ROUGH DRAFT
————————————————
TW: mentions of drug abuse and kidnapping and stalking and mind control and jervis
I’m not that good of a writer so go easy on me ok
Hi guys I really love my little Jervis so I thought I’d write a bit about him
My Jervis takes a lot of inspo from the Arkham trilogy, a lot from jokers asylum, and little sprinkles of BTAS here and there
His insanity is driven by loneliness and rejection he’d felt his whole life. Since my jervis was born in ~ the 60’s and the Jervis I draw takes place in the 90’s, his parents really truly did not understand why he was so different.
He behaved strangely and did not have friends, so he spent a lot of his childhood incredibly lonely because of his oddities, and parents who didn’t know how to understand him. He was obsessed with a childish book and had no interest in socialization, aided by the fact people didn’t really want to socialize with him anyways.
Along with loneliness, Jervis has always been small, ugly, and peculiar, so it’s not out of the question to consider he also was bullied and rather roughly pushed out of social groups. He quickly learned that other people were cruel, selfish, and u trustworthy because of how they’d treat him.
Eventually being socially rejected so much drove him to apathy towards other people, as he was the only real person in his mind. He was always smart, so he pursued an interest in neuroscience and/or neurotechnology especially because he found the function of the brain fascinating. After all, wonderland was a dream. Maybe he could make it there through that. (Though he probably would’ve liked to go into literature as well, though it wasn’t his major.)
He used substances to assist his emotional regulation through college. He’d dabbled in it in highschool because it was all over at that point, but didn’t enjoy it as much until later. This later set him up for what would lead to developing schizophrenia.
Through college he was once again, alone. He didn’t make friends in lectures or join social groups. At this point in time and given his past experiences he didn’t see a reason to. His focus was almost entirely on his rigorous studies and his fixation on Alice in Wonderland. He found himself getting more erratic and anxious.
Once graduated, he was hired by Wayne Tech as a neurotechnology specialist for medical chips that might assist paralysis patients to move again. He was the best of the best after all, and it was up to par with his capabilities. This could also really truly help people. As he was working he became infatuated with a coworker, though he didn’t know anything about her. He knew she was blonde, and she had blue eyes, and she was young and beautiful. He was able to project Alice’s traits onto the woman and idealized everything about her to the point he had an entire fake person in his head just with her body.
Schizophrenia can sort of switch on at any point in time. The point is it’s a gene that’s always there, and can be activated, it just needs a trigger. My Jervis was triggered by long term drug abuse in his teens, as it was normal for young adults to be using a lot of hard drugs in Gotham at the time he was in high school and college. (Like the 80’s). Due to long term abuse he eventually woke up to the horrible sort of delusion and madness that would guide him to become the mad hatter.
He did not understand what was happening to him. He took several days off work and locked himself completely away, convinced he was just sick. With nobody looking for him and no social support system, he only got worse. He read his favorite book to comfort him in this very dark time, and slowly but surely started to believe completely that he was the Mad Hatter from the book. He looked in the mirror and saw The Hatter. He must be going mad, and the Hatter is mad. So he must, absolutely must, be the Hatter.
And Alice was out there. She was lost in wonderland all alone. He had to go find her, admit he loves her. Then she’d stay with him. She had to. She’s Alice.
Jervis put on his Mad Hatter costume for the first time, venturing out to go find the coworker he was infatuated with. She was not as pleased to see him as he would’ve anticipated, as he didn’t quite understand that he hadn’t cleaned himself in weeks, looked as crazy as he was, and obviously shouldn’t know where she lived. Thus infuriated him, and he started following her around the city. How could she reject him?? She was made for him. He was made for her. Alice was not following the script.
So enraged and embarrassed by her rejection and fear, he developed the same chip he was working on at Waynetech, only connected wirelessly to a band inside the hat that would allow him to control anyone with the chip he had developed, as long as it was in proximity to the head or neck. Of course, to match his hat and because Alice had a headband, he put the chip inside a black headband and broke into her apartment late into the night. He chipped her while she was asleep, and took her back to a cellar of the library, which he had made his own personal Wonderland.
She was missing for several weeks, not much able to be done to find her. Jervis got worse and worse. Alice of course, bared the brunt of it.
Being the world’s greatest detective and troubled by the knowledge his employee had been missing for weeks, and suddenly another had gone missing in the same department, Batman quickly picked up the case. It led him to Jervis’s apartment. Messy, disorganized, cluttered with layers of neglect, it didn’t take him long to realize the man wasn’t all there. Ramblings in a notebook about Alice and a few pictures of the missing woman in his nightstand quickly clued him in to what was actually happening.
The library took a bit longer to find, but Jervis had already hypnotized other people to play the role of wonderland characters, so it was easy to spot a group of grown men dressed as card soldiers. When he busted in the library, Jervis immediately panicked, believing Batman to be the jabberwocky. He grabs Alice and drags her to a more hidden area he can barricade off as the other characters are commanded to try and slow down or stop Batman. Just enough so he can get them to safety.
Jervis locked him and Alice in a back room. He considered shooting her, before the jabberwocky could get her. The jabberwocky in the story was a fierce apex predator. If he got Alice, it might be an act of mercy. As he raised the gun to commit his selfish, merciful act, Batman busted the door down and tackled him, trying to protect the woman from Jervis. Jervis tried to fight with a ferocious intensity (after all, this was absolutely life or death to him. He thought he was in a genuine scuffle with a huge beast that would tear him and the woman he loves limb from limb.) But he was weak, and Batman did subdue him. He was tied up and cuffed, sobbing profusely for his Alice to not be harmed, at least not in front of him. His hat was knocked to the floor and the band was crushed. Batman rescued the woman from the basement, as she was stiff, immobile, like a statue and could not move herself. He noticed the strange frequency from the headband and crushed it, freeing her from mind control. Alice was incredibly delirious (mind control in my version can cause memory loss and brain damage if it goes on too long) and the other characters were still and hollow like she was a second ago, as Jervis’s hat was knocked off and they were receiving no command. As the helmets and masks were removed, they were brought to the same confused, incoherent state as Alice.
Jervis was apprehended by the police, and taken to Arkham. He didn’t understand. He was ripped away from his beloved Alice by that brute, and locked away for what? For loving her? That made no sense to him. Once again everything he loved had been taken from him by cruel, selfish people who wanted him to be miserable. He had a vendetta formed against the jabberwocky and was completely determined to find his Alice once more at any cost.
