User blog comment:KillaHawke1/Fan Fiction: Cancerous plague of unoriginality or great companion?/@comment-4715955-20160512233619

Regardless of which type of fanfic you write, my advice is the same: only use it for writing practice. Don't use it for a serious project.

I say don't, because you CAN'T really. It's a derivative work, and derivative works belong to the original rights holders, regardless of who wrote the fanfic or how much original content it contains. That's a lot of work to be doing for somebody else for free. Why not invest that time and effort in original work with your own name stamped on it?

Seriously, look at all the amazingly well-drawn fan-comics on the 'net. It's a shame that they're derivative works and not original ones that the authors can capitalize on and adapt into other mediums. Maybe they just don't have the creativity to make their own worlds. I dunno.

And then there's Fifty Shades, which was a Twilight fanfic, and with a few name changes became the shittiest success story ever. Don't get me started on that lazy piece of shit author.

That said, I DID write a lot of fanfics early one, and I eventually came to these realizations and quit...more or less. I had a great enough love for Doom to write some stories for it, if only to keep myself from falling out of practice.