Is it safe to post fanfiction on the internet? Will it get stolen?

I thought this was the best place to place this topic. If not then a mod can move it.

Anyway, for the past few days I've been writing non stop on my first fan fiction for one of my favorite animes. The first chapter came out to be a little over 6,000 words. A few hours ago I posted it on Deviantart.com but then I got the sudden fear that someone may steal it by copying and pasting it and claiming it as their own. Has anyone had an experience where they uploaded a piece of writing to the internet and someone stole it? Does anyone have any advice on preventing this from happening? Or am I just over worrying about my first fan fiction? I just completed my first quarter of college a few weeks and I took a Creative Writing class and I'm starting to believe that one of my best strengths is in writing and creating stories, but I just fear for theft of my works since writing is so easy to copy and manipulate. And I love reading other people's fan fictions and I always wanted to write my own someday but I would be really disappointed if someone read it and stole my ideas. Well, any thoughts, opinions, or suggestions about this would be greatly appreciated. :)

 

For a fanfic, it's not worth worrying about. You're using characters that aren't your own, so you have no chance of making royalties off of it. Instead, you're writing it for the joy of sharing it with others.

People can rip it off you, but it's easy enough to stop that from happening if you just do a quick Google for a few lines of your fanfic. If it's hosted anywhere else, you'll find out. Also, it's unlikely that'll happen unless your fanfic is really good, in which case it'll be well-known enough anyway.

If it bothers you that much, just insert warnings in the middle of the page, saying '(only found on [DeviantArt url])'. They'll probably be copy+pasted too, redirecting traffic back to you. (Although it'll anger some of your viewers.)

 

The first fanfiction is like the first child. You are waaaay more worried and protective of it but just listen to P and you'll be ok.