Raven Roth Saved My Young Life

I grew up on Cartoon Network as a kid. It was almost exclusively the only network I watched as a kid. I would spend hours watching old episodes of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Scooby Doo, Johnny Bravo and Animaniacs. I was obsessed with Toonami, which has carried over into an adulthood spent re-watching clips of Dragonball Z, Cowboy Bebop and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing on Youtube. This was the time before the internet was the powerhouse of content creation and dissemination it is today. It was long before we could get that fix for entertainment at the click of a button. Whenever something new was on, whether it was a debuting series or episode of existing franchises, it was almost like an event for me. I wasn't a Nickelodeon guy. I wasn't into what they had over on Disney channel. For me, the sole geek entertainment I got came from CN.

I was eleven when Cartoon Network started airing Justice League. I had been a huge fan of the Batman: The Animated Series, and to a lesser extent the Superman: The Animated Series. When I found out they had all the same voice actors I was thrilled. I watched it religiously. I loved all the new characters I had never heard of, whether it was Martian Manhunter or Hawkgirl, or the rest. The stories were fantastic and engaging. There were several episode arcs that made me come back for more. This series solidified my young mind into becoming a fan of superheroes, in a time when I needed them.

I lived in New York, in a suburban county called Westchester. I still do. My family was very closely involved in the events of September 11. My father worked at the World Trade Centers.

I had a lot of questions. There weren't a lot of answers. My most pressing question was 'why did this have to happen?'

I walked through school and people didn't know how to help me, how to deal with me. I wasn't a trouble maker by any stretch of the imagination, but I desperately wanted people to like me. I had this hole in my heart that seemingly nothing but time with my family could fill. Being in middle school at the time didn't help because I didn't know how to properly verbalize what I was feeling. I was trying to make friends with people who saw my outlandish behavior, my hyperactivity, and didn't want to. I constantly experienced being pushed away, rejected, and I didn't know how to handle it. I was overcompensating for the fact I knew people who were no longer here, had seen sadness I shouldn't have and wanted it to go away by being the most excitable, outgoing, friendly person I could.

This lasted for the next two years of middle school. I just couldn't hack the idea of my burdened heart and trying to fit in. So I spent my time escaping like I had in my younger years with the television. A show came on, with superheroes, so I knew I would like it. It had Robin in it, and I had enjoyed the character in Batman: The Animated Series, so I gave it a shot. This show was called Teen Titans, and it changed my life forever. Everything I am now, the accomplishment I have made, the friends that I now have, the core of who I am as a person and the hopes I have for my future, I owe in part to this show.

It was good fun for the first season. I really liked it. I was thirteen at the time, just become a teenager myself, so it was nice to see the dynamic of what I could expect as I grew older. I loved Starfire's quirkiness. Cyborg spoke to my more jockish, baseball playing side. Beast Boy was a riot. Robin embodied the kind of dedication I had for the things I was interested in. Raven, though, was a new kind of archetype for a person that when I was first introduced to her I couldn't quite understand.

I watched her wall herself off from the people she considered friends. I couldn't understand why someone would want to be away from those they cared about and cared about them. I watched and soon came to understand, that she did it to protect herself and them. She did it because of her emotions, and being in tune with them, she knew that the darkness inside of her risked rearing its head if she was too exposed. If she didn't meditate on her own, find a balance between the outside world and her self, she might hurt the ones she cared for. That there was this tremendous war taking place inside of her between her demonic heritage and the human side of herself that so desperately, yet secretly, wanted to indulge in spending times with her friends.

Soon I found myself with more in common with her than any fictional character I have ever been introduced to. I had that same war raging inside of me, this anger and hatred for things I could barely begin to grasp coming from the world I had no understanding of. It felt like I had a demonic side too. I learned better ways to balance it, to do my own form of meditation like Raven did, to try and take an active approach to dealing with my chaotic emotions. It worked, with time, and I was able to be more present with the way I was presenting myself to the world. Slowly, over time, I made friends at the end of middle school and going into high school that I still have to this very day. I wasn't as angry anymore. I didn't have this well of despair and sadness masked behind every move that I made. It was still there, but like Raven, I could manage it. I didn't have to save the world on a regular basis like she did, but I recognized my own personal struggles and overcame them.

She was so powerful, taking on every challenge in stride and calm coolness that I so very much envied. In the show, she has her sixteenth birthday and her father, Trigon uses Raven as a portal to this reality. Her friends do battle with Trigon, despite every odd stacked against them. I watched these characters I had incorporated into the fabric of my being, had grown up along with, fighting a transdimensionally conquering arch demon together. I thought of my own friends, and how we all helped each other. It made me very thankful for what I had. When Robin rescued Raven from hell, and she emerged to do battle with Trigon, I saw a literal manifestation of my own journey to do away with my own demons. When she conquered him and sent him back to hell, I knew that if she could do it, so could I.

This isn't an exercise in venting my own personal history with a cartoon character. This is me explaining to the many of you out there who have been impacted by a fictional character, whether they're from a cartoon, comic book, video game, movie or book, that it's beyond okay to feel comfortable with that. It's a little hard for me to list my heroes to people who are bringing it up in conversation because Raven Roth is on that list. It shouldn't be though. We should be happy and proud to have found a crux upon which to build our personality on the things that bring us joy. Cartoons, comics, video games and the like have great stories to teach us how to be better people. Raven Roth saved my young life, and because of that, I get to help make the real world a better place.