Title: Legend
Author: Polyphoenix
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Status: WIP
Fandom: Batman Nolan Trilogy
Pairings: Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle
Summary: Months after Harvey Dent's death, with a mob war raging in the void left by Maroni's killing and the GCPD after him, can Batman continue to save Gotham? When new threats begin appearing and a familiar face returns can even Batman stem the darkness?
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7105611/1/Legend

Deep-immersion Batman story.

The main thing that jumped out at me was that this is one of the rare writers where nearly every sentence is polished. It's just high-quality writing the whole way through. You glance at the summary, even at the cool and classy penname, and you can intuitively tell that it's a great story with no apprehension, no skepticism.

The story is that cool. Bruce refurnishing the cave hideout in the introductory chapter alone is a badass reading experience.

I haven't read the whole thing yet (it's 250k words and running), but what's there is really, really great. It takes place after Dark Knight, so it could be considered an alternative sequel to Dark Knight Rises. This guy stands alone; no competition from the Batman fandom comes even close.

5/5

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I love this. The writing isn't ostentatious or flashy, the quality holds up twenty chapters in, instead of the writer spending most of his inspiration in the beginning. The balancing act is just admirable. The technical side of things is beautiful, the writer gets the Nolan-verse and masters Gotham City as the setting, and occupies the minds of his characters quite sharply.

Just look at this author's note from later in the story:

I didn't even notice the lack of the naming convention; it was that completely internalized into Bruce's personality and perspective. The author says something, and he's correct 100% of the time, and most importantly, it translates into story quality.

I've been playing this out in my mind's eye as a film, and it's epic. All the characters like Bruce, Alfred, and Lucius speak with the voices from the films. With a working imagination, I would even say it's possible to be able to invest, and possible get even more return of investment, from reading this story than watching TDKR.

 

...and you've sold me on it. Reading now. Will edit with review.

 

I should make clear that it's more of a long, long movie. The scope is more of the life after Dark Knight, instead of the escalating event structure of TDKR. I don't want to say slice-of-life, but there is some of that, and it necessarily slows plot momentum. It's quite cool - the author keeps track of his long-running threads well, like the Harvey Dent Memorial Hospital being worked on in chapter one, and eventually being completed later down the line, and relationships develop better than they would in a two-hour movie equivalent.

I don't fault the story for it, but I think I'll drop some feedback on how the author can up the tension more. I kind of automatically expect plot threads to converge into an overarching plot and a climax; I'll keep an eye out for that.

This also makes me want to convert my HP crossover plot bunny to a pure Batman story, with the escalating-event structure instead of the more long-game approach Polyphoenix is taking.

More description to flesh out the review:

It's Bruce's and a few main characters' lives, with perspective jumping to other characters, like mob mooks and district attorneys and such. Some of them are red herrings though, the author just uses a Gotham citizen perspective to get a chapter's beginning of the ground. It took me a while to work past that hangup, since I'm so used to just sticking with a single narrator character. But those orbiting perspectives are just that; orbiting around the central ones of Bruce and Selina.

 

Whoa, this was excellent!

It's currently 4am and I was meant to go to bed early tonight. There's a lot of content, but it never feels too drawn out or boring. That's hard to pull off for something this long - especially when most of it is build up. There's so much stuff happening concurrently. Not just simultaneously fighting multiple supervillains, but also the ongoing romance with Selina/Bruce.

The romance aspects were actually one of the highlights of this fic. Selina's interactions with Bruce felt a bit cheesy at times, but Catwoman's interactions with Batman were very entertaining. And it wasn't rushed either - for most of it, remained a background thing.

The only potential issue I can possibly criticise is that with so many things happening at once, some of the tension gets killed with all the juggling around. There was an excellent buildup before shit really started to hit the fan, but ever since then it feels like the tension has actually gone down a bit.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the author wraps it all up.

Either way, easy 5/5 from me. Haven't been this hooked on a fic for a long while.

 

When a writer crosses a certain threshold of skill, my positive-bias-influenced subconscious edits out petty grammar mistakes, so I literally do not see them.

 

That's precisely why I don't engage in hypotheticals. It's easy to make a statement that writers with a great track records here would dominate this other fandom, but the chance of that writer actually making that transition is slim.

They probably could... but would they, even assuming they had interest in doing so?

The writing itself is a huge part of a story, but I also acknowledged the other, equally huge elements: mastery of the setting, imagination. These are very Batman-specific, whereas most DLP writers have specialized on the HP universe and have gotten very, very comfortable in it. The Wizarding World and Hogwarts are specific, and all of that creative freedom DLP writers have developed in that sandbox probably won't be there with Gotham City.

Write in one specific genre long enough and it'll naturally get harder to wire your brain for something different. Just that first chapter alone, I realized that I just wouldn't have been able to imagine the cave in that detail. The mob and police power games are tough too - the crime element isn't really in most HP stories.

This story is the jewel of Batman stories, and I actually don't think a DLP author is likely to outdo it. Writing quality is highly, surprisingly dependent on the author's confidence and comfort with the genre, which is why we see so many authors sticking with their fandom of choice, or two closely-related ones like HP and Dresden or HP and Naruto, or if they write for a lot of them, only the stories for a few fandoms are good while the rest are bad. It's a fanfic-specific version of published genre writers, same principle.

Come to think of it, some guys who aren't writing so well in HP should consider Batman, just to see if there's a natural chemistry there.

 

To be honest, if you really think about it, the story isn't particularly that imaginative or anything. It basically novelizes Nolan's Batman, and then tries to meld in the comic book story in there as well.

If there was a parallel in HP fanfiction, it'd be back when we were eagerly awaiting OotP and there was a million attempts on trying to write the fifth book in exactly the same style JK Rowling would have.

But the thing is, for me this is my second Batman fic I've ever read that didn't suck. I'm sure if the fandom became a lot bigger, this would be "yet another one of those fics". At this stage though, it *does* continue the Nolan universe in the same vein as the movies and it does a good job of it.

No doubt that there are way better stories on DLP. But then, there's also stories that I think are a lot worse getting 5/5 in the library too.

 

Just had the great pleasure of reading this thing the whole way through. Fuck the minor grammar mistakes here and there; fuck the "lack of originality". This story is fantastic. Is the fandom weak? Undoubtedly, but that doesn't take away from what is a story with good plot, good characters, and good writing. The action is believable and well written, and the character interactions stay true to the Nolan-verse, despite the now AU status of it.

Easily a 4/5 from me, going up steadily.

 

Legend by Polyphoenix - T - Batman Begins/The Dark Knight

Title: Legend
Author: Polyphoenix
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Status: WIP; 357,798 Words
Fandom: Batman Begins/The Dark Knight
Pairings: Batman/Catwoman, Bruce/Selina
Summary: Months after Harvey Dent's death, with a mob war raging in the void left by Maroni's killing and the GCPD after him, can Batman continue to save Gotham? When new threats begin appearing and a familiar face returns can even Batman stem the darkness?
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7105611/1/Legend

Picking up soon after the end of The Dark Knight, Legend continues the tale of Batman in Nolan's world. Many traditional Batman villains make appearances in the author's re-imagineing of them as they would be in the Nolanverse. In addition, Batman has to deal with multiple Mob families as well as an angry police force while continuing to live as Bruce Wayne and hide his true identity.

I started this months ago, but sadly lost the link halfway through and couldn't find it again. Just found it again this weekend and read through in pretty much all my spare time since then. Particularly enjoyable is a complicated mob plot, continued clashes with the police in enjoyable action scenes, and a well done catwoman. Legend is truly the top of its fandom in my opinion and eclipses The Dark Knight Rises in the continuation of the Nolan Trilogy.

5/5; read and enjoy.

 

I think I saw this recommended here already.

It's a good story. A better continuation than TDKR, certainly. I was a tad disappointed when a review reply said that the author will be fairly conservative with the Bat-lore and character's they'll bring in, at least with this story, but I'm not overly concerned. I'd probably give it a 4/5.

 

Huh, you sure it was this story? I did a search of the other fandoms section and the almost recommended submission archive and didn't see it. Only other 'Legend' was a BtVS story in almost recommended.

Anyway, villains that appear are The Riddler, The Joker, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Black Mask, and Catwoman.

Killer Croc and Zsasz have short cameos and a joke is made about Manbat and Solomon Grundy although they obviously don't appear since magic and crazy lab experiments don't exist in the Nolanverse. The villains are all different than the comics since they follow this rule also which I think the conservative comment was about.

Rupert Thorne and various mob bosses also make appearances.

 

Legend Review Thread

Though it's in the Anime/Cartoon/Comic section instead of the TV/Film section.

 

My bad, must have glanced right over after searching. PM'ed a mod asking to delete thread.

 

Rather than searching by name, it's often better to search by story id#. Legend is 7105611 on fanfiction.net.

Anyone on DLP who recommends Legend will most likely link to it on ff.net. The link will include the story ID [eg. [noparse]http://www.fanfiction.net/s/[/noparse]7105611[noparse]/1/Legend[/noparse]]. DLP's search function will find that story ID even if the URL is not visible to the reader.

So, searching for 7105611 will uncover every post that links to Legend on ff.net.

 

I merged the threads.

 

Certainly interesting, somewhat original, and decently written.

It's not nearly as polished, technically, as Andro said, however.
Also, the author has the annoying tendency to keep some of the worst characteristics of Nolan-verse Batman, but thankfully half-merges him with canon Batman to make him competent.
Some of the characers and their first appearance worked wonderfully. Others ... not so much.

All in, while not nearly deserving a 5/5, certainly good enough for the Library and a 3.5/5.

Edit: having read some more, I decided that rounding down to 3/5 is more appropriate.