Let's talk about #fanfiction.
#Writing is hard. Like super hard. You have to create a whole world inside your brain parts and then put a #story together with a beginning, middle, and end. You have to create #characters and populate your world with people who might be fantastical, but feel real. You have to create rules and logic for your world and your characters. Then you have to #write it all down in a way that makes sense, with enough but not too much #narrative description.
It's kinda a lot.
This is why we shouldn't throw shade at fanfiction writers. When you're first starting out writing, doing so within an established world is way more approachable than creating your own. And honestly, what's the harm? There's incredible worlds out there that have been created by incredibly creative minds. In my opinion, it's very worth exploring these worlds. I myself have written fanfiction for Lord of the Rings and My Hero Academia, two universes with tons of potential for stories outside their main series. Hell, My Hero even has an official manga called Vigilantes written by a different person than the main story. That's technically fanfiction. Also it's fan-tastic.
Some authors are anti-fanfiction. Their work is their work and they're offended that someone else might want to play in their mind palace. My opinion is that these authors should shut up.
As long as the fans aren't trying to monetize their work, there's no harm being done and nothing lost by the original creators. Spend your emotional capital elsewhere, please. Stop disparaging people who love your creations. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Take it as such. Unless they're trying to make cash off of it -- that's just rude.
Anyway, that's my spiel on fanfiction, and here's a fanfiction creative writing challenge that I did during my grad studies at #snhu!