One of the many annoyances with writing fanfiction, especially if you’ve written multiple stories for the same fandom, is separating versions of the same character.
If I’m writing multiple ATLA fics, I could end up writing multiple versions of Katara.
One Katara is struggling with her mother’s death and the fractured relationship she has with Sokka - that’s the main point of Story A. But Story B might feature a different Katara, one who has feelings for Zuko and is trying to hide those feelings. And that’s the focus of Story B. And in Story C, Katara might have feelings for both Aang and Zuko, and is in the middle of a love triangle. But, in Story C, she also might be dealing with grief, still, over her mother, and her fractured relationship with Sokka. But Version C of Katara is not the same as Version A, the one who isn’t dealing with a love triangle. And how grief affects her ability to love will manifest itself differently in both of those Kataras.
It’s wild. You have to keep track of which version is going through what character complexities. It gets even harder if I’ve already published Story A, and it’s a done deal, but I’m in the middle of writing Story C. I have to re-write that arc of mourning, but not in the same way as I did in Story A, because again, this is a different Katara.
TLDR fanfic writers are a lot smarter than we think