I saw Korra on a list of queerbaited characters and I know you people don’t learn your history but goddamn 2014 wasn’t that fucking long ago.

Korra is not queerbait. Korra is the opposite of queerbait. Korra was the creators pushing every damn boundary they could, before gay marriage was even legal, when all cartoon characters were assumed to be closeted by default and it was explicit policy that no queer relationships could be shown. Bryan Konietzko even mentioned that they pushed as hard as they possibly could go to make it clear that Korra was bi and she and Asami were in romantic love. He went to tumblr the exact same day to make sure there was no confusion. The instant they could, they had a comic about Korra and Asami’s first date and first kiss.

Korra and Asami holding hands is a thousand times more radical and queer than any of the craven tokens we’ve been getting these past few years and I will not hear different. There is a vast gulf of difference between creators who could goddamn well make something queer just constantly teasing it because they think it’s funny but would never actually go for it, and creators who actually cannot publish queer content doing everything they can to make it happen. The entire history of queerness is about sneaking past society’s norms and rules, writing our stories in subtext and allegory, and denying those stories their importance in getting us where we are today is foolish and cruel.