#it doesn't help that I dislike both canon AND fanon hatters!

[scarecrowdrugs]

I really want to do something vastly different with Mad Hatter, but it's really hard to nail down exactly what defines him as a character and his motivations due to how heavily he's used as just a simple gimmick for a mind control story. Even the whole "kidnapping girls to be his Alice" isn't even part of his original motivations when he was first introduced! I don't mind it as a motivation, but I think at this point DC just uses it as a way to write the most sleazy grimdark shit imaginable and I'm honestly at the point where I want something entirely different with him. The dude barely has any backstory in anything outside of BTAS and Gotham, with the latter still pulling from the overused "Sexual Predator" angle and I'm just so tired.

Like, you can certainly do really dark and creepy content with mind-control without resorting to shock value! You can absolutely go into the inherent horror of being unable to stop yourself from being used as a simple tool for someone else to use and discard! The kidnapping girls to be his Alice angle isn't inherently bad writing, but I'm tired of it being his only motivation! Hell, you can even go really into the whole aspect of why Jervis is so focused on his Lewis Carroll fantasy and how it meshes with his mind control gimmick! You could go into a character gimmick of someone becoming so focused on their wish fulfillment fantasy that they drag others into it by force to play their part for him! If Jervis sees himself as playing the role of the Mad Hatter in his fantasy, maybe his mind control gimmick could be used as a way of making people play the part in the story if they don't act like how he wants them to. There's just so many potential ideas you could really do with Tetch as a character, but instead he's been stuck in the same old song and dance routine for the past few decades!