It’s pretty annoying when Christian creators pretend their stories only matter if they’re about some Moral Virtue.

It’s more annoying when secular creators do the same — especially when the art is far better on its own, and the Moral Virtues are (sometimes intentionally) controversial.

That’s the case with The Legend of Korra creators, and that’s my topic in today’s feature at Christ and Pop Culture.

Spoilers ahead, even in this excerpt.

The heroes win and and everyone is happy. Korra and her friend, Asami, go on vacation in the Spirit World. They smile at each other, the scene fades into golden light, and the credits roll.

And some fans went wild. They claimed their theoretical “ship” — fan-speak for a fan-envisioned romantic relationship between the series’ characters — was confirmed: a same-sex romance existed between Korra and Asami. Then the creators announced this was indeed their intention.

[…]

All Avatar stories have, as their emotional core, relationships between friends, siblings, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, boyfriends and girlfriends, and husbands and wives. Not one same-sex couple was in sight, meaning the Korrasami addition makes no sense.

Imagine if, at the end of the Star Wars trilogy, the camera pulled back to show the story was all a simulation or just Anakin’s bad dream. Or imagine that Breaking Bad‘s finale took a turn and — hey presto! — there’s suddenly a zombie epidemic! Korra may as well have added King Arthur, dinosaurs, or an alien invasion at the last second.

Read the rest at Korrasami Bends ‘The Legend of Korra’ In All the Wrong Ways, exclusively at Christ and Pop Culture.