please elaborate on bipolar tim 👀👀👀👀👀
Tim Drake being bipolar is my new favorite thing in the world, mainly because 1) it makes SOOOO much sense when you look back on his history and his father's history and it would bring a LOT of things full-circle, and 2) DC clearly doesn't know what to do with Tim Drake right now, so why not give him some mental illness to create fun new problems and spice things up? (And tbh whenever I see a character who's known for their intelligence, I immediately want to give them a heaping pile of mental illness to turn their greatest strength into their greatest weakness. I'm a simple gal ❤️)
The driving force behind the theory of Tim having bipolar disorder is the fact that you could 100% make the argument that his father, Jack Drake, was ALSO bipolar in the comics. Not only does it fit perfectly with his character, but it would also re-contextualize a lot of Tim's interactions with his father and the way his dad treated him for most of his life.
For those who don't know, bipolar disorder is characterized by recurring periods of mania and depression (high highs/low lows), often triggered by a catalyst like stress or a major life event:
So here we have Jack Drake—an inattentive father who constantly flip-flops between exercising crazy control over Tim, and wanting nothing to do with him. Throughout Tim's Robin run, Jack often makes spur-of-the-moment plans and impulsive decisions. He oscillates between high-energy attentive parenting and completely absent parenting, which could just be the result of grief over losing his wife or the excitement of meeting Dana, but I've decided they're mood episodes. One minute he's energized and looking to rebuild his broken relationship with Tim, and then a few weeks later he's pulling away again as the low hits and he doesn't have it in him anymore.
There's also the explosive anger:
And the weeks-long depression Jack falls into after he loses most of his fortune (but is still financially well-off), and he doesn't get out of bed for days. The way Tim reacts to this display of depression from his father as not a big deal suggests that it isn't the first time Jack has fallen apart like this.
Sooo as far as I'm concerned, Jack Drake was living with undiagnosed bipolar disorder for all of Tim's childhood because middle-aged men don't like going to therapy or accepting a diagnosis, and it's a hell of a lot kinder than the canon "man doesn't give a shit about his child, then man gets murdered right after he finally starts giving a shit and no one gets closure" situation lmao.
If Jack has bipolar disorder, then Tim would naturally have a high probability of inheriting it. For the most part, Tim is a consistently level-headed character, and he's noted for his self-control in the field compared to some of the more impulsive Robins (cough Jason Damian Steph cough). However, he has gone through MANY periods of instability over the years, specifically after major events like losing loved ones or going through a big change, like when he lost the Robin mantle or when he was kidnapped for a year.
It's canon that Tim has gone through periods of severe depression:
More often than not, Tim's grief results in questionable behavior he wouldn't exhibit otherwise: trying to clone Conner back to life, going on a goose chase across Europe to find Bruce after he gets lost in time, trying to steal Lazarus Pit water to resurrect his dead loved ones, etc.
Losing Bruce especially concerned everyone around him because they knew that his behavior (lashing out at loved ones, obsessing over Bruce's disappearance, explosions of anger, making risky decisions, self-isolating) wasn't normal, to the point where it even had the usually level-headed Tim questioning his own sanity:
(Yes he was right in the end about Bruce being alive but I'm calling it a manic episode anyway, it can be both. This guy teamed up with assassins and robbed museums because he saw a painting of his dad in a pilgrim outfit. Come on.)
(Also, ever see that season of Grey's Anatomy where they revealed Amelia Shepherd had a brain tumor and that explained why she'd been acting so irrational and out-of-character all the previous seasons and why her characterization was never consistent? That's the nifty thing about retconning a character to have a condition like this; it explains away all of the out-of-character writing decisions, like when Tim tried to murder Captain Boomerang in the last issue of Red Robin out of the blue, despite his strong moral compass and anti-killing stance rigid enough to rival Bruce's own, but I digress!)
Later on when Tim was trapped in that inter-dimensional prison for a year, when he came back, he fell directly into a textbook manic episode. (Not sleeping, not taking care of himself, coming up with wild ideas, delusions of grandeur, lashing out at his loved ones, etc etc.) This is probably the most prominent example I have of Tim being manic and the best evidence for Tim being bipolar overall:
("After all that, I can take care of myself, take care of us" = "I know I haven't been the father I should have been, Tim, but I'll make it up to you...starting tomorrow!") (I'VE CONNECTED THE TWO DOTS OKAY THEY'RE CONNECTING)
Aaaaaand for my last piece of evidence: Bi stands for bisexual and bipolar <3 (DC hire me already I can make this guy so unwell just give me a job)
