I wonder, to me fanfic have more of the connotation cute rather then weird, how many people even knows what fanfiction IS?
I've wondered this, too - like if maybe I have friends who read fan fic but, like me, won't admit to it. Or if they've even heard of it at all, what they think about it. But of course, the only way to find out if my friends know about fanfiction is to pop my head out of the closet and ask, and I'm not willing to do that, so I guess I live on in ignorance.
As for the 'cute' - I've never really thought that, but a lot probably depends on what your first exposure is. I think you could easily, if you just made a random pass through a huge and unedited archive like Fanfiction.net, leave with the idea that it was all very, very
bad, unless you just lucked out and hit a good fic on your first try. Or you could hit a site with lots of adult fic and leave with the idea that it was all smut. Or you could happen upon a flame war between people who were arguing passionately about some minute detail of characterization and decide that fans were just weird.
I have difficulty imagining that that level insight would be anything but exceedingly rare.
Does it really take tremendous insight to look at a novel-length story - or collection of stories - and determine that the author spent a great deal of time on it? Or a LiveJournal that's updated daily and contains lengthy conversations with a huge f-list? Or a name on a message board with 2000 posts appended to it? You wouldn't really have to know the ins and outs of fandom to be able to tell pretty quickly with a Google search that the person you're considering hiring has a time-consuming online hobby. Again, I'm not saying this is a reason not to hire someone (still just playing devil's advocate). Other people could have equally time-consuming hobbies that might not show up on a Google search, and it shouldn't take much checking of references to determine whether or not the person you're considering hiring has a decent work ethic.
Unless they are vengeful recovering ex-fanfic writers or something.
Hee! That gave me a chuckle. I was one of those for a while (well, not vengeful, but the other part was true). I fell off the wagon and landed here.
Caroline
