it’s harder than regular writing for me. you have to take these established characters and get inside their heads and learn how they speak and act and think. and you have you take an established setting and know every little thing about it so you can fill in the gaps. and if you care about being canon-compliant you really really have to know the entire canon inside and out
Oh god yeah.
I had to rewatch so much Carmen Sandiego for my fanfics, even tho I diverged from canon like, immediately.
I still need to get the voices right, you know?
And make character actions believable.
i'm writing a monster prom fic and for the most recent chapter i had to play an arc of the game and take screenshots of every single line of dialogue so i could reference them for a conversation in the fic (mostly lore reference but still)
and like i still diverge from the canon characterization but in ways that still hopefully feel like natural outgrowths of the characters' personalities
also i have to know ALL the lore so that any lore i make up can have the same vibes
the vibe of the world and narrative fitting with canon is as important to me as the vibes of the characters, y'know?