#I've always been prone to muscle aches; headaches; kinetosis; and stomach issues. But from Microorganisms? Almost NEVER.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

And on TODAY’S episode of “RHS overanalyzes every little detail about Raven’s existence”....

If Raven’s soul-self protects her from pathogenic illness, and she doesn’t just have A Serious Immune System: it’s an astral protection, somehow. Through some mysterious mechanism, Raven’s soul-self (specifically named as the functional component in this mechanism) prevents “disease” from affecting her.

Yet also canonically doesn’t protect her from the pains she absorbs, or the effects of a bad drug trip. She can’t “absorb” a “disease” from someone else.

Conclusion: it’s specifically Illness-Causing Microorganisms it protects her from, exclusively those In Her Own Body Only.

So I started wondering: What about her gut flora?

Like, you know: natural microorganisms? The built-in bacteria that help with digestion, immune health, stress tolerance, inflammation, and probably a whole lot more we just haven’t discovered yet?

I mean, I’m the fucking adult Poster Child for it, but empaths are Known to Have Digestive Struggles when they’re overwhelmed / not grounding / generally just Being Empaths Around Other People. She probably needs all the good gut health she can get.

But anyways, how does the whole “my soul-self protects me from illness” thing work? Because obviously it doesn’t indiscriminately kill microrganisms or cells. 

Obviously, she has a human digestive system (she does eat, and she does canonically have Blood Type O, which Requires Intestinal Digestion to carry nutrients.)

I mean, arguably you could say demons don’t need gut flora. 8F But even cats and dogs are known to need healthy gut flora. (It’s a Big Thing in modern veterinary studies lately. Also a commonly-prescribed treatment for recurrent digestive distress.) Herbivores are known to need A Lot More gut flora to help break down plant matter (and she IS vegetarian in the 80′s comics), so she can’t rely entirely on digestive enzymes and juices.

How does an astral form discern Healthy Cells from Invading Cells?

Does she get sick if she gets a transfusion of A/B/AB blood types? Is Raven immune to germs in ALL regions, planets, and dimensions? Food poisoning? What about bad cellular developements in her own body? Nerve damage? Autoimmune disorders? Cancer?

As far as my personal headcanon goes: Yes, she’s immune to all of that. Her body IS in a human shape; though she DOES exist separately, her body and soul are STILL both connected parts of her. If her soul gets corrupted, so does her body. If her body gets corrupted, so does her soul. Obviously, they’re connected. And canoically: her soul protects her body. And what is her soul? “The part of her that is Trigon.” So: Her soul comes from an interdimensional conqueror, and obviously he couldn’t be stopped by a bacteria from another dimension crippling him for life. So by hereditary necessity: she has a more ferocious immune system that conquers a wider, stronger range of bodily invaders.

Really, the only reason humans get “sick” is WAY more from our own immune response than what the germs ACTUALLY do to our bodies. Fever, whole slews of digestive issues, body aches, sweating and chills-- they’re all caused by our brain going, “this doesn’t belong here. We’re going to try getting rid of it! INCREASE THE TEMPERATURE; kill it with fire! Increase bloodflow, thus bringing in more troops to kill it! Increase sleep to batten down our energy reserves!” You know: The things we identify as “getting sick”. It’s actually our own body doing that. The only invaders that ACTUALLY make us sick are internal parasites eating our food and causing malnutrition, microbes that cause nerve damage (and even that’s more often caused by High Fever than directly from microbes), and viruses like rabies that actually alter the way neurology and brain functions work. Most of our Symptoms are just from the way OUR BODIES REACT to microbes, not caused by the microbes themselves!!

So what I’m saying is, maybe Raven doesn’t “get sick” because her immune system JUST “destroys” the invader, without her brain centers going, “there’s A Disease here, so we’re going to try killing it by inflaming the area, raising the body temp, and generally making the body feel gross”. She doesn’t have that in her DNA. Maybe it doesn’t take a lot of energy to destroy the invaders for her. Or maybe it takes more to do it without the help from Brain Stuff-- but it gets that energy from her immense astral reserves rather than her body.

I mean, if the girl can teleport between dimensions, suck neurological signals (pain and inflammation) into herself and basically force someone else’s body to Stop Experiencing That and Feel Better, channel the power of both Trigon and a thousand souls plus an almost-goddess through her body, and generally defy physics in a great many mystical ways? She’s got a LOT of energy.

A little thing like “destroy 1-20 microscopic cellular or viral things that Are Recognized by The Body as Don’t Belong There” doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Hell, regular HUMANS are capable of that; we just have bodies that Give Us Symptoms because it takes us a goddamn 1-14 days to do!

What I’m saying is, I think her immune system is Magically Enhanced and her neurology is Different, so it’s probably doing all the same Recognition and Identification of Intruders that our regular immune systems do. Just, super buffed up so it’s faster and doesn’t require Fever or Inflammation to do it.

This is one of those things i’m Kinda Burning to ask Marv Wolfman about, but on the other hand, Suspension of Disbelief is a thing.I’m just, yeah, hi medical student here, and a Curious one at that........