Fanfiction - hate/love?

Hear me out before you judge me.

Okay, so I've said it: I really dislike fanfiction.

Not the way it's written or the things people do in it, but because of the way it puts prison bars around people's work.

If you'd just replace the names, and only the names, that one-shot would have gone waaay up in my estimation. Because then I know that you're actually envisaging people, characters. But put the name 'Gerard Way' and you're imagining a type, a stereotype, or an ideal. They're no longer a person and simply a stock item. It's like... putting on a puppet show and only using the same puppet again and again, but with different items of clothing. It doesn't feel real.

And I know you're probably going to say, it's fiction, it's not meant to be real, but the beauty of fiction is when it feels real, and reveals reality which we wouldn't have found otherwise.

I just feel so empty after reading something with the name 'Gerard' or 'Ryan Ross' in it. Because that character is empty, because they don't reflect the true character which goes with that name.

Please, please, please, do justice to your writing and swap the names for something new, because it deserves something better.