#buuuuuut you can take it different directions i suppose

[incoherentbabblings]

Here's a theory:

What if Tim was resurrected in a Lazarus Pit by Ra's when he was stabbed by the Widower in the desert?

What would his triggers be?

Dick? Damian? Steph? Probably all the Batfam to be honest, except like Bruce and maybe Cass, though I think with Cass it may be bitter resentment for leaving him.

I know Captain Boomerang would be one, and he'd probably be sliced within five minutes of Tim returning to Gotham.

I would just like to see an evil Tim, who isn't from the future 'cos that's boring, who just gets to go beast mode essentially, since we never get to see that.

Or maybe, I don't know, Tim overcomes his rage because of his love for Stephanie or something.

Just a thought.

This became too big again I'm sorry. Half canon meta, half fanon just going off the rails. Partial fic idea. Blergh. It's going under the cut because it's too long.

Again.

But okay you wanna talk evil Tim do you? I am always down for that, although pit madness isn't actually a thing in canon. I mean you do typically come out a bit BLRIGDSSHFGJRNES but you calm down soon enough. Cass and Connor and Kate and Dinah has been in there enough times to be proof of that. Remember Jason literally says to Bruce not to pin his actions on being BLRIGDSSHFGJRNES from the pit in Under the Red Hood. He's perfectly rational and in control of his actions. So I don't think Tim actually going for a dip would be the inciting incident.

I dunno. I like characters who do morally awful things to be utterly aware that they did an awful thing and justifying of their actions as a result. I think in Tim's case he would do absolutely massive leaps of logic to justify to - more than anyone - himself that what he did was not wrong. Or that he even actually did the morally awful thing to begin with. I didn't do that - they did that to themselves kind of jumps of logic.

Okay, so. We look elsewhere for Timbo to go off the rails. Luckily, I think we have a pretty good basis a bit later on in Red Robin.

The end of Red Robin is so... dark? Like it's kind of ridiculous compared the second half of the series, where we spend like half the series breaking Tim down, only for him to realise this, do a u-turn and take positive steps to rebuild some bridges. They bring back Harkness to taunt Tim, and he glares angrily through the glass, but no more. And then the last issue happens. And Tim's an actual mess in it.

He spends the entire issue trying to justify the eventuality of Harkness dying. He sets up this stupidly elaborate plan to have Harkness, get offed by the powers that be or another villain, before finally, just ensuring that he would fall and die. He gets angry at Bruce - who is totally not wrong - in calling out that line of thinking. Tim metaphorically set up the gun, put in the bullets, held it in his hand... then didn't shoot. Dick praises him for it, because Dick has been there and empathises. Bruce chides him for it, because Bruce has also been there and empathises. It's an interesting look actually in Tim's two mentors.

Anways, I think Tim was still wrong to do all that. And Tim thinks it too. He admits it. He knows his dad wouldn't have wanted it. He knows Dick and Bruce don't want it. He doesn't care. He stops himself... because he knows it's wrong.

But he tries and tries to justify the death as something that was totally out of his hands. As if it would have happened anyway. As if Tim didn't engineer the entire scenario. The mental gymnastics Tim does in that issue is frankly astounding.

So! I think if Tim had let Harkness fall to his death, he would and continue to do said mental gymnastics to try and a) remove any culpability from his decisions and b) twist and twist and twist until its was justified or 'accidental'.

I don't think Bruce is wrong in UTRH when he tells Jason that, if Bruce killed the Joker, it would be very difficult to redraw the new line of what is and isn't justified murder. I think it's true for Bruce, and I think it would be true for Tim.

And thus off he jumps the slippery slope.

The batfam is very forgiving when it comes to murder if said perpetrator is remorseful or wants to do and be better. Easier to count who hasn't attempted/been complicit/gleefully committed murder at this point. It's a thing of the genre I suppose. If Tim is at the stage of just flat out denying he did anything wrong, I genuinely can't see any of them standing with him. Like no-one lead him to that, he made his own choice... He's utterly delusional, and that's sad and mournful and painful, but he chose this. He keeps chosing this.

I think therein there's a lot of overlap with Jason at this point, but perhaps there's a distinction in that Jason at this time would and was quite gleefully running around killing entire prison populations. I don't think Tim would ever be that trigger happy. And I don't think Tim would be particularly power hungry in his own right. Controlling, yes. We can see he's very much like Bruce and Jason who have a weird paternalistic view of their relationship to the city. The words 'my city' and it 'belonging' to them - the three of them have that in common. It would be interesting to talk about where the three views come from and how they understand it I suppose. Babs does this too sometimes. Oracle is a heady thing.

Side but also kind of important note going forward: Interesting that the one other Gotham native is exempt from this line of thinking during this time huh? Steph doesn't have a sense of ownership about the city itself; just the people within it. Interesting interesting interesting I wonder if it pops up elsewhere in other runs huh like I wonder if it could be stretched into an actual piece of storytelling meta by someone with too much time on their hands...

Anyway - how far do you want to push Tim's controlling nature regarding the city? How far do you take him just flat out denying the reality of his actions? How much does he let that anger grow hotter and hotter? How much does those violent fantasies he has grow until he's creating ways for them to be real? How and where and when do you personify and objectify that obsession with Gotham and put it onto people. A group of people. A [blond] person. Cough. Cough.

He doesn't stop loving his family very, very much. He thinks their naive, and ragging on him when he's doing nothing wrong. That frustration will only grow.

Mmm. Thoughts thoughts thoughts...

#dc #tim drake #there's so much overlap there with early back from dead jason i have to say #buuuuuut you can take it different directions i suppose #anything is possible in the land of fanfic after all~ #batfam meta #sorta #ask and i'll babble