What better excuse to do something like this then because they find it fun? Personally I have always enjoyed the experience of writing fan fiction.
There's a list of authors/works on Fanfiction.net that have each person who does not want their stories used in fanfiction. The list is very, very small. I don't see any problem in writing fanfiction. If I may ask, colorthemap, what fandom are you looking to write for? Fandoms such as Harry Potter are notorious for their fanfiction. Harry Potter Fan Fiction gets over 30 millions hits a month and it hosts almost 70,000 HPFF stories.
Nothing wrong about writing for the fun of it. I just think that a great deal of writing comes through the craft of original characters, with their own motives and their own world to inhabit. Through fan fiction, you're borrowing off of the hard work of other authors, and if they feel strongly about not wanting fan fiction for their work, I think they deserve the respect of that. Of course, this is all my opinion and doesn't mean it's right.
Oh thanks for the link and I'm not writing it I simply wish to read some of it, yet have a bloody extreme conscience
Being true to the settings and characters of other writers is a useful skill if you're going to write popular entertainment like comic books or episodes of tv series.
