What does Dick as an individual bring to the Dickkory relationship in your view? I’m on board w/ their chemistry and love for each other, I’m just on the “I think they’re neat” level instead of the deep understanding level of liking them.
And narratively Kori provides Dick with a sense of freedom and encouragement to be more in touch with his feelings. But it feels like Marv set up Dick’s contribution to the relationship to be making sure Starfire understood Earth customs. But I think Kori’s great the way she is and he was just dimming her sparkle. So what do you perceive his narrative contribution the relationship to be, if anything?
it took me a while to vibe with them on a deeper level, because even for me, for a while it was more so just "they're cute together, and have a lot of history, and on the surface have a fun dynamic."
but after several years and diving deeper into kory as a character, i do like their relationship a bit more, though in some ways i like their potential more than the overall direction DC took them.
i think one of the most impactful moments for me was when dick stood up to kory's dad, myand'r, about how evil it was to sell kory in exchange for tamaran's freedom. no one had ever come to bat for kory in such a strong way, and i think it probably would have meant the world to kory. now -- the rest of the karras arc is a mess, because dick doesn't stop the wedding, but he doesn't do that because kory has made her choice (acquiesced to her parents' demands and given up her hope of happiness in exchange for tamaran's future yet again).
the karras arc -- and really, every tamaranean arc! -- is a mess because we're told tamaran is a paradise, that tamaran is perfect. but our narrator, usually kory, is unreliable, because she was a child when she left and it was the last place she felt safe. she knew about its history and art and ceremonies, but probably wouldn't have had an adult grasp of the complex political realm as a 12 or 13 year old, which is equivalently what she was when she was sold to the citadel. we're still told that tamaran is (or once had been) a paradise by tamaraneans, but we're also told a lot of things that conflict with this idea. like the idea that murder is legal on tamaran if it's a crime of passion (?!) and divorce not being legal even if both parties were forced into it. these are things that cannot be true in a paradise. either tamaran isn't what kory remembers, or isn't a paradise, or a mix of both.
im not entirely sure that dick and kory were good for each other in their mid to late twenties. maybe they'd be excellent together again, but i do think it could have been good for them to find themselves for a few more years. but i definitely think that dick was good for kory in their late teens and early twenties.
the reason i think this is simple: as much as kory loved freedom, stability and a gentle, non forceful, heroic partner was probably the best option for kory.
we see in the franklin arc that kory was EXTREMELY naive when on earth. this is somewhat at odds with her being sexually abused but also using her sexuality to trick a gordanian guard into letting her go and making her escape to earth in her earliest appearances. but with franklin, kory was very overeager to be loved, and fell in love hard and fast, with a guy that was probably bad news but was killed too quickly to reveal his scumminess in entirety.
so it's safer, more practical, that she ends up with a level-headed stick in the mud like dick grayson in this era. someone who's not going to sexually harass her or pressure her in any way. she got to have intimacy far more on her own terms, with dick reciprocating but not being nearly as fun or forward. she brings vibrancy and fun into his life -- and while a number of guys could probably have filled in for mr. practical, dick was familiar and safe and a bonafide hero. it's not that dick was the only option, but he was the only option in her immediate orbit that was as reserved and nonsexual as dick was. with the amount of trauma that kory had been through, i personally think it makes a lot of sense for her to gravitate to a longterm partner who's not going to pressure her in any way.
this goes double considering kory's abandonment issues. i know it doesn't immediately seem like she has them, but if you look at almost any of the arcs that focus on her, this is a girl that is terrified of being unloved or abandoned. if someone cares about her and has expectations for her, she will betray herself over and over again. especially if it's for tamaran.
it's highlighted on a few occasions that kory feels like she's betraying tamaran for feeling more like an earthling and not returning to tamaran even when she's able to again. she feels safe on earth, more alive on earth, like she can be free to be whoever she wants to be here. she loves her friends, the life she's built, her work as starfire. but she feels like she has to give it up to do her duty to her home planet. for all that she normally embodies freedom, on some level, in her heart of hearts, she still doesn't feel free. some part of her feels like she belongs to tamaran, and like she has to give herself away to make her home planet safe.
kory really seems to be a character who doesn't to express a lot of outward trauma, and for the most part she is very joyful and full of life and freedom and spice. but she feels so deeply, and that includes hurt and rage at her enslavement, and also fear of it happening again. she lashes out, especially when she's scared. looking at the mirage arc, i know we can grimace and roll our eyes at how possessive she's being of dick and how frustrating it is to read. she's a stereotype of a possessive girlfriend, endlessly telling mirage "he's mine" over and over again, through the entire arc. but this is also a girl who's been abandoned and betrayed and sold to save her planet. kory shouldn't be possessive -- especially when dick's already made it clear that he doesn't like mirage and is deeply uncomfortable about being deceived and manipulated and lied to (and a victim of rape by deception). but a traumatized brain doesn't necessarily understand that possessiveness doesn't fix what happened and won't keep mirage away. so kory keeps lashing out and lashing out and being jealous and angry, because she's scared at losing the only stability she's found since being enslaved. not to mention, this is taking place during a time that donna, kory's other closest relation, is pregnant with an apocalypse baby and actively dying -- then gives up being on the team. kory's lost her support system -- and on top of that, she spent several days captured and almost died fighting her way out. she's a mess.
you see some of this with the kynasf'rr arc too. kory has a vision where two sides of her mind are competing; her duty to tamaran and to being a warrior (represented by komand'r), and her love for dick and earth (represented by dick). everything with dick is softness and love and clinginess. komand'r represents strength. this portrays a lot of kory's conflict between earth and tamaran. ultimately, she chooses tamaran and not earth. though she quickly loses her memories, then gets them back, at the end of the day even after several years free of being enslaved and given away for tamaran's benefit, she still goes back to tamaran rather than staying on earth and continuing to build a life for herself. i truly see this as a relapse in trauma; self-sabotaging right at the final moment. unsurprising given this happens after a pivotal betrayal. while kory may have been having second thoughts even before walking down the aisle, an evil version of raven then crashed the wedding, kissed and arguably SA'd kory. it's no surprise that kory had an extreme reaction and relapsed in her trauma -- a dear friend just betrayed her. even raven's words evoke komand'r, who was responsible for most of kory's trauma up to this point. raven forces her seed into kory (very literally), and finishes it by saying "now we're officially sisters." meanwhile, kom was directly responsible for kory's enslavement, and there are depictions of kom physically torturing kory, too, including a panel that looks somewhat sexualized -- and kom was definitely responsible for kory's SA, if only because she enslaved her and was in charge of her contracts, and clearly was responsible for choosing contracts that would have sexualized and put kory at direct risk for SA. sisterhood for kory is not a positive thing. for raven to evoke that on kory's wedding day... it's no wonder that after weeks of being psychicly tortured by raven, kory snaps. it's no wonder that in a choice between being a hardened warrior/choosing tamaran, and being soft and sweet and loving/choosing earth, kory falters and chooses tamaran. she felt like being soft and romantic hadn't saved her from jack shit.
when kory decides to break up with dick and leave earth for tamaran, she claims that she's 'too young to be married' and needs time to 'figure out who she is, for herself'. and in theory this would have done wonders for her, and dealt with the conflict at the heart of her narrative, the fundamental abandonment issues and fear of being betrayed that drive so many of her most irrational choices.
but instead, it's a lesson that kory just can't seem to learn. within what must have been only a month, she's with ph'yzzon. some panels suggest this was even a political marriage and she didn't even really think she loved him, which makes this even more tragic.
ultimately after the destruction of new tamaran and her subsequent return to earth, i think kory has another chance to really find herself again. i wish she found it easier and it was portrayed more clearly. its been a while since i read that era for her, so im fuzzy on the details. but she and dick hook up again, off and on, and eventually they break up for good after he tells her he doesn't love her.
but i think there's potential in them staying apart for a bit. i think dick was excellent for stability -- she desperately needed someone who just wanted to be her person. and for a while that truly was dick grayson. she needed someone who was going to put her first and love her for exactly who she was and who she wanted to be. who'd care about her, catch her when she fell, and see every moment with her as a dream. who'd let her do things at her own pace, on her own terms, and have fun together doing it. but eventually, she did need to do some soul searching and find more than just stability and a safe relationship. she needed someone who'd fight for her, like dick did to myand'r, but on a more regular basis. but she also needed someone who'd challenge her.
i think someday dick could have been this for her again. they have enough history and chemistry that they can still have fun together. but i would like to see him challenge her, disrupt her patterns in a good way. i would like to see him acknowledge her deepest fears and i would like to see him be gentle enough to not hurt her, but tell her these are things she has to stop running away from, to actually address them. i want to see her get angry -- but then i want to see her actively work on them. to face the things about herself and her past that scare her. i want to see her let him in, in a way she didn't before. i want to see them yelling in the kitchen at 3 in the morning because something happened and she's lashing out, and he knows her well enough to call her on it, and she's not quite healed enough to not take that personally. and then i want to see her grow for real. i want to see her find hobbies, jobs, new friends. i want to see her have something real, something beyond just him, things she builds just for herself.
i think they can genuinely have such a compelling relationship if dc lets them get out of the 'exes with hot chemistry' department. the only baggage dc is interested in is the fact that they're exes -- not the trauma of her ghosting dick in the last moments of their relationship; not dick haunted by all the things he could've done differently with his girlfriend who had every trauma in her backstory. i want to see them learn and grow and fit together differently than they were as teenagers.
