Sunken Ship Stats: Irosami (Iroh II and Asami Sato)
Ah, Irosami. The Titanic of Legend of Korra. Hopes for this firebending prince and his brilliant would-be princess were so big and bright that they launched a whole cruise ship of content following season one. Which promptly sank. In fact, despite indications it was originally meant to be canon, General Iroh and Asami Sato didn't have so much as a scene together the entire rest of the show. But while we never got to see this potential United Forces duo in action, that doesn't mean they didn't live happily ever after in fanfiction.
What We Love About It: 🎵IIIIIIIII've been dreaming of a true love's kiss...🎵 Okay, we'll stop. But if LOK had a Disney moment, then surely it's this. She, a brave and beautiful young woman alone in the world after the betrayal of her father and a breakup with her boyfriend. He, a valiant commander who looks like he walked out of some kind of calendar, willing to put it all on the line to do his duty. Both intelligent, serious, and given great responsibility at a young age, Iroh and Asami have the feel of a mature but passionate couple who can deeply commit to doing good and to one another. What's not to love? Also, wow, their kids would be gorgeous.
By the Numbers: Unfortunately, Irosami is one of the harder ships to generate stats for because it is frequently either a side-pairing, a foil for endgame Korrasami, or both. The Iroh II/Asami Sato tag on AO3 has 115 works. But if you sort for kudos, you're 17 deep before you get to Amethyst, the most popular fic where Irosami is the main ship, and all but five stories of the first 20 are where Iroh and Asami are broken up to make way for another pair. Hardly romantic. There's no ship shaming at Avatar Sunken Ships Week, but if rarepair is what you're hungry for, you have to dig a little.
By using AO3's magical OTP function to filter results to just the Iroh II/Asami Sato pairing, the total number of fics drops to only 24. But this function filters out too many popular, legitimate Irosami fics that also include other ships. So in the end mod Appa—who claims to have read every Irosami fic ever published—went the analog route and counted them. There are 62 fics where Irosami is the/a main pairing, inclusive of OT3s. Take that, technology.
As with other older ships, there's also a fair amount of Irosami content not on AO3. In particular, the 2012 Irosami Week spawned a diverse set of stories across fanfiction.net, tumblr, wattpad, and deviant art. We'll be highlighting some of these works later in the week. While we can't do nearly the filtering job and some are cross-posted, a quick search for "Irosami" on fanfiction.net generated 88 additional fics. But never fear - despite the age of this sunken ship, new Irosami fics are still being added (as recently as last week!) by a few dedicated authors still carrying the torch.
Served With: The most frequent companion ships are far and away the Krew in different combinations: Korra/Mako (22 fics) and Bolin/Opal (13) being the most common, with a some (largely past) Mako/Asami Sato (16). We also see some Iroh II family pairings such as Izumi/Bumi II (8), as well as the intriguing OT3s of Iroh II/Mako/Asami (8) and Iroh II/Asami/Korra (2).
Up next: The sunken treasures that make up the beautiful Art of Irosami!
Banner image by LightSilverstar
