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linkspooky · 8 months

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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

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