You act like there's a trivial difference between the amount of work that goes into creating original content vs. fanfiction. This is like saying building a house is just as hard as repainting it.
The vast majority of world-building has already been done by the authors when it comes to fanfiction. Depending on the work, pre-existing characters are often used. I'm not saying that it takes no effort but it is so much easier to write fiction when you already have a concrete, pre-existing story to build upon.
Most of my research is based upon ecology and biology. Either way, I'm not just taking a world someone else has created, adding a few things, and attempting to establish it as my own "canon". Doing so would be incredibly disrespectful to the original content creators.
I find it comparable to people who look at a piece of art and say "oh, i could do this better". Yeah, but you didn't. If someone hadn't gone through the effort of creating this finished composition in the first place, the idea would have never crossed your mind.
Bad analogy. Rebuilding a house requires fundamentally different kinds of work than painting. Like, you don't need hammer and nails and boards and concrete...totally different kinds of work. Fanfic writing requires all the same kind of work that writing does. They still need to character develop, to world build, to plot...if fanfiction was the same as just painting a house vs building a house, fanfiction would only consist of one element of writing. For example, a fanfiction that just has Aang develop. But you can't develop Aang without developing a plot. For his character to develop, things need to happen. And since the plot relates to the world as a whole as does Aang's character as the avatar, you also need to world build. You can't focus on one element in writing to the complete exclusion of others. To this end, it's more designing an entire house from scratch vs designing an addtional room to a house. You're still doing the same thing, but there is already some basis.
I can assure you, I'm not thinking any less for original content writers because of this. I acknowledge it is harder to work with new content wholesale vs working with established characters, plot and worlds. However, counting to 10,000,000 may be monumentally more difficult than counting to 100, but it's still counting. You are still doing fundamentally the same task, just on a greater scale.
I don't know what your story is or how ecology/biology relates to it, but if you are planning to use any of the information that you researched, then you are using an established idea to create something new by connecting it to other ideas. Functionally, this is identical to someone researching Korra and doing something different with her. Both are instances of using old idea in a different context.
Unless you can point out some fundamental, catergorical distinction between writing derivative content vs writing 'original' content (which itself is derivative of ideas you encounter throughout your life), I can't agree with you.
Edit: Also, thought experiment. By your definition of derivative work, wouldn't sequels be on par with fanfiction? After all, once the original work is completed, it has set the established characters and setting and plot and tone, etc. However, what if 2 writers chose to do a sequel. One is the original writers, the other is a fanfic writers.
Suppose the original writer never intended the sequel. He established his world, did everything, and was done with it until he changed his mind. So now, according to you, the original piece was a piece of content is fundamentally different from works that derive from it because it is a lot more work in establishing a world than building off an established one.
However, a sequel is a different story. Now, the sequel is deriving from the original. And so is the fanfic sequel the other writer is writing. So who is putting in more work now? Since they are both creating another work from a different work.
By your reasoning, a sequel should be equally difficult for both the original and fanfic writer, since they are now working off an established franchise. Which means, your indignation of fanfic writers taking something as 'canon' should only apply to people who compare their work to genuinely new content. Something like Legend of Korra, a sequel to Avatar, would not apply for that rationale.
Edit 2: What about people who write on real life events and people, and create a dramatic replication of the events that occurred? They study the people and event involved and make a narrative from it, like schindler's list. Do they also not work as hard because they derive their plot, characters, and setting from something already established?
