In defense of Deidalius' recent take despite its common connotative meaning the word has for most western fans have it doesn't inherently mean ****. Dōjinshi literally just means self published manga. There is no inherent **** correlation despite what many thing. Alot of dōjinshis are completly sfw and serve only as a pashion poject by fans. Though this line of reasoning it can be argued that Deidalius' statement could be interpreted as "the best way to learn more about a series is though reading fan works" which isn't really too bad a take. Fan works can be quite a useful source for understanding the basic of characters and the general perspective of the series and characters by the fans. It can allow for an insight into the thought process of a community which can be quite useful especially if the community has long dead.
Also some series, such as Tenchi, have canon dōjinshis. Just because it's self published doesn't mean it's less part of the franchise than anything else.
And yes before says it I know Deidalius was specifically talking about hentia, I just playing devil's advocate here.
Respectfully, I'd have to disagree. Most of the time,
the best way to learn more about a series is by watching the series itself rather than the fanworks. It can be understandable if you prefer to consume the fanworks of a series rather than the main canon work because believe me, sometimes fans write stories that are more interesting than what the original author could come up with. (I won't give any examples because they might be opinions that are too controversial for this world.)
That and doujinshi (Or well, fanworks in general) flanderize characters a lot of the time. Encouraging people to consume fanworks rather than consuming canonical material leads to having a fanbase that does not understand their own franchise or their own characters.
I, for example, was guilty of consuming the fanworks of a series more than the canonical material of Touhou.
That led me to misunderstand the characters and their stories. An example would be that I read a fanfic where Okuu was kind as hell, a really wholesome gal, lovely, very lovely. But then I finally played one of the games where she appeared and she ******* nuked me without saying anything beforehand. She just saw me invade the reactor and she just started nuking me. How rude. That made me realize "Wait, have the fanworks been lying to me? Is Okuu a character that's more hostile than kind?" Of course,
ever since I started playing the canonical games and reading the canonical manga I started to understand the characters more and I noticed several differences between their fanon and canon portrayals.
As much as I love KKHTA, I must admit it caused irreparable damage to Koishi's image. For a while, people believed Koishi was a creepy crazy cool-ass edgy serial killer because some Touhou fans watched KKHTA more than they played Koishi's games.
The Touhou fandom for example struggles a lot with fans misinterpreting their characters and lore because a lot of them (Probably the majority) prefer to consume fanmade content of their series rather than play the canon games.
The same happened with Dragon Ball fans. A lot of the misunderstanding of their own series and characters come from the fact that they watched Dragon Ball Abridged rather than watch the original series.
Fanworks are not a replacement and will never be a replacement for the canonical material of a franchise. If you watch fanworks, you should always keep in mind they might portray characters different from canon and that you should not judge that franchise with the things you learned about it through its fanmade media.