#taramia

So Tara and Mia manage to be very similar and different at the same time. The main place they intersect is in the people writing them. Mia’s arc is flawed but she’s still consistently treated like a kid and they make a point to say that everything that happened to Mia is not her fault. Tara never gets the same kindness.

(Green Arrow 2001 #2 / Teen Titans: Judas Contract)

Unlike Mia, Tara gets the full villain treatment. Reading the interviews about her, it’s so fascinating to me how Wolfman and Perez really did not care about her! At all!! Intentionally making Tara smoke to imply that she’s “an irredeemable bad girl!” And instead just creating a clearly troubled girl? Check. Tara’s unhinged levels of loyalty towards Slade being used in order to prove that she’s impossible to save? Just giving off the impression of a grooming victim? Yeah.

Interview found here.

Where Mia was able to become a hero, Tara was cast aside as a villain. I think that ideally Mia would hear about Tara from stories by the Titans and the alarm bells would go off. When you are being groomed the person grooming you often makes themselves appear more formidable than they really are either as a manipulation tactic (I can make you feel safe. Let your guard down around me and I will become the true monster) or as a threat. I think that Mia would see this and understand what it felt like to be young and scared.

I wish I could say that the titans would be empathetic towards Tara after defeating her, but that’d be a lie. In their defense: Donna was dating a 29 year old when she was 18-19, she had her own issues going on. While Dick is sympathetic towards characters like Donna (though he has so many problems with his own love life anything he says is lovingly hypocritical) that sympathy clearly does not extend towards Tara. Kory is far from naive regarding relationships but NTT #16 shows that she is also a victim of horrible taste - and an alien. Raven sensed Bad Vibes from Tara and Bad Vibes from Slade but she was also raised by monks. In my heart I know that Vic was fine with none of this. Gar shows the most compassion for Tara - one of his few redeeming traits - but everyone else hates him for that for no fucking reason.

I know almost nothing about Joey.

(New Teen Titans: Games)

Of course there’s more titans by the time Mia joins (Cassie, Kon, Bart, and Tim, sort of Rose) but the narrative hates teenage girls so the narrative of Tara Markov is, how Wolfman and Perez put it:

“Anyone who thought after seeing how truly bad she was that we would find a way of redeeming her was being a little naïve. We wanted her to be as much a viper in the garden as we could.”

How fucked up would this be for Mia and Rose. You see a girl that reminds you of yourself, but unlike you, everyone hates her. She’s a story for new members to gossip at and croon about how stupid the originals must have been to let a freak like her on the team. It was inevitable, really. 

Two things to know about Mia Dearden:

She has come so far in her journey as a survivor. And her openness as sexual assault survivor and as someone with HIV is one of the best parts of her character.

(Green Arrow 2001 #45)

2. The perfect victim does not exist.

(Green Arrow 2001 #11) 

Mia gives speeches to educate people on HIV. She’s too scared to tell the Titans she has it because she doesn’t want them to judge her. Mia’s a rape survivor, and she’s hypersexual as a result - something that is rarely ever talked about despite being extremely common.

Mia’s journey is good because it isn’t linear. Contrast this with Tara;

(Deathstroke 2016 #27) 

Tara’s journey has also never been linear. She was groomed (like Mia) and never truly recovered in the way Mia could. She will always be a warning to do proper background checks, she will always be the villain because she’s “impossible” to redeem. Personally I don’t even think she needs to be redeemed, I just think she needs to kiss a girl and murder Slade.