I like the points you made here—and I also have to giggle a bit, because fanfic was absoutely a gateway drug for me back in the day. I may not have picked up a Harry Potter book if a friend hadn't sent me a link to the biggest HP fic site in the early 2000s: FictionAlley. Talk about a rabbit hole, lol... My mind was pretty blown, and I wrote a few pieces myself (that may still be somewhere on fanfiction.net?), so I've always been generally in favor of it too. Thanks for sharing!