#there's so many talented creators in this fandom who have read wayyy more comics than me

[evilwickedme]

Tbf I don’t think a single character is treated well by the fandom lol. Nuance dies in the Batman fandom 😂

This is so real!!!! It's actually a bit of a nightmare to have read literally any comics and also look for good fic, it's why it takes me so long to get to some of these fic requests. But I've been in fandom a very long time (well, for the average Tumblr user; I first read fic in 2008 or so), and I've seen a lot of characters get treated this way. I saw this problem in HP and in SPN and in BTVS and marvel where certain characters got flattened or completely mischaracterized by the fandom at large. The problem with batfam is that due to a combination of factors this happened to literally all of the characters. An average batfam fic has nothing to do with the actual DC comics characters and it's fucking bizarre, actually.

WFA I think made it worse somehow. For me, WFA was a gateway into the comics; I read it, got a good grasp on the basic players, read some fic, and then dove into whatever comics I could get my hands on. But for other people it seems as though the only material that exists is WFA and fanfic. A lot of really prominent writers literally just plain admit to not having read a comic. Now, some of those have read enough fic by competent authors that their characterization is still on point; others, tho, are uh... Very involved in the fanon.

Basically, it's not weird that some characters are completely flanderized or flattened by fandom. It's just bizarre that this happened to every single batfam character. Like:

Bruce is either a good guy trying his best or literally evil

Dick is a good older brother with a kind heart and a thick ass and that's it. Sometimes the writers have vaguely heard about Nightwing 93 but only sometimes

Jason has pit madness and is nigh on abusive to Tim or is babygirl who loves Jane Austen, no in between

Tim is woobified and is defined entirely by being a genius who drinks too much coffee

Steph is waffles girl

Damian is the literal devil and antagonistic towards everyone except Bruce and Dick and also nobody in any fandom can write children, fyi, y'all need to stick to writing teenagers and up bc y'all either extremely underestimate or overestimate what children can do

Cass is a sweetheart and everyone's favorite and that's literally it

Babs is a super genius but not as smart as Tim of course. The one and only good thing about fanon is that she's nearly always Oracle

Duke is not there

Kate is not there

Harper is definitely not there (although tbf she's in even less comics than Duke and I don't own any of her appearances)

And yeah this is the mess that the fandom has created. It does honestly get exhausting sometimes