra and Asami’s romantic arc – where the Korrasami ship – officially sets sail, and it is told to us in hefty doses of subtext.

Some important comments about sexuality before I walk you through the episode:

I refer to Korra and Asami as “bisexuals”. Since the characters don’t outright say how they self-identify (or even if such sexual orientation vocabulary exists in the Avatar-verse), it would be more technically correct to refer to them as “queer.” However, this is my meta analysis (and my headcanons) so you gotta deal with it. (In my view, they both got all hot and bothered about Mako.)

Also, people don’t just become bisexual. The characters’ bisexuality is something that has always been there, lurking just below the surface. It just happened to sneak up on them. You know, kind of like real life.

Asami Sato: always subversive, always bisexual

Book 3, Chapter 10: “Long Live the Queen”

Written by Tim Hedrick

Directed by Melchior Zwyer

We start the episode at Fort Bosco, a little Earth Kingdom outpost.



Fort Bosco is named after the late Earth King Kuei’s constant companion, his pet bear.

“Just bear”?

After having been captured by the Earth Queen’s forces at the end of the previous episode (“The Stakeout”), Korra and Asami are being transported as prisoners via an airship to Ba Sing Se.

Ever felt like you were held hostage to a ship? I did. It’s called “Book 1: Air”.

Korra tries to warn the Captain about the Red Lotus and their plans to take down the Earth Queen but the Captain dismisses Korra’s warning as “crazy talk." It’s almost as if he’s a Makorra shipper denying Korrasami shippers' insistence that what they’re seeing is romantic buildup.

The Earth Kingdom forces have taken great care to make sure that Korra, the Avatar, is restrained. They put minimal effort into restraining Asami, a non-bender. She’s almost an afterthought. This is pretty much how the series has treated her up until Book 3.

Here it’s time for a course correction. Having an engineering background and being the owner and CEO of Future Industries, a company that produces, among other things, airships, Asami knows that the Earth Kingdom airships are made by rival Cabbage Corp and are of cheap construction.

The Earth Kingdom / Cabbage Corp airship is a crappy ship. In fact, it could represent all the shipping that has been featured on The Legend of Korra up to this point in the series.

Traditional like the Earth Kingdom; cheap like Cabbage Corp.

Some of you may have enjoyed the romantic storyline between Mako and Korra in the first two books of the series but one has to admit that the Book 1 romance was heavily reliant on cheap tropes. The build-up was insufficient to believe in a satisfying romance without casually accepting cliches to explain the romantic outcome of Book 1. (I can continue arguing this but that really ought to be the subject of different post entirely.)

Makorra = Earth Kingdom / Cabbage Corp airship quality. Pretty on the outside, somewhat functional, but flawed and poorly constructed at the most basic level. (1x12: "Endgame”)



So what happens in 3x10? Asami uses her feminine wiles to trick the unsuspecting crewman, Arik, to chain her to a wall rail instead of the floor. This is all part of a plan.

Oh Arik, she’s not really into you. I mean, she still probably likes dudes but just because she’s bi doesn’t mean she wants to do everyone.

We then cut to the Red Lotus getting some characterization that will make us a little sad later when they bite it.

Villain-Hero bonding moment. Too bad you all want to kill each other.

PSA: Maybe don’t try to kill the Avatar in the Avatar State next time.

Back on the airship, Asami takes advantage of Cabbage Corp’s poor workmanship. She leverages her full body weight to rip the rail free from the wall. Girl is doing everything in her power to free herself from this cheap, crappy ship!

Actor of agency for a change. Who needs benders? (Except sexually.)

Now allow me to jump three years into the future to point something out.

Bringing tea to warm up Korra? Smooth, Sato. Real smooth.

Korra spends the vast majority of the series with bare shoulders. She was raised in a compound at the South Pole. Thanks to airbending, she can also warm herself up through her breathing (which Tenzin explains in 3x07: “Original Airbenders”). Heck, if she were really cold, she could also firebend. Asami is an intelligent young woman. She should know these things. However, in “Remembrances” (4x08), Asami brings tea to Korra saying, “I brought you some tea. I thought you might be cold out here.” This has to be a lie. It was an in. It was a way for her to reach out to Korra and spend time with her without coming across as too stalker-ish.

Bringing it back to 3x10 and the airship, Asami claims that she needs the keys to free Korra from her Hannibal cosplay outfit. We know Asami is lying here because we have eyes.



Azula Asami always lies.

Asami, sneaky bisexual that she is, is pretending that she needs the keys so she can show off in front of Korra. She pries an opening in the floor and crawls out in a mission to get the keys.

How’s that view, Korra?

Meanwhile, in Ba Sing Se, in the plot-forwarding portion of this episode, the Red Lotus and the Earth Queen are making a deal: the Queen will hand Korra over to the Red Lotus in exchange for the location of the “stolen” airbenders (3x04: “In Harm’s Way”).

One of these people has eaten baby flying bison and is thus far more evil than the others.

Back on the airship, Asami knocks out Arik and gets the keys. Look at the suggestive way she twirls them! There’s only one audience for this and she’s kind of tied up at the moment.

Work that key ring with your finger, Asami!

This is followed by a subtle, partially off-camera scene where Asami helps Korra take off a very particular garment: a straightjacket!

Asami is disrobing Korra of this constraining outer layer of heterosexuality. See, Bryke told you in Episode 3x10!

What does this represent? What is being told to us subtextually? Korra – and by extension Bryke – are now free to go about their business and write the girl-love story they want to tell…with limitations.

Asami and Korra break into the cabin of the airship. Korra gets over-aggressive with airbending…



Korra is overaggressive with the airbending like how Bryke were overaggressive with shoving Makorra into Book 1.

…resulting in the ship crashing in the Si Wong Desert.

“I think we both know that this, us, doesn’t work.”

That whole scene was also subtext. It’s illustrating to us that Bryke can’t be too aggressive with depicting Korra and Asami’s same-sex relationship. They’re operating at a TV-Y7 level here. If they show us too much, if they’re too explicit, they can get in real trouble. Like, I don’t know, get taken off the air or something.

Everyone survives the crash. Korra and Asami want everyone to work together to get the airship running again so they could get out of there. The Captain wants to sit tight and wait for rescue: “This ship isn’t going anywhere and neither are you.” He wants to follow his orders – the Earth Queen’s orders – and take Korra and Asami to Ba Sing Se as prisoners.

Then Asami notices something in the distance, stirring underneath the sands.

What else is just underneath the surface in this episode?

Believing that it may be some spirit out to do them harm, the airship crew decides to team up with Korra and Asami to fix the ship and fly out of there.



Meanwhile, in Ba Sing Se, Mako is reminding us of the time when he made Korra feel all insecure in her Avatar role. This time Mako is making Bolin feel all insecure and sad about his inability to metalbend.



Mako, stop making everyone cry!

And just outside the Misty Palms Oasis, Chief Lin Beifong has found the abandoned Jeeps and pets.

I still can’t get over the fact that they refer to them as “Jeeps”.

Back in the desert, Korra, Asami and the airship crew (the “KAir Crew”) are nearly finished with returning their ship back to the old status quo.



Asami acknowledges that it’s still pretty crap (it’s Cabbage Corp, after all) but its mediocrity is still good enough to get them out of there. Here Bryke is saying that, yes, they could fix up Makorra and give it back to us, but do you really want this cheap, short-cut-taking, formulaic stuff? Is Cabbage Corp good enough for you or do you want something better?

It’s relevant to point out that Asami, a snazzy gal who understands good quality, is subtly pointing these things out to us. She’s the one who presented us with the top-of-the-line Future Industries Korrasami airship back in 2x02 (“Rebirth”).

Like, seriously, that airship is sex. No subtext needed. You want to get aboard that one!

The crew starts up the engines and that’s when the creature under the sands makes its appearance. It’s not a spirit. It’s a sand shark and it pops up and gobbles that crappy ship and trashes its cheap heteronormativity.

“It’s over for real this time.”

The crew is devastated but the Captain still thinks that they ought to stay where they are and wait for rescue. That’s when Asami nerds out with her engineering and gets way too excited about building a sand-sailer out of parts salvaged from the airship.

Asami loves chances to show off in front of Korra…just like in Book 1…back when she was also a bisexual.

Like, seriously, you’d think someone gave her the Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon Lego set. Instead, she’s working with a ship that isn’t quite as cool.

Meanwhile, back in Ba Sing Se, Zaheer notices something amiss and decides to spy on the Earth Queen. He overhears a Dai Li agent informing the Queen that the airship carrying Korra has crashed in the Si Wong Desert. Recognizing that the Earth Kingdom forces are unlikely to catch Korra again, Zaheer and his Red Lotus comrades decide to change up their plans.



They confront the Queen with the information they’ve learned. The Queen threatens to throw them into prison for eavesdropping if they won’t reveal the location of the “stolen” airbenders. When the Red Lotus defy the Queen, Hou-Ting orders her Dai Li agents to seize them. Big mistake.

Subversive Ghazan smacks Dai Li agents down with their own “traditional” rock gloves. Dai Li and the status quo get pwned!

A note about the Dai Li: They were created by Avatar Kyoshi to protect the interests of the Earth Kingdom royalty and to preserve the cultural heritage of Ba Sing Se. In other words, they represent tradition and the status quo. They were founded to combat subversive elements. This episode is loaded to the gills with subversion.

And then Zaheer assassinates Hou-Ting.

She dead. Lesson: Don’t f*ck with Zaheer.

While this is a villainous act, the audience isn’t entirely sad to see the Earth Queen bite it. The woman forcibly conscripted the new airbenders, she ate endangered baby bison, and it’s rumored that she ate Bosco after Earth King Kuei died. Why would she eat the beloved pet bear of her father? Was it jealousy or spite or was it something else?

We learn in “The Earth Queen” (3x03) that Hou-Ting considered her father a weakling for ceding Earth Kingdom land to Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko, land that became the United Republic. But consider that her father had another weakness, an unspoken weakness:

Seriously, how did they get this past the censors in 2007!

What if Kuei and Bosco had a relationship that went beyond Korra and Asami’s canon bisexual women of color? What if Hou-Ting was disgusted with her father’s unnatural predilections? I wonder if there’s anything in Freud about eating another person’s beloved, but then if I were to discuss Freud too much in here it would invalidate a lot of the points I’ve been making (because mentioning Freud in a meta analysis is almost akin to Godwinning nowadays) so, you know, I’m not going to discuss Freud.

Anyways, the Red Lotus announce to the city what they have done and tear down a wall, allowing the people of the lower rings to run riot in the richer upper rings.

Shedding a lot of “outer” things in this episode.

And how many times has Ba Sing Se been compromised in this franchise?

Zaheer shows up at the prison and lets Mako and Bolin go, giving them a message – an ultimatim – to deliver to Korra.

And thus ends our plot-forwarding moments for the episode.

Back in the Si Wong Desert, the KAir Crew has built a sand-sailer from the parts of the old Makorra Cabbage Corp airship. With Asami’s engineering know-how and Korra’s airbending abilities, this badass duo officially sets sail on a ship of their own making. They built their own ship and they’re shipping themselves.



“It is ‘A’ way, it is a great way.” … “It’s a valid way if you enjoy that.”

This is the sand shark that they’re fleeing from:



Now take a moment and plunge your mind into the gutter. Then let yourself think that this sand shark’s mouth looks like what your gutter-mind think it looks like. (I would tell you what I think but that would destroy my Internet equivalent of the TV-Y7 rating.)

They are not that scary IRL.

If you’re still having problems placing the image, here’s a diagram (c/o Asami, the nerd who draws herself on her own blueprints) to help you out:

I know some of you headcanon Asami as trans so I threw Pema in there as well. (If you headcanon Pema as trans too, the woman gave birth in 1x10 FFS! You are breaking the rules of anatomy!)

Now watch this sequence:

The sand shark is DONE.

Now look at Korra. She isn’t even airbending here. She’s holding onto the mast of the ship and looking behind her. It’s unclear if she’s looking with satisfaction with what she’s done or if she’s looking at Asami steering the ship. Maybe she’s doing both. What seems to be implied is that Korra enjoyed the experience of temporarily being taken into that sand shark’s suggestive orifice. There was just something about going into the sand shark’s mouth that our heroine found so…so…[headcanon your thought here because I can’t].

Korra didn’t need to go into the Avatar State to achieve this “afterglow”. (Sokka would be so proud of me right now!)

They safely arrive at the Misty Palms Oasis.



Conveniently ignore the fact that the sand-sailer falls apart once they arrive at the Misty Palms Oasis since it falling apart doesn’t fit with the “theory” of this post.

After all they’ve just been through, the Airship Captain decides that Korra and Asami are all right and he’s not going to retake them as prisoners (as if he could have stopped them anyway). He then extends his…



If it seems out of the blue to you, I think a second viewing of the last two seasons this episode would show that perhaps you were looking at it only through a hetero an ableist lens.

…hook. Now the whole episode, the Airship Captain had been keeping his right hook in his pocket. Unless you were looking for it, you may not have noticed. Is this another nod to subtlety? Are Bryke hinting at how they are going to tell their romantic Korrasami story?

We know that closeup handholds in “The Legend of Korra” signify something important about a relationship. What does a hand/hook-hold mean? Does the Captain notice that Korra is hiding something and giving her a small nudge of encouragement by his example?

Maybe it was a cue to look beneath the surface. The captain was hiding his hook hand because it was different. It didn’t make him a good or bad person. It was there all the time, just hidden, like Korra and Asami’s queerness. Or maybe the point was that the hook didn’t really affect who the Captain was. Korra and Asami didn’t behave any differently to the Captain because he had a hook for a hand. Similarly, it should’t really matter if Korra or Asami are into men as well as women. It isn’t what defines them.



You know who the Airship Captain is? He is Nickelodeon. He’s seen Korra and Asami together, in action. He sees that they’re good, has no problem with them and lets them go do their thing. This hook-/hand-shake is Nickelodeon giving Bryke and Korra his blessing.

Remember how Bryke were operating under an unwritten rule. Remember how Bryan said that they had to go to the execs and ask them how far they could take things?

Now that that’s out of the way, they couldn’t exactly have Korra and Asami kiss in celebration of this green-lighting. Instead, we get a different act of girl-on-girl love courtesy of some polar bear dog tongue action.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend to hang out with and talk to before, except for Naga. This is nice.”

Korra and Asami make their way inside a bar/speakeasy/cantina where they find Tonraq, Lin and Lord Zuko. In this exchange with her father, Korra gives all the credit for the escape to Asami.

Sub-textually, Korra is presenting her girlfriend to her father. The Chief approves. You should approve too.

The episode then proceeds to wrap itself up. Lord Zuko makes another cameo appearance and Lin gets to be her grumpy self. They inform Korra and Asami about Mako and Bolin being captured by the Red Lotus. Then the tiny man in the box informs our heroines that the Earth Queen has been assassinated.

I wonder what Zuko and Lin conversations are like.

We know that Bryke were operating under an unwritten rule where they felt that there were things they couldn’t explicitly show. When we dig deep and try to uncover what’s there subtextually – as Korra and Asami discovered what was lurking just underneath the sands of the Si Wong Desert – it becomes hard to deny the representation of Korra and Asami as a potential romantic couple and of their sexual attraction to women.

Remember that you can’t just take one item alone. To see the greater picture, you must contextualize the subtextual evidence and see how it all fits together.

“Well, you can’t be afraid to mix it up sometimes.”

Real thoughts/opinions on “Long Live the Queen” (and this “analysis”) here. Honestly, after composing this, I could use a vacation.



[EDITS

3/6: Fixed title card to be less “epileptic”. Also, fixed some grammar.

3/9: Link added to follow-up post (x)

All other content remains unchanged.]