What is the difference between fan fiction novels and original web novels?

Fan fiction and original web novels both live in the same online reading spaces and share many readers, but they are fundamentally different kinds of writing that serve different purposes.

Fan fiction takes an existing property, whether a manga, anime, game, or book series, and uses its characters, world, or premise as a foundation. The writer does not need to introduce the reader to the world or explain who the characters are, because that groundwork has already been laid by the source material. A story like "Jujutsu Kaisen: Becoming the Strongest as Yuji Itadori" can dive straight into its premise because readers already know the universe, the power systems, and the personalities involved. This shared context is part of the appeal. Fan fiction allows writers to explore scenarios the original never covered, fix endings they found unsatisfying, or simply spend more time in a world they love.

Original web novels build everything from scratch. The author creates the world, the rules of magic or power, the culture, the characters, and the stakes all from nothing. This requires more setup but also gives the writer complete freedom with no existing fan expectations to navigate and no canon to respect or contradict.

The reading experience differs too. Fan fiction often feels more intimate because there is a shared language between writer and reader built on existing attachment to the source material. Original novels take longer to get into but can go places fan fiction structurally cannot, because they are not tethered to anything that already exists. Both forms produce genuinely excellent stories, and the best examples of each rival anything in traditionally published fiction.