I've read so much fanfic that surpasses the original work's subtlety and writing quality that I no longer really hold source material as necessarily hierarchically superior.

God, ain't that the truth.

I'll always love fanfiction because there's a shorthand that saves me reading buckets of exposition and makes me pre-invested.

Yeah, that's something I don't think I initially appreciated about fanfic, but when I started trying to advocate for the genre to outsiders it was way up there as a reason that fanfic is unique in the way it allows authors to play with shorter forms.