My whole life I’ve had absolutely no desire to create my own characters, much as some of my friends would go on and on about their “charries” they’d invented for some roleplay or another, or whatever “manga” they were writing. NaNoWriMo is a notable exception in my history of writing, but then again, I have never successfully hit the 50,000 word goal. Usually I average around 5,000, if even that. I don’t feel particularly guilty about leaving those not-novels unfinished, either; I have little attachment to the characters I’ve created.

It’s far more difficult to use someone else’s playground to write in. When you create your own world, you are its deity — you have ultimate control over the universe, its dynamics, the characters’ histories, what does and does not break the laws of physics/magic/etc., down to the tiniest details. If you screw something up, nobody holds it against you, either, because you can go back and rework it or explain it away with any old excuse.

If you’re writing in an established universe, you risk intense scorn and vicious mockery if you do anything to disgrace the canon of the source material. The characters, since they are so well known to everyone seeking out the story, have to be very much in-character, or it breaks the fourth wall and your writing get labelled “OOC.” You have to have extensive knowledge of the past events in the source material, especially if you deviate away from the main plot too much in an “alternate universe” sequence of events. If it’s not kept believable, you’re held accountable for it.

There will always be shitty fanfic authors who pair themselves up with their favorite characters, just as there will always be shitty romance novel writers who churn out the same cookie-cutter crap once a month. To write off an entire genre of masterfully told fiction as “creatively lazy” simply because the authors chose to harness an existing universe instead of making up Yet Another Sci-Fi or Fantasy Scenario is harsh and uncalled for.

Has there never been a series you wish hadn’t ended? Has there never been a scene you wish had played out different? Have you never found yourself craving more adventures or misadventures from your favorite set of characters? I find it difficult to believe you can’t relate to the motivation that drives the majority of fandom — a deep fondness for certain fictional characters. I’m not talking about nutcases who think they’ve married Sephiroth on the astral plane, either, but rather avid readers/gamers/what-have-you who have run out of official material to enjoy and desperately wish for another installment, and have to either take it into their own hands or seek it from others. Most series don’t have tons of spinoff novels and comic books to supplement the original, ala Star Wars or various superhero stories, and the more obscure the game or book, the more impossible it is to ever hope for something new from the creator(s).

To be able to sink into those worlds again, whether for a short, 300-word vignette or an engaging, 100,000-word epic, is a priceless feeling for those who’d give anything to experience the magic of a given story for the first time again. It’s not at all done out of laziness, but love for the source material.

Also, Fanfiction.net DOES run ads, for what it’s worth, and they’ve the bane of authors’ existence for a long time now. The AdBlocker works only occasionally, and paid accounts aren’t available anymore. LiveJournal has long since surpassed FFN as the place to operate.