bourniebna - Tumblr blog

bourniebna · 18 days ago

Note

[vibrating slightly, not unlike a heavily caffeinated chihuahua] hello, respectable Raven expert. do you have the time, means and brain juice to infodump at me about Azarath? I am in a hell of my own creation (possessed by a post canon fanfic idea, I'm sure you've managed to catch that from my deranged ramblings in your replies earlier this week) and I don't know how much lore I'm gonna need from Raven's past. Backstory. Stuff. I remember bits and bobs from the show but y'know. You prolly know all manner of juicy bits from beyond it.

That I do, my friend!

So here's the thing: there are a few different versions of canon, and what I consider to be the biggest tone in Raven's upbringing in the comics (they feared and hated her) was directly contradicted by Arella's words to her in the cartoon ("you always had the love of your people" and a "home here [in Azarath]").

But if you're asking for MY take, I've chosen to ignore that line in the cartoon entirely, because they never developed it. The comics, on the other hand, had an entire 20-page issue about it!

(And in the Daughter of Darkness miniseries there's an entire conversation about it, but it's just a couple of panels and it retcons some things that I've also elected to ignore.)

So let's start with what you already know if you're planning a post-canon Teen Titans '03 cartoon series-based fanfic:

Raven was born in Azarath.

When Raven was born, "they looked into [her] future." A prophecy was built upon this, likely what Arella references when she says "It was too late for Earth, just as it was too late for Azarath."

Raven was born to be "a portal" to bring Trigon to Earth.

She was "protected by the monks of Azarath".

Arella tells her those lines about "love of your people" and "a home here."

And that's about all we've got.

(This show, for all its glory, really didn't do much with backstory......)

But if you're anything like me, that's not enough to work with! That doesn't sate your desperate hunger for information and character exploration!

So if you want to follow me on a journey across comic canons and continuities, delving into ~45 years of Teen Titans history, let's go!

It's time to play in my favorite sandbox.

Before we begin: Raven's backstory comes with some heavy tw's, namely for attempted infanticide, attempted suicide, heavily implied sexual assault, and like... emotional neglect? Is that a thing you tw for??? It's Heavy, whatever way you slice it.

Alright, SO! The first thing you need to know about Raven's comic book history is that, so far, it spans about four and a half decades-- that's nearly HALF A CENTURY of stories! There have been times when she wasn't there (dead at the time, mostly), but even the same writer has given her a few different backgrounds.

The original is my favorite. It's the one that's explored the most in-depth, it's the most deliciously angsty, and the one that developes important elements of Raven's childhood, especially Azar.

This was all written in Tales of the New Teen Titans #2. It was part of a four-issue miniseries that existed solely to explore the Titans' origin stories! #2 was 100% solely about Raven.

The vast majority of it takes place in Azarath. I was so tempted to grab some panels for you, but I have all the quotes I need memorized anyways. If you want, you can read it here:

(This is optional, especially if you plan on leaning into the fact that the cartoon DOES differ from the comics. Take what you like and leave the rest; that's the fun part about a franchise with so many different canons, if you ask me!)

But you asked me for an infodump, not a link, and I am eager to oblige.

There's so much I could talk about! But the biggest points that I think could serve in a story are these:

Even from infancy, Raven was taught to suppress her emotions.

This was taken to an extreme level. She was even TAKEN AWAY FROM HER MOTHER so she wouldn't feel those mother-daughter emotions.

Raven was raised instead by Azar, who was the High Priestess to the Azaratheans, their leader, but more importantly, "she was the only one who treated [Raven] like [she] was something special." She calls Raven "my dear Raven" in one panel, which is exceedingly warm compared to the way the other Azaratheans treat her.

Raven's birth caused chaos and destruction throughout Azarath, and for this and her father's identity, the Azaratheans hated and feared Raven. Many were convinced she was evil.

One man was so desperate to get Raven out of Azarath, he tried to kill her as a baby.

Trigon saved her when Juris tried to cast her into limbo. The man was killed in the blast.

Raven wasn't allowed to play as a child; she was trained instead, taught how to use her powers (especially, in the comics, those of an empath and "traveling between the dimensions", i.e. basically teleporting).

She was constantly told that if she didn't control her emotions, control her powers, control Trigon's influence over her, she'd unleash Trigon on the world and he'd end all life forever.

No pressure. /s

Azar died when Raven was 10 years old. Now that she had been taught how to control her emotions ("if you do not TEMPT her"), she was allowed to see her mother.

But her mother was AFRAID of her. On her deathbed, Azar had told Arella not to fear her, but Arella apparently couldn't help it.

The Azaratheans had never told her who her father is. (Implicitly, she didn't know why she had these powers, or why she had to be raised this way, or why everyone was afraid of her.)

Raven met Trigon sometime between age 10 and 18. (I suspect it was age 13, because in the panels between Azar's death and this event, Arella mentions "For the past three years", and there's no other indication of time.)

Basically, Trigon summoned Raven out of Azarath and into the interdimensional limbo, Arella followed, Trigon humiliated her, and Raven tried to defend her mother, but wound up getting her soul zapped by Trigon, who "baptized" her in his, uhh... "essence." (I'm not gonna touch the verbiage there.)

Trigon let Raven and Arella go back to Azarath, but Raven literally asks Arella Who That Was. Was He Really Her Father?

Arella, apparently, could only hold her and cry.

...whew. It's not a happy story. (But it's Raven we're talking about. These things rarely end happily for her...)

That list got longer than I meant it to, oops. There's a Lot Happening in those 20 pages.

Before the backstory miniseries came out, there was also a bit of backstory in some of the very earliest issues of New Teen Titans (1980), but that mostly focused on Arella and how she met Trigon.

Tl;dr on that, Arella was a foster child who felt unloved by the families that took her in, and she turned to the occult. She somehow got wrapped up in a group actually practicing those things. (The 80's comics didn't get into How but later comics did, more on that in a moment). They performed a ritual Bride-of-Satan style, Trigon was who they summoned, and Arella was the bride. And then, well, Raven happened. (She had changed her mind when she saw what Trigon really was. Trigon didn't. He forced it.)

Arella was tormented though, and after trying to get help and not being given any, she tried to commit suicide in an alleyway. Strangers came to her, and they took her to Azarath. (Arella thought she was in Heaven.)

Now here's where it gets... fucky. Come about 2003, right when our beloved cartoon series is starting, a comics writer by the name of Geoff Johns takes on the Teen Titans for the first time in his career (and god, I wish it had been the last). The relevance to Raven is especially in that he added quite a lot of detail to Arella's backstory.

He mostly added that Arella was in fact being abused in her foster homes, implied she was a rebel child, and added details about Arella being uncomfortable during her pregnancy (I believe he was the one who wrote in that panel where Arella's being held down and begging the people there to kill her).

He also added the specifics of how Arella got involved in the cult: She had run away from home, come to a "Church", and drank some water they had. The people who ran the church found her, and inducted her.

Geoff Johns added a LOT to the Teen Titans stories, so you can feel free to take or leave what he did. I won't deny that his revival brought our favorite team back to the forefront of DC's lineup, but he also made my NOTP canon in the most shoehorned way I could've imagined. (A morgue, Johns? Really?)

But that's a tangent for another essay entirely.

A handful of real-life years after that (or before that? The site I'm looking at says it was in 2001, but I didn't read it until like... 2006?), there was an issue of, I believe, Legends from the DC Universe that touched on Raven's backstory a bit.

Relevant to this question, it added that when she was 15, the very first time she came to Earth, she was so overwhelmed (by all the chaotic emotions, via empathy), she had to flee back to Azarath and was unconscious for "seven passings". (What's a passing? Is that an hour? A day? I have no idea. But it's implied to be A Long Time, Arella seems pretty concerned about it.)

For awhile, Raven's backstory mostly went unaddressed unless Trigon was involved.

(And comic writers really LOVE involving Trigon in a Raven story. Most of them try to re-do the Terror of Trigon storyline from around 1984, the New Teen Titans comic book storyline that the season 4 arc of the show was based on! It was epic; there was the prophecy, Azarath's destruction, lots of mystical craziness.)

((But as with many pieces of media, the original version in the comics was by far the best. I think the cartoon is the only successful adaption of that I've seen, besides maybe Justice League vs. Teen Titans but Azar's not even really mentioned unless I want to extrapolate "Mother of Azarath" being a call to her, so they lose points for that. I'm only half joking. At least the cartoon included the rings of Azar, even if they're not NEARLY as important as they were in the original...!))

Fast forward a few years in real-time. New52 did some fuckery with Azarath being a place Trigon ruled, but we don't acknowledge New52 here. It was a mess and the New52 Teen Titans comic was... not great. The Villains Month event also had an issue that hinted at a hero named Alezandra and a different origin story between Arella and Trigon, but that story thread NEVER got picked up to my knowledge.

In the DCAMU (DC Animated Movie Universe), specifically in Justice League vs. Teen Titans, Raven tells a backstory similar to the prior comics in a lot of ways, but she adds in that she didn't "fit it" on Azarath, and she had been aware enough of Trigon being her father ("the monster that created me") that she could summon him to Azarath. (In hopes of understanding more.) She also spent an indeterminate amount of time in his realm. (Hell, implicitly, I think?) And then she trapped him in a crystal and left him there.

In that Daughter of Darkness miniseries I mentioned (one of three Raven-centric miniseries), she tells her school friends about her childhood, and she says there were no other children, and no books. I choose to disregard this, personally, because:

1.) Raven had to have learned how to read SOMEWHERE. Sure, the miniseries says she was barely taught English, and I've always interpreted her diction in the 80's comics to be that of someone who's not used to speaking aloud, but especially if we're leaning heavily on the cartoon, Raven reads voraciously. It's the whole Thing with Spellbound (nudge nudge). Books and Raven are inextricably linked in my head because of that cartoon, and I latched onto that too hard to let it go just because Marv Wolfman randomly decided she wasn't allowed to read as a kid for some reason.

2.) In TotNTT #2, there's a sort of montage splash page where she's looking at a book with Azar, she looks Intrigued, and that just pulls my heartstrings in wonderful ways. I'm Keeping That, Thank You.

3.) This one's a little more obscure, but there's a line in a New Teen Titans issue (I can't remember the issue number) where Wally is checking on her, asking her how college is going, and she says she's doing fine because she was raised by people who knew how to study. College wouldn't be easy for her if she couldn't read, and also it's DAMN hard to "know how to study" if you don't have books! What else would they be studying?!

4.) I see some minor plot holes in the claim of there being No Children, largely because in the 80's issue, she points to other children playing, while she had to train. Also, not to be awkward, but Raven was a baby and her mother wasn't feeding her. She canonically had a nursemaid. But... uhhm. You don't lactate spontaneously, you know? I theorize Galya had children of her own and that's how Raven had anything to eat.

...anyways.

In the comics, in the entire several decades of comic book history, Raven's backstory is absolutely devoid of that "love of your people" and any sort of feelings of "having a home here". For my own personal fanfictional purposes (and believe me, I Have Many of Those. Gestures widely at how my main OC's entire backstory relies on Raven having been abhorred.), I've decided to lean into the comics. There's just so much more information, so much more DETAIL, and so many more EMOTIONS!

If nothing else, I'm not sure I can imagine even mystical, pacifistic Azarath having a child they knew was going to cause the end of the world, and NOT have people who were afraid. That's just human nature, you know?

I'm realizing I didn't say much about WHERE she was raised, so let me remedy that right now: Again, drawing from the comics, Azarath was a place of great mystical power and EXTREME pacifism. When I say "extreme", I mean they don't believe in violence for the sake of self-defense, they don't seem to believe at ALL in self-defense actually. At least not if it means fighting or violence or resistance. Nonresistance, that's the word. Complete and total NONRESISTANCE. Not to defend yourself, not to defend someone you love, never. The ultimate endpoint of philosophies where you just "let it be".

(Raven has always stood in opposition to that. Obviously. Kinda hard to be a superhero and also be entirely pacifistic.)

Azarath was created "between the dimensions" by the first Azar (the grandmother of the woman who raised Raven). When Azarath was founded, they took those peoples' souls and actually separated out the violent urges and sent it all away.

Also, in the earliest 80's comics, it was those same evil urges that later coalesced into Trigon, which lends itself to some REALLY fascinating thoughts if you think too hard about how Trigon was the one who destroyed Azarath!

But most comic writers chose to ignore that little bit and one even made him more of a Green Lantern flavored creation. (I forget exactly how it happened, but Trigon was still created out of Someone's Evil Becoming Sentient, basically.)

The Azaratheans seem to retain that power to pacify violent urges though, if no less than two of the Raven miniseries' endings are to be believed... (Spoiler alert?)

There's so much I could say here, but the line between what's cold hard canon and headcanon is a little blurry for me, because I think my headcanons are fully grounded in canonical fact, but others have interpreted the same lines to mean very different things...

I am physically withdrawing my hands from the keyboard here because I love talking about Azarath, I have so vastly many headcanons about it and some wacky adventures in both writing and certain pop-culture-influenced practices, and I can write a TEXTBOOK on what I know and think and believe and headcanon about Azarath! But it's the background setting to your question. I think the people and events are, perhaps, more important. If you have anything more specific you'd like to know, just ask!

Please! Please ask me about Azarath.

Oh, I do have this tag for all things Azarath, but I don't have a tag on just my Personal Extrapolations and Headcanons. Or canon. (I... really like Azarath. And as I've told you before, I tag meticulously. So of course there's an Azarath tag, too. When I'm babbling, I usually bring up the canon details that lead to my conclusions...)

I will say though, that being raised in Azarath was the only way for Raven to learn how to control her powers / emotions / Trigon's influence. It's a place of study and discipline, meditation is par for the course and they forced themselves to get rid of violent urges, and Azar said if they didn't keep her with them, there was no hope for the world. (Not in so few words. She mostly said "This is what would happen if we Didn't Do This" and showed divinations of places exploding. But that's the idea.)

So there's the infodump you asked for. I've been sitting on this question for two days and mentally compiling everything I want to say. This isn't even everything (I haven't poked a single bit at the tension evident between Raven and the Azarathean Council after she leaves for Earth), and hell, half of this might be extraneous and you may end up using Absolutely None of This in your fanfiction.

But even if you don't use a word of this, I'm SO curious what you'll do with your ideas! I have indeed been watching your tags and I'm delighted to see the creative juices flowing in that direction! Let me know if you end up writing this thing, okay?

P.S.: Calling me "respectable Raven expert" made me raise my eyebrows at first-- I mean, you're not wrong. But then it made me smile. I hope I've lived up to that title, and I hope you enjoyed reading this! Or, at the very least, that I helped you decide if you want to include comic canon or not.

22 notes · View notes