I don’t read any, but I think they pretty cool. People expressing themselves with the culture they consume is the way humanity have created culture for thousands of years until copyright laws where invented.

Fanfiction isn’t a monolithic homogenous entity. Some of the most entertaining, well written stories that expand on their respective narrative universe are works of fan fiction but there are also poorly written abominations that cause psychic damage just being read.

Like anything labeled indie: mountains of garbage, with some god-tier works sitting on top. The only issue is sifting through the garbage

It’s like any other writing. Some of it can be good. A majority of it fucking sucks. And some of those things that suck become good because they suck in the right way that they become funny, like Full-Life Consequences and other internet meme fanfics.

Since there is no publishing barriers you end up with a lot of bad content that wasn’t filtered out from the platform in any way. That’s no necessarily bad, it’s just harder to find good writing, but it gives novice writers a way to just get out there and get feedback. When you find good stories it’s just a way to get more from characters and worlds you want more of. I specially like slice of life types of stories where you get to peek into the “boring” parts in between the cannon story lines. There’s also generally a lot of smutty content that you can filter out if you don’t want to see it.

It’s not for me, but what other people do with their time is their business.

I don’t think of it often, but when I do it’s like, “oh yeah, that’s neat.”

I’m glad people have the ability to put something together at home and throw it out there for the world to see.

Some of it’s really great, but I wish it wasn’t 90% shipping

Like others have said some of it can be shit but you can come across genuinely good writers as well. I don’t read it anymore but when I was younger I was really into it. There’s one story that was pretty much like the length of a book and being released by the chapter every few weeks or months or whatever and the writing and story had such an impact on me, I still think about it often.

Writers gotta start somewhere.

Sometimes it can be better than the original source. Often the fans know just what to do with a world.

Depends on the fanfiction. There’s a lot of good ones out there, but also there is way, way more low tier/low effort stuff written by grade schoolers, so sometimes it feels like you’re wading through a sea of oyster mucus to find a pearl.

Even though the work is not completely original, something that the internet has only recently starting lacking is a mass variety of creative writing. This is due to a lot of reasons, yet mainly it’s intense moderation policies and increasingly strict advertiser friendly narratives being policed. There was more creative writing online within forums during the early 2000s. Anything that grows creative writing is a win.

I support people’s rights to make it but have very little interest in reading/watching most of it.

I want more content of my favorite guys

I get more content of my favorite guys when i read fanfiction