Starfire (Teen Titans 2003)

"There will always be people who say mean words because you are different. And sometimes their minds cannot be changed. But there are many more people that do not judge people based on how they look, or where they came from. Those are the people whose words truly matter."

- Starfire on racism

Starfire is the deuteragonist and lead heroine of the 2003 animated series Teen Titans. She is an alien princess from the distant world, Tamaran, and one of the five founding members of the Teen Titans. She is also Robin's main love interest and finally becomes his girlfriend in the series finale movie.

She is voiced by Hynden Walch, who also voices Nia Teppelin, Princess Bubblegum, Alice, Wendy (After Kathryn Beaumont was retired), and reboot incarnation.

Character History
Background

Starfire was born and raised on the distant planet Tamaran before arriving on Earth and joining the Teen Titans. The Tamaraneans are an emotional race who see feelings and sensations as the force that drives their very livelihood and strengthens their abilities. In fact, it's their emotions that further increase their natural abilities of flight, and projection of pure ultraviolet energy. Because of this, Starfire is inherently the most sensitive member of the Titans.

Starfire was cared for as a child by Galfore, who first appeared in Betrothed. Starfire's only family of which we know in the series is her evil big sister Blackfire. Later, in the comic Teen Titans Go, it's revealed she also has a younger brother named Wildfire, who was sent away when the Gordanians attacked Tamaran, and that her parents had died from grief after she was traded as a slave by Blackfire to the Gordanians in order to bring peace to a war-torn Tamaran.

Starfire came to Earth as Koriand'r, a Tamaranean princess being transported by Gordanians, in exile as a slave to the Citadel. Through the use of her innate Tamaranean superhuman strength and incredible agility, she broke free from the brig aboard a Gordanian ship and landed in Jump City. While attempting to free herself of the handcuffs with which she had been laden, she ended up both destroying buildings and cars, and running into four young teenagers with whom she would later fight crime.

Raven suggested that fighting may not be the answer, and only then did Robin notice the handcuffs. Carefully, he talked the mysterious girl down and took off the handcuffs. She grabbed and kissed him to learn the English language, and warned him to leave her alone if they do not wish to be destroyed. (This falls in line with how Tamaraneans learn a spoken language through lip contact with another life form.) And then Cyborg said that she knows how to leave a mark.

Once fully released, she sought out food in the form of popcorn and candy at the local video store.

Having been tracked by the Titans, she reunited with them and fought off the wave of Gordanians sent to recapture her. Angered at Lord Trogaar's promise of destruction, she yelled at Robin, reminding him that she told him to leave her alone. The two got into an argument, but the situation was quickly defused after they apologized to each other, and the decision was made to work as a team to save the city from the Gordanians' particle weapon. The five teenagers founded the Teen Titans shortly after.

Physical Appearance
Starfire is shown to be very beautiful. Her eyes, nose, lips, mouth, hair, skin, and outfit view her as colorful in comparison to Raven. Her long fiery-red hair is down to her waist and straight with bangs. She has small eyebrows, and green eyes with light-green scleras (or in other words, the whites of her eyes are colored light-green). She is tall, with bright orange skin, (or it seems to have a yellowish skin tone in the comic strip above), and her outfit is mostly violet with a belt, her neck and gauntlets being silver. She also wears an armband on her right arm, which is also silver. She wears a violet sleeveless crop top showing her midriff, a violet mini-skirt, and violet thigh-high boots with white stockings. As a Tamaranean, she has alien physiology which includes a long purple tongue and nine stomachs, (probably for storing food during meager times). She also seems to resemble some Japanese girls, inheriting similar eyebrows and very shiny hair.

Personality
Starfire is cheerful, sweet, naive, and somewhat insecure, but her naivete is not to be mistaken for stupidity, as she can be extremely intelligent and perceptive at times. It is mentioned on a number of occasions that her powers are fueled by emotions. An alien and an outsider, she is still rather new to Earth and its customs. (For example, she did not understand what a boy meant when he asked if she was "diggin' the scene" when she was at a party, and stated, confused, "I did not know we were supposed to bring shovels.") This leads to much confusion for her and others, such as the awkwardness in casually drinking mustard as a beverage, and thinking cotton candy and cotton balls are the same thing. She takes friendship very seriously, and is easily distressed when others, especially her friends, argue or fight, even if it's over trivial things like video games. Starfire is particularly indignant to the point of snubbing her teammates when she believes they do not care for her friendship or company. In How is Long is Forever?, she explains that she fears arguing will result in her friends drifting apart. In fact, that same episode shows that she is essentially the very person keeping the Titans together, with them having drifted apart in the future precisely because of her absence.

She is arguably the most sociable of the Titans, regularly meditating with Raven, or lifting weights with Cyborg. Above all, she wishes to be friends with everyone she meets, and for everyone to get along. She also insists on sharing her own customs with other members of the team (such as providing a crown of raw meat to be worn on one's birthday), but doesn't generally take offense when they don't understand or refuse her. In one instance, she lies about a holiday celebrated by destroying drapery and blows up a window to explain an accidentally torn curtain; an act that barely registers as odd behavior by the others. Presumably because English is not her first language, Starfire speaks without contractions, and misuses idioms (e.g. "Kick the butt!" as opposed to "Kick butt!" or "The mall of shopping" instead of "shopping mall" as well as "lobstery" instead of "crabby"). Additionally, she uses several Tamaranean nouns, such as "bumgorf" (term of endearment towards one's own child), "K'norfka" (parent or guardian), "clorbag valblernelk" (insulting term apparently meant for referring to those who do especially mean or cruel things), "G'lufnog" (bless you; said after one sneezes), and "shlorvak" (dream).

Starfire's personality changed dramatically from her first meeting with the Titans in Go!. She demonstrated her power and strength as she escaped from the Gordanian ship. While others saw rampant destruction without a cause, Raven saw her trying to free herself from her handcuffs. As mentioned above, it seems Tamaraneans learn language through lip contact, and having gotten what she wanted from Robin, she leaves him with a warning to leave her alone, she flies away knowing full well that the Gordanians were still hot on her trail. As she fought against the Gordanians with the four other young heroes, her personality calmed dramatically, and she eventually apologized for the destruction she had caused during her escape. This change in behavior suggests Starfire truly was, at heart, a somewhat friendly, kindhearted character. The reckless behavior seen in the beginning of the episode might lend some credence to why Tamaraneans are so feared throughout the galaxy: their strength is not easily matched. It also proves that Starfire, when the time is right, is not afraid to "kick the butt".

Starfire cares greatly about each of her friends, but there is one person whom she cares about more than anyone on Earth: Robin. Since the day they met both her and Robin have had romantic feelings for each other, which are obvious to everyone including a few villains. There have been multiple hints throughout the show showing how much they care about one another (as evidenced in Sisters, Date with Destiny, Betrothed, Stranded, Go! and finally in Trouble in Tokyo); but Robin and Starfire didn't admit their strong romantic feelings for each other until the series finale movie Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo. At that time they share a few scenes with each other and have attempted to kiss twice. By the end of the movie, Robin and Starfire finally reveal their feelings for each other and they finally share a real romantic kiss, much to the delight of the other Titans, especially Cyborg. They are seen the next day holding each other's hands, confirming that they have finally become a couple.

Besides Robin, Starfire is also incredibly close to Raven, and was the first person to get her to open up about herself- when they had been trapped in each other's bodies by the Puppet King, she decided the best solution to defeating him was to learn everything about each other so they could use each other's powers, to which Raven agreed. Afterwards, the two can often be seen together and are shown to have an incredibly deep bond, in spite of having polar opposite personalities.