The Function in Fanfiction

Dear Wal,

The title rhymes. Ha.
Yesterday I had a revelation...again. My Torchwood fanfic took a turn that wasn't nasty, for once. Usually my stories will turn nasty before they straighten themselves out. Not this time. This time, my fanfiction ramblings with Tom finally straightened themselves out. So, let me explain some things first. Who is Tom? Here comes the reveal, people.
Tom is the infamous Elliot.
I have chosen to reveal this piece of information because Tom has extricated himself from my Batman fanfic. Yes. This is Jason's famed nemesis. Tom Burdock is his name, and he is awesome. Point blank awesome. He has his own story now, and that's why I decided to take him out of my Batman fanfic. Because there was no way the two could coexist in my mind with two versions of Tom. The doubling just doesn't work. I learned this with another story of mine from a long time ago. Story for another day.
So, to solve that problem I took Tom out of that fanfiction but then that left me with another problem. Tom is also in my Torchwood fanfiction. Through events in that fanfiction, his character changes in a way that makes it possible for him to progress in his own story without these events happening in that story. The problem is, those characters aren't mine. That world isn't mine. This may not seem like a problem to some of you, but it is. You see, not only does this cause another doubling in my head if I try to separate the two, it leaves me with the problem of getting Tom back to that point he needs to be in order for his story to progress. Now I come to the point of this point. Why fanfiction is useful. I have talked briefly about fanfiction before, but I didn't really detail why it was so useful. I think it was one of those filler posts I just sort of threw up to have something to post. Anyway.
Fanfiction is useful as a shell, a place to develop an idea or a character or even a world. You take the bits you need to fill in around your idea, and then write the two together. Using someone else's world in your story is like a crutch. It helps your character (in this case, anyway) heal and develop into a whole. Your character, in a way, outgrows the universe you've put him in. Then you get the mess of having the character develop his own story outside of the fanfiction. My friend Watson has this character who has gone through this process. She started out in Watson's favorite fantasy series, and then grew into her own unique story. Several stories, actually. You can read all about that here.
This process happened to Tom. He started out as a villain in my first story, my first real villain, and then he became a villain in my Batman fanfiction and he started to gain dimension. The question of why he was evil started to come up more and more often. He started to gain a back story. There was something in his past for which he had this unfathomable regret, and for a while I just assumed it was all the horrible stuff he put Jason through, and then I figured out that it didn't have anything to do with Jason at all. His wife died...was killed. I don't want to spoil it.
So then after that I put him into his own story. I tried to write his back story-the moment that created him, essentially-in a different world from Gotham City. Really, all I did was change the name of the city and take the original elements of my Batman fanfiction universe and put them into an original world. Anyway, that story failed pretty badly. The source of the problem was actually his wife's killer. I got the identity of the killer waaaay wrong. (I realized this the other day and completely freaked out that I had never noticed this before. Honestly, I have no idea how I messed that up so badly.) I booted that story and started another. Which I rescued from middle age, and then suddenly stopped for no reason. There just wasn't anything else to write.
Now I know why.
It was because, if Tom kept going the way he was (He eventually destroys the world in that story...well, if I ever finish it he destroys the world.) he would have destroyed the entire universe. The entire multiverse, even. Yes, there are parallel universes. So I had to do something, or else he would leave the collective multiverse in ashes. He is perfectly capable of it, trust me. He ended up in my Torchwood fanfic because I got bored. I made up a gap in my story where Tom could slip away to happy Torchwood adventures (the fact that Torchwood is happy land for Tom should tell you something about my story) and then when he came back to my original story he was a different person, who could now go save the multiverse. Problem. How do I get him to that point without the fan fiction? I had been thinking about this for a long time, and then last night I figured it out. Some of the Torchwood characters started not acting like themselves, and then I realized they were becoming new characters.
At that point in the story they were in an original world I made up in my multiverse, so naturally I just made up a new character. So then my problem was solved. Mostly. Anyway, that's my fanfiction story for you.

/endrant

P.S. Added the link to Watson's post. :D