i know that generally when it comes to scarecrow’s fear toxin/gas/whatever the favored interpretation is scary hallucinogen/really bad trip with a lot of “oh no everything is monsters” BUT LIKE personally i think it would be interesting if he just bypasses all of that and skips right to triggering the physiological mechanisms of fear. like if he’s isolated the part of irukandji syndrome that causes feelings of impending doom, or found a drug that kicks the
amygdala
into high gear to trigger panic attacks (i know that i am oversimplifying this but it’s comic book logic so whatever). so instead of
EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE MONSTERS TRYING TO KILL ME AND THAT’S TERRIFYING
it’s
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M SO SURE YOU’RE ALL TRYING TO KILL ME BUT THE WORST PART IS THE ANTICIPATION, MY WHOLE WORLD IS JUMPSCARES NOW
but tbh my reasons are mostly self-indulgent because i would find it hilarious if batman got gassed and then kicked crane’s ass anyway, leaving crane under the impression that batman is immune to fear, but actually batman is just already hypervigilant and prone to catastrophic thinking and has a lot of practice dealing with panic attacks
I love this AND I’ve also toyed with the idea of toxin triggering deeper, more psychological fears. And this makes a lot of sense for trauma survivors with coping mechanisms because that kind of trauma actually has a physical effect on the brain– the reason trauma survivors can seem so on edge is not some vague, little understood thing. It’s that their brain’s neural pathways have been rewired to keep them in a near constant state of fight or flight. So, without coping mechanisms (and even with them, but better managed), basically EVERYTHING is considered by the brain to be a threat. Someone hugs you? Your heart pounds because WHO KNOWS. Someone starts music in the other room? Your hands are sweating and you want to bolt because MAYBE IT’S DANGEROUS.
Learning to train yourself down from these reactions actually rewires neural pathways, again, but takes a lot of effort. And the exhaustion from dealing with the extremely high stress levels your body is mass-producing as part of the fight or flight process tends to make people seem: detached, overwired, or hyper-calm until they explode, or ALL THREE depending on the time/day/company.
So, this DEFINITELY makes sense for Bruce Wayne.
And if you personally are completely wiped out after a trip to the grocery store or a dinner with friends or a party or a class at school, and you’re a survivor of trauma or abuse, this might be why: your brain might actually be telling your body that you are in a life or death situation every single time a minute thing in your environment shifts and your body just cannot keep up.
It’s required in the Batfamily to be able to silently communicate to each other, but not even Bruce is able to understand how Dick and Wally can come up with a plan, and like six backup plans frOM A CONVERSATION CONSISTING OF NOTHING BUT HEAD NODS, AND THE WORD BRO.
the idea that bruce wayne’s ideal method of learning is to just find whoever is best at the thing and latch onto them for a while is so underutilized, though. i want to see more of, like. bruce wayne fucking off to join the rodeo, so he can learn the best ways to not fall off things and also hogtie other things. bruce wayne moving to hawaii to master surfing because the thought of not knowing how to surf in some kind of surfing emergency caused him a sudden panic. bruce wayne in the alps learning how to yodel. living with the amish to learn how to make a really good dresser. in the andes learning how to weave. going to florida to wrestle alligators and meth addicts and meth-addicted alligators. when will you ever need to know this, he remembers people asking, as he faces down killer croc with nothing but a net he had to make himself using a machete and a spare sheep.
“You couldn’t crack a joke in the cowl if your life depended on it, old man,” Jason ribbed, flipping his dark bangs out of his eyes. They flashed as they met Bruce’s, right before he fastened the domino mask on his face.
“Hn,” was all Batman said in reply, his own mask in place now.
“Me? It’s easy. Watch,” Jason spun so the cape swirled out behind him and he leapt toward the Batmobile, calling over his shoulder, “What do you get when you cross a navy ship, a hurricane, and a drunk captain?”
He stopped at the passenger side, turning again to watch Batman’s jaw.
“I don’t know,” Batman said tersely.
“A fucking disaster,” Jason said proudly.
“Jay,” was all Batman said in warning, but the corner of his mouth twitched up.
“I heard that one in bar full of uniforms,” Jason said. “It’s pretty good, dontcha think?”
“Hn,” Batman said again. “Watch your mouth.”
***
Robin was perched on the edge of the fire escape, just two stories up, while Batman had a perp cornered in the back of the alley. The guy had been a tough dude– until, of course, he got thrown against a dumpster by a man in a bat costume. Robin waited to hear what the man would spill about his boss, a drug runner they’ve been after for weeks.
“Are you scared?” Batman asked him in a low growl.
Robin waited. It wasn’t unusual for Batman to bait them, to string them a long a bit and draw it out until they were really quaking.
“Yeah,” the man admitted, which was a surprise. Sometimes they were belligerent out of defense. Robin knows he would be.
“Hi, scared. I’m Batman.”
Robin’s eyes widened under the domino mask. The man went even paler, all the blood drained from his face, as if somehow this was more terrifying than any threat Batman could have flung at him.
“Now talk.”
And the man spilled his guts.
Robin’s mouth was still open in a gaping smile when Batman rejoined him on the fire escape, right before they both rappelled up out of the alleyway.
“That,” he said, biting his lip when they landed on the next roof, “was a goddamn awful joke.”
All of the blinds and curtains had been closed. Finn tried to turn on his living room light, and frowned when it didn’t work. He rocked the switch back and forth to no avail, squinting up at the ceiling.
Eyes started to glow in the far corner of the room.
He screeched and dropped his bag on the floor.
“… Bat… man…?” he asked finally. His answer was silence. “Are you… here about the show…? You’re here about the show. We’re — this is all above-the-board, legally speaking.”
Batman stood. At least, that was what Finn assumed happened. The eyes moved from eye level to significantly above that.
“Also legalities aside I think we’ve done a good job of being as respectful as we can within a satirical context,” he added hastily, backing toward the door. “And at this point it’s out of my hands so I couldn’t put a stop to production even if I wanted to. Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t find a way, because you’re Batman, it would just be really nice if you didn’t do that.”
“Convince me.”
It took him a minute to realize that Batman had spoken, to register that they were words in a specific order with a specific meaning. “… convince…? You want the elevator pitch?” Finn wasn’t getting a lot of useful feedback and he was trying really hard not to burst into fear tears and he didn’t understand how anyone could possibly jaywalk in Gotham.
He took a deep breath. “Right. The elevator pitch. I can do that, no problem, not a problem.” He clapped his hands together. “So it’s a show about, uh, Batman — it’s a show about you — not the real you, obviously, it’s — I’m just going to say ‘Batman’, I think you probably get that I mean Batman as an idea and not — anyway.” Finn cleared his throat, tried to swallow the lump in his way.
“The core of the idea is, uh, what if — what if Batman was just a guy. Some guy. No powers, none of, uh—” He flailed his arms into the darkness in an attempt to gesture at whichever part of it was Batman. “Just, you know, a guy. So our story is about, uh, he’s a guy named Johnny Butler — we wanted to name him Johann, you know, for Die Fledermaus, but that seemed a little on-the-nose so we went with Johnny — and he’s this blind guy, and he’s an inventor! He invents, uh, this thing, and it lets him echolocate and he can see all this stuff other people can’t see, and he makes this thing so he can fly, and, you know, other stuff. He lives in Gotham with all these crazy villains, so he decides he’s going to use his inventions to fight them! Because, uh. He can? And Robin is this child prodigy who can talk to birds, he’s sort of, he’s the Marty and Johnny is Doc, or like Penny to Inspector Gadget. That’s. That’s the basics, basically. Is that okay so far?”
“Johnny Butler.”
“Yeah! Yeah. It’s, uh, because of Johann? I already told you that. And how, you know, a batman was like a kind of valet, like a butler, so we were trying to do sort of a pun thing? There’s going to be a lot of puns. I mean, you probably saw the fake intro we made on YouTube? With the theme song? It’s all going to be like that, with the retro aesthetic and camp and the cheesy effects, we’re keeping all of that for the real show. I have this brother, my little brother, he’s really into Batman, uh, you, he collects articles and stuff, and he’s eight, and I wanted to make something that he could watch. So it’s going to be kind of a show for kids, like a funny show — not making fun of you! I can show you a script, if you want.”
“Show me.”
“Yes! Yes sir, absolutely, not a problem, sure.” He bent, and tried to dig through his bag in the dark. “I, uh — here, I think this is it.” He offered a thick stack of paper to the darkness, which took it.
“Rowsdower’s Revenge,” the shadow read.
“Wrong script!” Finn said, snatching the script back. “Sorry, sorry, ignore that, sorry. Here, this one, I think this is the one.” He handed off the other script. “I would turn on the light, but…”
Finn squinted, trying to make out a face in the dark. He would have thought that the light from those weird white eyes would have had more of an impact. But while there was definitely the pale lower half of a face, everything else was just a shape, darker than the rest of the room.
He could make out the sound of pages flipping. And another, different sound. A pen?
“Holy homicide, Batman.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, kind of like a catchphrase? Thing?”
“Batcomputer.”
“Yeah.”
“Bat-o-vision.”
“Y… yeah. It’s like — I mean, you have the batmobile and those batarangs — I don’t know if you actually call them that, but, uh. We thought, you know, wouldn’t it be funny if Batman just puts ‘bat’ in front of everything? As a joke.”
“Batman and Robin consult the giant lighted lucite map of Gotham City, parentheses, labeled.”
“Obviously you don’t actually go around putting labels on everything, it just, uh.” Trying to explain jokes to Batman was the most painful thing he had ever done in his entire life and he wanted to die.
“Johnny Butler is blind.”
“Right.”
“The actor isn’t blind.”
“He… is not.”
“Why.”
“He’s — casting is — that’s not really how we—”
“Fix it.”
“I. Okay.”
“King Tut.”
“We’re trying to get Rami Malek but he’s been pretty busy but I’ll make sure we get someone Egyptian because I can tell it’s important to you.”
“The theme song.”
“We can get a new one!”
“No.” Batman handed the script back, and Finn took it, hands shaking. “Robin likes it.”
“He does? The, the na-na-na-na-na—”
“Stop.”
Finn shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.
“I said Robin likes it.”
“Right.” He looked down at the script in his hands, or tried to. His eyes were adjusting, but still not enough. He brought the paper close to his face, squinting. Had Batman written notes on his script? It smelled like permanent marker. He could barely make out a few crossed out words. “You know, if Robin ever wanted to come by set after we start shooting, we could—”
The lights came on.
“Augh!” Finn shut his eyes, then blinked furiously. His apartment was empty and the window was open. He looked back down at the script, and flipped through it. The notes looked like they’d been left by a monk, taking a break from illuminating Bibles. They sat next to words crossed out and sometimes replaced, saying things like ‘mental illness is not a joke’ and ‘don’t use this word’ and ‘words with more plosives are inherently more humorous’. A note beside the description of Batman’s lair mentioned a carefully labeled ‘Historically Inaccurate But Well-Meaning Tyrannosaurus Rex’.
Finn hit the speed dial on his phone.
“Marco. Dude. You are not going to believe the notes I just got on this — okay, wait, first of all, we need to recast Batman. We need a blind guy. No, like a real blind guy. A tall one. Really tall. And Robin needs more screentime, we’ve got to curry favor with Robin. No, the real Robin. I have never been more serious. Making sure Robin likes this is going to be vital to not getting our asses kicked.”
¯_(ツ)_/¯ 
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