#teen titans meta

[linkspooky]

What’s your thoughts on teen titans 2005 blackfire?

This is actually a complicated question to answer because I do love the Blackfire we get from the Teen Titans cartoon, but it isn't really my favorite adaptation of her character. Part of the problem is she's only in two episodes. If Starfire got her own season then Blackfire would probably have to be fleshed out more just by necessity.

I guess my main issue boils down to the difference between personality and character depth. Which is something I just made up on the spot but, a character can have a lot of personality but not be a particularly deep character and vise versa. More under the cut.

Cartoon Blackfire is so overflowing with personality that she's an incredibly memorable character despite only appearing in two episodes. The cartoon adaptation does a good job in general of streamlining the more complicated comic book versions into easily recognizable personalities that fit into the animated adaptation, where you still get the gist of the original.

Robin is trying too hard to be Batman, reflective of early Teen Titans Dick Grayson's habit of overworking himself and his insecurity as leader. Starfire's personality focuses on her fish out of water aspects which was a big conflict for her originally. Cyborg's portrayal leans into the disability representation aspect of his narrative and how like an ablest society has taught him to hate himself or think of himself as less than human for his cybernetic prosthetics.

The show communicates these deep ideas in more simplified personalities compared to the comic book counterparts (they have to it's a 20 minute cartoon versus a new teen titans run with over a hundred issues).

Then we get to Blackfire who also has a strong personality that immediately communicates a lot about her character. Number one she is the archetypal big sister who makes her little sister feel inferior about everything, it's like being in middle school when your sister is a high scholer. From Starfire's perspective Blackfire has always been cooler, stronger, more adult. That's something the audience can understand pretty easily because they most likely have big sisters too who seem cool and untouchable.

On top of that though as the episode progresses we learn that Blackfire isn't just making Starfire jealous on accident. Like it could have been an accident sometimes you hang out with a new group of friends and immediately grab the attention away but it's just a misunderstanding you're just trying to integrate yourself into the group and newer people tend to attract more attention. Borrowing your sisters clothes, hanging out with their friends and taking attention away, those could all just be a normal sibling conflict.

Then you find out that Blackfire's doing this on purpose, she's just trying to edge out Starfire and steal her place with her friends. It's not just because she wants to hide out from under the law and stick Starfire with the blame to get the police off her tail, no this is something she constantly does in every interaction with Starfire. She's always insisting that she's the better sister. She's reinforcing this sibling rivalry and always trying to come out on top.

Blackfire constantly antagonizes Starfire and turns everything into a competition, whereas Starfire doesn't see things that way she just sees them as sister. There are times where Blackfire is mentioned offhand and Starfire tells stories of her growing up like (Oh, my sister went through puberty and she turned purple for three days). So the rivalry thing is also pretty clearly one-sided on Blackfire's side. Even Blackfire's attempt to conquer tamaran and marry Starfire off to some ugly alien, it's a pretty clear attempt to just hurl egg in her sister's face.

Blackfire personality-wise also has that bad girl thing going to her. She's the quintessential mean girl to Starfire's naive nice girl. Her introduction episode where she immediately takes away the attention of all of Star's friends by coming off as a cooler version of Starfire, and the night club scene where she's wearing Starfire's clothes, and dancing also calls to mind Faith, Hope and Trick, the BTVS episode where Faith the other slayer is introduced to serve as the main character Buffy's darker foil. The "Bad Slayer" to Buffy's "Good Slayer."

This is what Blackfire is set up to be, she's not only a rival / antagonistic sibling she's supposed to be the "bad sister" to Starfire's "good sister". It's a pretty shallow role but Blackfire has so much personality that she plays it really well.

The show itself doesn't really dig any deeper than the sibling rivalry and the good sister / bad sister aspect, though. Which isn't true for the comics. Which is why I consider cartoon Blackfire a good adaptation of her PERSONALITY, but one lacking in character depth.

What makes comics Blackfire such a fascinating character to me is that she and Starfire are a pretty nuanced breakdown of the golden child / scapegoat dynamic. It's something a lot of adaptations miss out on. Even the debatably canonical Teen Titans GO! spinoff Comic of the show that ran at the same time the show was running kind of misses out on this element in their origins.

"Starfire was more liked because she was kinder and prettier..." this oversimplification that their parents did love all their children equally, Blackfire was just a bad seed / bad child who was unpleasant and hateful from the start. THe archetypal jealous older sister / cain to Starfire's Abel.

That's not how it is in the comics! Blackfire is disabled in the comics, and because of that Starfire's parents heavily favor their abled child. Blackfire's narrative is a disability narrative, she's unable to fly in her world so her parents strip her of her rightful inheritance and treat her far worse than her abled children, for no other reason than she can't fly.

I'm going to borrow heavily from another post about a character with a similiar disability narrative, where they are actively abused by their ableist parent: Toya Todoroki from My Hero Academia.

Touya, as a kid, is undergoing this painful disability, and rather than acknowledge his hand in that - because Endeavor brought him into this world for selfish reasons, without thought or care to the possibility of the Incompatible Outcome - Endeavor just turns him away and refuses to see his pain. He doesn't try to accommodate or mitigate or treat the disability, just pushes the disabled child aside and minimizes how severe the disability is. [...] Endeavor then keeps attempting to have "non disabled" children to "make up for" the disabled one. [...] Touya, however, in all of his grief and his anger, can only see that once again, he is not seen, his suffering didn't matter to his father. His disability is made to be his fault and his failure, which Endeavor, despite having a shrine to him, has cleanly wiped his hands of it. This new child is not disabled; this child is perfect. This is similar to how disabled older siblings may initially fail to emotionally connect to their abled baby siblings, and fail to see the way their parents may hurt or otherwise not nurture them; resentment at what is, real or perceived, better treatment and more displays of love, care, attention, etc builds inside.

Blackfire is born with a disability, and rather than try to accomodate for her, her parents just turn away from her refuse to see her pain and then push her aside for their "non-disabled" children. Starfire is not disabled, Starfire is perfect, and Blackfire knows that their parents treat the two of them differently.

Which is why in her pain and desperation for her parent's attention Blackfire has never truly connected or noticed Starfire, because she's incapable of seeing Starfire as anything other than the "abled" sibling in the household and the "favorite." Which isn't Blackfire or Starfire's fault, it's a conflict that's forced upon them by their parents. If Blackfire's parents had just treated her like a normal child instead of scapegoating her for her disability, Blackfire would have no reason to compete with Starfire.

However, there's an added element to this which makes the Blackfire and Starfire dynamic so good, is that Starfire does not understand that she's the golden child. She thinks their parents are perfectly normal, loving parents, and that Blackfire is the problem. Starfire refuses to ever see that Blackfire was abused and from the start believes that Blackfire just came out of the womb petty and jealous.

To be fair Blackfire does commit sibling abuse when she's younger, and even eventually ends up selling out their entire planet, and her sister to her the enemy. If Starfire resents Blackfire for her actions she's justified, but Starfire reduces Blackfire in her mind to a mustache twirling villain.

It's like if Starfire saw a pair of parents abusing their child in a wheelchair, screaming at him for not being able to walk, Idk, pushing him down the stairs she'd get angry and think they're horrible parents, but she can't see that the behavior is bad in her own parents.

Once again Starfire is a victim of Blackfire's lashing out, but at the same time imagine it from Blackfire's perspective. Imagine knowing that your parents are abusing you, and having no one to confide in because even if you told your sister how you'd felt she'd take her parents side and say "it's your fault, why don't you just try behaving better?"

In the comics themselves Blackfire's intense rivalry with Starfire is really her attempt to "earn" back the love of her parents by making up for the disability she was born with.

It's also sort of ironic - many disabled children (physical, intellectual, mental etc) often continue pushing themselves to achieve their parents dreams- whether it's sports, academics, work, etc - as a way to garner attention or praise or love or "make up" for being a burden/disabled until they collapse in some way - mental health crisis, irreversible body damage, etc.

Blackfire becomes violent, obsessed with strength, because her parents have taught her that there is something wrong with her that she needs up to make up for her inherent weakness by being strong. Blackfire is who she is in reaction to an inherently Ableist society that demonizes her for her disability, and parents who punish her and a sister who (cluelessly) joins in on that.

It's a good golden child and scapegoat dynamic because as awful as Blackfire is as an adult, she didn't have to become that way. She was pointlessly scapegoated as a child, pushed, pushed, and pushed because apparently it was just too hard for her parents to love a disabled child. It's also probably one that a lot of readers don't understand because it's a little hard to swallow the idea that some parents will just treat children as subhuman for having some disability, but then be perfectly capable of loving their abled children.

What makes it such a great one though is that it eventually breaks free from assigning Starfire the hero role, and Blackfire the villain role. One thing I hate about most "Good sibling vs Bad sibling" conflicts is that they'll make the bad sibling the one who got abused. Like, wow the abused sibling that didn't get any outside help is angry and violent... no duh.

As the comic goes on they break out of their roles because Blackfire becomes a much deeper character than she initially was. She's no longer just a power hungry dictator trying to grab a throne that wasn't hers out of jealousy, she eventually wins the throne of Tamaran because she is a better ruler than either Starfire or either of her parents. We learn that the reason she's so motivated isn't because she came out of the womb a little hater, but a genuine patriot.

She's violent and ruthless not because she has to be, but because she genuinely believes it is the only way to accomplish her goals of a better Tamaran. It is really the extreme end of what her parents did to her as children. Blackfire became violent, volatile, and determined because she wanted to earn back the love from her parents. Blackfire decides she has to be strong, cold and a killer because she has to work hard to earn the love of her planet.

Her backstory all ties into these goals, and through that we can see why Blackfire treats Starfire that way. It's not just that Blackfire is jealous of Starfire, but also that Blackfire represses her need for love. Her parents never loved her, so why would Starfire? She spent her entire childhood trying to earn that love and never got it, so she tried to deny that she ever wanted love in the first place.

Blackfire is actively killing off the part of her that desires love from people, that wants a family, because she believes it will make her lose sight of her goals. If that means she ends up turning against her family and fighting Starfire, well, oh well then she never had a family in the first place.

However, she's never completely able to get rid of her desire for familial love which is why she has this weird obsession with Starfire in the first place. Starfire's basically the only one who tried to love Blackfire and have a connection with her, even if Blackfire didn't reciprocate. Which is why Blackfire is simultaneously always trying to put Starfire down, but at the same time she can't let go of Starfire either. I think Blackfire desires that relationship with her sister too, but one it's hard not to be jealous when you see your more abled sibling receiving the love and care you want, and number two Starfire has consistently all their lives sided with Blackfire's abusers over her.

Which is why instead of the sibling relationship they both want, which is to just be normal sisters and equals they're constantly forced to fight against each other. Neither of them actually wants this, it's their parents, it's outside circumstances, and it's their own inability to overcome their emotional flaws that makes them constantly fight. Which is just sad because Starfire has no connection with her younger brother, and her parents are just as ready to sell her out as they were Blackfire so the only person in her biological family who loves her is Blackfire... albeit in a twisted way.

They both miss out on the chance to have a close connection with a person who they grew up with, and will understand a lot of their lives especially because Blackfire and Starfire are actually pretty similiar (the same person in two different fonts) because neither of them can get over this conflict.

It's tragic. They miss out on the chance for a loving sibling relationship that they both want because they can't overcome the cycle of abuse that started with their parents.

Anyway, if you want a show that dissects the golden child and scapegoat dynamic between the two of them better you can watch Season 3 of the HBOMAX TItans Adaptation. Their Starfire and Blackfire are fantastic and the season actually shows the two of them reconciling.

#teen titans meta #teen titans #komand'r #koriand'r #blackfire #starfire #blackfire teen titans #starfire teen titans #new teen titans

[suzukiblu]

. . . so I know the understandable fandom cliche is for Tim to make a grief-baby from his and Kon's DNA for handwave-y reasons, but LOGICALLY, given his incredibly messy downward spiral, if he DID need extra DNA to stabilize his custom Kon, wouldn't he use Steph or Bart's? Wouldn't one of them be the obvious choice to his messed-up self?? He is SPOILED for dead people's DNA to use!!

Anyway that's my new pitch for a Timkon clonebaby now, tiny little blonde gymnast with bright yellow eyes and a Speed Force connection and tactile telekinesis and a thing for sunbeams and three INCREDIBLY STUBBORN and too-smart-for-their-own-good brains jammed into one. Tim, you will regret this so much, and not because of the dubious ethics of the situation or anything like that but because you are gonna have to deal with Kon, Steph, AND Bart's collective "why??" and "no!!" phases all wrapped up in one tiny superchild.

And THEN you will get to explain said tiny superchild to ALL THREE OF THEM when they ALL come back.

Tim, full-on spiraling as he cooks up clonebaby soup in the Titans Tower basement: this is a normal stage of grief :)))

Cassie, somewhere, feeling a chill up her spine: gods Tim please don't be Gun Batman again

#timkon #tim drake #dc robin #kon el #stephanie brown #bart allen #teen titans #meta ecetera

[soleminisanction]

I've always really liked DC's in-house choice of referring to their various superhero groupings as "families," but it has gotten a little frustrating recently with people both in canon and in fandom seeming to forget that families aren't just a parental-unit-and-kids formation. They're complicated, and a lot of the DC families are too messy to fit into that neat little nuclear family mode.

Which is to say... here's some scattered thoughts/summaries about how these families are actually structured in canon, because I think it's interesting:

Supers -- The smaller, more traditional Superfamily (Clark, Lois, Kara, Kon, etc.) is a pretty traditional Midwestern nuclear family, with Jimmy Olsen filling the role of close family friend/goofy neighbor sidekick (in the Silver Age, he was Kara's would-be suitor) and Steel feeling more like part of Clark's personal circle of friends. The recent line up, though, with Jon, the twins, Kong and Nat? Starts to feel more like some old dynasty or noble house, complete with fostered foundlings and the Steels acting almost like knights under a noble's banner, possibly reflective of what the House of El would have been on Krypton.

Arrows -- Might currently be the closet to a traditional nuclear family structure. You've got Ollie and Dinah, their younger sisters, Ollie's adopted and biological children, and Ollie's granddaughter through Roy, plus by some counts Roy's co-parent and her sister as "in-laws." Bonnie and Cissie King-Jones are adjacent to but not technically "part" of the family, though I believe it's implied at one point that Ollie might also be Cissie's bio-dad. Pretty straightforward, these guys are actually family and they act like it, for good and ill.

Shazam Family -- Also a literal, actual family. Not originally, the original golden age "Marvel Family" was considerably more complicated and only Billy and Mary were full siblings, but nowadays the whole point of the modern Shazam family is that they're foster siblings united by familial love and that's fantastic. Meanwhile your average Black Adam story is 75% angsty family drama, 25% Egyptian mythology references.

Flashes -- Technically closer to three nuclear families (the Allens, the Wests and the Garricks; four if you include the Quicks), two of whom are united by marriage and all of whom are bound by the Speedforce, which, given its semi-spiritual connections to things like Speedster afterlives, can act almost like a religious force that connects them to the additional members like Avery, Circuit Breaker and Max as Bart's foster-dad. They're a big, sprawling tree with more cousins than siblings, the kind of family that functionally has a reunion every Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Lanterns -- Now these guys are the exception that proves my point about the whole 'family' thing not being straightforward. The lanterns aren't a family, they're a corps. Soldiers. Space cops. Comrades-in-arms. They respect each other, have each other's backs, might even like or care about each other, but those last two are optional, and they don't have the same kind of assumed obligations towards each other that a family would have. They're friends and co-workers, not family, but that doesn't mean their relationships are less significant, they're just different.

Wonders -- Roughly half of them are either one of Hippolyta's daughters (Diana, Donna, Nubia pre-Crisis) or related to them through the gods (Cassie), and the other half (Artemis, Yara, modern-age Nubia) use sister as a term of endearment more in a utopian lesbian commune kind of way. I think they brought Steve Trevor back recently? He's basically the Ken in this equation and perfectly fine with that role. None of which should be surprising if you've seen Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

Bats -- This is the one that people get really wrong when they try to force it into a traditional family structure. Don't let WFA fool you, the Bats are and have always been way more a snarled mess of tangled interpersonal relationships than they've ever been a cohesive family. Whether Dick is Bruce's son or his brother depends on what era you're talking about, and the former reading is much more recent than you think -- as in "started cropping up in the early 2000s" recent. Barbara is both Cassandra's sister and her mother. Duke and Steph both have living parents and neither of them want or would ever dream of treating Bruce like their dad; Tim was the same way until his dad died. None of the Robins ever lived in the mansion together, nor did Cass. Babs considered Jean-Paul Valley her brother and Huntress is so close to Tim she once hallucinated him calling her Big Sister. They're a beautiful mess of people finding places where their broken edges fit together into something that works for them and trying to reduce it down to a cozy nuclear family is just so goddamn reductive and lazy.

Blue Beetles -- Are only tangentially related to each other. Seriously, they never even get direct mentoring, each one just takes over when the previous one dies and works on completely different rules from the other two. They're complete strangers bound by a legacy and that's honestly pretty fun.

Zataras -- There's only three of them and they're literally a father, daughter and cousin.

Martians -- Not really a family because there's only the two of them, but an interesting case where the two survivors of what was functionally a war of mutually assured destruction came together in an attempt to find some peace in the aftermath of what they'd lost.

Titans -- The JLA and JSA aren't really in the "family" category, but the Titans lean into it hard, mostly because they're a textbook found family. They don't mirror a nuclear family structure, they're simply a group of people who came together to form a mutual support network. They're the idealized college friends you grew into your own with, some of them childhood companions and others you only met once you leave home for the first time, but all of them friends that you manage to maintain contact with for life, with everyone coming back together even as you scatter and do your own things.

Young Justice -- Meanwhile, this team is the chaotic group of misfits you hung out with when you were a teenager, especially when you were just starting to be allowed to act without adult supervision. You drive each other crazy, none of you know you're all queer as fuck, and you'd fight a bear for any of them even if they asked you not to. They'd probably be insulted if you tried to call them a family. They come out here to get away from their families, thank you very much.

#dc comics #meta #batfamily #super family #arrow family #flash family #wonder women #shazam family #batman #superman #wonder woman #green lantern #teen titans #young justice #kinda rambling #just kinda throwing some ideas together #families of choice #non-traditional families

[arrowheadedbitch]

Do you guys remember the puppet master (or was it puppet king?) from teen titans? I'm just thinking about him meeting meta!tim

Puppet: I'll make you all puppets!

Tim: In the grand scheme of the universe, we're all puppets

PK/M: ...

PM/K: I like him

#tim drake #red robin #robin #rr #chaotic tim drake #meta!tim #my au #unhinged tim drake #puppet master #puppet king #teen titans

[heroesriseandfall]

In the grand scheme of things, Jason attacking Tim in Titan’s Tower was just one among many traumatic things that were happening to Tim at the time, and that’s a large part of why it isn’t shown as something that would stick out in Tim’s head as major trauma.

Tim had other problems that were a much bigger deal to him at the time, and for good reason—like his dad and Steph dying, like his stepmom and Kon dying, like Dick almost dying.

Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy addressing things in fan works that never got addressed in canon. But it absolutely does make sense that Jason attacking Tim wouldn’t feel like a big deal to Tim! It’s hardly the first time he’d been beaten up badly, and seeing his best friend’s dead body not long after kind of took priority.

#tim drake #jason todd #batfamily #batbros #dc comics #batfam #anyway. no shame to ppl who find it interesting to address this tt29 but literally Tim has other problems #it wasn’t a failure of canon to not make it a big deal for Tim #heroesriseandfall #bonds: no one could forget you #dc meta #red hood #teen titans (2003) #dc

[sassylittlecanary]

I am so freaking angry about how DC has treated disabled characters in recent years.

Many people have pointed out all the negatives of making Babs into Batgirl again — taking away her character development, de-aging her, casting aside two other Batgirls, using comic book science to “”cure”” her, etc, all for the sake of nostalgia. Oracle was an icon and an inspiration to many, and that was taken from us. Some great meta on this here and here.

But what I don’t hear anyone talking about is how this was also done with Joey Wilson/Jericho of the Teen Titans, albeit in a slightly different way.

In the post-52 DCU, he doesn’t use sign language anymore (he’s mute) and instead uses technology to speak.

First of all, artists drawing Joey signing shows loving detail and care toward representation for that form of communication (which is frequently overlooked by able-bodied people). Joey using ASL is such incredibly important representation for everyone, and taking that away from him feels like an easy way out so artists don’t have to draw ASL and writers can give him typical dialogue. It reminds me of stories about deaf people (especially kids) who were disappointed when Hawkeye didn’t experience hearing loss in the MCU. There’s a lot of people who see themselves in different kinds of characters, and when you take that diversity away, you lose something important. I hate these cop-outs to fit differently abled characters into the cookie cutter superhero mold. Superheroes aren’t defined by their abilities — they’re defined by their heroism! Characters like Oracle and Jericho, among others, have reminded all kinds of people that anyone can be a hero so long as you care about helping others. That’s literally the point of superheroes. The superhero genre should always have room for diversity and representation of all kinds. Minimizing or erasing disability does a massive disservice to that legacy.

#I’m an able bodied person writing this so if you have thoughts or corrections to add please do! #dc comics #dc #dcu #oracle #barbara gordon #jericho #joey wilson #joseph wilson #teen titans #deathstroke #new 52 #dc rebirth #tw ableism #disability representation #meta

[pluckyredhead]

so what did you not like about worlds finest teen titans? There were a lot of dropped plot threads and bits I expected Waid to develop more (Roy and Ollie conflict, Roy, Garth and Wally never resolved their sleepover argument, Karen's reaction at the con to nearly being unmasked, Wally's parents, ect) and also the queerbaiting with garth (and his eyes changing colour halfway through???) was annoying. I thought it was cute overall but maybe I'm not familiar enough with some of the characters?

I held on to this ask because I was going to reread the miniseries to answer you more accurately, and then I decided to not put myself through that, so...hopefully my memory is accurate lol.

(I should note before I get into it that none of my quibbles are with Emanuela Lupacchino's art. She's a treasure and we're thrilled that she's here.)

But yeah, you've put the nail on the head with a lot of it. It was just terribly paced, like Waid didn't know how many issues he had or something. Aside from all the dropped threads you mentioned, it felt like the main bad guys were...pretty much hastily introduced, or at least assembled, in #5? There didn't seem to be any kind of...well, point to this miniseries. There was no theme. There was nothing Waid was trying to say, as far as I could tell, except "Fuck Roy Harper." (Oh, we'll get to that.) It wasn't an origin story for the team. It wasn't about adolescence or coming of age or learning who you are, except maybe a little bit for Garth. It was just...there.

And I want to be clear here: Mark Waid is one of my favorite comic book writers of all time. When he hits, he hits. The regular World's Finest book and his Shazam are wonderful. I just think this wasn't the right match of writer/characters, because he didn't handle these very well. Taking them one by one:

Dick: DC is fully in their "Dick the unbearable Mary Sue" era and this book is no exception. If I never see another comic where a whole team of experienced superheroes with major league powers and training stands around like incompetent jackasses until a Bat comes along and tells them what to do, it'll be too soon. I'm here to read about an ensemble book where everyone is a three-dimensional character, not The World's Most Perfect Boy and his loser sidekicks. Not only is it unfair to everyone else in the cast, it's doing a disservice to Dick, who is a much more interesting character than this book (or Tom Taylor, ahem) gives him credit for.

(There's also something very weird and inconsistent Waid is doing across his books with Dick - WF, WFTT, and BvR - where sometimes he's throwing a tantrum because he doesn't get to be a circus star with everyone looking at him all the time, and sometimes he's screaming at Roy for filming them, and both feel utterly arbitrary to me as well as contradictory.)

Donna: Donna's characterization in this was just...bizarre. I was a little worried about how Waid would handle her, since he has a tendency to turn more quote unquote "wholesome" female characters into the Mom Friend (see: his Champions run, where he tries to get away with it by having Kamala announce that she's not going to be the Mom Friend because she's the only girl on the team...and then immediately becoming the Mom Friend), and Donna's already very much a Mom Friend, and I didn't know what Mom Friend Squared would look like. But instead he went for this...Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl approach? Where she's really into bungee jumping and monster trucks? I'm not offended by it, it's just so utterly random. This isn't who Donna is? It's never been who she is? Baffling.

I am offended (I mean, mildly, but still) by the fact that she and Garth are shoehorned together in this. He's the only boy on the team she's never been romantically linked to, even in dreams/hallucinations/whatever, so completing the set feels very much like Donna's only narrative worth is in being a love interest, which...gross.

Garth: Garth probably got the best treatment of the bunch, to be honest. He was in character as the shy little weirdo he was in the Silver Age and in pretty much every flashback we've ever seen. He's smart and perceptive and bad at saying what he wants and generous towards those who have hurt him, all of which is very Garth. I have no complaints about him except the weird queerbaiting, and I'm not blaming Waid for that because from what I understand, solicits are written by editorial working off of a pitch, potentially before the comic is even written, so who knows what happened there? It might have been a stupid joke that didn't land, it might have been a story that was pitched and then a higher up vetoed it, it might have been a story Waid was going to write and then changed his mind. I'm not going to say it's his fault when I have no idea if that's true. Otherwise, I think he handled Garth well.

Wally: Wally was another one where I was just like ??? the whole time. He didn't feel like Wally, he felt like Bart. But, like, fanon's innocent child version of Bart and not the actual canon character, who has a lot more backbone. Why is he hero worshipping Dick like that? Why is he so docile? What was up with that weird line where Dick's like "you're the youngest?" Yes, historically Dick had already dropped out of college while Wally was still in high school, but otherwise they've always been portrayed as the same age. And if it's a reference to debut year, Donna's the youngest. It's such a random throwaway line dumped in at the very end for...why? Confusing me personally?

The worst, though, was whatever the hell was going on with Wally's parents. Wally's parents are not an idyllic suburban couple! They are not the Kents! Rudy West is only not classified as a supervillain because he doesn't have a costume! Even if he hadn't tried to kill Mary, sold the Earth out to alien robots, faked his own death, or run a deadly labor camp for children at this point in the timeline, he definitely hit Wally and, uh, poisoned Wally's Little League coach. I don't think Mary is as bad as some of fandom does, but she's certainly a difficult person. Wally was desperately unhappy at home as a child, which is why he latched on so hard to Barry and Iris. And Waid knows this, because he wrote a lot of that canon. If it's a retcon, it's such a strange, pointless one that makes all of them a lot less interesting. Just baffling.

Karen: I think it was a very smart choice to add Karen to the founding roster and make the team slightly more gender-balanced and not all-white. It's kind of a wasted choice, though, when she's so aggressively sidelined. All she does in this book is hang around with Mal and the support staff. She isn't looped into any of the major emotional conflicts - Garth and Donna, Dick and Roy, Roy and Wally and Garth. She's not treated as a headliner in the same way the others are, and that really sucks.

Roy: Hoo boy.

When Waid was announced as the writer of Batman vs. Robin, I was worried, because I had a feeling he didn't like Damian. I couldn't put my finger on why, it was just a feeling I had. And boy howdy, was I proved right! Damian is treated like shit in that book.

I had the same feeling with this book and Roy, and...let's just say I'm two for two, okay?

Here's the thing. I'm okay with Roy being written as kind of shitty, especially during his period of his life. Teen Titans: Year One writes him as an utter fuckboy, and I love that comic. The Mal and Karen issue of The Other History of the DC Universe retells the Bronze Age Titans era from their perspective, and it pulls absolutely no punches regarding Roy being, well, kind of an asshole...and it's right to do so, because it's drawing very directly from those 1970s comics, and he was often awful in those.

But Waid writes him as a generic 80s movie villain. He's a human popped collar. He's a stereotype of a bully. My problem isn't that I need him to never do anything wrong, it's that nothing in this book is specific to Roy, his history, or his established personality.

For instance, all of his bragging about how much money he has? He comes off like a kid who was born into wealth and has never known anything else, but that isn't true. He was at best middle class before Ollie, probably more likely working class given the economic situation on most reservations - but there's no indication that he's responding specifically to that shift in circumstances. He's just, like, Draco Malfoy with arrows. Also, Dick has a nearly identical history but none of the same issues. He even says "Roy and I have the same background but he sucks." Why is one of them a perfect angel untouched by filthy lucre, and the other is Bradley Uppercrust III?

And then there's the subplot with Ollie neglecting Roy, which fizzled out to a real wet fart of a resolution. But honestly, at no point did I know where Waid was going with that, because...well, if you know Roy's history, you know Ollie neglecting him is what leads directly to Roy getting into drugs. And like...first of all, the timeline here is off, because historically Ollie didn't ditch Roy until after he lost his money, and he still has it here. (How interesting would it have been to have Roy pretending he was still rich in addition to pretending Ollie was around?) But also, this comic ends on an "and now everything is fine!" note, but it isn't! It really, really isn't. So Ollie showing up at the end and being like "I'm here for you, buddy" doesn't ring true, because he is demonstrably not in this very comic, and we also know he won't be in the future. And Roy getting what he wants doesn't feel like a satisfying resolution either because we don't actually get to see changed behavior from him, and again, we know this won't last. (Again, TT:YO handles this dynamic very well, where we see that Ollie is an affectionate but negligent guardian who Roy is learning some very bad habits from.)

And to top it off, constantly contrasting Terrible Roy to Virtuous Dick and simultaneously pretending that Ollie was at this point a responsible guardian has the (I hope unintentional) effect of implying that Roy will eventually become an addict because he's just a bad and weak person, instead of a struggling teen who needed support and didn't get it. I would have actually preferred a story that hinted at the beginning of Roy's addiction and how he hides it from the Titans, because we've never had that story told in comics, but I don't think Waid's the one to write it. Instead we get a conflict that's out of character for Roy, a resolution that doesn't feel at all earned, and the looming threat of Roy's immediate future which Waid refuses to address.

In conclusion, this book was a mess, and you should all read Teen Titans: Year One instead.

#meta #teen titans #dick grayson #robin #donna troy #wonder girl #garth #aqualad #wally west #kid flash #karen beecher #bumblebee #roy harper #speedy

[ravensvirginity]

(CW: canon typical discussions of sexual assault)

Really niche fandom pet peeve but I hate when I see something that acts like the only thing that was wrong with what happened between Trigon and Arella was rape by deception. That did happen, and that on its own would be very bad (I'm absolutely in no way trying to say that that would be okay or anything but rape), but idk where the perception that he stopped assaulting her once he revealed his demon form comes from because that's very much not what happened.

This is Arella's account of what happened to her in her own words, and it seems pretty clear that Trigon kept her longer after she saw his true form. It's not hard to fill in the gaps.

This isn't even a misconception that can be blamed on non comic media. Obviously none of this was ever discussed in either of the CN cartoons, but it was in the DCAMU, and if anything it has more explicit confirmation than the NTT panels.

(The actual scene with the reveal is about 53 seconds in)

I'd guess where the misconception comes from is future retellings of Raven's origin that were condensed to be only a few panels. It doesn't matter all that much at the end of the day, but it just bothers me a little because it's not what happened.

I think it's also a little out of character for Trigon; as the sum of all of Azarath's evil, he's almost nothing but violence. I think that act being so violent is what made Arella find so much solace in Azar's teachings, and Raven hearing this story from her mother as her first exposure to anything related to sexuality made her internalize that her sexual desire is something dangerous and violent that she needs to keep tightly under control. The intended story fits the overall themes with Trigon and Arella better than the misrepresented version.

Arella as a character is so often misrepresented. DC doesn't seem very interested in that part of Raven's backstory at the moment, but I think the right writer could write a great story with her with a more modern tone if given the chance.

#cw sa mention #raven #raven meta #trigon #arella #new teen titans #Youtube

[batcavescolony]

Why can't comic adaptations lean into the found family aspect of some superhero teams? Like I'm tired of gritty dark drama I want a live action TV show where the team acts like a team and takes care of each other.

#comics #dc comics #tim drake #robin #batman #red robin #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #red hood #titans #young justice #starfire #raven #cyborg #roy haper #didnt the og teen titans like co raise lian with roy. lian was probably coloring at titans meetings. #beast boy #embrace the comic weirdness. it doesn't have to actually work like that! normal people are keeping up with metas! how? idk just accept it #superboy #impulse #wondergirl #nightwing #how does mr freezes freeze gun work? its a freeze gun. you get hit your freeze next question #but how does it work? comic logic. get over it you dont needed to know the science it does what it does because it does #oliver queen #superman #flash #diana prince #wonder woman

[bluetrapeze]

Dick Grayson, leadership.

Dick's a leader, you've probably heard that before, but in what way? Why is he seen as a leader? What are his leader-like qualities?

We can see from as early as the 1960's that Dick's always been quick on the draw. By this I mean Dick is quick to react, quicker than his companions.

He knows his allies' abilities and orders them to preform specific tasks accordingly.

(Teen Titans (1966) #8)

Dick's able to analyse a situation and plan out counter measures in the time it takes for others to realize something is happening. His plans are generally successful too.

He's a genius in mechanics, biology, deduction, language, movement and more, his educated guesses tend to be correct. Dick's first reaction tends to be one based in logic, which is why his reactionary commands are followed without doubt.

He's that guy.

Dick's also a man who doesn't give a toss who you are or what you can do, if he thinks he has a plan you're getting ordered around.

Dick has ordered the members Justice League, and they've listened to him.

Man of Steel < Balls of Steel

(Teen Titans vol 3 #6)

Dick's also self deprecating. He's not egotistic (he knows his own worth and skills but he's his own biggest critic), he gives praise and support when it's deserved.

He's inspiring.

The New TT vol 2 #31

Dick can be intense, but it's due to his high standards. He knows the risks of the superhero lifestyle, he's accepted those risks.

He expects others to act seriously in Superhero spaces as a result.

(Young Justice #7)

#dick grayson #nightwing #teen titans #nightwing meta #leadership

[metalatias5]

Everything I love and do always leads back to him eventually, pff

Between Danny Phantom leading me back to superheroes and Nimona reminding me just how MUCH I love shapeshifter gremlins..

yeah Beast Boy is still my all-time favorite, my literal BB XD

#DC #Beast Boy #BB #Teen Titans #Teen Titan #TT #Garfield Mark Logan #Garfield Logan #Meta #MetaTheTrifox #MetaLatias #MetaLatias5

[linkspooky]

Do you think Batman could empathize with Terra?

Short answer: Yes. Long Answer: Oh, here we go again.

So, Terra is my favorite character of all time. I want her to live, recover from her trauma, and then become some anti-villain mercenary that just shows up to annoy the titans.

However, I will forever defend the decision to kill Terra at the end of Judas Contract. Her complexity as a bad victim and the tragedy that Terra was just too complicated a victim for anyone in her life to notice or save is what makes her character good. The whole point of the story is Terra should have been saved, but she wasn't. That gives the story it's punch. Terra is a teenage girl who joined the Teen Titans, put on a costume, and died. Her creators sort of half-realized this and half didn't when they made the decision to kill Terra.

"Hers was the power over the earth itself. She could have brought life to deserts, heat to the frozen tundra, food to starving millions, she could have damned raging rivers and funneled water to lands parched dry, and dead. Her powers were limited only by the mind that controlled them. A mind which sought not hope, not love, not life, but death."

Even the panels that narrate her death that call her a psychopath and victim blame her, also speculate on how much potential good for the world is lost by snuffing out life as young as Terra's. Hers is the story of a young girl who by the narrative is doomed to die hence why there is nothing, no hope, no love, no life just death in her mind.

That's what makes the question of "Could Batman have empathized with her" so compelling, because it makes you think and realize there was a chance for Terra, miss "Dead at the beginning of the story" to be saved. So, why wasn't she? Why couldn't anyone involved in her situation empathize with this troubled teenage girl?

Out of context of her creators intending her to be an irredeemable monster, don't these lines, the last one especially sound horribly tragic?

"A mind which sought not hope... not love... not life... but death."

Terra's life is so nihilistic and miserable. What exactly was she alive for? She was a sixteen-year-old mercenary who was cut off from her family due to being the bastard child. She thinks she's manipulating death stroke who she thinks is her equal when she's actually just getting manipulated by him. I mean the fact that Terra views relationships as transactions. That she views sex with Slade as using her body as a bargaining chip to gain leverage over them. The fact that she hates the titans, primarily because she doesn't understand them. She thinks all their goodwill for each other is fake, and that they can't possibly be as good as they pretend to be because, in Terra's mind, good people don't exist.

The best interpretation of Terra is to not make light of her crimes at all, she did not grow close to the titans, she was planning on betraying them and never wavered, she felt next to nothing about killing... but even if all that's true isn't she sympathetic regardless because her life's just miserable?

All of Terra's actions don't change the fact that a 50+ year old is not only raping her, and using her as a child soldier, but is good enough at manipulating that she thinks the relationship is consensual and she's somehow in on the partnership. These two things do not cancel out one another.

The reason I hammered this nail in so hard, is because this is what makes up the tragedy of Terra's character. Terra is a fifteen year old girl in a horrible situation and therefore deserves to be saved. Terra does not get saved. Why is that? That's the essential question of the tragedy.

Now to return to your question, would batman empathize with Terra?

Yes.

I would argue the Titans empathized with Terra too. However, empathizing with someone is different from having the emotional maturity to communicate with them. Which is the difference between Batman and the Teen Titans, he is an adult and they are children.

When I think about the Teen Titans who are unable to save a girl they've lived with for months from an adult man who's their mortal enemy and clearly exploiting her, I get frustrated until I realize the Teen Titans are just barely older than Terra. Terra's case so clearly needs adult intervention, and she doesn't have that she has a group of teenagers who all have the RESPONSIBILITIES of an adult, but don't have the requisite maturity to be able to handle those responsibilities.

There's a lot of reasons that Terra does not get saved, number one being that not a single Titan seemed to see through her act despite them all having suspicions. I know this wasn't the intent, but Terra's written as a pretty textbook CSA victim. She's aggressive, hypersexual, tries to pose as an adult, associates sexuality with violence (heck Beast Boy flirting with her during a training session makes her violently lash out, you could easy interpret that as her experiencing some kind of flashback). There was clearly something going on with Terra, everyone had an inkling, no one noticed.

It's because everyone around her just saw what they wanted to see of Terra.

Beast Boy only saw his own romantic feelings for her. He made up his own idealized version of Terra and pursued her. And let's be honest considering Beast Boy's weird relationship with women in early NTT he was probably just seeking a girlfriend to validate his low self esteem.Raven sensed something off with Terra, but projected her own situation onto her as well. Raven convinced herself that there was some kind of evil buried deep within Terra but was afraid to confront her because number one, Raven is convinced she is evil deep down inside, and number two Raven understands so little about humans she feels like she cannot judge them. Robin is frankly, too busy with the rest of the team to notice.

Terra is practically the Laura Palmer of the Teen Titans. For those who have never watched Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer is a young woman in the town of Twin Peaks who lives a double lie. By day she is a prom queen dating a kid on the football team and running a meals on wheels program. By night she is tricking her boyfriend into buying cocaine for her regularly, working at a whorehouse across the border, regularly sleeping with men twice her age. Laura has an ugly dark side that's hard to look at, but what's uglier is the source of all of this behavior. Laura's coping with being raped by her father on a semi-regular basis and keeping that secret, when every single person in town only sees what they want to see of her, they see a prom queen, or a girlfriend, or whatever.

Bobby Briggs: “You damn hypocrites. You make me sick! Everybody knew she was in trouble but we didn’t do anything. All you good people… You wanna know who killed Laura Palmer? You did! We all did.”

No one noticed because they all saw their own version of Terra. Terra herself played into that, because she was lying to everyone.

At the same time there's a difference between a child who is not fully emotionally developed or aware of their surroundings and an adult who should know better. An adult should be aware enough to pick up signs of abuse or even notice a child's distress, and if they ignore it that's a problem.

The question is should a kid reasonably be expected to do the same thing? I would say that's expecting too much emotional maturity out of a kid because that's asking them to do what should be an adult's job. At the same time, the Teen Titans are kids who put on masks and decided to make it their job to save heroes. This is what makes the Judas Contract such an effective tragedy, because it makes you ask these questions. If none of them were able to notice or save Terra, then will they be able to notice the next time someone like Terra is in danger but they're not a straightforward or easy-to-spot victim?

The complexity of Terra's victimhood is another reason why the titans failed to save her. There's a panel where Terra is telling Kory and Donna a fake version of her backstory to get sympathy and they deny it by going "Well, we all have dead parents." And Kory goes "I was a slave for five years."

Of course, Terra's lying about her backstory here but regardless it's dismissive to play tragedy olympics here. The fact Kory was a slave for five years doesn't really matter because we're talking about Terra's experiences here, and only Terra knows about her feelings.

Terra is a complicated victim, her trauma doesn't make her a hero, in fact she despises the idea she should have to use her powers to help others. Yet, she deserves saving because she's a fifteen year old girl getting raped. In fact you would think Kory if she learned that fact or even got an inkling of it would be the first to sympathize having gone through something herself. And hey, she might. I just want to point out, Starfire tends to suffer from black and white, them vs. us thinking. Especially NTT Starfire who's much more emotional and warlike. She also didn't even notice her own sister blackfire was being abused in the same household.

So why do usually extremely empathic heroes draw a line like that with more complicated victims like Terra? Why even bother to play Trauma Olympics in the first place?'

It's because once again they're teenagers. Teenagers have black and white thinking. Who would have thought? Teenagers don't realy have the emotional maturity to see outside of themselves and their own situation. Which is why we get one of two responses. The first being "Well, I went through this and I'm fine...." (Arguably, none of the Teen Titans are fine they're all drama queens). The second being "Well, just because that happened to her that doesn't justify her behavior."

Returning to the example of Laura Palmer, once again does Laura Palmer's dark side even matter? Does it matter she illegally buys cocaine, or helped kill a man? An Adult (Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks) would be able to see that literally none of that matters because Laura needs someone to notice what her father is doing to her and save her from it.

This is mostly a post about comic books Terra, because she's my baby darling but to bring one moment from the cartoon in. When faced with the weight of her guilt in the episode "Betrayal" Terra breaks down sobbing and starts apologizing to Beast Boy.

Terra: (from o.c.) Beast Boy...it's the truth.

Beast Boy: Terra...why?

Slade: Because you could never give her what she needs.

Terra: No! I won't let you hurt my friend! (Close-up of Slade.)

Slade: Dear child, you don't have any friends.

Terra: (sobbing) Beast Boy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. (He moves partially into view near the camera.)

Beast Boy: (from o.c.) Then why did you let it? (She stands up.)

Terra: I don't know, okay? I don't know.

Terra: Slade...he helped me, saved me from myself. (Pan to frame an upset Beast Boy in the other spot; she continues o.c.) He said I owed him, but--

Beast Boy: So it was all a game? You were just pretending? (Cut to frame both.)

Terra: (steps to him) No. You said you'd be my friend no matter what, remember?

(She reaches out to touch his shoulder, but he gives her the hardest glare he can and turns away.)

Beast Boy: Slade was right. You don't have any friends.

Terra confesses everything, shows obvious signs of guilt, and basically begs and Beast Boy turns his back on her. There's no more obvious opportunity to save her or change her heart, and Beast Boy just doesn't. He jumps straight to the victim blaming, "Why did you let it happen?" Again and again, they empasize Terra's choices and of course those are important but it doesn't change the fact she's being abused. "Why did you let it happen?" I don't know why did she let an adult man groom her. Why do children get groomed? Shouldn't they know better?

However, in doing that Beast Boy basically repeats the same words as her abuser "You don't have any friends" and drives her right back to Slade.

Now, Beast Boy was hurt because he thought his friends were possibly dead or injured somewhere else and Terra lied to him the whole night about it. Beast Boy's also a teenager so it's ahrd for him to see past his own hurt feelings and show empathy for the person who hurt him no matter what her reasons would be.

At the same time Beast Boy decided to put on a mask and call himself a hero. Heroes save people. This begs the question, if he's too immature to handle a victim as complicated as Terra which he will come across in the job because the abuse that happens to Terra is more common than you think then is he really mature enough to be a hero?

Now, having gone through all of that Batman would be able to empathize with Terra, for the simple reason that he's an adult so he should be able to step out of the situation and realize this a child who desperately need adult help that he's dealing with.

One important detail is that Terra's death, and Jason's death happened pretty closely to one another in comic book time. Dick Grayson in fact had a pretty bad reaction to both of those where he felt responsible because he was the one who gave Jason his Robin costume and allowed Terra on his team, therefore in both cases it was like he was approving of them being superheroes when they were too young for it... the very thing that got them killed.

Batman regularly refers to Jason's death as his greatest failure, because Jason was just a child and Bruce wasn't the caretaker that Jason needed him to be. Jason Todd is also a character that once reviving from the dead becomes a morally grey victim, with behavior that's comparable to Terra. Some people believe that Talia dipping him in the Lazarus pit like a crouton in soup has rendered him insane, or incapable of feeling remorse.

He is a vigilante killer. Tutored by several years by a woman from the League of Assassins and taught several forms of murder. He's involved in the drug trade and selling his services out for protection money. He is more or less a teenage mercenary like Terra, just with a slight vigilante bent to his actions.

Heck, his trauma is similiar to Terra's, they were both basically separated from their families at a young age, lived apart from them for years, and then became mercenaries and used their powers / vigilante training for both survival and profit. However, Bruce unconditionally views what happened to Jason as a failure because he let it happen. As an adult it was his job to be there for Jason and he wasn't.

Bruce's dying will and testament in Battle for the Cowl is an admission for this, and an offer to help him get the treatment he needs. Of course, it's Bruce so he still says it in a victim blamey way. He probably should have said "I failed you" rather than "You have been my biggest failure" but he still took responsibility.

Which is the underyling point and also something Batman as an adult can realize, that Jason was a child dealing with all of that pain alone and he couldn't possibly have coped with it the way an adult would because he's not one. He needs adult and outside intervention to show him the proper way.

Batman has taken in former murderers as sidekicks before (though arguably Terra needs to learn how to just be herself, making her be a hero was part of the problem in the first place). There's Cassandra Cain who was trained from birth to kill, his own son was also raised by the League of Assassins. In the new 52 Batman and Robin Damian and Bruce have a complicated relationship, but there is one scene I think demonstrates how Bruce has great potential to be empathic and communicate with Damian. Damian murders a man in front of Bruce, and breaks the bat family rule of no killing. He murders Henri Ducard's son, because the man was threatening to come back and kill Bruce at a later date.

Bruce does not throw him out or fire him for being Robin. THis time, Batman takes a long time to explain the truth to Damian about what his relationship with Henri Ducard and his son was. How in the past he also felt a desire to kill both of them for what they did and what the danger represented.

Bruce doesn't hit Damian over the head with "murder is bad" or "cool motive still murder" he doesn't see the crimes first he sees the victim.

He takes the time to let Damian understand him better as a person so they can have a connection there, and then he explains to Damian why he does not kill, and that he also doesn't want Damian to kill so he won't have to bear the guilt of it. He does that for Damian's sake, because he's a child and won't understand these things unless told.

Bruce needs to communicate this with Damian because they won't magically understand and empathize with each other, which is why I'm emphasizing over and over again the necessity of adult

intervention in Terra's case. An older and more mature Dick Grayson in Batman and Robin 2009 also emphasizes that Dick is the grown up in the relationship and Damian is the child.

And as the adult it is his responsibility to take care of Damian, hence the "Who's gonna save him if we don't?"

Batman has encountered children turned murders in one way or another and he always emphasizes the fact that they are children. If you want a more recent example, in the James Tynion Iv run for Batman, issue #105 where Bruce is facing off with Ghostmaker / Minhkhoa. Ghostmaker sets up a situation where Clown Hunter a murderous vigilante who started killing crimminals after his parents were murdered by the joker at twelve has a chance to kill Harley Quinn in revenge while Bruce watches. Bruce intervenes for two reasons, which he tells Minhkhoa.

Which features one of my favorite Bruce lines "caring about people hasn't killed me yet..."

Which really demonstrates Batman's empathy for others. His goal is to not put villains away, but stop the cycle of violence in the streets of gotham.

"How easy it would have been to just eliminate the joker's closest associates? But then nobody learns, nobody changes, nothing is better in the end."

It's easy to dismiss Terra for her crimes and let her face the consequences alone. But then, nobody learns, nobody changes, and nothing is better in the end. Batman doesn't judge who deserves to be saved and who does not. He doesn't let "not everyone can be saved" work as an excuse to not try to save someone.

Hell, Minhkhoa himself is diagnosed as a psychopath in universe with extremely low or nonexistent empathy, which is what Wolfram and Perez's original vision for Terra was. A person who did not feel empathy, remorse, or love for others. Yet, Bruce still gives someone like Minhkhoa a chance to do good, and still tries to communicate with him and get him to understand why Bruce does things the way he does even if Minhkhoa can't empathize with him.

To tie this all up. The tragedy of the Judas Contract arc is Terra was a child who did not get saved. There are reasons for this. She was surrounded by other children who didn't have the maturity to save her. She was being taken advantage of by an adult man who has been manipulating people for years. She was a liar and manipulator herself.

If Batman, an adult, had been there to help the Titans would he have been able to reach out to her and save her? We don't know, but I can say this he definitely would have tried.

#tara markov #terra teen titans #terra #batman #bruce wayne #dick grayson #teen titans #tt meta #teen titans meta #dc comics #dc comics meta #jason todd #damian wayne #beast boy #ghostmaker #dc #rape tw #csa tw

[galaxymagitech]

Don’t know if anyone still cares about spoilers for this, but…

SPOILERS FOR TEEN TITANS (2003)

So I finished TT03 season 2. And cried. I was NOT expecting a teenager to die. When Terra defeated Robin, I thought “this can only end in a last-minute heroic sacrifice.” But it still took me by surprise that she was actually just gone. They make her a gravestone and she never comes back as Terra. It was shocking.

I tend to see most characters in the most sympathetic way possible, and that applies to Terra too. She did terrible things and she knows it. She made really bad, perhaps irredeemable, mistakes. But she also didn’t deserve the way her story went. Doing bad things and experiencing bad things don’t cancel each other out. Being hurt doesn’t justify hurting people, although you can certainly experience empathy for someone like that. But also—just because someone, especially a 15/16-year-old teenager, hurts people doesn’t mean it isn’t sad when they get hurt too.

Looking back on Terra’s story, I don’t know what the Teen Titans could have done differently. Fixing one mistake would’ve just delayed the inevitable. Slade was cunning enough to manipulate Terra and unlike Robin she didn’t have an established support system—Slade got to her before she could build one and undermined all her successive efforts. Terra says she’s looking for control, but I don’t think she’s right about herself. If she wanted control then she would’ve left Slade as soon as she got control over her powers. I think she was looking for safety and she considered herself a threat. She wanted to feel protected and secure, after so long on her own, and Slade offered her the opportunity to take the storm inside of her and channel it outwards. He offered her a place she didn’t have to fight him for, and Terra had never had that before. The Teen Titans couldn’t give her what she needed—and neither would Slade, but you can see why she thought he would. And Terra keeps repeating that she’s in control, that she wants this, as if trying to convince herself, and it was honestly horrifying to me.

I don’t want to take away Terra’s agency here. She was manipulated, but she still chose to betray the Titans. She isn’t a good person. But I don’t think she’s a bad person either. It’s not a dichotomy, it’s a sliding scale. She was just a person and she was trying but it wasn’t enough.

And Terra was a kid. She was a teenager who was lost and confused and scared and made the choices that seemed best to her in the moment. She changed her mind again and again. She gave up the best thing she ever had. In another world, she could’ve been happy. She could’ve even been “good,” maybe not in the profoundly heroic person at heart way, but in the “doing good things” way. If Terra hadn’t had out of control superpowers, if Slade hadn’t noticed her, Terra wouldn’t have turned “bad.” If she’d gotten a normal life, she wouldn’t have been “bad.” Terra was just as deserving of a good life as a normal person.

So I found myself with literal tears in my eyes over an animated TV show, because it just sucked so much that Terra’s story ended up like this and this was way darker and more horrifying than I expected.

Some of this goes for the comics character too. I think she’s genuinely a bad person in the comics, and a lot less sympathetic. But also—without getting into the specifics—her life really sucked. She did bad things and bad things happened to her. Deathstroke manipulated her, and although it was clear that she’d kill people/be evil on her own, the way her story went was really sad. And of course she’s still responsible for her own evil actions, but…any time you’ve got a teenager whose life is like that, whose mind is so messed up that killing people seems like a good idea, it doesn’t matter where the blame is assigned—it’s a tragedy.

I can’t help but have sympathy for Terra, in both forms. Because no matter how awful she was or how many cruel things she did, she was a kid and her story was sad.

(Me: Terra is a kid! 15 or 16 years old! A kid!!

Also Me: I’m…practically an adult.)

#teen titans #teen titans (2003) #cartoons #terra #tara markov #slade wilson #meta #fan analysis #dcu #dc

[soleminisanction]

What comic issue did the whole kon v steph showdown happen? In which he basically called her a poser? I’m wondering what the rest of the young justice teams reaction to her was. I think greta tried to kill her at one point? I don’t think she’s very well liked among that team, but it also makes me wonder if she’s very well liked in the wider hero community at all besides her small group of vigilantes she’s enmeshed herself with through getting involved w Tim and to a lesser extent Batman? What are your views?

Teen Titans (2003) issue #13:

That's it in its entirety. The bit with Tim and Conner is very much the story's B-plot, the A-plot is focused on Beast Boy and the rest of the Titans back in San Fran.

As for Steph and Greta -- it is true that Greta is the one member of YJ that Steph ever truly interacted with during that time period. I actually wrote up a whole thing here about the arc of those interactions, but it was kind of off-topic with your question and also long enough that it really deserves its own post, especially because lining it all up together without the multi-year gap between plot points gave me a revelation about how the story actually went.

I'm going to try to get that post up in the next day or so to prove my point but the summation here is: the first time they met, Greta explicitly didn't try to kill Steph -- but afterwards, Steph framed it as "she tried to kill me in a jealous rage" and people took Steph's side because part of Greta's story was that her "good people bad powers" thing made her kind of sus and that's what eventually drove her to join Darksied.

So while Steph did get mentioned in YJ, including getting brought in to help as part of the invasion of Zandia in issues 50-52, her only significant contribution there was a very brief stand-off with Greta and getting stuck in a bubble with a several other 90's characters who I'm pretty sure don't exist anymore.

The only other person I recognize here is Lagoon Boy. The pink filter doesn't help.

Other than that, the only interaction Steph's had with any member of Tim's friend group is the one issue of Teen Titans (2003), #66, where they're doing this membership drive thing and Steph (recently back from faking her death) tags along so they can pretend that maaaaybe she's going to join the team, but actually she's just there to have a very brief interaction with Traci 13 and Bombshell.

And an even briefer, awkward stare-down with Cassie that's only there because she and Tim's budding romance had been awkwardly cut short just so he could back to Steph the very instant she got back from faking her death no matter how little sense that made.

And then Steph wasn't even interested in joining the team anyway she was just there for quote, "moral support" as Tim told Cassie he needed to take a break for a while and focus on the pre-Final Crisis chaos going down in Gotham.

Stephanie has never spoken to Bart, Anita, Slobo, or Ray so far as I know. She's never even met Cissie because the Arrowette who went to Zandia turned out to be Bonnie in disguise.

Pre-Flashpoint, the only other people she'd met outside of Gotham are Supergirl (whom she met in World's Finest (2009)) and Squire, who's still technically a Bat even if she lives in England. Stargirl and Miss Martian show up alongside Bombshell and Supergirl towards the end of Steph's solo series but they come out of nowhere only because BQM had wanted to make them part of Steph's entourage at some point but didn't get the chance, so I don't really count them. Nor do I count her showing up in a group shot at the end of the Gail Simone Wonder Woman, since that was just a line-up of cameos from every female hero she could get at the time.

So with all that as the preamble, to answer your second question: no, I don't think Steph is very well-liked by the wider superhero community. I also don't think she's disliked. I think the vast majority of heroes and villains have no idea who she is.

If they know her at all, it's probably as, "That girl in the purple that Cass is always hanging out with" or "Robin's ex-girlfriend who faked her death that one time" or maybe even as, "There was a girl Robin at some point right? I feel like I heard that somewhere," particularly since there was a big media shake-up after War Games. Heck, they might even know her as, "Cluemaster's daughter; she runs with the Bats, yeah? Heh, sucks to be Arthur" since he's actually gotten around more than her just by virtue of being on the Suicide Squad.

But as Spoiler, as Batgirl, as a hero? Basically unknown outside of Gotham. She's always been too much of a supporting character to develop those kinds of connections.

#stephanie brown #ask me stuff #dc comics asks #teen titans 2003 #connor kent #spoiler #superboy #teen titans #young justice #dc comics #meta

[hollow-keys]

I'm reading New Teen Titans and I finally got to the part that Joey's in (three cheers everybody!) and I have thoughts/feelings on how they treat him as a disabled character.

What really sticks out for me is how little he gets to define himself or choose his own path.

Marv Wolfman had a strict policy of not letting him have any thought bubbles and only showed his thoughts through narration. All the other characters have thought bubbles, but he doesn't and I can only assume it's because he's mute.

His thoughts are always shown via narration which keeps a level of separation between us and the character. Like this:

[Tales of the Teen Titans #45]

And Wolfman knows how important thought boxes are with other characters:

[New Teen Titans (1984) #13]

He's not allowed to actually explore and resolve his personal conflicts and he rarely gets to disagree or have his own ideas. He's usually going along with what everyone else wants.

He's introduced going along with what his mother wants. She describes him, she introduces him. She's not acting as an interpreter either, she's talking over him. The narrative isn't self aware about how he's treated, it just is. She talks, she acts, she has her motivations explained. His muteness is her motivation for revenge. Joey is just an extension of her, not allowed to define himself or his motives.

He was then run out of the Titans because they thought he was a traitor. Does he get to confront them about it? No.

He ends up on a mission with his mother where she tries to get him to kill someone who tortured her and he refuses. Then he chooses to save an art collection rather than capture him. And yes it's nice to get these character moments, but where's the confrontation + resolution between him and his mother? It's up in the air.

During the trial of Deathstroke he's the only Titan who's not present because he's being questioned by Interpol. This should be an important moment for him but he's not there.

And when the Trigon fight's over, Jericho is in hospital while all the others (including Lilith and Terry, who's literally not even a hero) get to have the post Trigon "talk about our feelings" chat but he doesn't. They don't hold the chat in the hospital or wait for him to recover. He's just left behind.

We're shown his insecurity over his masculinity, how his parents tried to force him to be like them and made him feel ashamed for not being manly enough, but he doesn't get to reach a resolution. He doesn't get to have his "what my parents said and did was wrong" moment. It's in the air. Things kind of just happen to him.

He's also framed as fundamentally pure, rarely getting to be angry and never hateful like literally every other character gets to be.

[Tales of the Teen Titans #44]

Ironically, this is a very condescending way of speaking about him, but we are meant to take her word as true. No one on earth has never had a condescending thought, to separate him from those very human feelings and to treat him like he's pure is to dehumanise him.

He's a pacifist who doesn't care for violence but was forced to train for it against his will. Literally, why are you a hero if you didn't even want to learn how to fight? What changed for you? How do you reconcile your distaste for violence with your violence? There's no answer. His opinion doesn't matter. His mother wants him to fight, so he does.

The conflict between Cyborg and his dad who wanted him to be a scientist while he wanted to be an athlete is shown. They do fight over it and there is a resolution.

The conflict between Raven, her cults strict pacifism, her preference for non violence and the violence she commits is shown. She is conflicted, always musing over it and we get to hear her thoughts about it from her.

Jericho, however, is put in these conflicts without genuine exploration. There's no catharsis, there's no resolution. It just is. He just is.

He doesn't get to be angry at his mum, dad or genuinely argue with his fellow titans. He doesn't get to mess up and be emotional. Every other character gets this. Not him.

Like yes, he does have his moments sometimes but there's a huge disparity between him and other characters.

This all plays into tropes about disabled people. The idea disabled people either have to be beacons of perfection who inspire everyone else to be better or are discarded as needlessly bitter and angry, with this either being an explanation for their evil if they're a villain (Komand'r), or a flaw they need to get over if they're a hero (Cyborg). The idea that disabled people cannot make their own choices or have autonomy over their own destinies. The idea that disabled people have less of an internal life and aren't as complex as abled people.

Let Joey be a three dimensional person with complex motivations who is angry and hateful sometimes. Who gets to actually confront people, add to the conversation and have his own thoughts.

#yes i know cyborg is also disabled but in a different way and that affects how he's treated #joey wilson #joseph wilson #jericho #dc comics #ableism #titans #new teen titans #meta #long post #📨

[bobauthorman]

Here's a crazy thought; You don't have to demonize the other guy to support a romantic pairing. Sometimes both ends of the imaginary love triangle are good, just in different ways. Let those who love love, and leave the hate at the door to be stuffed chewed on by the dog.

#You should be ashamed #Avatar: The Last Airbender #RWBY #Teen Titans #Batman #DC Comics #Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir #shipping #ship wars #don't be toxic #demonization #I won't name names #meta