#kom and kory's dynamic is also interesting in the n52 but it's not nearly as fleshed out

[princesskoriandr]

Your Starfire Cosplay is coming out so unbelievably good. Like how are you not working in like costumes for movie sets? It’s award worthy! So stunning! And the amount of work that must go into making everything! Wow!

I was wondering if you could give us more thoughts on the whole sibling dynamic between Kory and her siblings because I find that so fascinating! Like on one side you have Kory and everything that can be explored there but you also have Kom who is disabled and her narrative there and then you have Ryand’r who isn’t really explored as much.

what I find interesting about the dynamic of this family is that Ryand'r was so obviously tacked on at the end in an after thought which is like such a real youngest child in a busy/important/high profile family thing lmao

before we jump into it I want to make a few disclaimers:

I am not a mental health professional of any kind, I just have some surface level research behind me on like sibling and parent dynamics

I am not going to be excusing or endorsing some of Komand'r's more violent actions in her adulthood but also please remember that Kom is like a fictional character in a silly comic book

I will be talking both about the in-universe narrative that developed over time and the way it developed out of order in real time

okay let's get into it

their family dynamic honestly isn't super complicated but it is really interesting. the narrative sets Kory and Kom up as the scapegoat vs. the golden child (which is funny bc Kory is...the golden girl. goldie. etc.), Kom is also the black sheep of the family for obvious reasons, and Ryand'r is just lost in the shuffle which, as far as I understand, is pretty common for the third child in this kind of family dynamic.

Kom was set up for failure. a pretty important city, the city of Kysarr, was destroyed by the Citadel. the only source I can find on this is from Who's Who volume 2 (which is misattributed on her wiki as v. 1 #13, when it's v. 2 #13, but I'm banned from editing the wiki so whatever they'll just have to live with the mistake):

[image text: Komand'r was the eldest child of Tamaran's royal family, and the first princess born in almost a century. As such she should have been courted and showered with honors, but Komand'r was instead reviled. On the day of her birth, the dreaded Citadel Empire attacked and destroyed the western Tamaranean city of Kysarr and Killed three thousand citizens in her name. Due to no fault of her own, Komand'r was for all time inextricably linked with Tamaran's day of infamy.]

now, this destruction of Kysarr is not included in her or Kory's backgrounds in any comic, so this is something that's thrown into the continuity in 1991 and never spoken of again because it's in a total throw away comic. BUT that's exactly what makes it so interesting. so, let's go into this with the retcon context that Kom's day of birth was marked with destruction and this, alongside her disability, made her parents consider setting her aside as heir and having another kid (who would have previously been the spare, if Kom hadn't been "sickly" when she was born, as Kory says in The Tales of the New Teen Titans #4).

(as an aside: this profile on Kom also says that Myand'r is like a puppet ruler, which is not quite accurate, so we might also take this added Komand'r seasoning with a pinch of salt)

so, with this added context, we could see maybe why Kom would hold so much resentment toward her younger sister. Kory, being the golden child, is both aware of her parents treatment toward her disabled older sister and misunderstands it.

[The Tales of the New Teen Titans #4]

so, Kory says that "even when [they] were children the differences between [them] were so very apparent" but neglects to say why those differences may have been so apparent. she also says that "those were such happy days for [her]" and that there's one thing she could do that Kom couldn't, which is: fly. Kom can't fly. she has never been able to fly. in the page above, you can see Kory flying with her mother while her father watches and just below that, we can infer that the contrail in the distance behind Kom is either Kory or their mother, Luand'r.

can you see, maybe, why Kom would hate Kory? it's not Kory's fault. their parents literally pit them against each other because they're not good parents. it's clear from this alone that Myand'r and Luand'r are neglectful parents and even if they aren't neglecting Komand'r on purpose they are neglecting her in favor of Kory. so, Kom starts to escalate her abuse toward Kory in a bid for their attention and to ensure that Kory is as miserable as possible. Kom is forcing Kory to atone for the sins of the father (and mother) because in her child mind, Kory is the source of all her problems and if she can eliminate her or, at the very least, make her miserable, Kom can again gain the approval and love of their parents. it's unclear if she ever had this to begin with but she wants it so bad.

and, in turn, Kory wants her sister's love more than anything when they're children. it doesn't matter that Komand'r is abusive and will do whatever she can to make Kory's life hell, Kory wants her sister to be a sister to her. (any of you that have siblings know that sibling relationships are very rarely nice growing up, though, so Kory is striving for something that might not even be possible if Kom was like loved and cherished by their parents)

Raven quite literally asks Kory if their parents favored her over Kom and she kind of hand waves it away with a "well not in the beginning" which is like. such a golden child thing to say. they didn't care for her before she betrayed Tamaran, which is pretty clear from Kory's whole narrative up to this point, and what's the core of the why of the matter? Kom couldn't be their perfect paragon of a Tamaranean princess and she couldn't complete the image of a perfect Tamaranean royal family. which is very obvious if you read all her appearances and then read the second Tamaran arc where Myand'r uses Kory as a bargaining chip. if Komand'r had not been disabled, she would have been that very same bargaining chip, but because she's disabled she is then pushed away, punished for her disability, made into the scapegoat for an entire planet, and eventually begins to buy into that and becomes like a really bad fucking person, right?

it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

and then Ryand'r is just like. there.

literally, he's just there. we get this one glimpse of him (which is a hard maybe because this kid is never named) in New Teen Titans v1. #3 and then we don't see him again until 1982 when he is a literal infant:

that's a baby.

we meet full grown Ryand'r in New Teen Titans Annual #1 (love annuals) where it's revealed that he's alive! which is funny because I think most people forgot he even existed considering the last time they saw him he was like. an infant.

he does it in the funniest way possible and just pops out of the jungle after Kory curbstomped their sister. like. okay. you didn't want to, like, help your older sister who you most definitely don't remember because you had not gained sentience yet as you were busy being under a year old when she left the planet to train. I guess I wouldn't get involved either idk.

so, Kory, for some reason, believed Kom when she said Ryand'r KILLED THEIR PARENTS and then is like oh damn you're alive and you didn't kill them? that's cool I guess.

so, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that no one in this family has a real relationship with Ryand'r because Kory 1. believes this absolute lie their very obvious liar of an older sister made up and 2. is also surprised to not only see him alive but to see him as an adult and that just doesn't scream "I care about my younger brother and think about him when we are not together".

(also, ryan's age doesn't quite add up, considering Kory and Kom are the right ages but he's like...an adult...and not a preteen. like. sure. and no do not go "but time passes differently on tamaran" because in-universe it most certainly does not pass any differently because Marv Wolfman, like me, does not care to calculate time differences between planets)

so between Kory being surprised that he's alive and Kom making up whatever she wants about him I think that we could say that there's no real relationship between the siblings. like I said earlier, Ryand'r is just lost in the shuffle and like at the first sight of trouble he peaces out and leaves the planet. he's done this like as much as Kory has peaced out from Earth when she needs a break. this has, I think, impeded his ability to like truly form a relationship with Tamaran and his people because he's just neglected by everyone. there isn't a lot of info on his childhood and from the way we see his parents deal with his sisters, we might be able to come to the conclusion that he was also pretty much left to his own devices.

which is sad but nothing egregious happened to him in childhood. when he was older, he was also experimented on by the Psions and gained like the ability to burn people and things with his hands in a different way than Kom and Kory can (starbolts vs. thermal emissions) and that's like hugely traumatic and kind of binds him to his siblings in that way. is that every explored, though? no, it's not.

in Ryand'r's appearances that take place in the 90s and early 2000s (which is the last time he appears for a really long time), every time he appears it's to call Kory for help. one of these times he also asks her to help him commit genocide. so. just let that sink in. he's mostly just a plot device in later years and outside of his scant character development in the original Omega Men run he just doesn't to be an interesting character with a place in the dynamic of his family.

#can y'all tell my family has a weird dynamic or what #i've been click clacking away for like two hours on this i love it #starfire #blackfire #koriand'r #komand'r #kom and kory's dynamic is also interesting in the n52 but it's not nearly as fleshed out #so there just isn't much to talk about #i can talk more later. but i am tired now lol #thank u for the compliments and the question <3