So.

There’s a lot of good fanfiction and a lot of good fanfiction writers. Fanfic can help writers develop, practice, and refine vital fiction skills. Many good writers start writing fanfic.

On the other hand...

... I believe "fanfic is good/fanfic is bad" discourse is reductive and the whole conversation needs to start from one key argument:

Fanfiction is a net-neutral phenomenon that can have a positive, negative, and neutral impact depending on its context

Why do I feel this way?

1) Fanfic has provided many queer writers and readers an opportunity to explore myriad emotions, needs, desires, and experiences that are inaccessible to them in other ways. "Queer writing is out there" is true, but it's not always *accessible*

If you grew up in the '80s & '90s with zero access to queer literature + zero help finding it online, then you know exactly what I mean.

But on the other hand, fanfic doesn't always serve as a gateway to queer fiction outside of fanfic. This is a BIG problem for queer writers

So many queer authors write original queer fiction -- some of which honed off of fanfiction experience -- that isn't read because it's original fiction. Which goes to point #2

2) Fanfiction often reinforces & promotes corporate entertainment's ecosystem

If you're writing fanfiction about a Disney or Nintendo IP, for example, you're ultimately creating art that reinforces fan interest in the IP. This may not be officially endorsed by the corporate IP holder, but it does reinforce the necessity + value of corporate entertainment

We cannot ignore the fact that corporate entertainment has a vested interest in suffocating non/anti-corporate art, just as Amazon has an interest in killing off small businesses. Disney benefits from a fan *identity* around The Avengers

Meanwhile, corporate entertainment is increasingly a monopoly that starves interest in subversive art, such as small queer filmmakers and fiction writers. Additionally, it is largely aligned with imperial powers' goals (just look at Hollywood and the DoD)

That's not to blame the fanfiction writer, but rather: we should consider how marketers in corporate entertainment purposefully use hype, convention PR events, and fandom sculpting to create a mindset that encourages fanfic reading/writing over non-IP engagement

3) There is a lot of good fanfiction and a lot of great fanfic writers, but we need to be honest: there absolutely *is* a lot of bad fanfiction and fanfic writers. Like any genre or medium, it's there. And like any genre or medium, it can also teach incorrect form and approach

This is why it's important to read a wide variety of writers and a wide variety of genres across a wide variety of mediums. I remain unconvinced that you can learn how to write from solely reading fanfic, just as you cannot learn how to write from solely reading Stephen King

4) A lot of the hate around fanfiction stems from young women, GNC folks, and trans people writing fanfiction. Have you ever noticed that when 20-something cis white men write fanfiction, it gets sold as an "official D&D book" or the "official novel adaptation" or etc?

5) Conversely, when women, queers, and trans folks criticize fanfiction as a medium, they're far more likely to get hate on this website for it. Despite the fact that, per #2, we often struggle *the most* to have our original work read

6) Just as fanfic can be queer-friendly, there are plenty of fanfics that encourage cisnormative and heteronormative views of society and culture. This is more of a problem in some fandoms than others, but I don't think it's unique to fanfic any more than fiction as a whole

So in conclusion, fanfic can:

help writers grow, expose them to new identities and experiences, and give them a space to experiment and express themselves

Fanfic can also:

reinforce corporate entertainment, stifle writers' growth, and reinforce cishet norms

The devil is in the details. Fanfic does good things in some contexts, it does not-so-good things in other contexts.

I remain highly skeptical of strong antagonism toward it, but I also encourage people to seriously critique its role in modern corporate entertainment

There's also an interesting and necessary conversation to have here about fanfic for non-corporate art. On the one hand, we see this a lot in the indie games world with breakout titles like Undertale. These games have huge fandoms & tons of fanfic

But on average, small, independent, marginalized creators' art is far less likely to receive fanfiction than major corporate projects. I'd consider myself a pretty successful indie erotica writer, and I don't think I've seen a single fanfic of my games yet