Giftwrapped

If you look at digimon romance fics for long enough, soon enough you'll come to a fic that has a whole lot of different couples at once.  It isn't such a bad thing to like a lot of couples (I'm an anyshipper, y'know) but I don't know that it's really neccessary to throw them all into the one fic together.  At the end of the day, it can sometimes result in a pretty crappy fanfic.

For one thing, as I mentioned in the anti-fluff rant, even a romance needs a plot.  It might seem easy enough to create a plot when dealing with a lot of couples - in an action/adventure or a thriller you can involve the whole team with no trouble at all.  Give them all their own missions or split them up into several convenient groups and hey presto!  Inevitable romance.  But the couples, which may indeed have been the purpose of the fic, tend to fall into the background when you start writing like this.

Let's say you want to write a fic with Daiyako, Kenkari and... ooh... Taito.  We've got three great couples, but if you want to involve them all you need a common situation.  For romances, situations are often best if they're exciting and dangerous, so the most obvious thing for a digimon fic should be to send them all on a new mission in the digital world.
Of course, if you're going to do that, you can't just use six digidestined, especially a mismatched bunch like this, so you'll have to involve the others as well.  This means giving those characters a bit of story time and maybe even a few more romances, which will take time away from the ones you originally wanted to use.
And naturally, if there's a new adventure you'll need a new villain.  You'll have to develop him/her and his/her evil plot, as well as planning his/her demise.  Hey, action/adventure fics are a lot of work!

The result of all this extra work is that so much is going on that sometimes the couples become nothing more than an added bonus.  Or, if they do take the forefront, it seems awfully inappropriate.  There are only so many "Let's have one last kiss before we die" scenes I can handle at once.

The other thing that sometimes happens is that with a lot of couples hanging around, all their stories begin to sound the same.  Oh, of course they have different names and different genders and different personalities too, but I find that the nature of the relationships themselves can tend to be very similar.  They have the same sort of status, same motives, same level of sweetness (or lack thereof).  This comes from trying to give all the couples equal importance within the fic.  Which brings me to another point: how to make multi-couples work.

Most of the time I'd rather read a great Sorato, a great Jyoumi and a great Daiken than all three of them in one fic, although the former option may be more time consuming.  But I think the best way to use several pairings at once is to make one couple the focus of the story and use successive couples to back up and develop the plot.
For example: Couple A has split up, with character 1 leaving character 2.  1 goes to stay with couple B until he finds his feet, while 2 seeks comfort from his two friends, couple C.
Now, perhaps it's just me, but doesn't that sound more interesting than couples A, B and C all being totally happy and getting together at the exact same time?

But do you know what my biggest problem with multi-couples is?  Do you really?  *leans in close* In a lot of fics, Mira is thrown in with Taito and Jyoushiro, just for the sake of getting 'those girls' out of the way.  I'm sick of it!  I am sick to death of female characters being treated as nothing but obstacles to yaoi!  What makes it worse is that I quite like Mira, but it's nearly impossible to find any fiction that focuses on it rather than chucking it in the blender with a bit of yaoi.

So, perhaps you've written a great fic with multiple romances.  It could be Taito/Mira/Jyoushiro, Taiora/Mimato/Takari or something even more exotic.  But before you embark on another one, could you at least give a thought to what I've said?  If you look more specifically at one couple it will give your story a lot more depth, without cutting out the others.  Watch your setting and make sure it doesn't sound repetitive.  And let me know.  I'll be very interested to read it.