Teen Titans

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 1:51 pm

Now, I fucking love this show, but when I reflect on it there's a lot of things I wish had gone differently. Some of them are minor things, like the end of the Cyborg/Brother Blood fight other ones are more major like the handling of the Terra thing.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 5:41 pm

I also love this show, and in fact just finished acquiring a totally legitimate copy

so I can go through and watch the episodes I missed. While there are some things I would have liked to be different, I can't say I'm really enough of an expert on the source material or the genre in general to know the difference between what would be actually better and what would be fanboy wank. Exactly how would you change things?

bourdain89 · Post by **bourdain89** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:52 pm

I didnt really like their take on deathstroke aka slade, i know its a kids show but they could still have stuck to the source material a little better

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 11:11 pm

I liked their Slade better. The Deathstroke the Terminator in the comics is just a generic professional but-slightly-slimy mercenary. Servicable, but not the best.

Gelare: Well, I'll start with suggestions I don't think are especially wanky. The climax of Titans East was a crushing disappointment which was otherwise their best story arc up to date. Everything else was excellent without a single wasted episode (unlike the Robin and Terra arcs, which had a couple of minor problems) but it had to end with the most ridiculous deus ex machina in the series -- which unfortunately was so bad that people declare it as the worst. Imagine if you were watching, say, Finding Nemo and it ended with a graphic cannibalism scene of Nemo chowing down on some tadpoles.

One suggestion that I liked is that Cyborg should've loaded Brother Blood up with the virus Beast Boy accidentally infected him with in Crash--that way you could've kept most of the fight without changing things so that Cyborg wasn't so obviously outmatched at the climax.

As far as the Terra thing went, she should've been in more episodes and the openings for that season should've been included her. That way when she betrayed the team it would've been a bigger shock rather than being a plot twist even people unfamiliar with the original arc could've predicted a mile away.

Also, the final episode 'Things Change' was just ridiculously depressing. Seriously, it ruined the triumphant vibe of the entire series to have some Oscar-bait 'real life sometimes kicks you in the nuts even when you fight desperately for someone you love!' Why couldn't Terra just rejoin the team and make amends, or at the very least just have her retain her friendship with Beast Boy?

Fucking Season Five.

bourdain89 · Post by **bourdain89** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 11:29 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I liked their Slade better. The Deathstroke the Terminator in the comics is just a generic professional but-slightly-slimy mercenary. Servicable, but not the best.

its true he is your generic mercenary assassin type i guess i just wanted to see him do more of his own dirty work instead of working through other lesser villains

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 11:31 pm

That's a good point, even the show Slade was pretty awesome when he did his own stuff.

But I suppose that would have meant the titans winning less often.

-Crissa

Tshern · Post by **Tshern** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:16 pm

There's more to Deathstroke than his mercenary stuff. The character is pretty neat in comics, at least I find his comics great.

bourdain89 · Post by **bourdain89** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:39 pm

i always preffered what is essentially the marvel version of deathstroke, the taskmaster an interesting character with very interesting powers that let him take on entire super teams at once

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 8:52 am

Okay. Attention, Internet:

I know all of you are raised on achingly pretty emo pretty boy fucks but CYBORG IS AS OLD AS EVERYONE ELSE. He is not an old man. He is not even an adult. Cyborg just happens to not be a beanpole, but within the standards of the artstyle that is a perfectly valid bodybuild for someone his age.

Stop saying that. You sound like total media-drone dumbasses, your standards of beauty so warped that it is shattering your hold on reality. Either shut the fuck up about it or go look at some Calvin Klein ads between your Naruto and Twilight movies and stop pounding your semen/vaginal fluid-covered keyboards with your ignorant tripe. Fuckin' idiots.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 8:58 am

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:44 am

I assume that Lago ran into one of the concern trolls that complain about Cyborg/Raven or Cyborg/Bumblebee pairings on the grounds that he is so much bigger than they are and thus "obviously" much older. I think these are the same people who complained about She Hulk getting it on with Juggernaut.

The fact is: some people are bigger than other people. A really tall guy getting some action is not the same as pedophilia. It's just a dude who happens to be tall getting some play.

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:28 am

I always figured Cyborg was older, than, say... Robin. Maybe Starfire. I'd say older than Beast Boy, but he's actually pretty old, he just... matures slowly. Certainly not older than Raven, Bumblebee, or Aqualad.

But sheesh, the age range is like from 12-16 or 14-18. There's huge gaps in development. And it wouldn't be unusual for 'kids' or 'teens' to represent a group from 13-26, because while more people are hitting their weight to switch into puberty earlier, the mental processes, and even the bone growth, may not finish doing it's thing until mid-twenties.

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:49 am

They are all "comic character age" and thus don't actually get older from year to year. However, Starfire is substantially older than the other characters, having spent years as a captive of The Citadel after having spent years as a space warrior after having spent years as a princess and such. She's an alien, and apparently retains her loli charms long after a human of the same age would not. So actually the fact that she has a thing for Dick Grayson would be a little creepy if they had actually known each other at any point during their upbringing.

But while there are lots of weird age things juggling around, the usual age ranking would probably be something like:

Starfire, Robin, Cyborg, Raven, Beastboy, (Terra).

-Username17

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 5:04 pm

Lago, I think your problem is that you haven't watched the space tofu episode enough.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:00 am

You know, one of the things I liked about Teen Titans was their whole dealing with Robin being a dick.

He didn't become better overnight and struggled with the whole idea until it came to a head with Haunted, where he learned to chill and developed much better relationships with Raven and Cyborg.

And then that fucking movie had to come along and derail all that progress, but, that's another story.

But anyway, one of the things I found kinda dissonant in the first season was that Robin was the only one on the team actually concerned about stopping Slade while the others were all 'meh' about it. The show tried to make Robin look like a dick by taking it too far, but honestly, he was the only one who even cared a little bit about the whole issue beyond just reacting to whatever crimes he pulled.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:37 am

But anyway, one of the things I found kinda dissonant in the first season was that Robin was the only one on the team actually concerned about stopping Slade while the others were all 'meh' about it. The show tried to make Robin look like a dick by taking it too far, but honestly, he was the only one who even cared a little bit about the whole issue beyond just reacting to whatever crimes he pulled.

What is weird about that? They are super heroes, they fight a supervillain every week. Their job is to stop super crime, not to pursue vendettas or to stop potential crime from happening in the future. Slade is not Starfire's nemesis, Blackfire is. Slade is not Raven's nemesis, Trigon is. Neither of the girls demand that the team drop everything, leave Earth, and go hunt down their respective ultimate foe - even though those foes are actually much more dangerous than Slade is. Slade might kill and/or enslave all the Titans. But so might Brother Blood or Doctor Light. Trigon will destroy the world and rule over a thousand years of fire and darkness. Darkfire will conquer Starfire's homeworld and turn it into an oppressive police state with mass executions and patrolling alien robots on every street corner.

In the big picture, the fact that Robin freaks out about Slade and wants other people to drop what they are doing to stop him from doing "crime" means that he can't see the big picture.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 8:09 am

But if you're going to use the fact that there are much bigger threats out there than Slade that they don't freak out about, it begs the question why those things aren't a big deal.

Yes, while if there's Darkfire out there and you devote all of your resources towards trying to take down Kitty it's a loss of perspective, you can only use Darkfire as an excuse to ignore Mothman or Mad Mod if you're actually going out to fight Darkfire. If the plan was to ignore all of those people you can't start bitching at the guy who spends day and night worrying about Slade. They're still doing more than you are.

Their job is to stop super crime, not to pursue vendettas or to stop potential crime from happening in the future.

Why not?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:51 am

Well, because if they dropped everything to follow Slade, they'd never have time for pizza, ball in the park, sleeping, or stopping other random dumb supervillains.

-Crissa

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:56 am

As a side effect of that, Crissa, if they dropped everything to fight Slade full time, it'd likely have been a much darker show. I seem to recall episodes featuring him being that way, darker than other episodes. Possibly a bit of the comic bleeding over.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:19 pm

I think another point is that Slade is also easier to find. Darkfire could be anywhere in the universe and Trigorn is in another plane of existence IIRC making the task of bringing them down much more impractical (and out of their jurisdiction).

On the other hand what would be the point of even going after Slade? Every joker in a costume they put away just gets out and is back on the streets in no time. Slade is BETTER than most of the other villains. If the Titans aren't going to "permanently" dispose of him there is hardly any point in wasting extra time to track him down just so he can get out again to start the chase over.