Fanfic is not a lesser form of writing. Fanfic is a genre. And like any genre, people are not necessarily going to get what makes it tick unless they learn the conventions and presuppositions of that genre.
At some point, I am going to try to come up with a pseudo-scholarly explanation of those conventions and presuppositions. I’d say that probably the defining feature of fanfic is that the reader is expected to come in with prior knowledge of characters and (if not marked AU) the quirks and conventions of the source medium, so that some things can be taken as read before the story even begins.
Like any genre, this means that fanfic can do things that no other genre can do. Me, my particular crack is to really lean into the dramatic irony. There’s also a heavy overlap with romance, in which the conclusion of a particular story is already known and in fact inherent in the label (Kirk/Spock slow-burn, for instance) but the adventure is in the getting there.
However, like any genre, people who are not familiar with the conventions (or uninterested in what it has to offer) are likely to be thrown off, and from there often conclude that what they’re reading is no good, rather than realizing that they’re using the wrong toolset.
For an example in another genre, say that I’m accustomed to contemporary stories and I read a science fiction story that opens by saying, “Rashid was missing his sceptrim. He rolled his eyes and looked under his bunk. The starship was small. It couldn’t have gone far.” Someone who only reads conventional fiction would be all like, “What the hell is a sceptrim? It’s not in the dictionary. How do you expect us to know what’s going on if you make stuff up and then don’t explain it?” An experienced reader of science fiction, meanwhile, is thinking, “A sceptrim. This will be explained as we go. Right now, we know (a) it could fit under a bunk, and (b) either it is not important enough to immediately panic about, or Rashid is not prone to panic.” Thus, the experienced reader has absorbed information that completely missed the inexperienced reader, and you could say with some accuracy that the inexperienced reader is not, in fact, absorbing the actual story. Because they don’t know the conventions. Because they may be an expert at reading romance or contemporary, but here, they don’t know how to read.
Fanfiction is like that. By drawing on the source material, I can make sure that the reader has information that I never state. I am writing a Doctor Who fic featuring an original character who works in a shop; she thinks, “Huh, new mannequins. I must have missed the staff meeting where they said we were getting new mannequins.” Using info from the original show, I have put up a giant sign saying DANGER IS PRESENT AND PEOPLE ARE LIKELY TO FREAKING DIE. But you have to be somewhat familiar with Doctor Who to get what I’m doing. Similarly, say I’m writing a Kirk/Spock college AU, and Kirk (my viewpoint character) goes off on a mental rant about how Spock is an uptight prick and what’s with being known only by your last name anyway? My reader knows (a) these characters have an epic bond that has been inspiring people since the sixties, and (b) I marked the story Kirk/Spock rivals-to-lovers slow-burn, so the question is not whether Kirk has correctly analyzed this character, but how he learns he is wrong and exactly how they get together in the end. People who don’t read fanfiction or romance may be annoyed to find out that everything I establish about Spock in my first chapter turns out to be completely wrong; people who are here for a rivals-to-lovers slow-burn were relishing the dramatic irony from the beginning.
That’s the thing about genres. You need to learn them. You need to accumulate the right toolset. And you’re never going to do that if you decide ahead of time that they aren’t worth learning.
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