Work Text:
We can operate under the assumption that fandom in the Batman universe operates similarly to fandom in the real world, with the key change that anything about Batman (or any other DC character) is RPF, with all of the controversy that comes with that.
All works of fiction excluding DC comics exist in their world as normal. Anything that canonically crosses over with DC (eg, Marvel) still exists, but the crossover bits either don’t or are nonfiction in-universe. So if Batman were to meet Tony Stark, he would recognize him as a fictional character and assume that he just happened to be from a universe where Marvel is real.
I’m sure this creates various large continuity errors in certain works that used DC based crossovers as actual canonical events with consequences, so assume that anything that falls into this category instead had a crossover with some other superhero based story that simply happened to go similarly and have the same results.
Generally, though, the fandom landscape in this version of the Batman universe mirrors our own, with similar content release dates, fandom sizes, and controversies to what we would recognize.
This is great news for the SI, as they are still very much a fan of several things that weren’t released until the late 2010s, like Undertale. (Which, as of chapter 21, has been released in-universe. Unfortunate that the SI is too busy to play it)
I find it interesting to imagine how each character in this story might interact with fandom, both as a whole and with the fandom surrounding their vigilante identities. I don’t feel that there’s necessarily an easy way to fit this into the main work, or at least not the arc I’m currently writing (unless I want to double it in length, augh) so I’m writing this to get it out of my system.
This is absolutely canon, though, and I’m not committing to never making fandom a major element of the main story - I’m just not doing that now. Elements from this may show up in the main fic.
This started because I was thinking about the (as yet unwritten) relationship between Steph and the SI, and considered that fandom might pop up in some of their conversations. This, of course, led me to wonder how much Steph would actually be liable to know about fandom.
For example, if the SI were to explain their situation to her using the analogy of a self insert fanfiction, would she understand what that meant? To what degree? What assumptions would she make from that?
I think about this kind of stuff a lot.
Details are like, my brand.
Anyway, without further ado, (as I’ve meandered quite a bit already) here’s how I think each character interacts with fandom.
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According to my handy-dandy timeline that I made for this fic (had to preserve my sanity somehow) Bruce is 48 in 2015. (I put his birthday in 1969 because why not)
Basically, he’s old. Practically already rotting, even.
Now, as we all know, being old doesn’t stop you from participating in fandom. In fact, it was middle-aged housewives who wanted Spock and Kirk from Star Trek to boink who are often said to have started the whole business. (The first fanzine was for Star Trek, back in 1967!)
(Though fandom as a whole actually dates back all the way to the 1890s and the original Sherlock novels by Arthur Conan Doyle, but I’m getting very off topic. You should read the wikipedia articles about fandom and fanzines though, they’re really interesting)
No, the fact that Bruce is old as balls and probably had a pet dinosaur as a child due to how old as balls he is isn’t a reason to keep him out of fandom.
The fact that he spent basically every waking moment (and most of the sleeping ones too) since the age of eight focusing on nothing but Justice™, however…
Yeah, he’s not a fandom guy. He knows what it is, but it’s not something he actively seeks out or participates in under typical circumstances.
The one exception to this, of course, is Justice League conspiracy theories. Originally just to make sure no one got too close to truths he’d rather leave unrevealed, but later because he has a deep and abiding love of trolling.
Do the butts match is canon to this universe. If you don’t know what that is, google (and know your meme) is your friend.
It’s like a way to unwind for him. He’s too weird and uptight and caught up in himself to relax in any way that’s recognizable to a normal human, so instead when he’s stressed out and needs to decompress before he explodes, he goes and reads a bunch of really stupid conspiracy theories before combining the worst aspects of all of them into something new and posting it.
He’s like the My Immortal of conspiracy theorists. Everything he says is legendarily bad to the point of self parody but he’s so committed to the bit that anyone who’s not already in on the joke struggles to tell whether he’s serious or just fucking with them.
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Dick is like. 27 in this fic? Perfectly normal age to know about and be involved in fandom stuff. He’s, like, about the right age to be the target audience of Homestuck. (if you don’t know what that is, don’t google it. You’re better off this way) (If you do know what that is, I’m sorry for your loss and also I wrote a self-insert fic about it you should check that out wink wink nudge nudge)
He has some tangential involvement with fandom as a whole because he likes memes and finds insane discourse relaxing (because the stakes are so much lower than what he usually deals with) but most of his involvement with fandom is specially stuff related to Nightwing.
He doesn’t really look for content about his civilian ID because the whole batfam gimmick is deliberately getting the dumbest possible reputation and I feel like seeing people take that as fact would amuse him but also depress him, but he has an account specifically for interacting with the Nightwing fandom on all the social media sites he regularly uses.
Unfortunately I think he would not be a tumblr or ao3 guy. He’s in an age demographic I would associate a lot more heavily with livejournal in its prime and later fanfiction.net and like. twitter and reddit. maybe facebook. does fandom stuff happen on facebook? i’ve literally never used it so i don’t know.
I think he has a folder on his computer that’s just entirely filled with fluffy Nightwing fics and cute fanart. He looks at it whenever he’s feeling depressed to remind himself that people like him. i think he reads nightwing x reader fics. he would be into that.
basically he just really likes fluffy wish fulfillment romance fics with minimal drama and angst. he uses it as a coping mechanism.
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Alfred has been writing fanfiction since before any of the other characters were born. No one knows this. It’s not like a deep dark secret or anything he’s just never brought it up and it’s not like anyone is going to ask.
It’s all like, classic slash stuff too. Man probably contributed to the original Star Trek fanzines.
Most of his stuff is either super long slow burn romance fics or extremely kinky pwp oneshots. You know the kind of authors I’m talking about.
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Cass, at the point in the timeline I’m currently at, is still extremely new to like. Language as a concept. Arc 1 is set like right after she joins the Batfam so she hasn’t much time to learn about stuff.
So she doesn’t know what fandom is yet.
But realistically the SI would absolutely try to get her into it once she’s a bit more literate under the assumption that they like fandom so obviously everyone else must too (I’m self aware, if nothing else) so she finds about it that way.
I think Cass is a pretty morally rigid character in a lot of ways? Like she has her idea of what “right” is and doesn’t have a lot of patience for things that don’t fit in with that. It’s not necessarily a huge flaw for her since that kind of attitude fits very well with her general lifestyle (if anything, vigilantes who think this way are probably better off since villains have a harder time manipulating them) but given how morals in fandom tend to be… squishy…
Yeah, might not be her thing.
(What i mean by squishy is that fandom tends to have weird moral divergences from the world. controversy over whether rpf should be considered ok, proship versus antiship discourse, the ongoing conversation about what things it’s ok to write about and by who… i don’t think cass would enjoy this kind of discourse as it’s all very wiggly and difficult to pin down as having clear wrong or right answers.)
I do think she would love tumblr though. Like she’d have a blog where she’d just post deeply surreal memes or mock things the other bats did. I think Cass would be a big fan of tumblr brand absurdist humor as long as the joke wasn’t specifically about like. murder.
which is admittedly a fairly large part of tumblr humor, but i’m sure with skillful dash cultivation she could find a niche she’d enjoy.
and she’d definitely get tumblr famous also. like she has just the right kind of brainworms for that site.
SI is the one who teaches her internet safety so she’s very anonymous.
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Damian isn’t actually in the story yet but if I keep writing it long enough he will be. Maybe in arc 3? But he was originally going to show up at the end of arc 1 so i’ve got various brainworms about him from when he was going to be in the fic that I never got to use :(
Anyway SI and Damian were really close when they were staying with the League because realistically what more trustworthy babysitter is Talia going to find even. So whenever she had errands she’d just hand off Damian to them like “hey here’s your brother see you in a month”
And SI was engaging in fandom while they were with the league (i’m saving them for last so i’ll go into detail about that later) and obviously giving damian internet access was an easy way to keep this otherwise very difficult child entertained.
so basically they taught him internet safety, set him up with a pinterest account (because it’s basically impossible to socialize on pinterest and they do not trust him not to try doxxing and threatening strangers on the internet. like he’s not gonna give away his personal information but he might send someone death threats. can you tell i really like damian he’s so completely bonkers it’s delightful) and let him loose.
through that, he mimicked my own history with the internet and immediately got into two (2) things. politics and fandom.
the politics stuff is like. rocky. si has to have a couple conversations with him about identifying dogwhistles (pinterest will absolutely radicalize you in the bad way if you aren’t careful. i got lucky in that the specific thing pinterest radicalized me against when i was 12 was trans people and i transed my gender like a year later so i just went “hey maybe that stuff was Wrong actually” and then never trusted strangers on the internet ever again) but thankfully i’m actually like. weirdly good at debating people in a way that changes their minds? idk there’s tricks to it. hard but not impossible thing to do. esp with kids.
so instead of getting radicalized in the bad way damian actually ends up a lot more moderate than canon? like he’s still completely bonkers (i would never take away his funniest personality trait) but he’s more readily suspicious of authority and willing to give other ideas a chance and he knows a lot more political theory that’s unrelated to league propaganda.
si probably gets in trouble for that actually. like they manage to spin it as “oh i’m just making sure he’s properly educated” but there is some side eye towards them from ra’s.
actually this damian might also be more circumspect about his opinions than canon bc of that.
anyway. this is about fandom. as much as brainstorming damian things is very interesting to me i will save that for when he actually shows up.
the thing that i was trying to get to before i got sidetracked is: damian’s first exposure to fanfiction is wattpad.
and he’s like 8 or something, so he loves it.
damian gets into like. all the kiddie fandoms. he participates in pjo discourse. he has opinions on harry potter. (him and the si have several long conversations about jk rowling so most of these opinions are fairly negative. si died before she went full transphobe but i actually hold the dubious honor of having disliked her before it was cool. i know i’m such a hipster. mostly because house elves are an ethical nightmare but like once you start digging even back then she did a lot of questionable shit. the goblins, for example. holy antisemitism batman. i’m getting off topic again)
damian also gets into the batman fandom. specifically, he reads a bunch of “self insert becomes robin” fics, because in a universe where batman was real i think those would be about as common as the ones where the reader gets sold to one direction.
damian writes self insert as robin fic. it’s not good.
like, he’s not even 10 yet while the SI is with the league. i remember the kind of fanfiction i wrote when i was in 6th grade (a fair bit older than him) and it was pretty bad! like, writing is a skill and little kids don’t necessarily have it yet!
Anyway, I say this in order to present you with a mental image that brings me joy: Damian very proudly showing the SI his terrible, terrible Batman fanfiction and them having to just like. read that. without laughing or otherwise breaking his little baby heart.
They’re very proud of him but they also deeply regret every decision they’ve ever made that led to this.
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Talia knows about fandom but only because she reads Damian’s fanfiction. He does not know she does this. He would be horrified if he knew his mom was reading his fanfiction.
When he’s a proper teenager who can be gently mocked without his entire self esteem violently and instantly shattering Talia will casually bring up his first fics in conversation and he will take lethal psychic damage.
—
Tim both reads and writes Batman fanfiction. Not as much after becoming Robin because he’s deeply ashamed of it but he will literally die if he goes more than a week without updating his blog.
Like, Tim is such a Batman fanboy both before and after becoming Robin that him being completely uninvolved in fan communities is just inconceivable to me. There’s no way.
He’s somewhere between 13 and 15 during arc 1, which places him in the prime age group to have gotten into tumblr and ao3 just as they were starting to take off.
He absolutely has online friends who he knows through Batman fandom events. He’s participated in Big Bangs and fic exchanges. He has a Batman focused sideblog specifically for fandom stuff.
And he is so deeply ashamed of this. It’s his deepest darkest secret. If I ever have fandom stuff be important to the main plot it’s probably just going to be the SI helping Tim grapple with the idea that he doesn’t have to hate himself for having “cringe” interests.
Like wow that kid’s repressed. Get him some therapy stat.
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I think Babs does fandom but not RPF. Like, she has a sideblog focused entirely on fuckin. Avatar: The Last Airbender or something.
Some kind of fun thing that was popular in 2015, idk.
Oh shit.
Oh shit I know what she’s into actually.
Barbara Gordon is a Homestuck.
Like, she’d love it. It’s so absurdly convoluted. She has timeline charts. She actively updates the wiki. She’s written hundreds of thousands of words of classpect analysis.
Anyway.
I think Babs mostly participates in fandom from the analysis end of things. Like she doesn’t really write fic or do fanart, but she loves theorycrafting and editing wikis and all of that stuff. She makes TV tropes pages for fun.
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Steph is also mostly into non-RPF fandoms. She does a lot of discourse, I think. She’d enjoy arguing with strangers on the internet.
She also keeps up with any Spoiler fan-content religiously.
She has a tumblr account but she also uses Twitter pretty regularly. She uses fanfiction.net for fic because she doesn’t know that much about ao3.
idk i just think she’s like. a very normal fan generally. surprisingly average about it. it’s her hobby.
—
Ok so. The big one. The Most Fandom. The person with the most complex relationship with the whole business.
Let’s talk about the SI.
Alright. So they were already a fic author when they died, right? Like I fudge their age a bit because I can never remember what age I was during what grade but I have a specific time where their death happened even if I don’t know if I have the actual numbers right.
but they died in like 2019, which is before I made my ao3 account, so while they’d written some stuff they hadn’t necessarily posted any of it.
They also hadn’t gotten into any fandoms other than Undertale yet. I’ve mentioned Undertale before a couple times in relation to them, but I don’t think i’ve explained yet why it’s important to them (and by extension me).
Undertale was my first ever fandom. Not the first thing I was ever into, or even the first thing I wrote fic about (though it was the first thing I wrote fic longer than a page about), but it was the first time I ever engaged with a work through its fandom.
I read theories, I looked at fanart, I googled a dozen variations of “best undertale fancomics”, I read hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction.
in a lot of ways, undertale is why I am the person I am. I found it at a pivotal point in my life, where I was deciding what kind of person I wanted to be, and the specific ideas and themes explored by Undertale became my guide for how to be a person.
I eventually started exploring other fandoms in similar ways, but that came later. The SI didn’t get that far.
Undertale was released on September 15th of 2015. Nearly 20 years after the SI was reincarnated.
But the story stuck with them. They have secret folders, both physical and digital, full of anachronistic Undertale content. They have carefully organized google docs detailing every detail of it that they can remember, both from the original game and from fan-content.
They burn all the fanart they draw, but they can’t bear to get rid of the fics. They write them in code and hide them but it’s a story held so close to their heart that in a lot of ways it’s become a part of it. To fully let go would be to lose something essential to themselves, and when they’re already hiding themself so much, they can’t bear to let go of it.
It’s one of the few connections they have to their old life that isn’t going to hurt anything. That isn’t dangerous to anyone.
Fandom is such a normal kind of secret to have, compared to the rest. Even being a fan of something that doesn’t exist yet feels so much less risky than anything else.
It’s their standard obsession with self-punishment that keeps them out of other fandoms. They lurk, sure, reading fics and blogs and looking at art, but they don’t let themselves create anything. They tell themself the original Jason wouldn’t have, so they can’t either.
The Undertale stuff is all they allow themselves, because the fact that it doesn’t yet exist means no one would know what it meant even if they found it.
And even then they hide it and encode it and disguise it as other things.
It’s not until they come back that they start actually posting fan-content again. At that point, they’ve already lost so much, already given up on any hope of sticking to what they remember, so they just…
Stop denying themselves access to a community.
They make a tumblr account. They post memes. They write fic for things that actually exist and they post it. They get mutuals and regular commenters and even a couple friends, for all they don’t let anyone get too close.
It’s their escape. It’s their only connection to a world where they’re just another person. Where what they do doesn’t matter. Where they can just… Be.
It may very well be the only genuinely healthy coping mechanism they have.