Original Stories vs Fan-Fictions

Okay, so I don't have anything against either one of them, because personally, I love writing and I write whatever kinds of stories. But recently, I was caught in between a debate between a writer who was more interested in writing their own Original Stories, and a write who preferred to play in (what she called) the "Safe Zone" and wrote Fan-Fictions. They asked me what my opinion was, and because they both presented me with reasonable reasons, there were two problems for me, because they are both a friend, I didn't comment, even when they knew I wrote stories, but I felt indifferent in saying anything because:
1. I write both, and in saying something, they might think I agree with the other.
2. I agree with both of them and I didn't want arguments.
3. I had no clue what they were on about until they dragged me into it.

I would like to share my opinion in this whole thing, and I needed some way to let it all out.
So here's my take on it:

For Original Stories:
- You can make up absolutely anything without any rules (except those "ultimate" and "perfect" thingy ma bobs, they're just impossible, there's got to be downsides and tensions, seriously), and you are practically a God with your chess pieces at the tip of your fingers.
- If it's in a fictional world, hot damn, you don't need to involve so much research in your stuff. Like I said, you can make anything!!
- Anything is possible.
- I just repeated myself, but Creative Freedom feels so awesome.

Against Original Stories:
- For me, I get less motivated to finish it, because I get in the progression of the story, but end up dragging it along.

For Fan-Fictions:
- You can make a fictional character that is somewhat based on your own self and write it into a story with a person you have a major crush on but can never get.
- Characters are easy to think of.
- Setting is based on somewhere real, so it's not any trouble, especially if you're familiar with it
- Events can be Googled. For me, it's the convenience of Google.

Against Fan-Fictions:
- Have to, at the very least, make it accurate in terms of Setting, Character, and Real-Life Events -- unless it's set in an alternate world, then that's okay. But it's time consuming. (Downside for someone who doesn't live in the country that the storyline is located)
- For me, get hated on for being mean to the characters, haha - honest truth.

What I noticed:
- They're practically the same.
- Characters still end up being loosely based on you or someone you know in real life or your celeb crush or... Yeah, you get the point.
- Doesn't matter what genre, storylines still go one way.
- You still have to do some researching, since not everything is in your head.
- Google is your best friend.
- When you write a fan-fiction, just change the name of the people, the locations, their jobs and their achievements, and you've got yourself an original story.

You can agree on what I said or not, because this is merely my opinion.
Though am curious what your take might be in on all of this? (To whoever is reading this)

xox