From Pixels to Plastic
Fan fic! Fan fiction. Homebrew stories about established characters, that’s a Gen C format if ever there was one. There are rules for fan fic. The end of the story isn’t allowed to change the established world in which the fiction all takes place. And the fiction that establishes the world is called the canon. The fan fic must stay within the canon.
Sounds just like a scientific experiment to me. If they weren’t fun to observe, researchers would go mad.
And just like that, the pleasure of fan fic comes when you know the characters and the world really well: The pleasure comes in watching them go through the motions, even though you know their responses and the universe of possibilities so well that nothing surprising will ever happen.
Under this definition, some of the latter episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation were fan fic, but I’m good with that.
It’s the experience of observing the experiment that counts, the joy we take in watching events unfold… not in the specific events themselves.