O.K. Keyes

It Did Not Start With Stonewall: Black Lesbian Elders Tell Their Herstories     ( Video uploaded on Jan 12, 2007 )

Roxane Gay, Some Thoughts on the 2015 Oscar Nominees (The Toast)

Yep.

(via malindalo)

More and more we become a mixed race country, but our movies don’t.  Half of the population is female, but our movies don’t reflect that.  And we still struggle over the heroes of our books.  Doesn’t it make you want to scream?  Doesn’t it make you want to drop flat any movie, tv show, book that doesn’t at least acknowledge that the world is NOT all white, NOT all cis, NOT all Christian, NOT all American, and HALF female?

I’m tired of the token female.  I’m tired of the token person of color in a secondary role.  I’m tired of a constant adherence to a world which is gone.

(via tamorapierce)

Art should reflect truth, and the truth of the world is diverse. 

“Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, “there is a life that will never have been lived,” sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost. The apprehension of grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of precarious life. Grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of the living being as living, exposed to non-life from the start.” 

― Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?

So these are some of my initial ramblings about the significance of The Legend of Korra.  I will be releasing a series of essays over the next couple of weeks related to the finale and the series as a whole.  Some essays will be more academic, some more personal, others just straight up meta.  The essay presented below is an attempt at an introduction to my research as well as situating Korra as one of the most significant queer characters in television history.    

As an aspiring TV scholar, one of the things I investigate within fandom studies is the inception of fandom communities.  I wanted to know what made a group of people pull together over the ether, crossing boundaries of gender, race, sexuality, etc. to find a common ground over their admiration (read: obsession) of a TV show.  To be fair, when I first set out to follow The Legend of Korra fandom, I was basing a lot of my research on this idea I introduced called the “American shoujo,” and how this was being used as a marketing strategy to appeal to both male and female kid/teen audiences.  Never did I imagine, I’d stumble headfirst into a community who shipped first canonized queer couple of color on a children’s TV show. 

Warning: It’s long.

The representation of queer love stories among main characters in media is incredibly limited, and when told, a relatively recent phenomena. Sure, you’ve got your But I’m a Cheerleader’s here and there. But for the most part, these are love stories that simply aren’t told. It’s not to say heterosexual romances aren’t compelling or enjoyable; of course they are. But there are also certain common tropes, or at the very least “signals” that we are used to seeing portrayed: the contentious banter, the light touches, the puppy-dog eyes.  Take Firefly…Mal grabs Inara’s shoulder for 4 seconds in the pilot episode and it was one of the most charged moments on TV. We all knew what was up.

But with queer romance, it’s different. It’s not necessarily more subtle, but most of us aren’t used to looking for these signals, or the signals get misinterpreted. This is especially true of relationships between two women, because in our society, women in platonic friendships still tend to show some kind of physical intimacy with one another…hugging, hand-holding, etc., which is behavior that we typically don’t see between two men in a platonic relationship. There’s also the stereotype of women being “more emotional” and prone to talk about their feelings with one another, so for many, a romantic relationship between two women may not look dissimilar to a friendship. Even when clear romantic cues happen to be there, most of us are inclined to write them off as just a friendship, because of the unlikeliness of canonized queer romances.

Korrasami is no different. This is what Bryan was getting at, when he said that people who felt the love story was just “thrown in” or “not developed” may have been watching with a “hetero lens.” I personally don’t think it’s even indicative of that…it’s just that the perceived improbability of a canon Korrasami may have clouded viewers to the very well-scripted romantic arc. Even I was guilty of this; while I certainly began shipping the two in S3 (declaring that their ship was sailing after that finale even), I still strongly felt it would remain in the realm of subtext. I don’t think it’s as simple as heterocentrism; there’s a lot of really complicated factors in our society that may cause us to overlook or downplay the likelihood of a romantic arc between two women.

Aries- “ALRIGHT LET’S GO!!”

Taurus- “just another 30 min…”

Gemini- ”where’s my phone?”

Cancer- “everybody hates me”

Leo- “Oh shit who is that?”

Virgo- “I’m tired… I’ll call in sick”

Libra- “I have nothing to wear!!”

Scorpio- “death and darkness”

Sagittarius- “where am i? how did I get here?”

Capricorn- “better get to it!”

Aquarius- “I am God”

Giveaway prize for berylgrace who wanted modern au Korrasami in a chalky style. I thought it would be nice to draw Asami as a business woman, since I’ve never done that before, but then my hand slipped and I somehow ended up with a Paperman crossover?

Whoops???