Seriously.

Fanfic authors, & other fandom content creators, do the work for love of a story and/or its characters, etc. Original or not, their plots, etc. are still their own. Hours, days, weeks, months & even years go into their creations & they do it for free.

Regardless of

whether it makes money or not, fanfic has value.

In a capitalistic society it might not seem like it does, because it's not making someone else money.

But for me alone, fanfic got me through years of hard times. That, to me, is priceless. Whether it has been assigned a dollar

value or not, that doesn't mean it can't be important, celebrated, or appreciated, because either way, someone is behind that work doing it for nothing but the enjoyment, love of the source material, etc. That does not make it less.