Raymond McNeil decided to "flesh him out" and make him more important, because apparently somebody on his team REALLY liked Shay and wanted him to be in a relationship with Raven.

Also Vernal is now a Raven knockoff, even moreso than how Ruby resembles Summer.
To the point where Vernal now has a mini-Katana. Also? Vernal doesn't die trying to protect Raven, Raven apparently sacrifices her now. So they made Raven even worse. Finally, they try to have Yang build a friendship with Vernal, and have Vernal and Weiss in a friendship....completely ignoring Vernal mocking and trying to kill Weiss in Canon.

I won't go further than this...They have Yang and Neo team up after Yang asks Neo to kill her (Yang). I'm not kidding. This is what people call "fixing rwby". Its messed up how many people say this is somehow "a good idea". The people writing that stuff do not understand RWBY or its characters one bit.

So no, they cannot call it fanfics...They have this obsession with "saving RWBY from the writers who created the show"....It's awful.