As most everyone here should hopefully know by now, I was a fanfic author. I have been proudly writing fanfiction for about nine years now, soon to be ten, and I have always defended this medium from people who would claim that all of it is pure crap (that's nowhere near the truth - only about 95% of it is crap, and the remaining 5% is worth dying for). I got into the Batman fandom back in 2008, and now I'm wondering why I waited so long. I've met some great people through this fandom and enjoyed some good stories (and loathed some not-so-good ones) because of it. That said, I am also a Joker fangirl and am very aware of this fact. I have my moments, none of which will be discussed here, other than the fact that if I could feasibly do it and get out alive and unscathed, I would totally go have tea and a discussion with the Joker, just because he's so damn fascinating. I definitely am no angel when writing Batman fanfic, just go ask anyone who's read a few of my darker Joker-centric stories. I don't claim my work is any better than any other Joker fan's is, but I like to think that it's definitely in the top twenty.
I also have nothing against young fanfic authors - everyone has to start somewhere, and I have my own set of "dirty undies" stories that I'm not proud of. Seeing newer authors continue to write fanfic and helping them get better through critique is my reward for being good at writing fanfic and for being around the fanfiction community for years. Sure, I don't get to write as much anymore, but there's always someone better at writing willing to have fun writing for my favorite Caped Crusader and his colorful rogues gallery, and at the end of the day that's the best part of writing and reading fanfiction for me.
Now, we all know my feelings on young authors writing romance fics, because romance can quickly turn into porn in the wrong hands. I have long claimed that young authors should not write romance fics until they themselves have had some experience with love, dating, and relationships firsthand, because it's painfully obvious when they do not. I can't tell you how painfully boring and unsexy an IKEA Erotica fic is - nothing titillating, no passion, no emotion, it's just bland as all get-out and really just leaves the reader disappointed. You see, fellas in the audience, a female reader likes to insert herself into the role of the female protagonist in a romance story. We gals tend to get off on imagining the act and fantasizing about it, where as you guys can get excited over just looking at a sexy someone of your chosen sexual preference. So when an author writes a passionless romance fic, it's about as fun for us as it is for you to start making out with someone, with the potential for bedroom funtimes later, and then said someone saying, "You know that was fun, but I think I'm gonna go over there for a while", then never coming back. If that didn't grab you, then does the phrase "blue balls" ring a bell? Yeah, it's disappointing in THAT way as well as disappointing because the story has no meat to it.
Another common problem I see in romance fics is that young authors often confuse "romance" with "sex", failing to realize that romance is not just sex, and vise versa, probably from the same inexperience. Sex can be very unromantic and very unsexy, and sexual fantasies can easily become horrific if you take them literally. For example, think about what a bondage fantasy is at its core, and then take away all of the sex, mutual agreement, and love from it. It's just gone from kinky, consensual fun to a disturbing kidnapping scenario (possibly with rape undertones), and that's not just unsexy, it's terrifying. There is a thousand and one ways that titillation can become terror, and that's not really something that a person learns until they mature into sexual beings themselves and begin to understand that, for example, a rape fantasy is not the same thing as actual rape, and that one cannot and does not segue into the other in the same way in reality that it would in a porno. The unintentional effect is that iffy or incorrect information about sex, relationships, and sexual fantasies get passed down from young author to young author (these fics are VERY popular for obvious reasons), and because nobody is willing to discuss this (let alone the often teenaged authors themselves), that incorrect information becomes so overdone as to become a trope.
On the other side of the spectrum, you have authors that put way too much detail into things. Let's face it, people - the external reproductive organs are not pretty. The only possible exception here is the female breasts, which are fun for both sexes (come on, ladies, you know it's fun to drive your other half crazy by wearing cleavage-exposing t-shirts) and safe for all ages in very different ways, but breasts aren't exclusively sexual anyway so they don't really count. But even if you're of the right orientation to be turned on by breasts, that probably doesn't mean that you want every single detail of the hairs around the areola and the veins of said bosom pointed out to you. You also probably don't want to be reminded that your manhood looks like a veiny alien maggot or that your ladyhood looks like a sarlaac pit minus the teeth and with a lot more fur because, while that is pretty true, it's also really, really gross. Well, people who read pornographic stories feel the same way, and for very good reason - just because it feels good when you smoosh them together does not mean that said organs are sexy in and of themselves, and it definitely does not mean that they need to be described in severe detail. In fact, if you put too much detail into a sex story, then you end up wrapping it right around from sexy to very, very unsexy, very fast. Just like actual sex, writing a good porn story requires skill, experience, and a sensitive handling of the subject, and that's yet another thing that young authors just don't always understand.
These several reasons are also why it pains me in particular when I see younger Bat-fans, new to the fandom and perhaps of the age where libido takes over, write romance fics with the rogues gallery. Oftentimes, these fics, like other romance fics, are poorly written, describe things in FAR too much or FAR too little detail, or otherwise fail to engage the reader, all of which are hallmarks of an author that is either inexperienced or just is not cut out for writing in general. It's not that these fics are any worse than romance fics in other fandoms, it's that when you write a sex story about a Batman rogue, you have to also take into account who that rogue is, what they look like, etc. Now, this isn't so bad when you're doing something like Catwoman/Batman (which I happen to ship) - it's not hard to sex up Catsy, because she basically IS walking sex appeal. It's also not hard to play up the authority, power, and closedness of Batman, because he definitely has all three. Look, I just made up a Catwoman/Batman romance fanfic - Batman has just spent three weeks trying to escape some rogue that captured and proceeded to torture him, which has made him closed off to even Catwoman, whom he still won't admit he has feelings for, so Selena has to make Brucie feel all better. It's not a terribly good Batman/Catwoman story, it's cliched, and it's probably not all that true to the characters, but it's a story that could work as a feasible romance fic as well as a Hurt/Comfort fic. That storyline, however, could easily be destroyed if the author chose to focus on the sex instead of the characters' relationship, and put too much detail into describing the erotic portions rather than building on the characters themselves. And that is what I see in most bad Batman romance fanfics - not enough focus on the relationship between characters. I understand if you're writing a PWP (Porn Without Plot) or Lemon fanfic with Bruce and Selena, and I'll give it a pass if you put that in your description because I wanna know what I'm getting into. But if you don't put anything, I'm going to assume that the fic is about the relationship between Batman and Catwoman and exploring that relationship in more detail, since that is what the tag "Romance" means when you choose it to describe your fanfic. Romance is NOT just about the sex, and if you're making it about just the sex, then you're writing it wrong, especially when you have two characters that have a long, long history with each other and have that sexual tension between them already, literally begging NOT for a story about sex, but for a story that explores the emotions those two characters feel for each other, the dedication to their alter egos, the idea that Bruce could very well truly want to get to know Selena and may even actually love her, but can't risk losing his identity to her or giving up on his mission to keep Gotham a bit safer. There's SO much emotion with Bat/Cat alone that anything less than exploring that emotion is a copout, at least to me. And I doubt I'm the only Bat/Cat shipper or Batman fan that feels this way. Even the DCU, both pre- and post-reboot, has explored this several times in one way or another; at one point they even gave another earth's Selena and Bruce a daughter named Helena who eventually becomes a vigilante named Huntress. If that's not enough for you, does the line "And most of the costumes stayed on" ring any bells? I could fill a whole post with just examples of why the relationship between Batman and Catwoman should be treated with respect both in-canon and out-of-canon, but that's not what this post is about, so I'll leave it at that. The same issue applies to relationships like Joker/Harley, which is abusive and needs to be written at least partially as such, but I've discussed that relationship already as well and therefore won't rant about it here.
Besides there being actual in-canon relationships that need to be treated seriously when written, there is also an issue with how some authors write the other rogues in romance fics. I have no problem with writing rogues, even rogues that have no empathy and therefore wouldn't engage in a relationship, in fanfic. Hell, I don't even care if it's a Crack!pairing like Riddler/Ivy or (God forbid) Croc/Scarecrow (Seriously, I saw a Croc/Scarecrow slashfic once. I didn't read it, but I have to imagine that it was... um... well, it was interesting to say the least). I like many Bat-fans have my own set of pairings for Batman fic (Bat/Cat = OTP, one-sided Joker/Bat = OTSlash!P, and Joker/Cat = OTCrack!P. OTP means "One True Pairing"), and I will be extremely disappointed if those relationships are not written correctly or are written a little TOO well. To add onto all that, some of the rogues are extremely hideous, extremely dangerous, or both. Let's take the Joker for example - the guy is NOT handsome by any stretch of the imagination, then again that also depends on how he's drawn or how the reader imagnies him to look, sound, and act. My ideal Joker, for example, looks a lot like how Brian Bolland drew him in Batman: The Killing Joke, sounds somewhere between Mark Hamill's BtAS Joker and his Batman: Arkham Asylum Joker, has both a witty slapstick/pun sense of humor as well as a disturbed black comedy style of humor, and acts an awful lot like a mix of Ledger and Nicholson Joker in how he plans things and carries them out. He's calculating, cruel, dangerous, disturbed, and just goddamn hilarious for people like me who LOVE gallows humor. I also often write him as being somewhat sardonic, almost as if he believes he's the Only Sane Man in a world full of lunatics that just doesn't get the joke, but that's just my thing. And he is an ugly motherfucker, externally and internally. You could not look at the guy, even if you didn't know who he was, and tell me he is good-looking - there's just nothing sexy about Looking Like Cesare and a clown all at once.
Yet, despite all this, the Joker has his fangirls and shippers, and I blame that on his charmingness and his silver tongue. The Joker could probably literally talk your pants off just as easily as he could convince you to kill yourself over a phonecall to order some pizza. Just like a real life serial killer in hiding, that charisma and almost-likeability draws people in - he's just that good at twisting words and manipulating people. I do understand the appeal in watching him try and fail/succeed at getting people to do what he wants, particularly in a relationship sense, but the problem with the Joker in these fics happens when people forget that he is a psychopathic killer that does not feel emotions for anyone other than himself. He does NOT share equally in a relationship, he does NOT care what you want or need, and he does NOT treat others with respect. One needs only to look at how he treats Harley in the comics to get an idea of what the Joker's idea of a relationship is, and that idea NEEDS to be at the forefront when authors write sex or romance fics with the Joker in them. You can theorize all you want about his sexual prowess, you can write fluff fics where he is out of character, you can soften him a bit and have there be this one psychopath of a woman (or man depending how you like your Joker) that just gets to him and makes him obsessively chase said person because he just doesn't understand what the words "loving relationship" mean, but you can't have him be some lovey-dovey soft-serve ice cream cone, because that is not what the character is. That is what Harley is, at least in part and at least around her Mista J, but that's a discussion I've already covered. And you definitely would not want to go into more detail about his anatomy, because nobody wants to see that for the same reason that nobody wants to see your (wo)manhood out in the open. It's not necessary and a lot of people would find it downright gross. Would the Joker flash someone for teh LULZ? Maybe, because the Joker will do anything as long as it's funny enough. But that doesn't mean I or any other readers necessarily wanna see it.
One of the biggest problems I see happens to be with people who slash-ship Joker/Bat. I myself ship a very one-sided version of this since it's canon. The Joker definitely does hit on Batman; whether he truly means it, is just doing it to psych Batman out, or does it because he is obsessed with the man is completely up to you to decide. But I as a reader often avoid Joker/Bat slashfics because they go into WAY too much detail, again because many authors confuse romance with sex. I have nothing against slashfic in any way and I have nothing against people who slash-ship (that'd be awful hypocritical of me since I'm a huge fan of the Foe Yay between Bats and J, wouldn't it?). I also have no problem with sex fics where the Joker is dominant as long as he's in character and the story makes sense. What I don't want is to walk into a fic expecting Foe Yay style flirting from Joker towards Bats, or expecting the Joker to end up trying to actually get to Batman sexually, and then end up with graphically detailed sex. That to me is not sexy, that is too much information and not even canon to begin with. For one, as I've said before, rape is not the Joker's style; for another, Batman would NEVER let his archnemesis get that far. For yet another, even if you believe it's sincere, the Joker's flirting is designed to be creepy, not sexy from Batman's point of view even if he were gay - think of your girlfriend or boyfriend calling you "darling", and then think of a big, burly guy standing with you in the prison shower calling you "darling". Its's not quite the same, is it? And while my desire not to see actual sex occurring between Batman and the Joker is more a personal preference, I think we can all agree that nobody really finds it terribly sexy to read about the intimate details of either party's little troopers beyond how large they are. Sometimes this detail gets so out of hand that you begin to wonder if you're being trolled, and sometimes it's really better to assume that you are indeed the victim of a prank.
There was this one humor fic I read once where Batman discovers that someone is writing terribly graphic sex fanfics about the Joker basically banging everybody in Gotham City with an alter ego and sending them to various rogues and Batman himself (It turns out to be a prank that the Joker himself is pulling on everyone). That fic has a scene in it where Oracle and Robin are trying to get to the bottom of where the fics are coming from, and both are disturbed to find a Joker/Bat fic involving the words "turgid ivory manhood" to describe the former's member. Both Oracle and Robin then react with extreme disgust because TMI. And that scene always plays out in my head every time I come across (I swear that no pun was intended there) a fic where sex and the organs involved is described very graphically, whether it be in the Batman fandom or any other fandom. It's like automatic brain bleach and it helps me every single time, because I just laugh so damn hard when I imagine that discussion. I highly recommend that if you're like me and just don't want to read the graphic details of a fic, you look up this fic and read it, because it will seriously save your brain from thinking too much about the squick.
Bottom line is, if you're going to write a romance fic, you need to be careful HOW you write it. Relationships and sex in fanfic is a delicate subject that needs to be handled well, and needs to be handled with care. If written wrong you've turned off your whole audience, and if written too raunchily, you're only going to attract people who want to read porn. Romance fics take skill and practice - and that is why they are not the best fics for the new fanfic author to write. If you're a young author bent on writing romance, I suggest you look at the way professional authors write romance and take cues from them. Blindly writing without understanding how a certain type of fic works is akin to writing a Creepypasta and then ending it with "And then a skeleton popped out LOL The End". It's not scary, and it can in no way be construed as a good Creepypasta. In the same way, you must understand the nature of your genre, or else you are doomed to fail.