The case for Korra and Asami becoming girlfriends in 3x10, “Long Live the Earth Queen.”

Written with the help of queertoonqueertoons

Korrasami was censored. We ascertained this fact fairly quickly, given the lack of a kiss between the two women at the show’s end. It’s easy to get frustrated, but there is a distinct reason that there were limits on what could be openly shown in terms of Korrasami: LOK needed to be able to air in countries with heavy restrictions (namely China and Russia, two big/necessary markets) where explicit depiction of a romance between two women could be illegal (especially given LOK’s status as a “kid’s" show).

Knowing there was this inherent constraint…that certain moments/scenes simply could not exist, it is wise for us to look past the presented, explicit narrative and seek the implied. Bryke were restricted in their telling of Korra and Asami’s story. So they did what they could to help us out: they included mountains of subtext.



Thanks to a recent conversation with queertoonqueerstoons, I began to view the airship that Korra and Asami commandeer in the desert as an intentional a symbol in and of itself. The airship may likely have been a conscious effort on Bryke’s part evoke our “shipping” culture, and to suggest to the fandom that their romantic relationship had begun. What we are shown are the two women struggling to build a ship any way they can to escape the Earth Kingdom’s clutches, which in this particular case takes the form of a crew of all men led by a quasi-sexist captain. What does it mean? That this is the moment in time the S.S. Korrasami actually set sail…back in Book 3 Episode 10, Long Live the Earth Queen.

“This ship isn’t going anywhere. And neither are you.”

Those who work in animation can talk with more expertise on this matter, but according to queertoon’s practiced eye, there are several times in LOK where you can tell frames have been held. It’s a quick animator’s trick to apparently remove a couple of frames of animated content without changing the length of time. What are two scenes that happened to get this treatment? The Korrasami hugs. It could explain why the 3x12 hug looked slightly awkward, and almost definitely explains the difference in the screencaps between their Reunion hug in the episode proper, and the flashback to it from a later episode’s recap section. The “contact” moment was cut. Even going frame-by-frame for the 4x07 hug reveals some interesting animation choices:

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So where did that leave Bryke? Even their scenes that were intentionally written to be devoid of sexuality could still be on the chopping block for the perceived closeness of the two women. Well, one easy solution is to give winks directly to the fandom. Bryke not only gave us the subtext, but they put it in our language. We wanted the S.S. Korrasami so they gave us a very literal ship in an episode that starred Korra and Asami’s teamwork.

And one should need no more proof of Bryke sending signals to the audience about Korrasami than the fact that in 3x01, they primed us: Korra used the word “girlfriend.” Bryke wanted to call attention to what was about to happen, and when it did happen, they sent in the fandom version of a bat signal: a mothafuckin’ ship.



If this is the case…if the subtext is intentional (which I’ve become inclined to believe), the Korrasami narrative changes a bit. It is no longer a story of two women who took nearly 3 years to understand their feelings for one another, sharing what might have been a first kiss in the Spirit World. It is instead the story of two women who understood their romantic interest in one another and took advantage of it far sooner than we realized, thereby dating for over 3 years and ending in metaphorical elopement.

As a quick note of clarification, given that Korra and Asami do end up together, the term “subtext” (aka parts of the narrative with a metaphorical or implicit meaning) is inappropriate to use for their relationship’s build up. It wasn’t just implied that Korra choosing to write solely to Asami had romantic undertones–it was confirmed. What many tend to call “subtext” in the Korrasami narrative is just…“text” (or the visual media equivalent). That’s not what I’m doing. It is not in question that Korra and Asami are together and their interactions in Books 3 and 4 had a romantic element. What I’m doing is pushing the envelope further to see what a Korrasami narrative would look like free of the external constraints.

So with that in mind, if we take 3x10 as the true beginning of our ladies’ romantic relationship, how does that impact their story? Well, in this version of events, both Korra and Asami were definitely aware of feelings for each other earlier than suspected. Since rewatching Season 1 (and reading Bryan’s comments about being the “first Korrasami shipper”), I’m comfortable saying we can assume Asami was aware of her attraction towards Korra from the start. Korra, on the other hand, would still be a bit behind in her own understanding, mostly because she grew up completely sheltered and “hadn’t had a girlfriend before” (so she could easily have mistaken their sexual tension for a “girl crush”). That part remains the same. I would argue that it also makes the most sense for Korra to have never even considered any potential feelings for Asami until after she and Mako were 100% done.

And by the way, none of this negates either girls’ feelings for Mako or the significance of their relationships with him. There was just also something palpable between Korra and Asami from the get-go, which makes sense given where they ended up.



Continuing down this line of thought, at the start of Book 3, Korra is as we saw her: appreciative for and willing to deepen her friendship with Asami. Reading into the subtext, over the course of the Book, Korra slowly came to realize that her increased enjoyment being around Asami was underscored by romantic interest. This moment of realization occurred in the sands of the desert, interestingly enough the same moment sato-mobile chose as the one where Korra questioned her sexuality. The implied meaning of their sailing ship? That Korra and Asami successfully launched their relationship, becoming girlfriends. They sailed out of the desert together, Tonraq gave them his blessing, and by the next episode, Asami was offering to watch Korra’s body in direct parallel to the already established couple, P’Li and Zaheer.

As a quick note, another implication in this version of the narrative is that that their friends definitely knew about their relationship. The airship sailing serves as both as signal to the audience and the characters in the series. Tonraq approves of Asami, the girlfriend. Grandma Yin asking Mako why he doesn’t date “two girls like this” replaces the awkward conversation of Korra and Asami telling Mako they’re dating, and Grandma Yin’s remark about Korra being “awfully muscular for a woman” is evocative of homophobic feedback we often associate with older generations. This character knowledge also fleshes out Mako’s choice to ward off Wu in 4x01, adding a really cute element to the Masami friendship.

I’ll leave the development and extent of the Korrasami physical relationship to headcanons—I’ve argued before, but we can’t really make super informed decisions in this realm. Suffice it to say the subtext suggests there was at least charged hand-holding by 3x10 (*coughs*). Though I would be remiss if I didn’t call attention to this…you always learn something or other from the person you date.

If we wanted to talk about the emotional arc on the other hand, we are lucky that the subtext stays in parallel as the version we’ve come to understand, so there’s little clashing in terms of head-canons about developing feelings and emotional significance. Asami still comes to realize that she is completely in love with Korra when Korra almost dies in 3x13. Their status as girlfriends going into that finale explains why she looks so anxious as Korra is deciding to turn herself in to Zaheer. Take this moment where the crew is waiting while Korra radios him (btw, Bolin’s talking about Pabu during this cap and Asami’s barely listening):

The subtext suggests that the Asami we’re seeing here is the Asami who knows her girlfriend is quite possibly sacrificing her life. There’s a reason then, that Asami looked so deadly determined/fierce as she took down the Red Lotus guard to free the airbenders. Korra’s exact line was, “help me save the airbenders, then you can worry about saving me.” And it’s no coincidence that she was looking directly at Asami when delivering it.

Korra, for her part, enjoyed her time with a new girlfriend in the very short period between their ship sailing and Korra dealing with Zaheer’s ultimatum. She likely had a deepening crush, yet not too much time to dwell on the extent of it. And then, as we saw, Korra was both mentally and physically broken at the end of 3x13, in no place to be reflecting on those feelings. Their scene at the very end of the episode (a scene which I will vociferously defend), therefore would have been one between two girlfriends, with Asami serving as a great role model for partners of abuse survivors and/or individuals with chronic illnesses to look to.

I think I should call attention to the queer subtext for Korra in general here. Being a woman from the Southern Water Tribe who bucked gendered trends and was entirely unique by the inherent nature of being the Avatar, Korra was a very relatable figure to many queer individuals from the get-go. And this is for the very good reason that she was a queer character herself from the get-go. Bryke may not have realized this at first…that the way in which Korra was scripted was inherently queer (and this isn’t referring to her sexuality, but more how she was implicitly a non-normative character). Similarly, Bryke didn’t realize Asami was really a “good guy” until they began working with her character in the development stage and scrapped their Equalist Spy idea for her. Both Korra and Asami had a story to tell: a story they were desperately trying to get Bryke to listen to.

Book 1 was Bryke cramming their characters into a box that didn’t quite fit out of necessity, in case it wasn’t picked up for a Book 2. They needed a neat ending presented with a bow on top, despite it not being the endpoint for the Korra character they were writing. Some feel that the conclusion felt forced, or that the pacing of Season 1 was off, and I think trying to tie everything up like that was the issue. They were constraining themselves with that ending, but by the nature of LOK’s production…they had to. It also happened to be a resolution that was incredibly normative/gender reinforcing, which didn’t quite fit with Korra, an inherently transgressive character, whose struggles were in many ways similar to the struggles of queer teens due to her “difference.”

Cue Book 2, aka the “bridge” season. Bryke knew Korra’s spiritual journey—a journey where Korrasami happened to be the natural conclusion—but that required breaking down the walls of the normative box they gave us to neatly tie up Book 1. Korra needed to become the “first Avatar”; she needed to both free the Spirits and bring back the airbenders, and in doing so become not only transgressive to us, but outwardly transgressive within her own narrative: she bucked the trend of 10,000 years of Avatars before her. She changed the world forever and began a new spiritual age.



Therefore, Book 3 was when Korra came into her own, and not surprisingly when all other characterizations were shored up as well. Bolin remained gullible but became a lavabender and found a mutually supportive relationship, Mako solidified his role as the slightly dour (and wonderfully nerdy) cop/devoted friend, and Asami finally showed off her technology prowess and fought front and center next to Korra. Then Book 4 showed how our characters had grown into adults, and where they would settle in the end. This was the story that Bryke wanted to tell, and it was a story guided by the characters. Mako was proud to have grown into the selfless friend who gets to follow the Avatar into battle. And yes…Jinora knew exactly what was up between Korra and Asami with her side-eye after Kuvira’s arrest.

So Book 1 still gave us a Korra who was a queer figure given the difference inherently placed on her character. But this wasn’t a Korra that was understood as “queer” yet by her writers (again, not about in-verse sexuality). Book 3, as I just noted, was Korra as her rightful self: the first Avatar for the new spiritual age, now without connection to her past lives. So was there a moment of subtext somewhere in between that? A moment where audiences could make the connection of Korra’s “queerness” becoming fulling explicated?

In fact there was: her re-fusing with Raava. I’ve talked before, but there were indeed subtle romantic undertones to the Wan/Raava relationship (search the #waava tag and look no further). If Raava, voiced by a woman giving a somewhat sultry performance, fusing with Wan seemed in any way romantic, then her subsequent fusing with Korra, especially given Korra just losing her past lives, sends a strong signal to the audience. And it’s even more poignant given that the main two past lives to whom Korra looked for guidance were both men: Aang and Wan. Korra’s connection was shattered with them, replaced by direct and intimate interactions with Raava. This is what put Korra’s innate “queerness” into our language.

The reason I talk about the queer subtext is because it’s important in understanding just how organic Korrasami’s blossoming relationship was. As I said, given the “difference” the in-verse Korra character had placed on her, her struggles were evocative of queer teen struggles today. I would assume that there were a number of individuals struggling with identity who related all too well to that teardrop off the cliff in the Book 1 finale. And similarly, there are rather nuanced implications of Korra’s suffering at the hands of Zaheer; it is important to keep in mind that coping with traumatic events is not uncommon in modern-day queer narratives. Which is perhaps why Korra’s overall character arc was so moving, affecting, comforting, and even healing for many.



That brings us neatly back to the Korrasami subtext. At the end of Book 3, we have Korra in a wheelchair about to enter one of the darkest periods of her life. Yet in this case, she’s doing so with a girlfriend. With that fact, Asami serving as Korra’s caretaker for two weeks, standing with Korra’s family, offering to drop her [rather important] job to essentially move in with Korra, now makes a lot more sense. And it’s rather heartwarming to think that this means Tonraq and Senna understand her importance to Korra by then.

Korra’s decision to go to back to the South Pole and to decline Asami’s offer is still understandable and fits with what Korra felt she needed to do in order to heal. But perhaps we can take Korra only writing to Asami that one time as it really being that Asami was the only one with whom she kept constant correspondence. Then Mako yelling about “no letters” would really be him being upset that his letters didn’t contain anything of substance, or were infrequent. Asami may have even visited Korra during the 3 year gap, and perhaps Mako was upset that Korra didn’t want to see anyone else. And it was still during this time that Korra came to realize that she loved Asami. In fact, it really wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that Asami visited, and right after she left was when it hit Korra. Absence does make the heart grow fonder, but a sudden and brief presence to remind you of what you were missing works wonders.



With their relationship status in mind, I’d argue that while Korra was sending Tonraq letters in the last few months of the 3-year gap (when she was lying about being in Republic City), she was also sending letters to Asami. Or at the least just one, to tell her girlfriend whom she loved that she needed to take a trip alone. This would explain why Tonraq never found out about Korra’s whereabouts when Asami would still be inclined to keep writing to the south pole, and why Asami chose that time in between 4x01 and 4x07 to deal with her emotional turmoil relating to her dad. She knew Korra was placing herself in danger and she didn’t know when Korra would be getting back…that’s definitely enough to push her towards confronting Hiroshi.

This also puts The Reunion in better context. Korra’s blushing because she’s super in love with Asami (and aware of it) and Asami is hugging Korra so tightly that the animators have to remove part of Korra’s stomach. Their quarrel at the table was indeed a lovers’ spat, as we’ve been saying, but this time we can assume it’s subtext for “as girlfriends, here’s how they handle disagreements…in a very mature, supportive, and considerate fashion.” Asami’s “You don’t get to disappear for three years and act like you know what’s best for me” is the best example of a line that works better when the context is two lovers. The content of their fight need not be taken literally, though it’s not unreasonable for Asami reaching out to Hiroshi to be a source of disagreement. The implication of the scene is merely that as lovers, they can handle conflict harmoniously.

Let’s look at more subtext. Remember their perfect synchronization with their fighting in both The Reunion and Day of Colossus where they instinctively knew each other’s whereabouts/actions before they happened? Subtext for their physical relationship. Further, Korra’s antagonistic demeanor towards Hiroshi (despite their task-focused dialogue) would therefore be Korra acting as a protective girlfriend. And of course, it makes the parallel between the last shot of Korra and Asami and the Zhurrick wedding shot all the more pointed, something to which Bryan specifically called attention in his post.

By understanding that Bryke were externally constrained from giving us the depiction of Korrasami they wanted, the subtextual clues left by the authors do tell a compelling love story. But it’s a love story of a different nature: not one of two unlikely friends coming to understand their feelings for one another over the course of 3 years and beginning their romantic relationship just at the end of the series, but instead one of unlikely friends-become-girlfriends with a strong emotional connection, who stuck by each other through their darkest hours and ended up completely and stupidly in love.

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So this presented a different Korrasami story. But hopefully a story worth considering?