Much as I love abridged series and mods, I sometimes feel like there are people too invested in existing franchises that could have made something substantial if they ventured their creativity out of fan works. I’m sort of one of them - I made a lot of TF2 animations back in the day, and past a point realized for all my work I had nothing I could claim to have truly been made “from scratch”.

Not to disparage parody makers, just that I understand the sentiment.