Honestly I feel like Kori’s characterization would be infinitely better in both canon and fanon if people realized that her hatred for and ruthlessness towards her enemies flows directly from her love and compassion for others. These are not parts of her characterization that you can separate.
I feel like people who write Kori always tend to focus on either her strength, royal sense of responsibility, and ruthlessness, or her kindness, compassion, love, and passion. And that leads to an incomplete Kori who is either written like a naïve sweetheart or a ruthless warrior princess who’s constantly in a bad mood.
Kori’s whole Thing is the fact that she doesn’t censor or restrict her emotions. This doesn’t mean she’s incapable of putting them second, she can and has done that, but it doesn’t come natural to her and she usually see any reason to do it. This means that she doesn’t temper her hatred for her enemies, yes, but it also means that she doesn’t disguise her love for her friends or life in general.
Reducing Kori to just her hatred for her enemies forgets a core aspect of Kori’s character. Kori is an extremely loving person, in every sense of the word. She’s open sexually, she falls in love hard and fast, she’s deeply loyal to her friends and loved ones, and she’s in love with life itself. Kori has a natural strong sense of justice, and she finds joy in helping others, especially her friends. She’s extremely emotionally perceptive and usually wants to talk through any issues she has with friends and family in a mature fashion, because she doesn’t want to fight with them. She’s very forgiving of them as well, due to this.
But likewise, reducing Kori to just her loving nature, strips her of another core espect of her character. Kori famously hates her enemies deeply, and does not understand why people refuse to kill their enemies. Kori hates her enemies as deeply as she loves her friends, and is unwilling to compromise with them. The only reason she holds back from killing people is because she knows it’s against the law on Earth, and because it would upset her friends.
I think her relationship with Komand’r, specifically in The New Teen Titans, is a great microcosm of this duality. Despite Komand’r consistently hurting and trying to kill her, she’s shown to love her deeply. She’s saved Komand’r’s life over and over again, even after Komand’r tried to kill her, and after Komand’r enslaved her. All because Komand’r is her family, and despite Komand’r never having been shown to be anything but horrible to her, Kori loves her. And Komand’r knows this, and openly and actively takes advantage of this, and mocks Kori for it.
It takes a long time before Kori finally stops trying to save or make amends with Komand’r, but once she does stop, she’s entirely unwilling to believe anything Komand’r says or give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s why she leaves Tamaran after returning there initially: she cannot accept the idea that Komand’r, her enemy, leads the planet. She fully and 100% commits to trying to kill Komand’r.
This shows both how deep her love runs, and how steadfast her hatred is. Once Kori loves you, there is very little you can do that will make her abandon you. But likewise, if you’ve managed to establish yourself as her enemy, there is very little you can do to change that.
Like - I don’t quite know how to get my point across, and this is long and rambly, but these two parts of her character can’t be separated! They are connected! The reason Kori hates her enemies is because she loves her friends! They are both connected to her freedom with emotions, and her refusal to censor them! Portraying one without the other shows a shallow and incomplete version of Kori!
And I feel like people just can’t wrap their head around this for some reason, because most portrayals of Kori I’ve read focus on one or the other. Kori is both a regal warrior princess with a deep hatred for her enemies that makes her ruthless, and a deeply loving friend whose loyalty is almost unshakable who loves life with a fierce intensity.
I’m just repeating myself bc!! Just don’t know how to explain that you can’t separate these two!! And I don’t understand why people keep doing that!! Kori’s character is interesting because of this duality, the depth of both her hatred and her love is her defining feature! Everything about her character flows from it! Stop erasing it because it’s easier to write her as either or!