"It is better to ask forgiveness than permission", II

Several months ago I posted here a comment I never got to write in the comments on fanfiction under a Websnark post. It occurs to me that there's a comment I did make in that discussion which also ought to be preserved here.

The element of writing fanfiction that is least understood by the Why don't you just create your own characters? school of detractors is that it's the loved characters which provide the inspiration.

Melville was inspired by whaling. Graves was inspired by history. White was inspired by Le Morte d'Arthur. Eric [Websnark, demiurgent] is inspired by mythology, superheroes and science fiction. I am inspired by the Doctor, Captain Kirk, and Buffy Summers.

When I started Arthur, King of Time and Space (which may or may not constitute creating my own characters when Arthur commands a starship and Merlin has a time machine), I had already been uploading daily Doctor Who crossover cartoons to the web for five years. And I haven't stopped them since AKOTAS - for daily updates from me you have to go to AKOTAS, but much of my most (and least) inspired humor and pathos can't be migrated there because it's just too character-specific.

What do you write about? You couldn't, and wouldn't, stop - or switch to a different subject or genre - just because your family and friends didn't understand, could you? Perhaps you've even tried, and found it wouldn't work? That's because this is something you're passionate about, isn't it?