#unsorted meta

[Dick]

So continuing the previous thought - just in general I think with Dick you're a bit more likely to see a gap between whatever he's feeling and whatever he's saying when it comes to affection - at least, with male friends and family (he's a bit less buttoned-up with Donna and with Babs). So for example, Dick's often way more effusive about Tim in his inner monologues than in whatever he's actually saying to Tim. And you see the difference a bit with their respective teams, too; Tim tries to do the Serious Leader thing like Dick does, but he's also reasonably likely to make "because we all care about each other <3" speeches, whereas Wally and Donna are more likely to be making that speech to Dick. But Dick of course does care about his friends and family REALLY INTENSELY.

So best-case scenario for Dick, I feel like uninhibited!Dick might be more expressive of those affectionate feelings, and express how much he cares about his friends or family, and perhaps be a bit more free with physical affection. (Because I also see Dick as someone who was very used to physical affection growing up, and who still kinda craves it, but who absorbed from Bruce and Alfred a kind of self-consciousness about it so he nowadays has hangups about what's too much / too mushy / too pushy / etc. So for example, he slowly gets more playful with Robin!Tim, who clearly welcomes and enjoys it, but then he pulls back to the stiffer, Bruce-esque manly-hand-on-shoulder after they have their falling-out.) And again, best-case scenario, Dick's friends are touched and afterward Dick's kinda embarrassed but in the end it's all sweet.

Worst-case scenario for Dick, uninhibited!Dick voices all his fears about how he is a Failure who Has Failed / Will Fail Everyone, and then when he recovers he's mortified and incredibly uncomfortable when people want to reassure him. (Or, worst-worst-case scenario, he gives something away about the sexual assaults.) I think of Dick as a person with pretty intense fears about something terrible happening to people he loves, plus a sense that it is His Job to prevent that, but these aren't fears that he feels comfortable voicing to other people and I don't think he'd like having them out in the open. I think of Dick as someone who protects his vulnerabilities pretty fiercely and really does not like having them visible or "on-stage" or legible to other people.

Plus in general I think the violation of the "no inhibition" spell would be really hard on Dick in particular, because he's very protective of his autonomy and his privacy, and he hates when people violate those boundaries, and his mind and his control of himself have been traumatically attacked before. So even if he didn't disclose a whole lot, the fact of having been not-quite-in-control would be really upsetting.

[Tim]

OK! So that's Dick. What about Tim?

On Tim's side, I feel like Tim (under normal circumstances) is pretty conflict-averse and prone to bottling up negative emotions. Thus the letter to his dad. See also: his many repressed conflicts with Bruce. If he disagrees with Bruce, Tim might tell him so but is equally likely to just secretly ignore him or do things behind his back, whereas Dick's more likely to confront Bruce and have an argument about it - Dick wouldn't sneak around the way Tim does. And Tim's often a lot sharper about Bruce behind his back than he is to his face.

And just in general, Tim's likely to try to squash negative emotions: so for example, when Steph comes back from the dead, his first reaction is WOW DELIGHT, and that's initially what he expresses, but his thought bubble afterward has that lingering note of unease (so she faked her death...but she's alive...so I should be happy... right?).

And more broadly, Tim is way more likely to fake being happy when actually miserable (which he does in IIRC War Games after his school's shot up, and in the Teen Titans comic right after his dad dies, plus in Resurrection Dick talks about being blindsided by Tim's grief-fueled breakdown because he and Bruce thought Tim was doing okay); I can't think offhand of any time when Dick does the pretend-to-be-happy-while-miserable thing (Dick will say he's "fine" when he's not, but he doesn't do the over-the-top "I can WILL myself into being happy if I just pretend hard enough and lie to everyone" thing that Tim does).

Best-case scenario for Tim is probably if you managed to hit Tim with the "no inhibition" spell during one of the rare times in Tim's life when he's not repressing a bunch of stuff, where you'd basically get Tim's wry inner monologue coming out. Tim's inner monologue is often significantly different from the things that he says, and he's frequently coming up with jokes that he doesn't voice. His inner monologue also features a bunch of small social anxieties about his relationships, so he probably wouldn't love having that exposed, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. Plus, like Dick, I think it'd loosen him up to be a bit freer with affection.

This is now veering even more into my personal preferred interpretations, but I also see Tim as someone who's instinctively really nosy and kind of a busybody who's up in other people's business (because he cares!! a lot!!), and who's initially very uninhibited about it, and who learns to be more inhibited/less pushy/more careful over time. So for example, Tim in LPoD is as pushy as it is humanly possible to be, and he continues to ask a bunch of pushy questions in Prodigal, but in the aftermath of Last Laugh - when Dick just wants to be left alone damn it - Babs and Wally both track Dick down and try to push him to talk, and get snapped at, whereas Tim shows up in Blüdhaven and hovers around trying to surreptitiously find out whether Dick's back on patrol yet, which is also intrusive but actually shows incredible restraint if you consider Tim's historical standards.

So I also feel like there's a decent chance that uninhibited!Tim would go back to monologuing about his worry about other people and his personal take on what would fix them, plus go back to asking all the nosy questions that older!Tim gets better about not asking even though he wonders.

On the other hand, if you grab Tim during one of his periods when he's...not doing so well, I think the best-case scenario would be a grief-stricken breakdown, which I know doesn't sound like a best-case scenario, but I think it would be for Tim. Tim bottles up grief and lives in denial and tries to repress it, but he does find expressing it cathartic. So being forced to actually admit to needing help and comfort would be good for Tim, who IMO has a lot of hangups about asking for comfort but not nearly as many about receiving it.

And worst-case scenario for uninhibited-Tim would be lashing out with anger / resentments that he usually buries, or voicing disagreements that he'd usually keep quiet about. Tim doesn't really seem to find fights cathartic; instead, they make him miserable (so e.g. after he yells at his dad in Robin III 4, he runs off and is crouched in another room being miserable, and then he goes back and preemptively apologizes; and just in general "have a fight -> run away" is one of Tim's go-to moves). Tim's pretty guarded about anger / hurt feelings in general and I think having them exposed against his will is something he'd find really upsetting.

SO IN CONCLUSION

1. Best-case scenarios: Dick gets handsy and affectionate, Tim gets more openly needy and probably cries, Dick gets reassurance and returned affection & Tim gets comforted