I think that’s probably true—but not for the reasons you seem to be implying, and not with any particular implications for authors’ romantic success. Fanfic seems to be a highly generational phenomenon; there have been shared universes and exchanges of what we now call fanfic going back arguably to the Twenties (the weird fiction genre was highly incestuous), but the form only really took off with the arrival of the Internet. So its authorship’s going to be heavily skewed towards younger writers, who are almost by definition less competent and experienced.
However, literally every fanfic writer that I’ve ever met—which is nowhere near an unbiased sample and skews somewhat older than the average, but still—has work in at least one original universe as well. I suspect you’d be hard-pressed to find many genre fiction fans with writing skills that don’t. So I doubt you can use that feature of the form to prove much about its authors.
Granted, most of the popular stuff is good(or occasionally legendarily bad). Popular opinion is a gatekeeper too. I suppose it depends on whether you sum over stories or over readers.
I think that’s probably true—but not for the reasons you seem to be implying, and not with any particular implications for authors’ romantic success. Fanfic seems to be a highly generational phenomenon; there have been shared universes and exchanges of what we now call fanfic going back arguably to the Twenties (the weird fiction genre was highly incestuous), but the form only really took off with the arrival of the Internet. So its authorship’s going to be heavily skewed towards younger writers, who are almost by definition less competent and experienced.
However, literally every fanfic writer that I’ve ever met—which is nowhere near an unbiased sample and skews somewhat older than the average, but still—has work in at least one original universe as well. I suspect you’d be hard-pressed to find many genre fiction fans with writing skills that don’t. So I doubt you can use that feature of the form to prove much about its authors.
Granted, most of the popular stuff is good(or occasionally legendarily bad). Popular opinion is a gatekeeper too. I suppose it depends on whether you sum over stories or over readers.