#honestly this was prompted by adora is a lesbian not bi discourse on twitter

[hayleysayshay]

Honestly this is probably my most controversial opinion but I don’t really care if people head canon Korra and Asami as lesbians.

Like, I think they’re bisexual. They are bisexual in canon if you take into consideration the author’s confirmation as canon. I also hate anti-fans (anti SJW type people) saying ‘they turned them into lesbians!!!’ When discussing the finale, because dating a woman doesn’t turn you into a lesbian and I consider that to be erasure. Realising you like your friend is kind of how a lot of relationships work in real life. I believe canon paints Korra and Asami having a real romantic interest in Mako. It just didn’t work out. And then they date eachother.

However if a lesbian fan reads either Korra or Asami’s relationship with Mako as comp het and they recognise the characters as being gay in a way that’s similar to their own experiences and identity it doesn’t really bother me. I can see that some lesbians have dated men in the past so that could happen with Korra and Asami.

Like this doesn’t invalidate canon as it’s a fan interpretation. Canon is still canon and the author’s word and not changed by some random user’s tweet or fanfic.

I suppose it comes down if you see a fan saying ‘Asami is a lesbian’ as dismissing any discussion of her being bisexual, but often (on Twitter where I saw most of this discourse that’s recent) it isn’t? It’s just someone saying they see them as gay. It doesn’t change anything to do with canon. Obviously some people saying ‘Asami is a lesbian and you’re wrong for thinking she’s bisexual’ isn’t a position I support but I think we often assume people are supporting the worst when discussing sexualities of fictional characters on the internet.

I don’t know, I think a lot of this is just personal preference. Like for me fanworks and headcanons have wildly differing interpretations and I feel like there’s always room for different versions of the same story. That’s the joy in fan works and headcanons. If you don’t like one interpretation, chance is there’s something out there that actually hits all your own personal ideas. And sometimes it’s fun to read stuff that is far away from your own interpretation!

This relates to head canoning Mako as gay, and not bisexual (I mean him being interpreted as straight isn’t normally negatively seen). Some people see this bi-erasure because he dated women, but again, comp het is a story that does happens as gay men do date women before realising they’re gay (I mean, inherently, the most canon sexuality is still that he’s straight). I headcanon him as bisexual but it’s no more canon than him being gay. Or similarly, headcanoning Kya as bisexual when people usually consider her a lesbian, because she mentioned a girlfriend (so canon sapphic) but we don’t actually know how she actually identifies. She could have previously dated a man or consider herself as Bi. We don’t know.

Maybe there’s a broader discussion on if some people can’t relate to bisexual characters in queer relationships so they feel the need to head canon them as gay. I think that’s a potentially interesting discussion and I do acknowledge that part of the discourse and I do think bisexual erasure is a thing that happens with these posts about gay Korra and Asami, and I get that it feels personal for so many people so there is genuine hurt.

But is it really that problematic for someone to headcanon a fictional character to their sexuality given in a blog post? I mean I freely ignore some of the canon commentary (smh Wu and Mako did not know eachother for three years I don’t care what the commentary implies. But the commentary is still more canon than my HC). Maybe, again, some rando’s opinion doesn’t actually affect my read of them being bisexual which I feel is very supported by canon and will not change this fact. Maybe I just don’t think good activism involves dog piling on some random twitter account for thinking Asami is gay.