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Why doesn't the Doom Patrol fight against the Brotherhood of Evil in the finale? I know the Brotherhood was seeking to destroy the younger generation, but seriously. Do you mean to tell me that none of them even cared that their archnemises were trying to kill one of their former members?
Because they're already dead. The Brotherhood killed them sometime before "Titans Together."
Perhaps the Brain set up a decoy operation to keep the occupied and make sure they didn't interfere until he was ready to turn everything he had on them? Seems the sort of thing he'd do...
Raven's "Azarath, metreon, zinthos!" chant... does she have to say it to use her powers? Sometimes, it seems mandatory... like in that episode "Masks", where Robin, disguised as Red X, managed to make Raven's powers completely useless by sealing her lips... but in some episodes, like "Fear Itself", she's rendered unable to speak (in this case, completely mummified by video tape), and is still able to fire off powerful magic.
"Azarath metreon zinthos" is more of a mantra than anything. Raven's powers are inherent due to her interesting heritage. It probably just helps her concentrate, hence her use of it while meditating.
Yeah. Raven doesn't need to say the words, but they help her concentrate and focus, which she does need to do. If she's cut off mid-sentence or has something sticky and painful slapped on her face, that makes concentrating...difficult.
Also, how the HELL did Terra come back in "Things Change"? Is it even really her, or is it an Identical Stranger?
Given some of the things she says combined with the fact that her statue is gone, it's incredibly unlikely to be an Identical Stranger. Presumably something happened to change her back, but of course we'll never get an explanation now.
My personal theory is that Raven's mass stone-returns-to-flesh healing spell revived Terra. She remembers everything, and as such, feels incredible guilt for her actions; though she has already been redeemed. She also wisely realizes that she really can't continue on as things were, since she's made many enemies, and permanently alienated the few friends she had, save Beast Boy, who still believes she's practically a saint. But her ultimate reason for living as a normal schoolgirl is the fact that--despite the fans protests--from day one, all she ever really wanted was a normal life,without having to use her powers.
To add a detail to this interesting speculation - Trigon turned every living thing on earth to stone, including Terra. It didn't matter that she was already stone, his magic still worked on her (she was turned from one kind of stone to another kind of stone, from a transformation mediated by her own power to one controlled by Trigon's magic). Thus, when Raven reversed Trigon's spell, it changed Terra back.
They still haven't figured it out in the comics.
The original (it was settled) or the ones based on the cartoon (no info on that)?
In the "GO!" (animated universe) comics, Terra's brother, Geo-force, stops by, looking for her. He explains that, as a child, Terra was constantly shouted down, and never given a chance to assert herself or develop her own personality-- "She didn't know who she was supposed to be."She struggled against the royal family of Markovia's restrictive control, and, like her brother, she was forcibly converted into a bio-weapon. After hearing her backstory, the gang fill Geo-force in on the events of Season Two... and Beast Boy takes him to the Murakami School, explaining that he met a girl who looked like Terra, but who said that she didn't remember him...or, he thinks, she didn't want to. He explains that Starfire has a theory about Terra, that Terra's trials had transformed her, from a caterpillar, to a chrysalis, to a butterfly. While Beast Boy waxes philosophic, Geo-force shouts, It's HER! and points at The Schoolgirl/Terra, busily laughing and chatting with her two friends. He takes this sight in for a moment, and says, "I've never seen her so... happy." He and BB leave, deciding that Terra is far better off in her new life than anywhere else. Terra catches sight of them as they leave, and tells her friends--and the readers--that everything's gonna be fine.
I don't believe that's going to be possible. NO ONE is ever really 'free' from their past because it's a part of them. What Terra is doing isn't 'moving on', it's running from her problems and essentially lying to herself. There is a VERY REAL CHANCE of her still being in danger. What about the scientists who gave Terra and her brother their powers? You think they were happy when one of their 'experiments' ran off? What about Slade, who no doubt knows she's still alive. You think he forgot who was responsible for making him Trigon's 'errand boy'? And don't forget: there was a familiar 'shadowed' figure watching over when Terra and Geo-Force were undergoing the experiments that granted them their powers that looked suspiciously like General Immortus. It's quite possible that they played a part in her getting her powers. Ten-to-One says the Brotherhood of Evil make a grab for Terra when the opportunity presents itself. Somehow, someway, someday.... Terra's past will rear it's head and she'll have no other choice BUT to deal with it and thus result in a Can't Stay Normal situation. I also find the 'Butterfly' analogy oddly appropriate-as everyone knows, Butterflies have very short lifespans. (Note: Geo-Force said it's been 'a long time' since he'd seen her laughing and smiling like she was, so at one point prior, she WAS happy but something clearly happened in their lives prior that ruined it. I have my own theories on that, which I'll be exploring in a future fic.)
Movie sequel plot! Movie sequel plot! Ah, a man can dream, no?
I do hope that was mostly sarcasm. And considering how we saw Schoolgirl/Terra? act, she might not have her powers any more.
Um, duh. That troper linked it to Fan Dumb and Fix Fic rather than his own actual trilogy.
That episode ticked me off to no end. They knew the show was going to be cancelled, they could have AT LEAST explained how Terra got un-petrified (although Raven's actions at the end of the whole Trigon thing is a great theory, and I applaud you for that) and what exactly that weird matter-absorbing monster was.
Incidently, I always thought that the monster had somehow changed her back, and that the whole thing was a plot by Slade. At least, that's what I thought before I found out that the series had just...died.
It seems the writers themselves neither know nor care how Terra came back, given repeated statements to the effect of "that's not what the episode is about." A common sentiment seems to be that anyone who has a problem with the episode must have just wanted a standard Hollywood happy ending, never mind a sensical one.
Which I find to be more than a little derogatory and insulting to the fans of the animated show. I don't think anyone was expecting a 'perfect happy ending'; more like actual resolution. And I certainly wasn't expecting an 'ending' that reads like something from the comic book continuity. They are sending the subtle message that we should run from out problems instead of facing them. And if it wasn't about 'how Terra came back' etc, then what was the point of adding her? If you're not willing to tell the story, DON'T. Their response is, I feel (and so do quite a few other people) laced with arrogance and self-importance.
Word of God states that while they knew Season 5 would be the last season, they were intially told they would have more episodes then they ended up with. So, that episode was not intended to be the finale, but they were Screwed by the Network and so they didn't have much of a choice.
The original DC comicbook version of Terra wasn't so lucky. After the original Psycho For Hire version killed herself in a fit of rage, a woman bearing a strong resemblance to her appeared. This woman was later revealed to have the original Terra's DNA. Rather than explain the whys and hows of this new development, DC Editorial consigned the character to a decade's worth of obscurity before killing her off via Black Adam's punch through her gut. Now, in DC Comics, a dark-haired, purple-eyed young woman calling herself Terra III has appeared, Despite the aforementioned cosmetic changes, she bears a major physical resemblance to both of her forebearers. She also possesses their geokinetic abilities... and an apparent guilt complex.She also is a perfect genetic match to both of her previous namesakes.
Given that the episode's about letting go of the past and moving on, actually getting resolution about Terra wouldn't have fit. The whole thing's told from Beast Boy's perspective, and since he never gets a definite answer and has to live with that fact, so too does the audience.
There are ways to do that WITHOUT over-loading an episode with symbolism, first of all. Secondly, Terra isn't 'moving on'; she is, by all accounts, still running away from her past and who she is. This is something that, somewhere down the line she'll have to confront. You don't tell kids that the way to let go and move on is to run away from your past and everyone who cares for you. This is the sort of situation where getting resolution is a must. You don't put in a character of such significance, then essentially get rid of them like they did with this. The writers were trying too hard to be 'deep and meaningful' but they came off as pretentious and self-serving; like it wasn't worth their time. If they started out the series the same way they ended it, how many people would have honestly watched it?
While I totally agree that the inconclusive closure to the whole Terra story was frustrating as hell, I don't think she was 'running away from her past'. Terra's tragedy was that no matter where she went and how many friends she made, her powers would go berserk and she would have to run away. With the Titans, she had a chance at normalcy, but she was already too emotionally messed up to take that chance and we all know what happened afterwards. At the end,as School Girl, either she now has complete control over her powers, or does not have her powers any more. I opt for the latter and if so, moving on and living the normal life with normal friends she's always wanted is something she has every right to pursue. She redeemed herself at the end there and while in real life that counts for little for criminal chargers, it's good enough for an animated show. She isn't 'running' from the Titans. She's made her peace with that past and she now lives a new life.
Explain how lying to Beast Boy about who she is and everything that happened is 'making peace with her past'. Making peace entails ACKNOWLEDGMENT and ACCEPTANCE of the past, NOT denying it's existence. Like I said before, if Slade knows she's alive (and there's no question he does), who can honestly expect him to not rear his head again and make her miserable? Look what happened to him in the comics when his own past came back. Who's to say the same thing won't happen to Terra? She can play pretend all she wants, but sooner or later, the time will come when she WILL have to actually DEAL with it. No amount of denial on her part will ever change that. I don't deny Terra was a messed up kid, but really... what we want and what we need are often town totally separate things. She WANTS to live a normal life as a normal person, but at some point down the line, it is NOT going to be possible for her to pretend it never happened. She NEEDS to confront it and DEAL with it.
Maybe so, maybe not, but either way, Beast Boy can't force her to do it. That's the point, and the episode's metaphor for anyone who's lost a relationship of some sort that they didn't want to lose. Sometimes you don't get closure, sometimes you don't find out why things have to end, and sometimes you think the other person's wrong and needs to listen to you. But unless you're planning on enslaving them, you have to respect their decision and let go sooner or later. And Beast Boy finally did.
No, Beast Boy can't force her, but it's something she WILL have to do. NO if's, and's or but's about it. Ask anyone who's ever suffered something traumatic in their life, blocked it out and forgot only to have to deal with it some years down the road. The past is always a part of you. It shapes you into who you are. You also don't force metaphor down your viewers throats. Metaphor is more poignant and holds greater meaning when it's SUBTLE and not slammed into your face. This isn't about Beast Boy 'enslaving' her; this is about Terra needing to, at some point in the future, deal with everything that happened and right now, she isn't. Beast Boy no question respects her decision, but I doubt he's going to sit idly by if, say, Slade makes an appearance or those same Markovian scientists who gave Terra her powers show up. Or Heaven forbid... the Brotherhood of Evil, who it appeared in issue #51 of Teen Titans Go! had a personal investment. Who do you think will be the first to jump to her aid? The writers weren't being 'deep or meaningful' when they wrote that final episode. They were being lazy and got too caught up in anime symbolism, etc. to remember exactly WHO their audience was. Audiences don't like to be lectured, which is what this episode DID.
She doesn't have her powers anymore. I thought the episode kind of established that? She wouldn't be useful to the Brotherhood and the most Slade could get out of coming after her is petty revenge. (And he seemed to get more of a kick out of psychologically tormenting Beast Boy about Terra than in getting said revenge.) And IIRC, didn't Geo-Force say the experiments that gave him and Terra their powers were supposed to make them heroes and that he'd been busy purging Markovia of corruption and evil long before coming to look for Terra? That seems to imply that the Markovian scientists were either not evil or had been taken care of to me. And another thing; the Titans (and Geo-Force and Slade) are the only ones who know that Terra is alive and not a statue anymore. If Slade really wanted to come after Terra he had ample time to do it during Season Five while the Titans were away and spread out all over the globe. As far as any other villains know, Terra is still dead. The Titans certainly aren't going to tell them otherwise.
Actually, no, it HASN"T been established. She MAY not have her powers anymore OR she could have just been holding back so she wouldn't give Beast Boy any confirmation that she is Terra. Also; there is nothing to stop the Brotherhood of Evil OR anyone else involved in the attempted coup in Markovia from looking for her. They're not stupid. They won't settle with simple hearsay, they will want confirmaion that Terra is dead. They'll track down her last known whereabouts and investigate from there. Once they find the cave empty, they'll know somethings up and look for her. The Brotherhood/Markovian scientists could easily use her as bait/leverage against the Titans (particularly Beast Boy) and Geo-Force. The other villains would have no interest in Terra. On Slade: attacking her at any time during the 5th season, while the Titans are away from the city is something we would expect IF Slade were anyone else. But since when has Slade ever acted in a predictable manner? He's not Mumbo, the HIVE, and certainly not Dr. Light. He is a tactical genius and completely unpredictable. When the Titans first encountered him, none of them expected that all the crimes he committed were actually a 'test'. He was searching for an apprentice and he specifically chose Robin. Everything he does is for a reason. He plans ahead and is nothing if not patient. Should he be plotting to go after Terra (and it's very likely that he will at some point in the future), he will do it in a way that is completely unexpected and in a way that will not allow the Titans to interfere and make them feel powerless to do anything. For all Terra knows, Slade is dead. She won't expect him to suddenly appear into her life again. Her defenses are down and she is, for all intents and purposes, completely defenseless. He'll wait and when the opportunity presents itself... he'll strike.
Or her powers could be dormant. For psychological reasons she can't access them anymore, but they are still present. Or, alternately, she deliberately suppressed her powers permanently (and if so, this would count as partial resolution of some of her personal conflict, as the deliberate and permanent relinquishing of one's previously uncontained powers would count as the ultimate form of self-control). If any of this is possible, then as a matter of course she would remain a potential target (sequel movie plot! Schoolgirl Terra is abducted by someone planning to extract her dormant powers to power some sort of doomsday device). She is probably under constant 24/7 secret surveillance by the Teen Titans as a precaution against this eventuality.
Her power's being dormant is also a possibility. Which means there's also the possibility of them resurfacing again. One guess is that one possible way for them to 'reactivate' is if her body undergoes extreme stress or changes and her powers re-surface in reaction to these changes. Like say, down the road as an adult she gets married and becomes pregnant and her powers start to surface again. With all the hormonal changes her body would go through, it would stand to reason that a pregnancy would trigger her dormant powers. Which means when she goes into labor, she could cause an earthquake.(I'm actually working on a fic where that happens). So in other words, her issues aren't really resolved. She just gives the impression they are. Things like that tend to backfire. As for the 24/7 surveillance; none of the Titans seemed ready to believe Beast Boy and in any case, they may have decided to keep away for one, out of respect for her wishes (because she did go through a lot and time away as life as a regular teen would benefit her) and concern that their presence could be detected and put her in danger.
People, Terra isn't lying or "running away from her past"; she can't remember her past! And as the Slade-bot said, she's choosing not to remember. She doesn't care who she was or wasn't in a past life; she's happy the way she is now. She was never cut out to be a superhero and was Cursed with Awesome before. Without powers, she's able to live a much better life. And Beast Boy had to accept that and move on. Why can't the Fan Dumb do the same?
It has not been established that Terra has forgotten. She could have easily been lying and there were clear hints that she was. Also, yes she IS running away, whether or not she remembers what happened. Denial/suppression of everything constitutes as running away, which means she refuses to deal with it. How long does anyone HONESTLY THINK this will remain a permanent situation? It won't. It is simply a matter of time before her past catches up with her. It is an eventuality and nothing she does or says will stop that. Her being happy NOW doesn't guarantee happiness in the future. A number of things could happen that force the situation to the surface. And what then? Part of moving on is acceptance of what was. Terra cannot accept who she was because she's scared and ashamed of what she did. She WILL have to deal with it at some point and stop using her 'normal life' as an excuse to spend her life hiding from reality.
She did have amnesia, her powers were gone, and she wasn't wanting to remember her past because some crazy green guy was trying to force her to and drag her away from a life she was perfectly fine with. And no, she won't have to deal with it at any point because the series is over. Let us move on, please?
Actually, according to a very reliable source (name removed until further notice), they met Amy Wolfram, the writer of the last epi at a Comic Con back in 2009. Here is her exact quote I've watched that Things Change so many times just to figure it out. Amy Wolfram (the writer) finaly told me it really was Terra... She was freed from the rock when Trigon's spell wore off that turned the world to stone. She is still the real Terra and has her powers, but wanted a 2nd chance on life to be just a normal schoolgirl & she didnt want to be a hero anymore. SO she played the amnesia game on heartbroken Beastboy - nice? Don't believe it? Go to her page over at dA and drop her a line. She has autographs from some of the voice actors, too. And think about this logically; why would she willfully admit to being the same super-powered girl who betrayed her friends, tried to destroy them and took over the city through the aid of the Titan's worst enemy? Who would admit to that? And if she did use her powers, it would have only confirmed Beast Boy's claims that she was who he believed her to be. She wasn't about to blow her cover in such a way. Even if it meant getting hit with a face full of mud, there was no way Terra was going to confirm or admit her identity to him. But because she says she doesn't remember means it's the truth? Come on... She will lie and play as dumb as possible if she believes it's for the right reasons.
And according to you, she shouldn't have done that. That's just how you see it but the writers probably saw it a different way. Maybe she had amnesia, maybe she didn't; I'd just like the claims of Terra getting Character Derailment and still "running away" to stop just because her choice wasn't one you agreed with. Same goes for the self righteous attacks against the "arrogant, self-important" writers for telling the story they wanted to tell rather than Pandering to the Base.
No, she shouldn't have, though it's understandable why she did. She went through a lot. But there are those who believe the writers tried too hard to make it 'deep and symbolic' while throwing in a lot of anime stuff (which turned a lot of people off the show in the first place). When you try too hard, it shows and it showed in the last episode. The speculations aren't going to stop just because you demand it. They are going to persist where you like it or not. It's not that so much that her choice isn't liked; it's that it's the kind of choice that comes back to bite you in the behind. So many possibilities were left open that's it's impossible not to speculate on what could be. You are making some very vehement railing against this like it were personal. If it bothers you so much, then you don't have to read about it. You were given a lead to someone who actually spoke with the writer of that episode, though it's clear you didn't act on it. If you're not going to verify, please stop pestering people about this.
You're getting mad at me for "vehemently railing against thins and taking it personally? You've been the one typing in ALL CAPS at times when stating your arguments on the subject like the episode had driven you mad or something. And I know the speculations won't stop but the fact is that the show has been long dead and we're never going to see Terra's past come back to haunt her; that's just fanfiction fodder now. There's no use cursing the writers and/or Terra for decisions you don't like now.
Don't discount my arguments just because I typed in caps. That does not invalidate them and nit-picking about it doesn't validate your claims. I did it to emphasize my point, not because I was angry. You seem to think we're not 'allowed' to criticize the writers of the show for what they did. This is the Just Bugs Me page, where people discuss what bugged them about certain episodes and this episode bugged a LOT of people. And just because the show is over and regardless of how much time has past does not erase possibilities of continuations in the future. There is also nothing that says either I or others can't be unhappy with what the writers decided to do with her character, which many of us view as wasted potential. We are allowed to speculate, vent and say we think they were wrong to finish the series the way they did. People have been complaining since the episode aired and will continue to do so.
Of course you're allowed to criticize stuff in the show; all fandoms do that. But one should also do so in a mature and rational manner, which I frankly don't see you as doing. There's expressing displeasure and then there's just bitching about it.
It just bugs me that people couldn't grasp that Terra was faking amnesia. How much more blunt than "Things Were Never the Way you Remember Them", can you get?
It's entirely possible that she remembered some things, but not everything, or that she was just saying what she felt Beast Boy needed to hear with no memory at all. Honestly, I find Terra a lot less sympathetic if she remembers everything and is just faking it, because it means a). rather than facing her problems she's still just running from them and b). it makes her out as a real jerk to Beast Boy, since she should have just told him the moment they were alone "yes, I am the person you knew, but I did some really bad things and am trying to move on from that life" or something to that effect, rather than vaguely hinting at it. Also, if she's faking it it doesn't explain what happened to her powers- if she still has them and knows about it, she should have deflected the mud Beast Boy threw at her on sheer instinct, much the same way a non-powered person would shield themself with their hands.
The Slade-bot said that if Terra does not remember her past, it is because she is "choosing not to." Which to me implies that she did forget alot of stuff, she could have remembered if she tried, but she's choosing to not remember because she's happy with the life she's started. Beast Boy coming along and basically telling her everything probably made her remember and she did not like that, which is why she was so cold to him for the remainder of the episode until the end where she more or less told him straight what she wanted.
This is a Troper speaking who hasn't contributed to this discussion yet. Frankly, let me say something to the Troper above who originally posed this question: You hate being lectured, but your entire argument is itself a long lecture about what Terra "should have" done, that is, you feel it would have been better if Terra had chosen a solution that would have satisfied you. This makes you come off as a hypocrite, and an angry hypocrite at that, one who frequently makes arguments out of rage. It's not about you typing in all caps. It's about the fact that you reacted badly to being lectured, and somehow you think the solution is dogmatic ranting about how other people should solve their problems. You display exactly the sort of behavior you say you hate.
I have problem with the whole universe of Teen Titans. I can accept that none of the Titans have any secret identities, Three of Titans has obvious alien skin features, one is a cyborg, and Robin probably does not reveal his identity to protect Bruce Wayne from rumors that him being Batman. However main thing that bugs me is that we don't see much cultural effects the Titans have to their city and the world they protect. In other shows with young superheroes (I.E Danny Phantom, Static Shock, X-Men, Spectacular Spider-man, and Avatar: The Last Airbender) We see a lot of political, social, cutural effects that these superhero has afflicted on the world and it's people they protect.
If you'll take a close look at most episodes of the Teen Titans animated series, you hardly ever see any civilians at all. It's hardly surprising that the team's actions have few consequences when, unless its to punctuate a joke or essential to the plot, Jump City often seems like it's uninhabited.
Are we supposed to believe that the politicians of Jump City and Steel Cities just allow superheroes teens to take care of their cities automatically and let them build a large tower looming over the city while supplying them financial support? Either that or Bruce Wayne pay the bills. The most we get is a chat room conservation with Control Freak, the people do enjoy the heroes. I always wanted to see News coverage of the Titans, politicians response, maybe companies making merchandising exploiting their likeness. The normal people of this show are just shallow background characters that needs to be saved and nothing else, similar to the Muggles of the Harry Potter universe, but at least there was a reason why Muggles were in the background since they were not even aware of wizards. What I'm essentially saying is that the Teen Titans universe is a bit too fake and shallow, not the characters themselves, but the world itself just feel hollow to me at times. I don't want an Alan Moore's version of the show, but I want something to ground the world to make a bit more believable.
Not saying I seriously disagree with your point, but... that's not really the point of the show. TT isn't trying to be realistic in any way- it's clearly set in a 'verse that runs on pure Rule of Cool and/or Rule of Funny. Could grounding it in reality have improved the show? Quite possibly- but it might also have taken a lot of its charm. Your Mileage May Vary on whether the trade-off would be worth it.
Also, if you're looking for a more serious, down-to-earth (as much as the genre gets) look at DC's young heroes, check out the currently-running Young Justice animated series.
If the creators, writers, and directors were so into anime tropes (especially with all the shout-outs to FLCL) why didn't they give Terra/"School Girl" an Important Haircut or Expository Hairstyle Change? Chopping off her long hair = atonement, burning bridges, plus an adequate disguise to hide from the authorities, considering the amount of "bad things" she did while under Slade's influence. It would've at least made School Girl look more ambiguous.
It's a cartoon for children, based on a comic book. It's also effective because School Girl is so uncomfortably similar to Terra.
Er... what does being aimed at children or based on a comic book have to do with Terra's hair?
It's the lack of such changes that can be interpreted as symbolic. ie (As discussed at length above) Terra hasn't achieved any resolution, she is still running and hiding, and not doing a very good job of it, either.
Again, how is that so? She has no memory of who she was.
They gave it to Raven during that whole "birthday of doom" thing, that's why. Heck, someone's already written it up on the Expository Hairstyle Change page. She cuts her hair again afterward, but that's more of a Status Quo Is God thing than anything meaningful.
Also, if Terra looked visibly different, Beast Boy likely wouldn't have recognized her from a passing glance.
Well, I'm sure it has been touched on before, but in "Things Change", there is a girl with black hair and Terra's face. She only appears in glimpses and cameos in the library, hallway, and I think one other spot, though, so it could be to intentionally mislead... and now I'm falling into symbolism. I better stop now.
How'd Red Star come back to join in on the battle royal in "Titans Together" for that matter? Didn't we last see him drifting off into space, ya'know, exploding?
Lets see, maybe exactly the same way he did the First time he exploded? Because he didnt physically explode, he merely vented all the energy filling him through his skin (hence the skin turning all red and weird), thus causing an explosion all around him, but not actually hurting him?
I just assumed that the Justice League scooped up the energy and smooshed him back together, like they did for Captain Atom in that one epsiode of JLU (y'know, Captain Atom? The OTHER superhero who derives his powers from nuclear energy? That one.)
Okay fine, the mask is kinda cool, now which of the Boy Wonders is Robin?
Dick Grayson. Next question?
Yeah, it is pretty obvious. Even if they never say it, there's a good chance that the guy who has Dick Grayson's Batmanesque work ethic, has Dick Grayson's love interest, goes on to become Nightwing, is in the lineup from the comics that included Dick Grayson as they went through storylines from the comics that were Grayson's, wears the costume of Dick Grayson (yeah, in the comics, Tim Drake is the first to wear that costume as opposed to Dick's pantsless version, but in 90s-2000s animated series, only Dick wears green and red. Tim wears black and red.) and has a Parallel Universe counterpart whose name is Dick Grayson spelled backwards is in fact Dick Grayson. As for Batman's saying Tim/Robin was with the Titans that time in Static Shock - don't forget that in Teen Titans, Flash is Kid Flash and Speedy is younger than his Justice League appearance. So Drake will be a Titan when Dick is Nightwing and Wally West (how do we know he's TT's Kid Flash? Same actor, he was the only Kid Flash at the time of that lineup, these storylines, etc.) is the Flash - in other words, a whole lot like in current comics.
That's a nice little rant there, must've done a lot of research, but to put it simply: he's none of them, while at the same time, all of them. Basically, Glen Mckamuri and the other writers didn't really care about junk like that, so long as the kids watching found the mask and bo staff and stuff cool, so they pretty much never got around to actually coming to a concrete decision in regards to which of the Boy Wonders he is. Make note that this is straight from his own mouth. All those little "hints" and Continuity Nods we saw and took oh so to heart, (i.e. "Dick Grayson" spelled backwards zooming by in "Fractured"), they were just having fun playing around with it.
Both Jason Todd and Tim Drake for green and red to. Robin is (for all intents and purposes) wearing Tim Drake's first costume.
Also, the fact that every single hint and continuity nod points to Dick Grayson (becoming Nightwing, relationship with Starfire, brief flashback to trapezes, backwards-named counterpart) tends to lend credence to... yeah, it's Dick. Personally, I find it odder that Starfire's real name was the only one never mentioned. Cyborg's name was hinted at in the episode Deception (he was undercover as "Stone" - his real name in comics was Victor Stone), Beast Boy's was mentioned by Mento (Garfield), and Dick of course got his spelled (and said) backwards by 'Larry'. And, of course, Raven's real name was... well, Raven.
I don't know how much of DCAU crossover is canon, but there's at least 2 episodes of Static Shock where Static meets Batman, and in the second one he ask's "Where's Robin?" and Batman replies "With the Titans; you'll meet them some day". Now, I could be wrong, but at this point the "Robin" that he's talking about seems much more like the "Batman the Animated Series" Tim Drake version than Dick Grayson.
I may be misremembering, it's been a while, but I think Starfire's real name was said once, in the episode where they went to her home planet, but it was in the middle of a mouthful of alien gibberish.
Word of God also has it that the reason they didn't deal with secret identities much is that the producers felt it would be confusing for kids if the characters had two names. This carries underestimating the audience's intelligence to the point of insult, given that generations of children have had no problem understanding the notion of dual identities.
Ultimately though, it makes sense that these characters wouldn't use their real names. Raven's superhero name is her real name, and Starfire's is the English translation of hers; Beast Boy plainly finds his real name embarrasing, going by "Homecoming II"; this Robin takes enough after Batman that he likely considers Robin to be his "real" identity; and considering Cyborg's angst about being less human, it's not out of the realm of possibility that there's a bit of That Man Is Dead going on, at least subconsciously.
And even if that's not enough to convince/satisfy you, the first half of Teen Titans Go! issue 47, Regarding Robin, starts with the eponymous Titan reminiscing about The Flying Graysons and mentioning to Cyborg a move his father taught him that he hadn't quite nailed himself just yet. (And a nice little cameo from a certain Gothamite at the end.)
What are Slade's origins and the motives behind his plots? Did any of them even have actual origins and motives?
In the comics? Yes, he did. It was a stupid origin, taken because the son he didn't like took an assassin gig he couldn't pull off and Slade picked it up on his behalf, chasing them down for ages and then just giving up after a while. In the cartoon? He's a Magnificent Bastard Wannabe and alternates between having a Man Crush on Robin and just wanting him out of the way.
That's not doing the character justice. Slade (Full name Slade Joseph Wilson) started out as a soldier in the military where he would meet his future wife. He was part of some experiments that ended up enhancing him physically and mentally while also giving him regenerative powers. After the military, he settled down with with his wife and had three kids, Joseph (who would later become the hero Jericho), Grant and Rose (Rose I believe was added to his back story later). However, not wanting to give up the action, he became a mercenary although he had a strict code of only killing enemies of the United States. Eventually, one of his targets kidnapped his sons, causing his wife to find out about his profession. When he tracked down his target, he held a knife to Joey's throat and told Slade to surrender. Slade refused and killed the man, but Joey's throat was cut, rendering him mute. After this, his wife tried to kill him by shooting him in the head. His enhanced reflexes saved his life, but he lost his right eye. Years later, his son Grant became a costumed mercenary who took a contract from HIVE on the Titans. It lead to his death, although I don't remember how. After this, Slade took up the contract and tried to deliever the Titans to the HIVE in the original "Judas Contract". Slade, or Deathstroke as he's commonly known, often plays the role of an anti-villain in the DC universe. He's not a nice person, but he has his own code of honor and has his own fair share of regrets, not the least of which is his family. He's allied with the Titans before, and even helped Beast Boy work through some of his emotional problems, including those brought on by Terra's betrayal and death.
To molest sexy teenagers, duh.
I had this theory going once that Slade was Batman, who went insane for some reason, & that Robin would eventually bring him back from the brink. As such, I was a little disappointed to find out about the comic book version, and even moreso when I found out that he never had an origin story planned out in the first place, and all the "foreshadowing" I'd found was completely coincidental. The final, crushing blow was when I found out that the next movie (which still hasn't come out...I'm thinking the series is dead) planned to aim for an older age demographic, & therefore use the original Slade.
Grant died because (if I recall correctly) the HIVE inflicted some sort of treatment on him to turn him into this badass mercenary guy at the cost of his own life (he may or may not have been aware of the cost at the time). That's why I specified that his grudge against the Titans was stupid; they weren't at fault, and the people he was working for were. Rose, incidentally, happened long after Joey and Grant.
All that's about the comics version, who is explicitly defined by the producers as a separate character. The TV Slade is just there to be the Bad Guy.
For the second and fourth seasons, it's safe to say he was after power. At least half of the first season can be attributed to getting Robin as an apprentice. Granted, that still doesn't cover all of it. Many of the show's villains seem to have an irrational desire to destroy the city. (At least The Source came up with a wonderfully creepy anti-reason.) Robin himself wonders what the heck Slade was trying to accomplish in "Forces of Nature", and never gets an answer. I've always enjoyed imagining Robin asking him about this point blank, and hearing, "To make you ask questions..."
It's Wild Mass Guessing, of course, but I'd speculate that Slade had a terminal illness, and knew he only had a few years left to find and train someone to follow in his footsteps. Robin was the young candidate who most reminded him of himself, so that was his first choice. He decided on Terra as his apprentice and heir once Robin proved too much to handle, but that went badly too - but if he was dying anyway, it helps explain why he was able to look at her killing him with self-deprecating amusement rather than anger. It'd be interesting to see if, now that he apparently has a new lease on life thanks to the events in "The End", he's still interested in gaining an apprentice.
My theory is that he's been in the "plot to Take Over the World, or a good chunk of it anyway" game for a while, but, by the time the series starts, he's started to realize all that power isn't that interesting without anyone to share it with (mindless Mooks don't count). Hence his desire to have an apprentice, someone who, while still subservient to him, he can have something resembling a real human relationship. Having Terra attack the Titans and take over the city? His idea of a fun father/daughter activity.
It's been stated a bit subtly in canon that Slade wants to build a totalarist empire by taking over cities and whatnot, probably so that he can eventually rule the world. It was said in his line in the season 2 finale: "This city is only the first of many." As for why he wants an apprentice, I'll go with the above and the fact that someone needs to take over his empire once he's gone.
Glen Murakami stated in an interview that Slade's motivations were made unclear on purpose: "A lot of times, I think it's more interesting to just make the bad guy the bad guy. Sometimes when you explain the villains, they end up being sympathetic. So if you find out things about Slade, you could end up sympathizing with him - and maybe that makes the character more emotional or more human... But he's the bad guy. He doesn't need to be more human."
In the same interview he says that Slade was meant to be an analogue of Batman to Robin. Robin was becoming more independent by separating himself from his "good" father-figure, so a natural choice for Slade's motivation would be to threaten this development by being an "evil" father-figure. As an explanation of "Apprentice", at the very least, "Here you have Robin working so hard to move away from Batman and become his own man. So it makes perfect sense for the villain to look for a son."
How is it possible for Malchior to have showed up with the Brotherhood of Evil when he was both sealed inside a book and locked in a chest in Raven's room?
Even if someone managed to sneak raid Raven's room and steal the book without her noticing, the spell to break to seal requires a hair from a beautiful girl... and no one from the Brotherhood of Evil fits that description.
Well, by then, the Brotherhood includes the overwhelming majority of villains faced by the Titans thus far, and everyone else wants to be part of it (like the HIVE FIVE in Lightspeed.) So if Madame Rouge isn't his type, there's no shortage of girls who could have done it. (And then, what was the source of the "fact" that a pretty girl's hair is needed? Malchior could have been lying, and if Robin had found the book, it would have turned out that only a brave warrior could do it... it would've flattered whoever found it.)
The Titans were away from their tower for an extended period of time to fight the Brotherhood; someone could have come in during that time and released Malchior.
Easy! Madam Rouge supplied the hair and General Immortus provided the magic. I wouldn't be surprised if Immortus picked up some magic skills in the thousands of years he's been alive, in fact I can picture him saying something like "I did teach Merlin everything he knew..."
And what kind of people call themselves "evil" without irony? Humanity's worst monsters typically either think they're saving the world or don't care what anyone calls them.
It an action-comedy, children-oriented (can't stress that any more) superhero cartoon. Its not meant to be that deep.
In the comics the Brotherhood was based on, they called themselves that partially to stand out against the "good" Doom Patrol, and partially because Damn the Man. One villain had an interesting rant on the subject where he basically pointed out that they did destructive things for personal gain and society has a word for people that do that.
In the original Doom Patrol comics (at the dawn of the Silver Age), they called themselves Evil because in those days, supervillains called themselves evil. It wasn't meant to be realistic or give them "believeable motivations". Villains were evil because the heroes needed someone to fight.
This Troper had a theory that the group was originally just named "the Brotherhood", but Mento added the "of evil" to mock them. When the Brain found out about it, he, considering himself Above Good and Evil, was amused by the label enough to semi-officially adopt it. Most of his henchmen are either in on the joke, or just smart enough to recognize that questioning their boss's choice of a name would limit future career options.
What's Kyd Wykkyd's story? His powers seem identical to Raven's. Sadly, he never gets any focus in the show, being the least-seen of whatever group he happens to be with in an episode, and the one issue of Teen Titans Go! to feature him turned out to be a TT-ification of the Batman episode "Almost Got Him," and Wykkyd was the impostor.
Repeated emphasis on "children-oriented" aside, the show wasn't big on explaining things. A good chunk of the Brotherhood of Evil hadn't been seen prior, and most of the existing ones didn't really have a story beyond their clashes with the Titans. In short, Wykkyd's a one-shot villain among other villains - a cool one that might have benefited from more exposition, but it;s not that kind of show.
The show being family-rated doesn't explain the fact that Kyd Wykkyd didn't get an explanation. Anyhoo, Wykkyd got way more screentime than Private Hobbs. Remember Private Hobbs? Didn't think so. He was in one scene (blink and you miss him) from "Deception" and then a little bit later he somehow replaces Billy Numerous as the sixth member of the HIVE Five. Horsesh*t!
Or maybe we're all making a big fuss over a phenomenally unimportant background villain, perhaps? And he and Billy replaced Private HIVE. Just doing my part to keep the HIVE lineup straight.
What the hell happened to Starfire? In the episode "Go" she was an armor-plated badass who was kicking much Titan ass even though she was shackled and denied her star bolts. For the bulk of the series she was primarily The Ditz. Was it something in the atmosphere?
In the comics canon, her gradual shift to naive redhead from bad ass warrior chick was explained as her acclimating to her new surroundings. Given that she's perpetually surrounded by warriors who exhibit a very non-warrior-like code, it may well be that she instead chose to embrace the more emotional aspects of her Tamaranean heritage rather than the violent ones.
It's all a ruse so she can take over the planet before they realize what she's up to.
Starfire went through puberty during the series.
Earth air has too much oxygen. It makes her giddy.
Then how were the others breathing on Tammeran without difficulty? And why don't they weird out on return to Earth?
Cyborg adjusted his environment settings and BB morphed his lungs offscreen Raven was immune due to being part demon and Robin had prepaired for low oxygen situations by training on mountaintops. That was scarily easy to justify.
Canon states that BB can impersonate alien animals. But if they know Tamanian air quality, they probably did some medical handwavium.
Earth's atmosphere is 21% oxygen. Humans can survive in as little as 15% (or rather, .15 atmospheres of oxygen partial pressure, provided that there is sufficient atmosphere to keep water liquid and none of the components is poisonous).
Her incredible powers were the result of her unbound rage, which also made her a threat to innocent people. To become a hero, she had to learn self-control.
Tamaranians have a warrior culture, so Starfire would know how to act the part, especially in a hostile situation on an alien planet. It's only since living on Earth that she's learned to let her hair down and be her giddy, idealistic self. Sometimes she ends up with the Idiot Ball, but we do see her go into righteous fury mode (or even sarcastic asskicking mode, such as her "I'm sorry to disappoint you" line) enough to believe that her Action Girl side's still there.
Plus, Starfire did ask at the end of Go! if she looked "nice" switching out of her badass appearance to someone less threatening in order to assimilate better. More than likely she's also doing the World of Cardboard Speech and holding back.
Okay, does this show take place in the DCAU or what? Why hasn't this ever been Jossed or confirmed by the Word of God?
Unlikely to be DCAU, speedy shows up in an episode of unlimited as a fully grown adult without batman being an old man by that point and, more obviously, lacks the binding animation style of the diniverse.
There was a Teen Titans Go! comic where Batman showed up to secretly watch over Robin to see how he's doing. He was drawn DCAU style. It's worth mentioning that this also revealed the identity of TT robin,though I can't remember which one it was.
Most likely not true, given that TTG has Kid Flash zooming around, where in the Justice League episode "The Brave and the Bold", Flash has a BLAM that shows someone who is most likely him as an adult getting struk by lightning. Granted, a hallucination that Flash has isn't the most accurate thing to keep in mind, but it is something.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Kid Flash and The Flash are not the same person, There are three Flashes are Barry Allen, the first Flash, Wally West, the second and the one in the Justice League show, and Bart Allen AKA Kid Flash. (Four if you count Jason Garrick)
Wally West was Kid Flash when he was introduced, then got "upgraded" to Flash III (post-Crisis, I believe). Flash in JL is Wally, but it's generally accepted that Kid Flash in TT is also Wally (Wally is also Kid Flash in the currently airing Young Justice).
The multiverse, people. The multiverse. Most of these shows are all on different Earths.
... yeah. That's fairly obvious. The point is, there is very definitely precedence for Wally being Kid Flash, and TT Kid Flash is generally considered to be Wally.
Tamareneans learn languages by lip contact and Starfire had to kiss Robin to learn English. Yet everyone on Tamaran seems to speak English fluently. Who exactly could have kissed that many Tamareneans?
I'm guessing her sister.
I've heard that the writers have stated that they were going to show a scene of Beast Boy and Cyborg teaching them English, but didn't have the time.
I believe that one Tamaranian learned English, then kissed a bunch of other tamaranians so they know english too. Then it just spread.
More interestingly, Raven knows six or seven other Earth languages...
Just a little one, but why does Blackfire look so different from Starfire and the rest of the Tamarenians? Cosmetic surgery (apparently you don't need your original eyes to shoot eye-bolts)? Sister from another mother (or father)? Automatic dark side makeover? I like to think Blackfire is Starfire's half-sister and her parent came from a black-haired, human-eyed ethnic group that was beaten by Dark-Skinned Redhead Tamerenians and given to as tribute.
Evidently in Tamarenean culture black hair is considered bad luck and might have directly led to her attitude problems.
Actually, one of the comics delves a bit into the past of the Tamaranian royal family, and the king and queen of Tamaran are seen in a flashback. Blackfire appears to be the only one of the three children who gets more of her looks from their mother than their father. Another guess: it could be a result of her Transformation. She did turn purple for two days, and it's possible she (and her mother?) just paled up afterwards.
Terra befriending Titans and then betraying them after learning their secrets - BAD. Cyborg doing the SAME THING to the H.I.V.E. - we're supposed to cheer? Go To HELL Titans. If it's so despicable when used against you, why do you get use it as a strategy?
Because the strategies were being used to very different ends. In this case, it's the difference between fighting (on behalf of a self-interested madman) to betray a superhero team and take over the world for personal gain vs. fighting to prevent known criminals from carrying out a plan to hurt other people. Not much of a "Go to Hell" moment.
The Titans treated the Terra event as a Moral Event Horizon moment. They had been fighting Slade before, but it was clearly the means and not the objective which were treated as horrible here. Hurting people's bodies in open confrontation is one thing; hurting people's minds and hearts by gaining their trust and betraying them is another. Besides, if there was an aesop to the episode where Robin disguises himself as Red X, it is that using certain means to fight crime (such as betraying people's trust, his friends' in that case) is wrong, and that in fighting crime one should be careful not to become like that against which one is supposed to be fighting. The first troper is right; H.I.V.E. never did something so horrible to the Titans as what they did to them by infiltrating Cyborg. The hell with them.
...Are you seriously getting mad at law enforcing heroes for performing a sting operation?
Moral Event Horizon moments usually don't entail repeated, highly emotional attempts to get through to the perpetrator. When it first becomes obvious that she has betrayed them, they are simply shocked, and (apart from Raven, who immediately bolts down on "just another criminal") rather confused. It's only after she cements her position by nearly killing them all that they drop all hesitation and fight with everything they have, which is appropriate. By contrast, Cyborg didn't intend form any emotional attachments in H.I.V.E., and he certainly had no intention of killing anybody. To say nothing of their status as supervillains bent on power, loot and destruction. The two situations and "betrayals" are extremely different.
It would have really been bad if Cyborg had broken Jinx's heart in the betrayal like Terra did with Beast Boy. However, their last exchange was Jinx saying that he could've been one of us, and Cyborg sadly replying "I could've been alot of things." Jinx just shakes her head, shrugs it off, and leaves. No real emotional damage was done to anyone in the HIVE (unless you count Brother Blood becoming obsessed with knowing how Cyborg resisted him.)
Jinx totally had a crush on "Stone". She has him carry her books, she has the little hearts flying out of her in 1 scene, when her, Gizmo, and Mammoth give "Stone" a Hive communicator and say "you're one of us", she is clearly happy as can be, and finally, Cyborg takes her to the school dance.
This isn't high school. It's not like the underclassmen just trashed the Jocks' party for no reason. The Titans are law enforcement. Terra was working for a man who wants to rule the world and is happy to use indiscriminate violence to do it. The HIVE trio may be friendly enough when they aren't working, but they're still mercenaries willing to work for whomever pays them. Their first appearance involved them trying to kill the Titans. You know where all that money they were stealing was going to go? It was going to Brother Blood, who later built a sonic tsunami generator to destroy the city and everyone in it. Terra's mission was to set the Titans up for Slade to kill them. Cyborg's mission was to find out what HIVE was trying to do and allow the Titans to stop it. According to the original argument, it's wrong for the police to run sting operations, because it involves some level of lies and betrayal. It's wrong for Batman to join Two-Face's gang as "Matches Malone," and then foil the plot to kill Commissioner Gordon. Are you really unable to spot the difference?
Plus, Terra tried to kill them. Yeah, they focused on the emotional betrayal aspect, but she betrayed them by trying to kill them. That alone puts her way, way past the moral line Cyborg crossed by going undercover and, at worst, breaking Jinx's heart. That part's comparable to what Terra did to Beast Boy, but it's the being attacked and left for dead part that the Titans held against her.
Jinx's heart doesn't even seem to have been broken that bad- she's fine the next time we see her, and was certainly sad when Cyborg stayed with the Titans, but not nearly as angry/broken up as Beast Boy was over Terra. Mammoth and Gizmo never liked him anyway, he doesn't seem to have been close to anyone else at the HIVE, and as for making Brother Blood angry- the man's a criminal psychopath.
This is so ridiculously simple. The Hive is EVIL. Any dirty trick the Titans want to use on them is justified.
That's kind of a shallow way to put it. So villains don't have feelings too? However, I do agree that their were differences in the two situations. The key one being that Terra was going to inevitably betray the Titans; the Titans only wanted to find out what was the deal with the new headmaster and the potential weapon. If Cyborg had found out that there was no danger, the titans wouldn't have acted. Also, Jinx didn't take heartbreak nearly as bad as Beast Boy did.
A season has passed off screen between these two events. And in that time the Titans have come to terms with Terra's betrayal, have thought deeply (probably a lot of painful soul searching here) about the reasons she did what she did, about what parts of what she did was wrong and what parts were understandable, and have forgiven her. In short character development. Therefore they no longer have any hesitation in using similar tactics when the situation justifies it.
Remember HIVE's first time on the show? They had been hired to kill the Titans, and almost succeeded. They're thieves and assassins- and at the time, they were working for Brother Blood, a man who ended up building a sonic generator that would create a tidal wave to take out the city. So, the Titans dealt with this threat by infiltrating the HIVE. I mean, is Ron Stallworth a bad man for infiltrating the KKK? http://www.cracked.com/article_18562_the-6-most-hilarious-undercover-operations-ever-pulled-off.html
Why did Raven keep insisting that there was nothing she could do to stop Trigon from destroying the world, even though Trigon couldn't even get to Earth had she simply refused to cooperate and become his portal?
She probably knew that Trigon would, well, do exactly the kind of thing he did and force her into it. Hence, why when the Titans' all-out effort to fend off his forces failed—and, to her credit, she at least gave it a fair chance until it became obvious her friends were about to be killed—she resigned herself to the act itself and instead left an ace-in-the-hole to undo the damage after the fact.
One interesting detail from Slade's flash-forward to the post-Trigon world is that the Titans had been turned to stone right outside the tower, in the middle of a battle with Slade's monsters . When Slade summoned the same monsters right outside the tower in "The End, Part 1" and the Titans began fighting them, Raven must have realized that she's already seen how this will end. Trigon will somehow use her anyway, and the Titans will die fighting, along with the rest of the world. So she quickly came up with a different plan: go open the portal willingly and, while doing so, also make sure her friends survive the destruction and have some hope of reversing it.
Okay, so Starfire knows the definition of boyfriend and girlfriend. Wasn't she still being a bit presumptuous on her and Robin's status as a couple in Stranded? They did ride on the ferris wheel, and there was that time at Kitty's prom, and they may have done some other things not shown in episodes. But they never really did couple date-date stuff.
It's a kiddie cartoon. What is there to show, really?
Incorrect, Person Above Me. It's a family-rated cartoon. It's got plenty of artistic merit beyond the purely functional purposes of an actual cartoon for preschoolers and has shown itself to be elegant and clever as often as it's been childish.
Let's see, Starfire's definition of 'girlfriend' was "A female with whom you have a pleasant and special association including the sharing of enjoyable recreation and occasionally the buying of bountiful floral arrangements." About the only thing we haven't seen Robin do in some form was the floral arrangements part. Starfire naturally assumed some kind of romantic or otherwise "special" relationship, based on the behavior she'd been presented with. This happens a LOT in other media and is Truth in Television actually... (See Not a Date, the Tropers Tales for She Is Not My Girlfriend, etc.)
Starfire has got a mostly technical definition of "girlfriend" based on actions she has seen couples perform. I am not sure she understands the associated concepts of emotions, romance, physical affection, attraction, sexuality, monogamy, (possible) marriage, etc... that are traditionally attached to the modern western idea of the thing and whether she would be so ready to classify herself as Robin's girlfriend in that case. Of course, it is possible she really has a good comprehension of the idea, considered herself and Robin to be in a romantic relationship despite the lack of verbal confirmation (and enjoyed the idea to boot), and got sad and angry when Robin cleared what he considered a misunderstanding.
Raven's power level bugs me. She's got a ridiculously long list of powers and could, in theory, take on half the rest of the cast at once! Shouldn't the writers have realized that A. Giving someone a backstory about her being the daughter of a world-destroying god (making Raven a demi-goddess!) and putting her on a low-powered superhero team was a very bad idea and B. That they shouldn't add New Powers as the Plot Demands? To compensate they have her conveniently forgetting various abilities every episode and deliberately weakening herself (her powers are powered by emotions, right?). The only conclusion that makes sense is that she's completely immortal and if something goes wrong she can just go back in time to correct it. Kindof makes her into a Haruhi though...
Her powers in the comics Teen Titans is based on were pretty weaksauce for an action cartoon: she was empathic, psychic, had healing powers, flight, teleportation, and astral projection. There might have been more, but regardless, she was a strict pacifist, so it made little difference. She was the White Mage of the team. And she was a demigoddess (demoness, rather) over there as well. Moreover, she doesn't really get new powers as the plot demands. She's got telekinesis and ill-defined darkness-based powers. She doesn't use the latter because they're evil. I'm not seeing the problem.
Her powers require focus and concentration, usually requiring her to step back from the action while the rest of the team distracts the villains. Note that she usually has to go on the defensive when an enemy gets right up in her face. Her more powerful spells, like time travel, could be handwaved as needing rare and expensive material components.
Just thought I'd list her powers: Telekinesis capable of crushing steel (auto-win against most enemies, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Robin and Terra). Portal forming. Teleportation (as seen in Go it's easy to teleport the entire team almost a mile away). Intangibility. The ability to make other objects intangible at range (imagine phasing someone underground to render them helpless). Black energy constructs. Precognition. Telepathy. Time manipulation (Timestop in particular). Changing form into demons and whatnot (and she doesn't even have to be evil to do it!). Astral projection (why does she even need a body? she can affect the mortal plane without it). Healing of herself and others. Creating monsters. Flight. And I'm sure I've missed something. Then there's her magic. And apparently her father can devastate the world in a few seconds, defeating every superhero on the planet simultaneously yet gets badly hurt by a team that Raven could easily destroy (she subconsciously created monsters that beat them) especially if you remove the killing inhibitions (TK is nasty if used properly and phasing someone's brain out should be lethal). From this it's obvious the only reason they lasted a second must have been Raven's protection.
Raven might have an incredibly long list of powers, but all of them come with a price. Most of her limitations have already been discussed, but one I wanted to add was her healing powers. Raven rarely uses her healing powers (I believe only once in the entire animated series) because the price of taking someone else's pain away is that she has to live with that pain for the rest of her life.
Raven is not capable of telekinesis, she summons and manipulates a form of darkness/black magical "matter", which can move or damage what it holds on the requirement that it isn't alive/consious/intelligent enough for dialouge/any of the above, since it's only shown, not explained. Really, her darkness can, as you say, crush steel, but cannot hurt anything directly, biological or otherwise. Again, it's not telekinesis, because she acctualy calls fort something tangible that can cause or hinder impact with other objects, making it different from telekinesis, which is simply moving something without involment of anything but one's thoughts.
Raven's powers are fairly broad but far from unbeatable. Most of the more extreme examples occur only when she gets extremely emotional, something she regularly tries to prevent. And while it's revealed that she could become considerably more powerful by studying magic, she seems to have been turned off to the idea.
Might be worth noting that her two of her most extreme powers - stopping time and creating monster hordes - were purely by accident, and took even her by surprise. As for why she doesn't do deadlier things with her other powers, it could be that she's actively resisting any excessive force out of fear it could fuel the evil inside her. Recall how horrified she was after she totally curbstomped Slade in "Prophecy."
It was heavily implied in the episode where Raven stopped time that her ability to freeze time was a "birthday wish", not something she can normally pull off. I haven't seen the episode in a while, but I believe Slade suggested the theory, plus I've seen it thrown around in a lot of different places.
I've watched the episode a lot, and the closest it comes to being suggested is Slade's line "you can stop time, birthday girl, but you can't stop me". Personally, Raven's surge of emotions coming with a surge of power makes the most sense, as it fits with what was established about her before.
Raven seems to show a lot more power as of Season 4. A theory thrown around a lot is Raven's power level fluctuates depending on her father - basically, the closer she gets to her father, the stronger she is. It would make sense.
On the note of not using all of their powers: this is actually true for each of the Titans, with the possible exeption of Beast Boy. Cyborg can shoot missiles and has a super-powered mode for when he can take energy from the Titans Tower, Robin uses his ice-based explosives and Red-X toys way less then you'd think based on how effective they are and Starfire has that energy blast with the huge radius she hardly ever uses. Really, ALL the Titans has powers that fluctuate like crazy and abilities they almost never use, which is why they always get defeated in the beginning of an episode/arc only for a single Titan to defeat the threat easily as opposed to it being impossible to beat with the entire team. Very clear case of conservation of ninjutsu where the only exceptions are for the teamwork-is-important episodes.
It bugs me that so many fans think that Raven SHOULD have used all of her power for most of the series. That would creater a greater chance of Trigon coming and destroying the world! Her powers and her emotions are very connected; repressing her emotions is how she controls her powers. If she went all out, she'd lose control.
Why does Brother Blood never return after the third season? He's probably the only villain in the show who can't escape from prison. When I think about it, it would've made more sense if Brother Blood became Trigon's servant in the fourth season instead of Slade.
He's native to Steel City, he's Titans East's responsibility unless and until he heads west.
Then there's the fact that his arms were, you know...SHATTERED LIKE A STAINED-GLASS WINDOW!
While we never see what happened to Blood, he was presumably tried, convicted, sent to a prison with facilities capable of holding him, and hasn't managed to effect an escape. As for him versus Slade as Trigon's minion, Blood's powers and personality are certainly more in line with Trigon's, but he lacks the almost boogey-man like status Slade managed to reach in the Titans' minds. Blood reappearing would just mean the team had to take him down, and he already has flashy, quasi-mystical powers. Slade rising from the grave armed with demon magic when he was just a Badass Normal before is a lot more of a Nightmare Fuel gut punch.
Doom Patrol related gripe. Basically, they were portrayed as ameteurs. For srs. Mento's Leeroy Jenkinsesque style saw his teammates barge headfirst into heroic sacrifice after heroic sacrifice, only to have it all undone offscreen. They weren't even there to beat their own bag guys. Also, Negative Man was made a stereotypical emo and the uniforms looked even worse on the men of DP than it does on Beast Boy.
Well, what do you expect from a group calling itself the "Doom" patrol? Clearly self-preservation isn't part of their agenda.
So... are they suicidal? Sorry, but when I saw those eps, the only explanation for the DP's fighting style that made sense to me is that the writers wanted to deliver an Anvilicious aesop; and I get the whole Heroic Sacrifice thing but they shouldn't have been so stupid about it.
For all the emphasis Mento puts on thinking strategically, he really comes across as a suicidal, emotionally abusive idiot. Twice he yells at Beast Boy for saving them rather than stopping the villains' latest plan. Okay, let's put emotions aside: what exactly was he expecting to happen after Beast Boy destroyed their doomsday weapon? Oh right, they'll just escape and build another doomsday weapon... and this time, because Beast Boy let his teammates die, there's nobody to stop them! And in neither situation was saving them and stopping the bad guys mutually exclusive. Once the Doom Patrol's been saved, they now have four extra people to go capture the Brotherhood of Evil, which is much better odds that Beast Boy trying to do it alone. Or at least it would be, if Mento would stop standing around and lecturing people and, you know, go chase the Brotherhood of Evil like he keeps telling them to.
This troper fot the impression that Mento vs. Brain = Robin vs. Slade- in other words, the otherwise levelheaded and competent leader becomes highly irrational where his personal nemesis is concerned. As we only ever see Mento when he's pitted against Brain, it's hard to get a good picture of his overall leadership.
I've gotta admit, that actually helps put things into perspective: Robin acts pretty much the same way with Slade, right down to chewing out the Titans for helping him rather than continuing the fight. And Mento does start to show signs of being a good leader later on, once he realizes how he's acting and starts accepting advice, so the idea that Brain can get under his skin the way Slade does with Robin makes sense.
For bonus points the way the Doom Patrol were portrayed isn't entirely inappropriate given their comic book incarnations. The Doom Patrol have always been seesawing between being a team of super heroes and a support group for the horribly mutilated, at least one incarnation of the team has been killed off, or comic book dead at least, in a suicidal last stand.
In the comics, Mento is a suicidal, emotionally abusive idiot. It's part of the reason Beast Boy left.
The Doom Patrol were meant to be seen as negative counterparts to the Titans, what they could be if they grew up the wrong way. (Mento = Robin as a total Jerkass of a leader, Elasticgirl = Starfire as completely submissive, Robot Man = Cyborg without humanity, and Negative Man = Raven as truly gloomy and without emotional development. And then there's Beast Boy, who's problem is that he's played both teams.)
I don't like the way they characterized Beast Boy. The toon version was, for the most part, reduced to an obnoxious, immature comic relief cliche (never mind that the series ends when he finally decides to grow up); which I wouldn't mind so much if it didn't influence the comic book counterpart, but it does- so much so that nearly thirty years of character development has been all but erased.
Someone had to get that role, and unfortunately Beast Boy was the only one it could really fit without completely shattering Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
The thing about Beast Boy is that no matter how dumb and childish the writers present him as being, it's still perfectly in character for him to sober up when he has to. Gar is the quintessential Sad Clown, playing up how silly he is to cover up for the fact that he's lost so many loved ones that he can't even name them all.
Regarding that last point, remember how he fights Slade in "Betrayal," when Terra's threatened? That was one of the deadliest displays of BB's powers in the whole series.
That's all fine and good, but he's supposed to be past that part of his life. Just before TT:TAS, he was actively maturing up because he was sick of being treated like a kid, and he also became far more happy and well-adjusted character; so while the Sad Clown thing was relevant in the 80's and 90's, the serious and comedic aspects of his personality have balanced out. But now, only very few writers want to keep that up as opposed to the ones who watch the TT DVDs and call it 'research', and due to the unstable nature of the comic book industry, BB now alternates between acting like an idiot and angsting over being treated like an idiot.
Yes, but the animated version isn't past that stage. The fact that his characterization in the show affects his comic book portrayal is an unfortunate side effect but no fault of the show's writers.
Animated BB has just left the Doom Patrol, when he first joined up with the Titans he was a dorky, annoying, kid who never shut up and thought he was funnier than he actually was. Furthermore as noted above just because he's a silly geek that doesn't mean he's still not one of the most effective fighters on the team who (with the right series of transformations) can possibly hit harder than Starfire.
Please you guys, just remember this. Beast Boy is a kid in the cartoon, fourteen years old, tops (I could be wrong about the age, but whatever). If you think he's an idiot, then kindly remember that we are all idiots at his age. As mentioned above with the "Betrayal" example, he is capable of getting serious, and quite frankly, the fact that he can go from 0 to Rampage Mode in half a second makes him, apart from Raven, probably the most dangerous member of the team.
Given than he's a massive racist and we only see the Locrix attacking him, why are the Titans so happy to accept Val-Yor's word that the Locrix are horrible monsters that must be destroyed? They didn't believe him when he was being an arse to Starfire, but suddenly his word is gospel about how bad these other creatures are, so they happily help him commit genocide? Something doesn't add up here...
This one bugged me too. Especially at the beginning of the episode. I may not remember correctly, but I remember the episode beginning with a Locrix ship flying over their city without actually doing anything bad- no shooting, no bombing, nothing. Val-Yor suddenly starts ripping the ship apart and the Titans automatically assume he's a hero, despite the fact that he was attacking a seemingly defenseless ship that was otherwise doing nothing wrong.
The Titans assuming he's the good guy when they first meet him and taking his word about the Locrix doesn't make a lot of sense, but in the long run his actions are far more consistent with him being a hero with a giant character flaw rather than a genocidal psycho. He doesn't put Starfire in danger except as tactically warranted by her abilities, nor seek to harm her in any way other than racial insults. (Besides, if he was really a villain manipulating the Titans into helping him commit genocide, being up-front about his prejudice towards one of them would make no sense.)
Ordos Xenos Codex Sect.21 Para.33 And low the servents of the Emperor did measure the bust of the females of the orange skinned and found them to be exceptable. However the lumpy pale xenos were found wanting and were cast down(exterminated).
The use of 'otaku' in the Trouble in Tokyo movie. It's supposed to be bad in Japan,, so was she just relying on Beast Boy knowing no Japanese? And if he didn't, how would he be reading his book right before the girl comes to him since the cover is shown to be in Japanese? Does he just not know that word?
It may be bad in Japan, but it's a term embraced by many American anime fans, and BB's an American anime fan. I don't see any problem: the girl was playfully insulting him, and he took it as a compliment.
Yep, she was counting on him not being able to speak Japanese. Given that he's often seen as barely smart enough to speak English, it wasn't a big stretch. Most of the things she said to him were either insulting or creepy and she was counting on him not understanding any of it.
Fridge Brilliance: don't know what experts in language learning have to say, but reading how a foreign word is spelt on a wiki and actually hearing it spoken, accent and all, is pretty different to me.
Two things, 1 is that Otaku is a bad thing depending on the person, with the success of anime and oriental culture in other areas of the world (US, UK) over the years it's been more acceptable in Japan, even the prime minister of Japan openly admitted he was an Otaku and that it's something the country should praise and not discriminate. Second of all the problem about Otaku's was that it was deemed childish and or improper and unprofessional, meaning the biggest concern was young adult or full grown adults having a big fascination for a certain thing (anime, tech, actors, etc.) BB is a teenager, as was the girl, so maybe she was just pointing out that he was an Otaku, or calling him a insult that pretty much means geek or nerd, not a slur.
This is a minor gripe: Why are the Teen Titans the first ones to grab that island? It looks like it was just sitting there completely empty before they decided to build their headquarters on it. Why didn't anyone else build something there first?
Maybe it was owned by Wayne Industries. Or someone planned to develop it, never got the chance, and the titans bought it.
Robin, with Cyborg and/or Raven along, talked to the local government. Because of the nature of the world they live in, they weren't hard to sell on the benefits of having the Titans call their city home, and once that was decided, Robin convinced them that the currently-unoccupied island was the ideal site, giving the Titans enough room to live, and placing them where any attacks on their home would not cause collateral damage to the city itself.
The question wasn't how they got permission to build there, it was why someone else hadn't beaten them to it. It's prime real estate in the middle of the harbor, it should have been developed years before they were even born.
Matbe because it's out in the open? Jump City is portrayed as a den of crime and villainy. Anything that they put on the island would be robbed blind by any of the supervillains.
Maybe it's an example of Truth in Television, considering most islands in the middle of major cities are city-owned. And they did, after all, save the entire city from complete obliteration.
Real life example: there are several small islands in the waters around New York City that are uninhabited. One was formerly home to a mental institution, and I believe another is a massive graveyard. Not only does no one live on these islands, even visitors are strictly limited.
It would take a ton of cash to make such an island workable from a commercial standpoint, and that's just minimal infrastructure. Inconvenience makes it unattractive from a mass-residential standpoint. So you're very limited in who would have a reasonable need for such an island.
Beast Boy's choices in animal forms never cease to bother this troper. When pure brute strength is the best option in a fight, he almost never chooses an outright gigantic animal. And no matter how often he faces alien, mutated, or otherwise bizarre forms of animals, he never chooses to be anything besides a regular, realistic animal to fight them. This is most Egregious in the episode where he turns into a lycanthrope-esque animal. He turns into a sasquatch at least TWICE. Clearly, he CAN be animals that aren't real or he hasn't seen, but usually just chooses not to.
I'd chalk it up to BB still learning how to use his powers: it's probably easier to change into animals he's very familiar with, and takes more focus and stamina to change into something unfamiliar (remember how big a deal it was in the Doom Patrol flashback when he turned into a dinosaur for the first time). He probably has about ten animals that he can flip effortlessly between in battle, and is still training to improve his shape-shifting skills and add more to the list.
Also Beast Boy can only turn into real animals (either alive or extinct). This includes alien animals he has seen or come in contact with, but if he has no knowledge of them he obviously can't turn into them. A recent development in the comics is that now he can turn into animals either much larger or smaller than their actual size, but this is a recent development that he didn't have at the the Teen Titans show takes place. He can turn into the were-wolf-like creature from The Beast Within because of the accident he was caught in but due to fear of losing control of its more primal nature he keeps it solely in reserve for only the most dire threats (like in Titans Together). That said he does seem to show a prefrence for certain animals (with a pterodactyl being his most commonly chosen form).
A related gripe, in "Mother Mae-eye" his suit was too tight, so he transforms into big animals, but only big animals. Why not be a snake and escape that suit.
Considering all the other weird things Mother Mae-Eye did, it wouldn't be surprising if the suit changed size to match Beast Boy's animal form, making it too tight regardless of the animal he was at the time.
It's clear that the Red X suit is much more powerful than Robin's gadgets. So why doesn't Robin use the suit all the time? Even if he couldn't use the exact same gadgets, he could use their technology to enhance his original ones.
It's been awhile since I saw those episodes, but I'm pretty sure the second Red X episode establishes that it relies on some very dangerous and unstable Applied Phlebotinum. It was useful for a quick run, but either Robin realized how dangerous it was soon afterward, or he always knew and just let his Slade obsession get the best of him when he built it. That's also why the guy who stole the suit and became the new Red X doesn't have such powers.
Well technically, the second Red X did have at least some of the original's powers (and indeed, his first appearance revolves around him trying to steal some of that same Phlebotinum to make the suit run). But that same episode has Cyborg (the team's resident tech-genius) freak when he finds out what Robin used to power the suit. The Xenothium fuel is both very rare and (apparently) very dangerous- more than enough reason not to use the thing on a daily basis. After it gets stolen, this becomes a moot point.
Plus keep in mind that Robin didn't want to use the suit again, since it was a constant reminder of his failure to get close to Slade, and of him letting his obsession take over him to the point that he betrayed his friends' trust.
In some ways, the fact that every future Titan except Robin (and Starfire by virtue of not having a future counterpart) kinda got screwed over in "How Long is Forever?" bugs me, but Beast Boy seemed to really get the short end of the stick. He's presented as a balding, chubby, apparently homeless middle-aged man. Okay, that is damn harsh! And after giving it some thought, I realized, even if he's going to go bald (which they made a pretty big deal out of, even using it as the closing punchline), that's no reason for him to not be a Badass hero. Imagine BB with his head shaved rather than a Danny Devito ring of hair, in perfect shape, trained in martial arts and perhaps sporting a Buddhist monk theme to emphasize his oneness with nature. And imagine him fully mastering his abilities, so that he can change between countless forms in the blink of an eye during a fight: punching as a gorilla, dodging as a hummingbird, pouncing as a tiger and then changing back into a spinning jump-kick as a human, all within a few seconds. We see hints of that sort of combat potential in the show, but it's a shame that, when we could have seen the Titans all grown up, we instead got an aesop about how worthless they are without Starfire as the heart of the team. Cyborg and Raven got that treatment too, but they get enough crowning moments on their own that the impact's a little lessened... and the aesop didn't apply to Robin at all, who still got to be badass future hero Nightwing even while his fellow Titans were homeless, insane and rusting apart.
In fact, Future Beast Boy referenced his attempt to be a solo hero as a failure that needed no further explanation, like the very idea of him fighting crime on his own is a joke... when, with his powers and experience, he could easily be just as much a superhero as Robin became. Perhaps the reason his failure stings the most is that there's little explanation for it. Cyborg is falling apart because Technology Marches On and Raven somehow slipped into a Heroic BSOD (I'd guess it was the price she paid for saving the world from Trigon in this new timeline), but the only reason Beast Boy turned out to be a mess is that, if we're to believe that episode, he just plain sucks.
Alternately, the Beast Boy of that future just hadn't undergone the Character Development he needed to be a successful solo hero. Beast Boy is the one character who matures and develops the most over the series, going from attention-starved and insecure Comic Relief to self-assured, genuine hero, but he needed the other Titans around him in order to reach his potential. Since the break-up of the group happened in Season Two, before BB had undergone much development, he just didn't get the support he needed in order to develop confidence, tried to go solo when he wasn't ready for it, and then gave up after having failed a few times. If Starfire's trip to the future had happened later in the show, we probably would have seen a more successful Beast Boy.
Likewise, Raven needs the support of her friends to keep from slipping inside her own mind, and Cyborg needs their influence to keep the man/machine thing in perspective. Even without them, Robin has the example of Batman to follow. But with them around he can perhaps be a different kind of hero: less dark and brooding, better with teamwork, just plain happier.
I'm the original troper, and just wanted to say that those are really good explanations, and I feel a little better about that episode now. When you put it that way, it does play to each of the Titans' weaknesses: without their friendship, Raven became completely isolated, Cyborg lost touch with his humanity, Beast Boy lost all his confidence, and Robin went back to being a jaded loner. Thanks!
Okay, so "Stranded" took place right after the Titans find out that Raven is supposed to bring about the end of the world. Very next episode. And yet in the next after that, Raven is...back on Earth? She was treated like a goddess by the little white aliens, and staying on their planet would mean she couldn't destroy Earth. Seriously, WTF?!
That would only mean Trigon would destroy the little white aliens' planet instead. And part 3 of "The End" implied that Trigon would make it to Earth anyway.
Couple problems there, though: Raven seemed to need to be specifically in that chamber under the old library, and it's pretty obvious that's not located anywhere near that other planet. Plus, Trigon didn't really seem to have too organised an invasion. He just sent the fire-demons off into the cosmos in random directions. It would at least give the Titans plenty more time to come up with a strategy, and there wouldn't have been anything Slade or even Trigon could do about Raven not being on Earth. So...
She can't stay on another planet forever.Plus the Titans can't be the only ones with a space shuttle, so Slade could probably take one too and find her anyway.
Slade can fly, with Trigon's help, and as an undead he doesn't even need to breathe. For that matter, Trigon can teleport him! Safe bet that no matter how far Raven ran, he'd have caught up to her eventually.
And where exactly was the Justice League when all this was going on? I get that as the JLU, they're supposed to reach out in the universe as far as they can, but I would think the destruction of at least one entire planet, along with the instant death of anyone and everyone they'd ever known, would warrant at least a passing glance from the higher-ranked heroes!
"Higher-ranked"? I might as well ask, when the Justice League faced apocalyptic threats, the Teen Titans didn't come in to bail them out.
We don't even know if the JL exists (yet) in this continuity.
Oh, they do. Even if it's not the full JLU, at least the JLA exists enough for Beast Boy to know enough about them to include them (as a lie) in his origin story to a bunch of kids in the canon comics.
For an in-universe explanation, no other Heroes turned up because all the Earth-based ones got turned to stone with the rest of the planet, and the situation was resolved before the GLC or similar noticed that Earth had gone silent.
In Nevermore, Green Raven kicked a bad guy's butt. Afterwords, she yelled "HOOAH!" Moments later, Beast Boy compared her to a Marine. What bugs the hell out of this troper/US Soldier is that 'hooah' is the battle cry of the US Army. 'Oorah' is the USMC's battle cry. This may seem like a small thing to get bugged over, but military battle cries are serious business. Don't believe me? Go ask a serviceman or servicewoman if they'd ever use another branch's cry; each one is distinctive and dearly beloved by those who say it. Pairing 'hooah' and the title 'Marine' would not go over well.
To be fair, Beast Boy isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Alternatively, Green Raven just kicks ass in general; he may have just gone with the most badass-sounding branch of the military, considering the Marines cover land, air, and sea.
Maybe calling her a Marine just took less time and effort than calling her "a soldier of the US Army"?
They could have just gone with "soldier", since it's just as generic as "marine". Also, why use an actual military term if you're not going to go the extra foot and get the branch right?
I don't think they got the branch wrong. I think they got the cry wrong. It's a lot more understandable when you look at it in that manner. They probably settled on "marine" early on the script, before the question about Raven's battlecry was given any thought.
Let's all remember that BB's roughly fourteen. Most civilian adults probably don't know the difference, so why would he?
Alternatively, Raven was just caught up in the rush of adrenaline and shouted whatever came to mind first.
On a behind-the-scenes note, I'd be willing to bet Tara Strong improvised the "hooah" herself. The script probably just said something generic like "Raven gives a victorious shout", and BB calling her a "marine" later was a coincidence.
I agree, OP you know about it but most of us regular civilians had no idea about the whole personal battle cries, so they simply didn't didn't knew either.
Why is it that Mother Mae-Eye has no problem mind-controlling Cyborg, while Brother Blood has no chance?
Magic?
Also the fact that she was basically drugging the team via the pies, rather than using a direct psychic assault like Blood did. The end result might be the same, but if the mechanic of how it happens is different enough, there's no reason to think Cyborg's resistance to one would mean he could also resist the other.
And maybe the fact that she kept giving him more pies, whereas Blodd just did his mind-cotrol glare every once in a while.
As awesome as "The End" was all around, Raven's overpowering of Trigon seemed to come from nowhere. Even if that was simply a raw blast of her unfettered magical power, it's hard to buy that a half-demon/god could overpower a 100% Physical God. The only other explanation I've got is that she realized she'd been suppressing Trigon's influence in her own soul all her life, and somehow turned that force of will outward to banish him from the earth, but that's just an Ass Pull on my part. Even Cyborg gave a throwaway explanation in the previous season about how he was able to beat Brother Blood with his own powers.
I'd say that a big part of it was that Trigon was just overconfident- he wasn't expecting that Raven could even come close to matching his power, so his defenses weren't up (keep in mind that the implication is that nobody has ever managed to resist him effectively before, and this mindset becomes a lot more understandable). After she did hit him, he was in too much pain/too angry to think clearly and fight back. In any event, the fact that she's back to normal next season indicates that Raven cannot keep that level of power up for long, so if Trigon had kept his wits about him he could have just waited her out and then fried her while she was weakened.
An answer could be found in the white energy she used, as opposed to the normal black energy. It represented a force of pure light, something a literal devil like Trigon would never stand a chance against, especially in such great quantity.
Also, a common Wild Mass Guessing theory is that Trigon's powers were weakened when Slade lopped off his antlers with that ax, since many demonic entities in mythology derive power from their horns.
Okay. This is how this troper sees it: once Trigon had used Raven as a portal, he didn't need her any more. So, he got rid of the part of her that he had influence over her. As Slade put it: "That part of her existence is over." But young!Raven represented her potential, what she could be without Trigon. She believed that she was nothing without Trigon - Trigon created her, Trigon gave her powers. Without Trigon, she's "lost". But when she fought back, she'd realised that she didn't need Trigon - she could be powerful on her own. She allowed her potential to grow. As for where these white powers came from... There, this troper is slightly stuck, and has resorted to a slightly Ass Pull-y solution that she gained them from growing up in Azarath.
Does the ending of the third season arc bother anyone else? Not the Deus Ex Machina (which is annoying, but I can live with it from a kids' superhero show), but the way it seems to reverse the Aesop of "Deception"? I mean, that episode essentially had the moral that sometimes ones differences come in handy (Cyborg is angsting about being half-robot, and in the end this very fact proves the only reason Blood can't control him- a nice counterpoint to other episodes that stressed the importance of his human half). This is weakened when Bumblebee shows up and can apparently resist Blood for no real reason at all, and then it turns out that Cyborg's half-mechanical mind had nothing to do with resisting Blood in the first place, because it was his spirit that was unbreakable. Now this is all well and good, except for the fact that it goes contrary to what was presented in "Deception" (and also remember that there, Blood was able to control the organic part of Cyborg's mind, convincing him that his arm was flesh-and-blood again- presumably it was the machine that rejected this information as false). It also just makes Blood a lot less scary- early on, the impression is he can mind-control anyone given enough time with them, and Cyborg is safe only because of what he is, only for it to turn out that anyone with a strong will can resist. All the core Titans have strong spirits (yes, even Beast Boy), meaning that it should be difficult or impossible for Blood to control any of them (and if Cyborg is still the only one who can resist, it's just even wierder).
Possibly it doesn't just take a strong will, but a strong-enough will. Or maybe Blood just wasn't really as powerful as he seemed/thought.
Even though it breaks the aesop the writers seemed to be going for, I like to think that it was Cyborg's nature that was making him so hard to control. Cyborg's Hand Wave of his Blood-like powers was that Blood was trying to hard to get into Cyborg's mind that Cyborg got into Blood's mind too (and, presumably, was turning his own mental powers against him). So when Cyborg started glowing and smirked that maybe it's not the machine, it's the man, it's because he could sense Brother Blood's deepest fear (that he really is just too weak to control Cyborg) and was taunting him with the idea that it might be true to make him doubt himself. As for Bumblebee, we could chalk it up to her mutation, powers or whatever, but as said, the idea that it's just willpower is kind of a slam against Aqualad, Speedy, Mos and Menos, and everyone else Blood ever controlled.
Alternately, and maybe in addition to the above, maybe Bumblebee got loose because Blood was trying to control too many people all at once. At the HIVE Academy he only briefly took control of the students, and they were villains who didn't have much of an issue with his orders anyway. The strain of constantly trying to keep the heroic Titans East from disobeying his orders was too much, and the strongest willed member, Bumblebee, kept slipping through his fingers because of it.
The whole thing was as much a realization to Cyborg as it was to Blood. He realized it wasn't his machine side or his human side that mattered; it was just him. His spirit, his complete being. Cyborg simply refused to be broken and that's what allowed him to hack into Blood when Blood was hacking into him. As for Bumblebee, I'd be willing to believe that it's just because the girl's got a very strong will.
While I can agree with the troper about Bumblebee's will (she did say there wasn't a man alive who could tell her what to do) I will personally give the tropers here some credit for none of them seeing the race angle. I do not think the writers intended this at all but I find it interesting that the two people that we know can resist being controlled by Brother Blood, are the only two black characters we see on the show. Think about that. The two black characters, who, if they're like this troper, is VERY aware of THAT bit of history, will not allow themselves to become slaves.
One little thing about Plasmus. Whenever he's acting on his own, and even in his first appearance when he was working for Slade, all he ever seems to do is...want to eat toxic waste. I don't recall Plasmus ever actively trying to hurt anyone, until the Titans show up, and even then it's only them, once they attack him first. All he wants to do is eat toxic waste! What's the big deal?!
THANK YOU! That has NEVER stopped bugging me! We see countless examples that the in-universe industries produce a lot of toxic waste that Plasmus enjoys. We also never see Plasmus willfully do ANYTHING more serious than destroying cheap, easily replaceable equipment for the sake of getting to that toxic waste. Essentially, he has the mentality of an animal. And I'm supposed to believe that NO ONE thought of just giving him a stretch of desert and diverting industrial biproducts to him? You solve your pollution crisis, AND you remove any reason for a large animal to become dangerous.
The deal is that he's big and ugly. Perhaps the Titans object to his breaking into buildings to get his toxic waste? And IIRC, he terrorized people at a football game in "Transformation."
Which could be termed destruction of property and general terrorizing of the populace.
Yeah, Plasmus isn't evil, but he is incredibly dangerous and destructive, like a wild animal. We've never seen him actually hurt anyone, but his rampage could easily injure any bystanders.
In the first episode Plasmus is shown to already be in jail, so presumably he did something bad before the series started. Probably the Titans want to put him back in jail because he shouldn't have been out of it in the first place, we don't know how long his sentence was.
Also, there's a human being trapped inside Plasmus, and he made it clear that he doesn't want to change into Plasmus. When we first saw him, he was floating in a stasis tank with equipment and computers hooked up to his body; I'd assume that, in addition to keeping him asleep, the authorities were also trying to cure him. They're just doing so at the prison because, if he wakes up and transforms, they also need to keep him contained. In Plasmus's case, the Titans capturing him isn't like apprehending a criminal so much as it's like subduing an out-of-control patient who needs to be taken back to the hospital for treatment.
Was this troper the only one disappointed we didn't actually SEE Adult Raven in How long is Forever? Already adding to the predictable, uncreative, cliche personality her future self was given, her involvement in the future was a big waste.
How so? It was a Starfire-centric episode, not like Raven was going to be all that important to the plot. And what exactly do you mean by we didn't "see" Adult Raven? Do you mean she kept her hood up the whole time so we didn't see how her face and hair had changed? I think how she looked is kind of irrelevent, the main thing we needed to know about Future Raven was just that without her support system her mind collapsed in on itself. Part of the whole underlying theme that the Titans are stronger together than they are apart.
It wasn't any more of a waste than a lot of things they didn't delve into over the show's run. Yes, like many other glossed-over plot points, dwelling on Crazy Future Raven would been interesting and worthwhile. However, in terms of storytelling style, the show just didn't bend that way.
Terra. Could that "amnesia" Terra be the TT version of Terra II from the comics?
The Teen Titans Go! comics confirm that the schoolgirl is Terra, princess of Markovia. Issue 51, "Metamorphosis". A Shout-Out, perhaps?
Am I the only one bothered by Aqualad's little story in his first episode? He says he and Trident are from Atlantis. If that's true, what the hell are they doing on the West Coast?
I'd always just assumed that Trident had fled Atlantis at some point previous and set up shop near Jump City's coastline; Aqualad simply followed him to bring him to justice.
Sure, sure, but to get to the Pacific Ocean, they would've had to travel hundreds of miles either way; it seriously took him that long to catch him? And why would Trident set up his cloning nest on the other side of the continent?
Probably just to get as far away from Atlantis as possible. The harder it is for him to get from Atlantis to where he is now, the harder it is for them to figure out where he went and get there in time to stop him.
General Immortus. He's introduced with great fanfare along with Madame Rouge (who gets a further role in that episode, is main villain in two more episodes, and has a climactic fight with Robin in Calling All Titans) and the reintroduction of Brain (the Big Bad) and Mallah (The Dragon). He has a very cool concept, is shown in Homecoming II to pretty much command the Brotherhood's army of Mooks and Mecha-Mooks- and then nothing. He doesn't even get any lines in subsequent appearances. Now I get that having two physically frail evil geniuses in one team is kind of redundant, but why introduce such a potentially awesome character and then do nothing with him? Of course, I've heard a rumor that Season Five was originally supposed to be twice as long, which might explain it- his episodes simply ended up on the cutting room floor. Still annoying, though.
I think Immortus suffered from a lack of, to put it bluntly, flashiness with his advantage. The writers would've had to write stories revolving around military strategies and gambits to show off his expertise, and they might have figured it wouldn't go over as well with the audience compared to more the typical villains in the lineup. But yeah, at least one Immortus-themed episode, focusing on the general getting into a Gambit Pileup with the Titans over the course of an episode, really could have been awesome.
I've heard that season five was originally going to be longer. Immortus probably had a few episodes that didn't make the cut.
When the Titans are defeated in "Aftershock", how did they end up in the underground hole? Terra got stuck with a huge Idiot Ball if she did that consciously.
Unfortunately never explained and the subject of much Fix Fic. Terra probably didn't do it consciously though, if her reaction in the second part is any indicator.
A little unconscious self-sabotage wouldn't be all that out of character, considering Terra's fragile-at-best mental state. It does, however, reflect pretty badly on Slade, who was watching over her shoulder the whole time and is generally portrayed as smart enough to know better (unless, of course, he still wanted the Titans alive for reasons he never shared with Terra or the viewer...).
Probably because they're the main characters and are therefore immortal as far as the plot is concerned.
The Brain's performance in the final battle of "Titans Together" bugs me. We're repeatedly told that he's a superhuman genius, repeatedly shown a competent Chessmaster, but suddenly when the chips are down he's so totally confident in his own victory that he doesn't even try to coordinate his minions and just lets the Titans mow over them? I get that his ego is his biggest weakness, but even so, for someone who's supposed to be "intellect personified" that's just pathetically sloppy. What gives, Brain?
He's a disembodied brain. Regardless of whether or not he's objectively smart, one can't deny that his very physical state makes him "intellect personified."
Well, how was he supposed to know his army of supervillains would fall prey to Conservation of Ninjitsu and get curbstomped? Ahem. That aside, I don't think his last-ditch plan to destroy everyone was too bad.
I agree about the plan, but a Chessmaster that good shouldn't have to skip straight to his nuke booby-trap when things go south; mostly, it just irritates me because the build-up during "Calling All Titans and the first half of Titans Together is really good, but the fight itself is rather anticlimactic, with the heroes not really feeling like they have to work for their victory after Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire show up with reinforcements.
It's most likely that Brain was a Smug Snake when he was a human and the arrogance is something that still remains in his brain?
This happens in a lot of western Kid Hero medias but..How exactly is it that they don't go to school or have any guardians? They're still underaged. Just because they're super-heroes they can drop out of school, or never go, and live on their own?
From a Doylist perspective, it's a creative decision the writers made to focus exclusively on their superhero roles with no mention of their civilian lives: it's also why they sleep in their uniforms and never go by any names apart from their superhero aliases. Going Watsonian, though, Robin and Cyborg may have earned their diplomas early: Robin from studying like crazy under Bruce Wayne and Alfred, Cyborg by uploading the relevant data into his brain. Starfire and Raven are basically cosmic tourists hailing from seperate alien cultures: they're both likely finished with their own version of secondary education, and even trying to enroll them in an American high-school would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Beast Boy's the odd one out, since he seems to be (mostly) human and immature enough to still belong in high schol, but perhaps Mento (who's nothing if not intellectually strict) had him finish his equivalent degree way back when he was with the Doom Patrol.
As for custody, I'd say Bruce filed all the paperwork Robin needs, Cyborg probably had himself legally emancipated, Starfire and Raven are off in legal limbo anyway (the military might have questions, but Robin, Batman and the Justice League could probably satisfy them), and Beast Boy... is the odd one out again. Mento might still be his legal guardian, at least on paper.
If you were superintendent for a school district, responsible for thousands of students daily, would you want superheroes attending your school? Answer: No, you wouldn't.
Why did the creators of the series decide to go with anime-style character designs as opposed to the style used in the DC Comics Canon ala Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: TAS?
I wasn't complaining. I was just curious. Thanks, though.
I guess because it isn't part of the DCAU canon.
I have a minor problem with the way they treated some of the villains with actual background in the comics in the series. First, there's Plasmus. In the animated series, he's a dude who basically turns into a walking booger with an unquenchable thirst for sludge when he's awake. Oh, yeah, and he doesn't talk and is as dumb as a brick. In the comics, he's a walking German pile of radioactive 'protoplasm' that can BURN things, completely and totally. Plus, comics-Plasmus was smart enough to be a key member of the Brotherhood of Evil. It seems like, for the animated series, they took the name and appearance of comics Plasmus and combined it with the powers and intelligence of another chemical supervillain, Chemo. Next is Warp. Emile "Warp" LaSalle wasn't from the future, and he didn't have all kinds of time-based equipment. He was a teleporter, hence the name. Also, as the name might clue you in, he was French. Thirdly, and a much lesser gripe, Mad Mod. Neil "Mad Mod" Richards wasn't actually much of a supervillain. He was a fashion designer and one of the ORIGINAL Teen Titans' first foes. He was just a smuggler who also plotted to steal the Crown Jewels of England. No powers, nothing. In the current DCU, he just designs clothes, including super costumes. They made him into... well, you all know in the cartoon. That one's a lesser gripe because, well, animated Mad Mod is FUN.
Can't console you much on Plasmus and Warp, but in the post-cartoon comics, Mad Mod pulled a city-controlling scheme that involved hypnotic clothing of his own design.
It being snubbed for not being as dark and edgy as other shows. It may not be a BTAS but it isn't some cute little show. It's a pretty moody show that centers around plot and bonds.
Agreed. The show's universe clearly runs on Rule of Cool and there's a lot of humor- but then there are epsiodes like "Haunted", "Apprentice", or pretty much the whole Raven arc that can match anything in BTAS or Gargoyles for intensity. In fact, one of the show's great strengths is its range- it can do comedy, action, and drama when the writers are on top game, often in the same episode.
The finale. It feels like a Bittersweet Ending but when you think about it it's a Downer Ending. They ended the series like that. The episode is about teaching BB that the world isn't black and white, and resolving the Terra arc, but..Couldn't that have been the second to last episode or something? Anything but the finale.
You're not the only one who thinks that way...
Calling all Titans and Titans Together were techically the finale. Things Change was a bittersweet epilogue. Though I do think they didn't have to put it as the last episode. Why couldn't it have come before the two finale episodes I first mentioned? Maybe Terra could have accepted that communicator at the end of the episode and the Brotherhood of Evil would capture her afterwards and the whole story would get resolved in a different way. Basically, they could've put it before or after the season finale and they chose the latter.
Where was Terra during the start of "Winner Takes All"? I find it odd how she wasn't playing with them. They could have given an excuse, like she saying she had to go "somewhere" or saying she didn't want to play, but they just left her out until the end.
She was in the bathroom. She shows up when the Master summons the female heroes, after all.
How about "Haunted"? I mean... who activated that mask if Slade was dead at the time? They never even reference this again, so you're left hanging. Even Raven, of all people, was a bit spooked when Cyborg tells them that whoever triggered that mask was outside the Tower. And this wasn't an episode you'd forget so easily, considering that this was by far one of the creepiest ones out there.
It's purposely left open-ended like that so as to be creepy.
My guess is that it was either remote activated or Wintergreen (butler guy from Divide and Conquer) did it.
It's possible Slade himself did it- if he'd already done his Deal with the Devil with Trigon, but wasn't yet ready to be sent back to the mortal world because the time of the prophecy wasn't at hand yet, he may just have had the oppurtunity to play around a bit. The glowing red light in the eye-hole of the mask seems to imply there's something out of the ordinary going on there.
Even when I still thought Slade was probably alive (until he was confirmed to have been Dead for Real by his resurrection), some sort of context-sensitive Dead-Man Switch seemed far more likely than a haunting.
This troper read a very good fanfic where this was the main point of the story, and it turned out to be a huge Batman Gambit set up by Slade before he'd died, to try and press Robin into becoming his apprentice again.
Word of God said at one point that it WAS Slade who activated it from the underworld, not directly outside the tower like some seem to think. Hence why the mask's eye glowed red like Trigon's eyes. Honestly, I still don't know why this is so hard to figure out. Why would any other villain activate Slade's mask?
What happened to Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth during the Brother Blood arc? They escape with him in "Deception", apparently still under his mind-control, but are nowhere to be found in "Wavelength" or "Titans East"? None of them seem like they could escape on their own, or would particularly want to, so why did he stop using them? At that point Villain Decay hadn't set in for him or them, so why would Blood get rid of a Badass when given proper direction Quirky Miniboss Squad?
This is about the comic book version, but since it doesn't have its own Just Bugs Me page I'll put it her. Terra.. Why do certain people say she used drugs or was drugged? Am I missing something outside of the Judas Contract arc? I remember the sex, but drugs?
Maybe they're referring to her smoking habit...?
In "Go!" (the origins episode) how is it that 5 teenagers able to beat the lizard aliens, but a planet of Tamaraneans (assuming each of them had similar powers as Starfire) couldn't? If that was just their leader's ship, then what happened to the rest of the army? I find it implausible that Blackfire selling Starfire to the lizard aliens "saved" Tamaran, she probably set them up and tricked them like in "Betrothed".
The ship in "Go!" was just transporting one (if important) prisoner- no need for the whole fleet for that. I would imagine that Tamaran was attacked by a whole lot more, though Blackfire being Blackfire there was probably some trickery on her part involved as well.
If the ship carrying their important prisoner went missing, wouldn't the rest of the army go looking for it and eventually end up at Earth?
My guess is that they saw Starfire as so dangerous, and Earth so remote and primitive, that they took one look at how far away the transport ship's last known coordinates were and considered the problem of what to do with her solved. Better to just leave her stranded in a faraway corner of the galaxy than to lose even more ships and soldiers trying to recapture her.
In 'Switched' why do Raven and Starfire have their own voices, despite having each others bodies? Not just in Teen Titans either, lots of shows with body swaps have the swapped people having each others voices. It makes no sense, since the voice is controlled by the vocal cords which are part of the BODY. And don't say it's so you can tell them apart, because I've seen plenty of shows where they do the switch properly and you can tell the people apart easily.
The meta reason is that they tried to have the voice actresses switch roles, but they did such a good job that there wasn't really any way to tell the difference, so they just swapped them back to normal. Personally, I wish they'd gone ahead and done it anyway, just as a closing credits gag if nothing else. As for the in-story reason, the Puppet King's using magic... this one of those times we really can say A Wizard Did It. Think of it this way: the Puppet King switched the boys into wooden puppets, but they kept their voices even without vocal cords. That's probably just how the spell works.
There is a trope, though, for this very situation. It always seems more interesting to me when the voices are reversed too, but for some reason, it's especially common in animation.
It's common in animation because you don't have to deal with matching a live-action person's mouth movements with the words spoken, you just animate the 'wrong' character talking along with the voice. Furthermore, it's easier to tell what's going on if you have the helpful hint of the voices being switched; otherwise you just have what seems to be Raven and Starfire just acting weirdly.
Personally, this troper is more bugged by the powers situation. Sure, it served to bring the two girls closer together by learning to control the others powers, but whilst Raven having to use Starfire's powers is understandable - her powers are linked to her Tamaranean biology - aren't Raven's powers a mental thing?
They're controlled by her emotions, but they come at least in large part from her being Trigon's daughter, which is definitely a physical thing.
How did Mad Mod become young again after the episode Revolution? Robin broke his cane, which is how he regained his youth in that episode in the first place. Does he have more than one of those or something?
The first episode with Mad Mod, everything was an illusion, which was why it was such a Mind Screw. The second time, it was actually magic... for some reason. Also, Revolution was one of those "lolrandom" episodes they get every season. Don't think too much into it.
While Mod has no powers, he does use advanced technology (not sure if he makes it himself or gets it from somewhere else). The age-draining cane could easily be a piece of technology he acquired between appearances, and it isn't out of the realm of possibility something like that could exist in the Titans 'verse. A lot of the rest of the episode, though, doesn't make much sense, since as has been mentioned, Mod's a Master of Illusion, not a Reality Warper. It's fun- but don't try to figure it out.
Comparatively minor to the other issues brought up here, but is Raven's favorite color blue or pink (see "Nevermore")?
Easy. Pink is the favorite color of Raven's pink emoticlone, but blue is her dominant personality's favorite color.
How old is Beast Boy? People usually say he's twelve - fourteen, but I always thought he was sixteen like his comic version.
As far as I'm aware, none of the team's ages were ever outright stated (though it seems fairly obvious to me that Cyborg is the oldest and Beast Boy is the youngest). Fourteen for him (and Terra) is the age I usually seen tossed around, though.
Beast Boy is definitely not 16 on the show
Why not? He looks old enough.
Cartoon Beast Boy is certainly at the very oldest 15 by the end of the series, as his voice still hasn't broken. I've actually read an anecdote that Greg Cipes had his voice deepen after recording the first few episodes and was forced to change how he acted the character in order to keep Beast Boy convincingly young-sounding.
I'm all for giving the show it's do, but why in hell's name are there no IJB, WMG, and character pages for the actual comic book series? what's more, why does the comic link to the shows WMG, IJB, and character pages?!
In the episode in which Beast Boy tries to find a job, we see him as a video game tester at one point. He ends up breaking the console he's supposed to be testing by simply playing the game that's in it...and his employers blame him for that. Dude, that's not Beast Boy's fault, that's something called Idiot Programming.
Since Starfire kissed a boy in The Movie to learn Japanese, which has gendered pronouns, would it cause to talk like a Bokukko?
The Japanese boy would still KNOW the opposite gender pronouns, even if he doesn't USE them. Also, Starfire doesn't speak English normally, why would it be strange for her to speak Japanese oddly? She'd still be understandable, just sound (and look) like an outsider.
"Employee of the month"; Beastboy is presented with a very experimental (and very shiny) prototype game console, of which the creators stress that he should be very careful with it (there's only one prototype and all that). Of course, the thing blows up after he messes with the controls and he gets fired. Seems logical, no? The fridge comes in after you realise that he was there to test the darn thing in the first place and he did nothing any other non-superpowered kid would not do.
Doesn't change the fact that the prototype he was supposed to test is now destroyed. Whether or not it's his fault, there was no longer a job left for Beast Boy to do.
If they're the H.I.V.E. F.I.V.E., then why is there six of them? (More if you count Billy's clones.) Lampshaded by Kid Flash.
This question gets asked a lot,but I think there's an explanation. When they first created the H.I.V.E F.I.V.E there really were only five of them (Jinx, Gizmo,Mammoth,Private HIVE, and Seemore)but they changed members which resulted in there being six, but by then they have already been calling themselves HIVE FIVE. The reason Kid Flash ask is to point out that there are six of them and to further drive his point that Jinx does not belong. Once she leaves there really are only five members left. Kid Flash just had the insight to realize that even in name Jinx didn't belong on the team, or at least that's what I think.
Gizmo doesn't count.
Considerable Fridge Logic when it comes to Tamareanean physiology. Not only can Starfire escape Earth's gravity under her own power, she apparently never needs to breathe while in space, and can somehow also survive the fact that no air pressure in space usually equals Ludicrous Gibs, at least for humans. I used to be bugged by how Starfire can wander from planet to inhabited planet as easily as one would wander a large city, but maybe Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.
First of all, the vacuum of space does not reduce humans to Ludicrous Gibs. That's a common misconception. Second, her being able to survive unprotected in space is a carry-over from the comics where she could do the same thing. Frankly her ability to survive in space is a pretty mundane power by comic book standards. Her magic language-learning-kisses are much weirder. Though her ability to fly interstellar differences under her own power is definitely a case of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. But again, this is also normal for the superhero genre.
Weird how it hasn't been asked yet. Who is Red X? (the non-robin one)
We don't know. Personally, I've always been of the opinion that it doesn't matter; X works as a character because he's unpredictable, he's a foil for Robin, and he's the living embodiment of one of Robin's greatest mistakes. The person behind the mask is ultimately irrelevant.
A bit of Fridge Logic bothered me, I.E. if the Mad Mod the Titan's deal with in his debut is an illusion created by the real Mod, then How did he smack Cyborg?
Mod may have the tech to temporarily overlay his holograms with force-fields, thereby allowing them to briefly become solid.
Or if that doesn't work for you, there are some types of air cannon that would feel like a hefty smack if hit by one, and Mad Mod could probably pull off that sort of timing for the sake of keeping up the illusion.
Do the Titans know each others birthnames? It seems they always refer to each other by their nicknames. The gang apparently never knew Gar's name until it was mentioned, but I figured he thought it was embarrassing.
Let's run through the team, shall we:
Raven is Raven's birth name.
Starfire is the English translation of her Tamaranean name (since it's what she uses, I would guess Tamaraneans have a thing for Meaningful Names)
Beast Boy, as mentioned, is embarrased by his real name and unlikely to share it.
Robin, since in this incarnation he really takes after Batman, may well think of himself as Robin, so that even if his teammates know his real name, they also know he prefers his codename.
Cyborg, considering his fear of losing his humanity, may have a bit of That Man Is Dead going on subconsciously, leading him to consider himself "Cyborg" rather than "Vic Stone".
So ultimately, regardless of who knows whose names, I think most of the team have a reason for sticking to their codename for daily use.
If you read the Teen Titans Go!! comics - particularly, issues #45 (Cyborg and Beast Boy's origin issue), #46 (Starfire's origin issue) and #47 (Robin's origin issue) - it's evident that they know at least about Beast Boy's, Starfire's and Robin's pasts, presumably Cyborg's. It's not a stretch that they all know each others backstories and real names, but choose not to use them.
Why exactly did Terra betray everyone? I understand that she got Slade's help with her powers, but was there a reason for her giving out the info and such? Couldn't she have just gone training somewhere else instead? What did she expect to get out of all this?
Slade was, seemingly, the only person who ever successfully help Terra control her powers; at first, she probably just felt she owed him (and he, no doubt, would have emphasized this, in an "I'm helping you, but I have my price" way). Then, in "Betrayal", we see him play her against Beast Boy to turn her against the Titan she was closest to; after tearing them apart, making her hate everyone else probably wasn't that hard.
The Centauri police featured in "Sisters" were, being brutally honest, complete morons. They were supposed to be going after Blackfire for her widespread crimes, to the point where they're prepared to search across whole galaxies to find her. So if capturing Blackfire is that big a deal, how the hell did they get Starfire mixed up with her? OK, so the hair could be Handwaved through hair dye or whatever (and Blackfire DID don a pink wig, so...), but what about the eyes? You can't change eye colour. All in all, Starfire really doesn't look enough like Blackfire to justify that sort of mix-up, especially since "Betrothed" shows that most female Tamaraneans look very similar. At first, I assumed that the Centauri Moon diamond that Starfire wore throughout the episode could be seen as proof that she's a thief, but that still doesn't explain why she was attacked by the probe before Blackfire came along and gave it to her.
Starfire and Blackfire are sisters, so if they were tracking Blackfire by her DNA (presumably they're using something more advanced than just appearance) it's possible that the probe confused the two and set the police on the wrong trail (especially after she starts wearing the necklace). Even if they were going on flat appearances, I'm going to have to disagree with you and say that Starfire and Blackfire are pretty much identical. If you take a compare the the production cels for that episode [dead link], the only things that separate Star from Blackfire are body language and facial expression. When you take colour out of the equation (maybe the police are colour-blind?), it's easier to justify the mix-up.
In "Switched", it's explained that Starfire and Raven both rely on emotions to control their powers. However, the way in which they're described show up a lot of inconsistencies, both with the continuity and with the nature of emotions in general.
Let's start with Starfire. In order to fly, you have to think of something joyful. To use starbolts, you need "righteous fury", and for her superhuman strength, "boundless confidence". It's easy to imagine how confidence and joy could go hand-in-hand, but what about starbolts? Is it even possible to feel righteous fury and joy simultaneously? At any rate, Starfire has flown/used starbolts whilst clearly feeling other emotions as well. A very good example is "Can I keep him?" when she leaves Silky - she's clearly upset and confused, yet she's still able to fly? Now Raven's powers. It's shown that they're very volatile, and can easily go out of control. For the most part, this remains consistent (with the notable exception of "Deep Six"). However, in "Car Trouble" she tells Cyborg that she has to put part of her soul into whatever she's manipulating. But if that's the case, Starfire shouldn't have been able to use her powers at all! After all, Raven's soul wasn't inside her body, and her soul does represent her dark powers,so how could Starfire have access to them? If anything, Raven should have been able to "control" Starfire by using her soul and focusing it on her...
"Switched" was primarily meant to establish the personalities of Raven and Starfire and that they are foils to each other. Forcing them them to perform opposite to how they normally would forges a mutual respect between them and therefore Character Development, which was probably more important to the creators than explaining the hows and whys of flying and blowing crap up.
Emotions are complex, and you can certainly feel more than one at any given time. Anger and happiness, or even sadness and happiness, can be incongruent (logically) but are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In Starfire's case, at least, it just speaks towards the amazing amount of control she must have to be able to juggle her actual feelings with the emotions needed to use her powers.
As another thought, Raven and Starfire were born with these powers. Trying to explain how they use their powers was probably like trying to explain how to walk or blink. Starfire probably doesn't have to focus to much on feeling things. They're probably just built in mental tigers like raising your arm for a normal person. Raven's powers are mostly mystic in nature supplemented by her demonic heritage. I think we can safely say A Wizard Did It in her case. The "a piece of my soul," is most likely just a way for her to visualize what she's doing.
In "Employee of the Month", Beast Boy manages to get three different jobs with ease. But isn't he meant to be 14/15? How can someone that young find jobs so easily? Most employers want you to be at least 16 before they'll even consider you, and even then many of them tend to prefer applicants aged 18 and upwards (fewer restrictions on working hours an safety regulations = less hassle to hire). Yet Beast Boy seems to literally just walk into vacancies... But perhaps more importantly, why do the gang let him take a job in the first place? His duty is, first and foremost, protecting the city - that's the whole reason the Titans exist. Surely having a job would interfere with that duty, and thus put the city at risk?
His employers were aliens. All of them.
The team were actually the ones to suggest that Beast Boy get a job, IIRC, to get him to shut up about wanting a moped (which he shouldn't be allowed either, assuming he's 14/15). It's not like they were expecting him to take a civilian job more seriously than his duties as a hero. Besides, working in the city instead of chilling on a secluded little island would actually put him closer to the action, should anything be amiss.
In "Quest" why does the snake have arms?
He doesn't. He's wearing a cloak make for humans- it has sleeves, but I don't think there's any evidence that there are actual arms in there.
But the sleeves were bent as though he had arms in there, and he reached over and put out the lantern with one of them.
The sleeves are sewn or starched into that shape, and he manipulates them by moving his body. Of course, normal snakes don't grow that big and don't talk, either, so it's possible A Wizard Did It.
Regarding "How Long Is Forever", Starfire is launched twenty years into the future, and we see every Titan's future counterpart... except for Starfire's. On the surface, that seems obvious, because Starfire has disappeared from the present and suddenly re-appeared in the future. However, there should in fact have been Starfire's future self there as well. The only way her future wouldn't appear is if she never returned to her own time. Yet at the end of the episode she does just that, and from the team's point of view she's only gone for about three seconds. Therefore, the future that Starfire saw inherently wasn't the real future. What Starfire should have seen is totally different to what she actually saw.
The whole point of the episode is that the future is uncertain and changeable: Starfire only visited a potential future. That particular series of events was averted and a new potential future was created (the "real" future, as you said) when she returned to her original timeline.
Minor gripe, but in "Haunted", since Slade was only able to affect Robin, how was he able to cut Robin's restraints? Was he also able to affect things that Robin was physically touching or something?
Simple answer- he didn't. Robin, with adrenaline on his side, burst free of the restraints, but his drugged imagination produced the image of Slade having cut them.
This troper never thought that he'd cut them. The thing was electrified. I always thought that he'd tortured Robin, and it was the pain and desperation that gave him the adrenaline to escape his bonds.
When does Trouble in Tokyo take place?
I don't think it's ever been officially stated, but either between season four and five or post-season five is what I usually see speculated.
Regarding "How Long Is Forever," Jump City is supposedly supposed to take place in southern California if the movie indicated anything. If that's the case, why is it snowing when Starfire goes to the future?
If the future's aesthetic resembling that of The Dark Knight Returns is more than a Shout-Out, then I'd say climate change via nuclear winter would do the trick.
If you want to go for an explanation that's a little less depressing, a villain with weather-altering powers did it, and the climate hasn't gone back to normal yet.
Global warming?
In "Stranded", Starfire first shows up on the alien planet with a bow and arrows. Where did she get them and why was she using them? Even weirder, they disappear for the rest of the episode.
I always assumed she made it (remember, she may act like The Ditz, but she's still a Proud Warrior Race Girl and probably has training in all sorts of weapons) and was using it because her starbolts weren't working due to her emotional distress. As for why it disappeared, that always bugged me too.
In "Crash," was it ever explained how Beast Boy talked as an ameoba? It's been a while, but I don't recall an explanation.
No, and that's always bugged me, since he normally can't talk in animal forms (except on occasion when he's in the process of transforming). Still, "Crash" is one of the silliest and kiddy-est episodes of the series- it wasn't supposd to make a lot of sense.
Robin's Clothing Damage in Haunted: If what he was fighting was a hallucination of Slade created by the reagent in Slade's mask, then how did his clothing get ripped. I mean, the damage to his body makes sense, as he was under great physical and psychological stress at the time, but hallucinations can't rip clothing.
He was getting tossed around (or rather, tossing himself around) a fair bit, particularly in Slade's old lair and the Tower basement. I'd guess that did it.
At the end of "Betrayal," when Terra and Beast Boy talk in the house of mirrors, Terra reminds Beast Boy that he said he'd be her friend no matter what. Then he just gives her the cold shoulder? I mean, he was in the right, but that seems pretty out of character for someone like BB to just completely disregard something like that he told his would-be girlfriend in his most sensitive moment.
He just found out that his girlfriend was working for the Big Bad, had been all along, had been spying on him and his friends in order to produce information that would be ultimately used to try and kill them all. It's completely understandable that BB would be remarkably ticked off at that. It's also exactly the kind of reaction that would push Terra even deeper into Slade's camp, which honestly just shows the whole tragedy of the situation.
Where exactly did Slade get the Ring Of Azar? The Teen Titans Wiki says Trigon gave it to him, but why would Trigon give Slade something that would protect him from getting killed by him (since I doubt Trigon ever planned to hold up Slade's deal)?
We don't know - Slade never shares that little bit of info. I always figured that he was genre savy enough to know that Trigon would either cheat him out of the deal or try to grant it in a really horrible way, so he scrounged around Trigon's domain until he found an artifact that would protect him. Honestly, it's something that should probably have been elaborated on more.
This makes sense, as Slade remarks to Robin that one should "never make a deal with an interdimensional demon without a little protection." How Trigon let that slip under his nose I'll never know, but he seems kind of negligent anyway.
Trigon, if you hadn't noticed, is monstrously arrogant. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he knew full well that Slade had the ring, but simply didn't consider it worth paying much attention to- after all, even if Slade survives, Trigon can always stomp him later, and he's got places to be, planets to destroy, and universes to conquer. Of course, the fact that he massively underestimates both Slade and the Titans is kind of the point of the character...
What's with all the characters who only have generic superstrength as their superpower (mostly villains)? Cinderblock, Pantha, Atlas, Mammoth, Adonis, Wildebeest, Solo, and I'm sure others I'm forgetting. Understandably it's hard to have such a large cast while keeping up variety, but this still kinda bothers me.
Superstrength is probably the most basic superpower- lots of characters across the genre have it, whether by itself or as part of a set. Still, I think that there's a pretty low number of main characters who have it- Cyborg and Starfire for the core Titans (who have very different powersets otherwise), Brother Blood out of the Big Bads (and I always got the impression it was part of his telekinetic powers rather than something innate), Aqualad for Titans East (and it's not even his main power), Monsieur Mallah for the Brotherhood of Evil, and Mammoth for the HIVE. Out of all the major characters on the show, that's a fairly low ratio.
Another "Haunted" one. I'm still trying to figure out how Robin might have unwittingly, whilst believing Slade to be doing it, have tossed himself about and lifted himself up into the air with his mind.
We were only seeing Robin's fights with Slade from Robin's own eyes. In reality, he probably wasn't really being lifted or moved around that way at all - he was throwing himself against the walls in a way that only vaguely resembled what he thought was happening.
And, to go with the above one - in "Haunted", what was destroying him? Was he attacking himself? Was it the reagent attacking him from the inside out? When they showed it from the other Titan's POV, he didn't seem to be attacking himself, merely jerking backwards as Slade's imaginary blows hit him.
He was attacking and hurting himself (maybe directly, or maybe just by collateral damage via slamming around and hitting things), but the fatal risk was a heart attack. The hallucinations were triggering so much unrelenting stress that his heart was threatening to give out.
In "The End Part II", Trigon makes Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg fight their evil sides. But Starfire's powers are controlled by certain emotions. So how is her evil side able to feel things like righteous fury and unbridled joy?
Being evil doesn't bar you from having emotions. Righteous fury and unbridled joy were emotions that Starfire had such control over that she was capable of juggling them simultaneously, so who's to say that her dark side couldn't use self-righteousness and joy to her own advantage as well?
I wouldn't rule out that starbolts just require fury, and Star uses "righteous" fury specifically because well, she's one of the good guys. But at the end of the day, none of the emotions she needs are hero-specific (Blackfire gets by just fine, after all), and even if they were, creating a Starfire-clone powered by negative emotion would be well within Trigon's capabilities.
In some episodes, Cyborg in particular is shown throwing cars or even buildings at villains. Does he not stop to consider that innocent people might be inside them?
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