wherein Liz whines about The Dark Knight fanfiction

[edenfalling]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I have the oddest feeling that most people writing fanfic for The Dark Knight were not watching the same movie I saw. At all.

I came out wanting to read Rachel/Harvey and Rachel/Bruce triangle fics; Bruce/Rachel/Harvey threesome fics; police procedurals; Ramirez post-movie or pre-movie genfic; Harvey pre-movie genfic; stories in which Gordon's personal life falls apart while he copes with his new job and his 'betrayal' of his friends; stories that tie up various loose ends (like Coleman Reese, who must certainly have been hauled in for questioning now that Batman is wanted for murder); and stuff like that.

I don't think that's an unreasonable list.

But.

About 90% of the fic I have seen -- leaving aside the generally awful Bruce/OC sagas -- is Batman/Joker (wtf?), Joker/Rachel (seriously, wtf? that is not romantic; he was going to kill her and forget her within ten seconds), Joker/Harley (watch me not give a damn; Harley is only interesting with Ivy anyway), and Joker/OC (even more wtf than Joker/Rachel).

...

Heath Ledger's performance was amazing. But the Joker is not much of a character. He is a cipher. As they say, he just wants to watch the world burn. And what can you do with a character like that? They used him brilliantly in the film, and by his nature he cannot grow or change, so where do you go from there? Nowhere.

Which is why I have little interest in reading about him. Especially not in porn (ick) or romance (so massively OOC that I am not even going to bother discussing it).

...

I managed to stave off my initial impulse to write Iron Man fanfiction, but I have a sinking feeling that I may not be so successful with The Dark Knight. This time, you see, I have genuine plot bunnies. *sigh*

Comments

[tjalorak.livejournal.com]

Yay! Dark Knight fanfic! I haven't read any personally but I'd be interested in seeing what fics you come up with.

Speaking of that, why not Iron Man? ;) Don't you want to write friendship tinged with lots of simmering passion but too afraid to go there for fear of awkwardness fics? :o

[edenfalling]

I have nothing against Iron Man -- I loved the movie. It's mostly that I am SO BEHIND on all my WIPs that the last thing I need is new fandoms and new story ideas!

I have two (or maybe two and a half) potential Dark Knight fics floating in my head. One would work beautifully for femgenficathon, in case I continue being unable to get off the ground with my currently outlined story for that. The other... would either be an epic (and therefore to be avoided, on my part) or a string of drabbles and/or double drabbles (which would be a fun stylistic experiment, among other things). *grin*

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Apparently a lot of people see hate/hate "relationships" as the makings of romance. (Cf: Harry/Draco, Harry/Snape, etc.) I am not one of those people. I would be interested in the sort of TDK fic you are interested in, if said fic existed, which apparently it does not. SIGH.

[edenfalling]

The main reason I can see Harry/Draco is their first two meetings, which always gave me the sense that if Draco had said one sentence less in his first appearance ('bullying' his parents into buying him a broom, basically), Harry would have latched onto him as a friend and tried to balance between Draco and Ron on the train. (And also, Draco reminds me of Ginny -- they're both massively opinionated, pushy, and drama queens in some respects -- so if Harry likes those traits in Ginny... well... *grin*)

Harry and Snape interest me mostly in a gen fashion, because there I always had the feeling that if they could just sit down and think about things rationally for five minutes, they'd realize they had a lot in common. But that was always vanishingly unlikely to happen. I have read a fair amount of Harry/Snape over the years, mostly because you cannot find friendship fic for nearly any pairing, so if you want to read about two characters interacting on any meaningful level, you're 95% stuck with shipfic. *sigh*

There are a couple genfics and some Harvey/Rachel out there, but it's like looking for needles in haystacks.

[chaos-harmony.livejournal.com]

Agreed, so hard.

And yes, I could really go for some pre-movie Harvey genfic. I wonder about his background. I'd also like to see more on the development of his relationship with Rachel (also pre-movie).

[edenfalling]

The novelization (while otherwise useless and... not exactly badly written, but... glancing, perhaps?) gives some interesting backstory on Harvey. I don't know how much was planned by the Nolans vs. how much was stuff Dennis O'Neil cribbed from Harvey's current backstory in the comics, but it was interesting to see somebody's take on his first date with Rachel. :-)

[bewize.livejournal.com]

I, too, would love to see some pre-movie Harvey fic and some Harvey/Rachel fic. I loved Harvey and his role in the movie broke me a little bit.

I think the fascination with the Joker/Batman pairing is a bit understandable, especially if you look at comic canon, too. The two characters are undeniably obsessed with each other. Obsession is easily confused with other emotions and while I really don't see - ever - Batman/Joker porn (and please may I never see it for msyelf), I do understand the idea of writing about them together.

"You complete me." - Shivers.

[edenfalling]

I can see obsession, and I understand the pull of that, but I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people seem to have this equation engraved in their minds:

EMOTIONAL INTENSITY (ex. HATRED, FRIENDSHIP, RIVALRY, etc.) = LOVE and/or SEX

Because, you know, most of the time hatred is hatred, rivalry is rivalry, friendship is friendship, etc.. There's no burning need to add other things into the mix to make it interesting. Hatred and friendship are interesting enough on their own.

...

Except I have the sinking feeling that 90% of the world disagrees with me on that. *sigh*

[lynati-1.livejournal.com]

Ow. *sends hug vibes*

And now you've got me wanting to read 85% of the things you listed in your initial paragraph. Have you found *any* out there worth reading?

[edenfalling]

Hang on while I go hunt down some links...

Okay. Here we go:

Exclusive, Intimate, Content, by Gater101, is a nice look at Bruce and Rachel from Harvey's POV.

The Four Men Who Want Batman and the Woman Who Gets Bruce Wayne, also by Gater101, is a series of five character studies: Harvey, the Joker, Lt. Gordon, Bruce, and Rachel.

One Night, by auzziewitch, is Bruce/Rachel the night before Harvey's press conference, when she stayed over at the penthouse.

Wise Up, by coffeemione, is an OC-heavy story dealing with the Gotham police department in the wake of the film, as they begin to hunt Batman for real. It's a WIP, though, and only the first chapter is up.

Batman Revealed, by vballmania23, goes AU from Harvey's press conference; in this world, Bruce confesses during Harvey's dramatic pause.

Roses and Revelations, by windsweptsilence, is a little window into Natasha, the Russian ballerina, who is far from stupid.

Ballerina and the Billionaire, by Jen K, is another Natasha POV.

The Job Interview, also by Jen K, deals with Coleman Reese after the movie.

Ten Minutes, by E Kelly, is Rachel in the last minutes of her life, thinking back and thinking forward.

Pathera writes some interesting short character studies.

January Thaw, by Zeil, seems to be heading toward some variation of Bruce/Rachel/Harvey, but only two chapters are up so far.

Call Sign, by arjuna74, is a Joker character study. (See, I have nothing against Joker!fic. What I mind is Joker!shipfic.)

Method, by shiny_n_new, is another Joker character study, equally creepy.

Tabloid Headlines, also by shiny_n_new, is a post-film Gordon character study that also attempts to tie up some loose ends from Harvey's murder spree.

...

There were a few others, but these links are all I have the patience to backtrack right now. *sigh*

[lynati-1.livejournal.com]

*thank* you. I appreciate running them down for me. (And I imagine there are others who do, too.)

[slowmercury.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the list! I'm glad to have someone's advice for fic; I looked once on my own and that was enough to scare me off. The same happened when I looked once for Superman and Spiderman movie fics; I'm starting to think that maybe it's a superhero movie thing. Although I've seen some X-Men that aren't too bad...

[edenfalling]

*puts on internet pseudo-sociologist/anthropologist hat*

Partly it's a function of fandom size -- less fic overall means less goodfic -- but since there are some small fandoms where the ratio of goodfic to badfic is much less dire, I think it really does also relate to the type of source material. Big action movies seem to bring out the (you know, there is no way to say this politely) screaming fangirl and fanboy ninnies. The small fandoms with intelligent fic have much more obscure source material, which means that you need a higher level of committment to get into them in the first place, and that tends to weed out the dilettante squee!fans.

Also, superhero movies tend to paint with an even more basic moral brush than many other action movies, and action movies aren't subtle to start with. So even when you get something that raises moral questions -- like Iron Man or The Dark Knight -- people tend to overlook them and pounce on 'he fights bad guys!' or 'omg LUV!' instead.

And then there's the tendency to turn any intense connection into sex and/or romance, which baffles me utterly, but appears in every damn fandom I've ever so much as glanced at, no matter how little narrative or character sense such attraction would make. Since action movies often deal in heightened emotions -- a byproduct of life-or-death situations -- there's a lot of emotional intensity flying around, which leads to a lot of really bad shipfic and/or porn.

Finally, I think an awful lot of these writers are teenagers, and most teenagers have A) no perspective and B) not enough practice at writing. So their stories tend to lack a good understanding of adult character motivations; to suffer from bad spelling, grammar, and punctuation; to be badly plotted and paced; and to be unfortunately superficial.

*sigh*

At least we still have the source material!