Is writing wish fulfillment necessarily bad?

Nothing is necessarily bad. A good enough writer could do a story with Hitler as the hero and make it work.

You just need to make sure it's entertaining. The synopsis looks really derivative and silly. But some pretty fantastic stories have been done with synopses that look just as bad.

"Blatant wish fulfillment that you hammer out and dump on readers without any particular effort because you don't care about what other people think" is not respected.

But there are plenty of famous authors who follow the principle "Write about something which you care about, enough to spend a lot of time and effort on making it into a respectable published piece, so that other people will respect your opinion, and possibly grow to like it themselves."

Agreed, Lera. Authorial enthusiasm for something in their work can be a very positive thing, leading to passionate writing.

The key is leading the reader to picking up on and sharing that enthusiasm.