Why fic? Why fic?
Fic. Fan writers call it “playing in someone else’s sandbox” or “borrowing someone else’s toys.” I call it “writing.” Opponents call it “stealing” – and I call that bullshit. Whatever else we call it,though, today we largely understand fanfiction as writing that continues, interrupts, reimagines, or just riffs on stories and characters other people have already written about. Fanfiction means writers getting their feet wet, their hands dirty – and if in their stories other body parts are sometimes getting wet and dirty, too, that doesn’t mean those same stories can’t be smart. If we call a piece of writing fanfiction, we usually (though not always) understand that it wasn’t published for profit.