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Okay, so. I just had a conversation with my spouse that recalled a bunch of other conversations I've had before with other people, specifically 'people who do not understand fanfic.'
See, there are people who 'get it' intuitively, immediately (some of us writing it before we even knew there was a word - let alone a [sub]culture - for it), people who 'get it' after being exposed to That One Fanfic That Changed Their Life, etc... and those who don't 'get it.'
Among those who don't 'get it' are the people who understand that Fanfic is a Thing, but don't appreciate why, and pretty much leave us alone. And then there Those People who are vehemently Against Fanfic because it's Literary Heresy and blah blah blah fishcakes**.
So I'm going to talk about what fanfic is (to many of us) and why some of us find it fascinating and why some of us spend so much time talking about it and reading it and, most importantly, writing it.
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The age-old refrain from Those Who Don't Get It is, "Why don't fanficcers write original stories instead of fanfic?"
I've heard a ton of answers, and mine usually boils down to "I like to play 'what if' with the worlds and characters I enjoy from my favorite media." An earlier answer that amused me (tho' it was not comprehensive) was "Fanfiction exists to correct the faults in canon." Some people just say, "It's fun," and that's good enough for them.
But I think there is one way to explain the difference between fanfic and original fic: two methods of approaching narratives. These two approaches can define the ends of a spectrum, not wholly separate from each other, but distinguishable from one another if you squint.
And, for the record, neither is 'better' than the other.
~Vocabulary time!~
Okay, in poetry, there's a thing called enjambment, where a line (a sentence, say, tho' it can also be a word or a phrase) is split by a line break
like
so.
And one of the cool things about enjambment is that the break is like a... like a cliff off of which the reader's mind is forced to jump, right into the abyss of potential endings for that sentence, word, phrase, whatever. It's essentially a half-second of playing conceptual mad libs before your eye tracks to the next line and you finish the sentence (or whatever) the way the author wants you to.
But the thing is, good poets build that moment of unknowing into the meaning of the poem. They want your imagination to run away with you for a second, to assume something that might not be true. It's not just a pause for breath or for emphasis, but it can also be the thing that gives room for the poem to do something special: to ignite from the essential spark of the reader's imagination, to turn and twist like a living thing, never the same twice.
(I will admit I'm not the best with poetry, but if you want to know more about it, there are tons of resources out there)
Technically, an ellipsis is this: ... But it can also be this:
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or this:
Or a simple 'cut' from one scene to another used to show that time has passed or that we're in another location.
Basically, an ellipsis is a break in a narrative or in dialogue. Sometimes it's used for naturalism, or for deliberate ambiguity, and sometimes it's used to excise "boring parts." F'r instance, how many times do we see people eating, doing laundry, or taking a shower unless the scene is actually about something else? Whether we go through someone's ordinary day in order to contrast it with a day that isn't ordinary, or whether the only shower scene in a movie is about ~emotional turmoil~ (or, okay, the male gaze/sex), we rarely see the boring stuff happen unless it has a secret purpose beyond that.
But the funny thing about that is we (as readers/viewers) sometimes miss out on information that might have been interesting. The author didn't think it was, but fans? Most fans will soak up content like a sponge (see: LotR extended editions, cutscenes, etc). And so we're likely to ask ridiculous questions like "What is laundry day like at Avengers Tower?" - not because it's important to the narrative, but because we're curious.
Not to mention: every narrator is an unreliable narrator. Especially the ones who seem the most straightforward. Which means there are a wealth of stories not being told hiding right behind the story that is.
Which, I think, gives an inkling of a way to define the separation between original fic and fanfic: original fic is often declarative, saying "here is the story, these are the important events and characters and aspects of the world," while fanfic is often exploratory (even when it's got a cracking good plot).
Fanfic exists in the interstices, in the ellipses and the enjambment. Fanfiction exists in the moment before the wave function collapses. A transformative work doesn't actually transform the original media it is based off of (because the original medium exists in a fixed state and cannot be literally changed by fans unless the canon creators allow it to be so) so much as take the essential structure of the narrative and the characters and twist it, turn it, rotate and reflect it until we've built a fractal around it.
And, to some of us, this comes as second nature.
It's interesting to note the dominant narratives and perspectives that assert themselves within fandom - "minorities" or individuals of marginalized identities, misfits, nerds, and so on. True, we occasionally have our own problems that reflect the source/'mainstream' media's flaws (in some cases, centering the narratives of cis white males, etc), but for the most part I wonder if transformative work comes easier to those who are marginalized because we are so used to living our lives - our own personal narratives - in the margins.
Either way, I think this positive space / negative space division might be a good (beginner's) explanation for those who ask "Why don't you just write original fiction***?"
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* ...wow, I could swap those words around and have a totally different meta: 'Inhabiting Fandom's Negative Spaces' - tho' I think a qWoC would be better prepared to tackle that one, 'cos their words would be so much better and more informed than mine. But no; this title refers to artistic 'negative space' not like 'a bad space.'
** This is a reference to Television Without Pity.
*** Another answer is: Some of us do; these activities are not mutually exclusive, but that's another topic entirely.