klaxces:

“Why is LGBT representation so important?”

Okay lemme tell y’all a bit of a story.

So I was raised in a homophobic household. Not knowing why, I was taught that LGBT+ was wrong, and up until I was about 12, I agreed, even though I wasn’t consciously aware of it.

Then came the Legend Of Korra.

I’m sure some of you can agree when I say that the ATLA/LOK franchise has been a part of my life for many, many years. As I grew older, the love for the show just grew stronger, to the point where post. Season 2 of LOK, I had a mildly popular fan account dedicated to it.

At the time, the ship “Korrasami” was a crack ship. Considering I was still homophobic, (definitely a lot mellower but still very much unaccepting) I rarely thought of it, and everyone I knew/interacted on my side of the fandom never thought in a million years that it would be canon.

Even a lot of people who shipped it didn’t really believe it would see the screen time it deserved. Sure, they shipped it, but it was just so..unheard of in cartoons. It would never happen.

And then, it did.

And I remember coming to school a couple days after and not being happy because I didn’t like the idea of gay women. Then, as time went on, I remember being confused because that show was such a huge part of my life and I loved it so dearly,,,so why did I have to care if they were gay?

Slowly, I realised that the show was portraying love in such a pure, gentle way. I rewatched the seasons, and noticed the lingering looks, the foreshadowing, the blushes at one another.

I realised that they loved each other. And who was I to not condone that?

I began to read into LGBT+ community. How they were treated in history, why “pride” was a thing, how many people are homeless due to unaccepting parents.

I vowed then and there to never let myself become that parent.

6 months later, a friend of mine came out to me and she cried, and told me how scared she was of not being accepted and I almost cried with her because I couldn’t believe at one point I wouldn’t have loved her for who she was.

A year later, I realised I myself, was Queer.

LOK remains so dear in my heart. It taught me acceptance and love, and it was represented in such a way that was obvious, not vague or unclear. It made me sit back and think about what love is and why I didn’t accept some forms of it.

Representation matters. It changes lives. Especially when I realised I was Queer, I had to rewatch some episodes over and over and over again to convince myself that being Queer was okay and you could still be happy if you weren’t straight.

Kids need to see representation. If they’re in a similar situation to what I was at one point, it’s incredibly important they know that being gay is okay and there is nothing wrong with that. And, without getting into discourse, it’s why I was hurt with how vague Shiro and Adams relationship was (although, there is one more season to come).

Representation in a kids cartoon ended up changing my life for the better. It matters.