Raven

Personality:

Raven is the reserved and stoic member of the team most of the time to the point of often seeming emotionless, however quite to the contrary Raven feels a cascade of conflicting and intense emotions all day every day. Raven always felt her inner intensity was a side-effect of her human and demon side clashing, but Brother Blood and Trigon have posed different theories on her inner turmoil. Brother Blood has stated that Raven's emotional flux is the result of her true nature as a daughter of Trigon and that such feelings were both normal and beautiful and only seemed like chaos when trying to break-free of restraints like willpower or conscience.

Trigon however has told Raven that her inner turmoil is simply the spiritual imbalance that comes from attempting to deny destiny. Regardless of reason for her intense and often conflicting emotions Raven does her best to repress her emotions in order to remain lucid. Early comics have her as repressed and emotionless while later ones have her as melodramatic and depressed and still later issues have her as snide and seductive; this is likely due to a change in writing style over the years but can be written off as just Raven going through the rainbow of moods persistent in her heart.

Even Raven's romantic life has changed radically over the years as she has had steady relationships with both Garfield Logan (Beast Boy) and Joseph Wilson (Jericho) and the two are almost complete opposites. Garfield is intense fool-hearty and acts rashly in most situations but always sure of his lot in life, while Joseph is reserved, empathetic and artistic but suffers from an on again off again dementia and yet Raven has been genuinely in a relationship with both, Jericho for his sensitivity and Beast Boy for his lightheartedness.

Appearance: Raven keeps a dark and mysterious appearance throughout the series. But actually, she is a very beautiful girl: she is very slender, with pale, grayish-white skin; violet eyes; and somewhat thick eyebrows. She has straight, asymmetrical angled, violet hair and a prominent widow's peak. She also has a red gemstone outlined in black located in the center of her forehead (or her "Ajna chakra", as Blackfire puts it). Raven, being half-demon, has used her demonic appearances on several occasions, though often the use of her demon form causes her to lose control. When Raven is in her 'demonic' state, a second pair of eyes appear where her eyebrows are.

Her superhero outfit primarily consists of her favorite color, navy blue. She usually wears a hooded navy-blue cloak, matching ruffled ankle-boots with grayish-black soles, and a long-sleeve dark navy-blue legless leotard with regular navy-blue cuffs. Her cloak is decorated with a round, crimson jewel (similar to a brooch), which helps keep the cloak shut. It covers her T-communicator and it is fixed to beep/glow when there is trouble, as seen in some episodes. Occasionally, the silhouette of a raven head appears inside the jewel. She also wears a thin, gold belt with decorated with several of the same type of jewel.

Origin:

Raven is one of the longest-serving members of the Teen Titans, in various incarnations of the team. Raven owes her heroic role (as well as an evil role) to a darker past - she is the daughter of a human mother named Arella and an inter-dimensional demon known as Trigon. Raven's demonic lineage was hidden from her for most of her early years. She was raised in an alternate dimension called Azarath, where she learned with a greater degree of skill to control her emotions by the goddess Azar. This was intended to control the influence of Trigon on Earth as her demonic powers would facilitate his ability to conquer the planet. Due to this training, she rarely saw her mother and the two grew apart. Upon Azar's death, she discovered for the first time her demonic heritage as she met her father face-to-face for the first time. This eventually caused her to leave Azarath and take residence on Earth where, after being rejected by the Justice League of America, she helped to create an incarnation of the Teen Titans.

As is common with any character that first appeared as a teenager, Raven has matured substantially throughout her time as a hero. When first seen she was shy and withdrawn, but this was also a result of not wanting to use her powers to their full capacity (or else her father would control her body.) Keeping her distance and her secretive nature made her hard to trust. Initially, she was also a total pacifist and refused to actively engage directly in fights, but provided transportation and healing to her teammates. Although Raven began maturing as a character, unlike the rest of the characters on the Titans, this development came at the cost of potentially releasing her father upon Earth. As she accessed her emotions more often they came to affect her physical appearance and after she became completely corrupted she took on a demonic form and finally summoned her father to Earth. After his defeat, she was revived and her normal appearance returned. During this time she struggled to better relate to other people.

During the Titans Hunt story arc, Raven was corrupted by the mad spirits of Azarath that had also possessed Jericho. After fatally wounding Adrian Chase, the Phantasm, her body was destroyed by Chase and Arella, all of whom were presumed dead. However, Raven's spirit lingered on and escaped to Earth, still as mad as she had been at the time of her destruction. She found a suitable host body and destroyed the spirit replacing her within the flesh. Having turned to her father's side, Raven's goal became to recreate her lost siblings that had come before her. The means by which meant planting a seed within a host body that would eventually give birth to one of these lost siblings. But the human Raven had attempted this with first went completely insane before she exploded, unable to handle the raw power within. Instead, she settled on implanting the seeds within superhuman hosts, gathering and corrupting a group of helpers with the task. One of the first victims of this process was Beast Boy. And later on, Raven famously prevented the marriage between Nightwing and Starfire when she attacked the ceremony before the vows and implanting a seed within her old friend.

However, it was later revealed that Raven's pure spirit was still active and unknown to her evil counterpart, had been the part implanted within Starfire. While inside her old friend, Raven pushed Starfire to undergo an old Tamaranian ritual gaining a slightly altered appearance and seemed to be more shaman-like before leaving for Tamaran itself. Eventually, this prompted the Evil Raven to follow her into space, striking a deal with the Citadel that leads to the destruction of both Tamaran and the Technis. Everything culminated on New Tamaran where Evil Raven was eventually reduced to ash, by Starfire, Darkstar Donna Troy, and Kyle Rayner while it was revealed that Raven would have resurrected Trigon and not his children had she succeeded in her plans. And Raven's spirit for the first time was free of her father's influence.

Raven would exist as a golden spirit for a while after the conclusion to the New Titans series, opting to remain in space with Starfire, Changeling and Cyberion. Eventually, she would return in an effort to warn her friends that Cyborg had lost touch with his humanity as Cyberion and was now returning as a massive planet-like object known as Planet Cyberion. She would stand by her friends against the Justice League when they would attempt to destroy Cyborg rather than try and save him, in the ensuring conflict he was confronting the New God Orion, one of the strongest voices for Cyborg's destruction before she quelled the everburning rage within, leading to Orion acting markedly different before returning to normal.

She would appear again during other engagements, most noticeably during the Our Worlds at War story where she played a crucial role in Wonder Woman's plan to both re-empower Darkseid and reignite the firepits of Apokolips, but also to enact Diana's own revenge against the New God of Evil for the earlier murders of her sisters by implanting within him a sliver of Diana's own soul, robbing him of the dark edge he had always had. Later it was rumored she had departed for other planes of existence.

She would later be revived again by Sebastian Blood who needed her as a bride, but as Blood was merely a 12 year old at the time, Raven was reborn with a body of a similar age despite being in her mid-twenties. After being rescued from this fate by her friends she developed more of a personality and even developed a Goth-inspired fashion sense. During the events of One Year Later she decided for the first time to lead the team alongside Beast Boy while they were in a relationship at the time (though they would break up from the strain the team placed on them). However it was revealed when Cyborg returned that Raven had broken up with Garfield and left the team, not because of the strain, but because she had become aware of a traitor in their midst. The traitor turned out to be one of the recent members called Bombshell, who was after the disk Cyborg had trapped Jericho on and tried to stop Raven from reviving him from the pool she herself had been recreated from.

After a period of turbulence, Cyborg tried to recreate a new team of Titans to run parallel with the one run by Tim Drake, while the other old New Teen Titans declined to take part originally, they were soon forced when Trigon attacked every single member the Titans had ever had, seriously injuring many of them. In order to confirm it was indeed Trigon who had struck them, being the only figure with the reach and resources to do so. Raven discovered that not only was her father alive, though a shade of himself, she had a living sibling on Earth who was aiding him. It was soon revealed she had 6 brothers, known as the Sons of Trigon, each of whom carried the powers of one of the 7 deadly sins, where Raven was revealed as the oldest and most powerful as the Sin of Pride.

The New Teen Titans:

From around the time she reached adulthood Raven began exploring her mother's homeworld so that she would be able to deal with the various emotions she would come across. As she would reveal later on to the Titans, she had known for years that Trigon would invade Earth and that she had tried to coax Azarath into action, but their beliefs in total pacifism wouldn't allow it. Eventually, Raven's patience with Azarath ended and she left its tranquility in favor of Earth, hoping the heroes dwelling there would aid her. However, Raven's heritage resulted in her request for aid from the JLA being rejected because Zatanna could sense the evil within her. Withdrawing, Raven instead looked elsewhere for allies to combat her father, finding the people she needed in those who were once called the Teen Titans, who had parted years ago. Dick Grayson was haunted by visions sent by Raven that allowed him to know of her and the others in advance, Wally West was saved from freezing to death on a mountainside by her before she had him fall in love with her, Donna Troy would suddenly find her old Wonder Girl outfit in her bag when she saw a mugger escape into a burnt down building, finding it to be her childhood home Wonder Woman had saved her from. She would ignite a spark of power in the alien princess Starfire that would allow her to free herself. Offer companionship to Victor Stone and inspire his father to build a suitable home for them. And finally, she would subdue the anger Garfield Logan felt at how his life had turned out.

At first, she hid her demonic past from her new friends but after encountering the Justice League of America (who had previously turned down her request for aid), Zatanna revealed this to her team. They felt betrayed at first but soon after Raven was kidnapped by her father. The team subsequently rescued her and imprisoned Trigon, though Raven still battled the remnants of his power. In the period following these events, Raven would occasionally lose control of her powers in high-stress situations, though with her father's increased control of her she could regain control. This was also at times a difficult era for the team for instance, Deathstroke infiltrated the team with an agent, Terra. Trigon would eventually return and took control of Raven, destroying Azarath in the process. Her team was forced to kill her so that her spirit could be directed to kill her father. She rose again, purged of her father's influence, but was not seen for a while (she was absent during the Crisis on Infinite Earths), her absence is one of many failings an angry Nightwing threw at Donna Troy for failing to investigate while she criticized him for being absent from the Titans due to Starfire's marriage to another Tamaranian.

Arella, however, had kept searching on her own, following clues and rumors of a strange and sad woman that appeared out of nowhere and had amazing curative powers. However, Brother Blood's followers were following the same leads and mother and daughter were captured in a swamp village that had been keeping Raven captured due to a vicious disease that plagued them. In her fragile state of mind, still not recovered from the battle with Trigon, Blood managed to brainwash Raven into his willing and unhinged servant. When Nightwing, as Richard Grayson, was captured while infiltrating Blood's complex, he was tortured in order to convert him, Raven would heal him each time so the torture could continue, believing Blood would set Richard free. Blood's first step was to reinvigorate his Church of Blood and had Raven and Azreal stage his own resurrection on live camera, the second phase of his plan was to join his powers with that of Raven in order to take control of the planet. The Titans, both the old and those who Donna had recruited, arrived to fight Blood but were unable to beat him and ended up captured, while the Justice League had to abandon their assault to prevent Blood forced from doing too much damage, leaving a distraught Magneta to proceed alone. Magneta manages to free the Titans, while Arella is near-fatally wounded by Blood's torturer; the Confessor. The only part of Raven's own mind resurfaced when Jason Todd showed her what had happened to her mother, making her turn on the Confessor. She was then summoned again to Blood's side as he was again confronted by the Titans, Blood made a final mistake and fed Raven even more of his power, breaking his own control over her. Previously considered immune to Raven and her powers, Raven was now able to take her vengeance on Blood and utterly destroyed the ruthless egotistical maniac he was. Azareal escaped with Blood and left him with a brotherhood of monks, who couldn't help but notice how quiet and almost meek their new brother was while he guarded their sheep. Combined with the birth of Blood's first child, a daughter to Mother Mayhem, it was assumed to be the end of the Curse of Blood.

Powers:

As the half-demon daughter of the inter-dimensional demon Trigon, Raven is very powerful and displayed a vast amount of abilities. It was noted by her father Trigon that she only uses a small potential of her power, and if she lets out her full inner demon, she may reach near-infinite power.

Soul-Self/Darkness Manipulation: Raven is able to conjure and project darkness from her body, usually in the guise of her soul-self, an astral projection in the shape of a shadowy bird that she can use to see through and manipulate objects. Though the soul-self is normally intangible, it can be disrupted by magic and concentrated sound.

Psychokinesis: Raven has demonstrated on several occasions to possesses psychokinetic capabilities, in conjunction with her soul-self.

Empathy: In the New 52, Raven has seemingly retained her powerful empathic abilities from the pre-flashpoint universe as she has been able to manipulate and sense the feelings of others.

Psionics: In addition to her well-known empathic powers, Raven has an undefined ability to sense and read minds to a degree that she doesn't appear to notice if someone is physically invisible or not. The strength of her psionic powers remains undetermined, though she seemed to be able to effortlessly dominate Doctor Psycho when he attempted to gain control of her.

Teleportation: Raven is able to teleport herself and others with herself to different locations, which is taxing her more than her other abilities. She can also use this power to travel interdimensionally with relative ease.

Chronokinesis: Raven can travel through time itself and even bring passengers, also she appears to be immune to chronological manipulation due to her paternal heritage.

Magic: Due to the time she spent with her father Trigon, Raven has gained a vast array of knowledge over the mystical arts, enabling her to cast magical spells for a variety of effects, such as healing, pryokinesis, and advanced energy wielding capabilities.

Empathy: Raven has been described by Dr. Mid-Night as a very powerful empath, a person able to sense and control the emotions of others for different effects. As she forcibly has made both Wally West and Nightwing fall in love with her, though in Wally's case it was to save his life and make him join the New Teen Titans and accidental in Nightwing's, due to her own failings in understanding love. As a counterpoint, she can also choose to rob a person of all emotions, this ability has been shown to be enough to render entire crowds emotionally numb, but it was insufficient to halt a rampaging Dr. Light, however, it can be suspected that she couldn't take it all without turning evil as a result. During the Titans/JLA crossover, Raven was free of Trigon's corruption and in this shape, she seemed to effortlessly be able to calm the New God, Orion, something that usually takes up most of the power of the Mother Box he always carries to curb his rage. Her best-known ability regarding her empathy is her ability to absorb the pains of others into herself, inducing rapid healing. However, the cost is that she will feel the pain she absorbs, once this nearly killed her when called upon to save a gravely wounded child, also this sets a limit on the injuries she can heal in this fashion as she cannot heal fatal wounds or dangerous diseases. However, Black Alice once channeled this particular power after one of her schoolmates was injured, citing Raven is one of the best healers around.

Soul-Self/Astral Projection: Raven's most visual ability, the power to separate her soul from her body, taking the shape of a huge bird, usually black, occasionally white. One she was taught to master as a part of Azarath's grand scheme to destroy Trigon. With this Raven is able to walk between dimensions or over vast distances in the same dimension in a short span of time, if there are any limitations to her reach with this ability it has not been clearly defined. During the Crisis on Infinite Earth's both the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor considered her a suitable herald if they could not use Harbinger or the Psycho-Pirate respectively, but neither could locate her. As the Monitor is a being that is aware of the whereabouts of all beings in all parallel dimensions it has been suspected she traveled to a non-parallel dimension during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Also, she has used this ability defensively, using it to absorb items aimed at herself or others before regurgitating them later on, having been seen transporting sections of bridges away in this manner.

Precognition: Raven has limited precognition which allows her to predict future events that are about to happen. She displays it when she was able to predict that Trigon was going to invade Earth-Two. However, she cannot control this ability and use it whenever she desires, which is why it is only limited, as it only happens randomly.

Flight (Third Life): Raven has the ability to fly in her third body, an ability she previously only manifested when she succumbed to Trigon.

Telekinesis; as she's twice displayed casually, once throwing Nightwing into a wall and suspending a struggling group of Titans in mid-air.

Hand-to-Hand combat; a very rarely seen ability that has only really been displayed once and hinted at in another. The hint came when Raven was brainwashed by the previous Brother Blood, where she boldly claimed she was Donna Troy's equal but they were interrupted before her claim could be proven. The proven instance came when she took down an armed group of occultists through a mix of combat skills and teleportation later taking down her brother Envy in the same manner, during the struggle she was seen hurling occultists through tombstones and Envy though the stone floor of a church, however it is not known is this was pure physical strength or telekinesis is not known. In her demon shape she has also displayed an above human level of strength by holding both Nightwing and Starfire above her head, however, this could also be telekinesis.

Seeding; Only seen when she's turned evil, first during the Darkening, Raven had the ability to impregnate others with the Seed of Trigon, the spirits of his hundred dead children who came before Raven. However, the Seeds needed superhuman hosts as Raven found out when a human carrier simply exploded in her asylum cell. Both Starfire and Garfield were subjected to this treatment, driving Garfield mad and causing Starfire to return to Tamaran, unknowingly containing Raven's pure soul. A different version of the Seeding was later shown when she attempted to implant the power of the remaining Six Deadly Sins into the bodies of the Titans, using Garfield as a conduit who would not survive the full implantation had it been successful.