Title: Probationary Member
Author: Adrian Tullberg
Rating: T
Genre: humor/drama
Status: complete
Fandom: DC Superheroes
Summary: Batman brings a new recruit into the JLA ... but there's something he doesn't know ...
Link: ff.net

This is a rather interesting story. Not long, only 16k and really a one-shot but it's quite engaging. I don't think it aged all that well and the league does come off as a bit...prudish or conservative (especially the wives/girlfriends) but honestly, it still holds up, 12 years later. The emotional journey that starts out light-hearted and ends on a kick to the heart is really well executed.

The development of the league members is pretty well handled, I liked the voice of Kelly, her perspective was fun and her situation was super interesting, especially what it meant to join the world of superheroes and all in all, their reactions were rather on point. They were judgemental and uncomfortable but not malicious which is still true to them as people, I think.

So yeah, fascinating story, definitely worth a read.

4/5

 

Some elements of this really didn't age well.

Spoiler

Renting porn? Lol.

It's not a bad little fic, that aside. I've read plenty of stories - canon or fanfic - that highlight the different identities cause problems - someone's job being at risk because they're off heroing, for example - but not something like this, that I can recall. It's quite interesting, and gets a few laughs out of it too. It's written decently enough, nothing special but other than persistently misspelling Rayner as Rainer, nothing to particularly criticise.

In fact, the only thing I'd especially criticise is that when the turn comes, it goes from 0-60 pretty fucking quickly. It works well enough once it's happened, but from a lightweight bit of amusing fluff to...well, that, was quite a turn, and not one I really think it earned.

All in all though, 4/5 is probably about right. It's probably not something I'm going to remember for long, but it does what it set to to, mostly well.

 

I've never encountered a DC Comics fanfic I liked. That has not changed after having read this one.

They seem to all have the exact same issue, and this fic is a particularly heinous example. The author namedrops characters but does very little with them, and then they do very little themselves. It's a combination of superhero bloat and over-reliance on reader knowledge of those characters.

A truly good fanfic should be at least legible to a fandom outsider. That's just good storytelling. It's completely absent here, and the plot was about as engaging as a Wikipedia article about toast.

2/5

 

I think that what they tried to do here is overall poorly executed. There is nothing that makes me want to read this further than the first 3k words. Like Otters said, name dropping and not utilizing the characters is pretty worthless, no matter the dynamic they're trying to setup. I really don't like DC fics a lot of time because I find the universe uninteresting -- I read them because for the most part, I have a fascination with the Lantern corps, and not much else.

For this story, I'd give it a 2/5. It could be better, but its not.