Who's the better ship: Batgirl or Starfire?

Babs!

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Starfire

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Starfire. But Nightwing to me seems like he will never settle down

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Peeps…

We can blame the writers for everything sexually wrong with Barbara not the fans for viewing her in the absurd way the writers intended, sometimes she can be very needy and desperate in a sense. Just look at her role in The Killing Joke. That one night stand with Bats on the rooftop and nearly stalking 2 different guys is a good indication that Batgirl isn’t marriage material. The fact that one was a criminal proves that Babs was willing to lower herself so much that she’d go to anyone to receive some attention or/and put herself in harm’s way to make Bruce jealous.

That doesn’t make her weak or paint her in a negative like, so don’t worry, to love someone is to accept them for everything they are. Nobody is perfect after all :slight_smile:

Still, that’s what made the arc impressive, after Barbara was shot, I think that trauma forced her to mature quickly. It’s one of those things where you grow up fast after a life changing experience. That said, it doesn’t change in any way the history or what she will always be and the matter which is compared to concept at hand. At core, Barbara will always have that insecurity, it’s even moreso when she is paralyzed which was portrayed well by the Birds Of Prey tv show. An excellent but shortlived series.

But why?

Well, perhaps DC wanted to show the light feminine side of a powerful character. I still can’t see her ever ending up with Nightwing on any realistic level but I could see her getting involved with a regular average Joe. I think that would be the best for her.

That is just my 2 cents, or less, not really worth anything. And nothing that nobody here didn’t already know.

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 I really liked Dick and Kory's relationship in New Teen Titans, and it's a shame that it has been abandoned and retroactively reduced to being "just hormones."  As others have mentioned, Babs was originally positioned halfway between Bruce and Dick in terms of age so that she could be her own character and not just someone's tag-along girlfriend.  They even introduced Jason Bard specifically to be her supporting romantic interest.  Barbara's random de-aging, and the string of retcons used to force a romantic history between them, sat poorly with me, especially when they had him sleep with her and then give her an invitation to  his and Kory's wedding the morning after (it was the first time they'd seen each other since The Killing Joke).  Honestly, this is where the "Dick Grayson's a playboy" thing comes from, it wasn't a part of his character before it became necessary to explain why he was with a different girl for years, and almost married her before sudden editorial changes intervened, despite the "fact" that he's always been in love with Babs and Babs alone.  
Meanwhile, Dick and Kory had a long-term, meaningful relationship that played a major role in Dick's original, more positive process of adopting the Nightwing persona.  They were originally supposed to get married before that was randomly derailed, so suddenly that at least one other comic published the following month depicted them as a married couple.  What could have been.

Barbara

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For some reason, I could’ve sworn I replied to this topic, but I can’t find my post. Maybe it was a different one.

Regardless, I honestly have just never been able to find Starfire all that interesting. Even in the original New Teen Titans, the bulk of her actual arc was dedicated to romantic drama with Dick (and very briefly with that one other guy who got killed by the H.I.V.E.), so she just kind of felt like the token love interest. And I feel like I’m being unfair to her just because I like Barbara better, so I keep looking for a reason to like Starfire, but all there ever seems to be is that she’s an alien princess who follows her emotions and loves Dick.

While I acknowledge that it took some very awkward retcons to have it make sense, I actually like Dick and Barbara’s relationship precisely because neither of them is entirely within the other’s orbit. They can interact a lot, but they also do their own stuff. And honestly, the biggest thing that makes me like a pairing is when I enjoy their interactions, and between the two options presented, Dick and Barbara have much better banter. I also liked the pre-Flashpoint dynamic that they were both people who’d grown out of their original, more “sidekicky” identities, went through some rough times (Barbara moreso), and eventually found some support with each other. And honestly, you don’t even need them to be the same age for that story to work. I’d be cool if they’d kept Barbara being a good bit older than Dick and didn’t introduce the romantic history as Batgirl and Robin.

I won’t go as far as to say one pairing is better than the other, but at least I personally find more to like with Dick/Babs than Dick/Kory.

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