Why.

Why fan fiction? Why, for example, does one have to write a Lord of the Rings around Gandalf's daughter or whomever, for whatever reason? Why not use that as a spring board and do something like Jacqualine Carey's Godslayer books. When you read them, you can TELL she was inspired to write these based on how she viewed LOTRs, but I felt that took that inspiration and ran with it. To me, at least, writing a story where Gandalf has a daughter or Harry and Hermione get together does not mean you're writing a LOTRs story or a Harry Potter story.

Because I want to write a short poem on heroic death, and I don't want to spend seven years writing and publishing a tv show so that I have the right quotes to use.

Because I want to do a character study of someone from this story, and I'd rather do it in fiction than in essay form.

Because I want to write around the main events of the story, and if I do that to a story I've created in my own head, no-one will have a clue what the main events are.

Because I want to tell a joke.

Because I want to explore the mindset of a particular person mid-way through a particular scene, and if I wrote a story with exactly that character and exactly that scene just so I could, you would rightly accuse me of copying from my favourite tv series even if I changed the names.

Because I want to write a story by cleverly leaving out the important part, and seeing if it still makes sense.

Because I want to capture a single moment in exactly 100 words.

Because I want to argue for a particular theory concerning a fictional universe, and if you think I'm going to create an entire original universe featuring One Monster Killer In Every Generation and have my main Monster Killer killed and then revived with CPR and then accidentally activate the new Monster Killer so that suddenly there are two of them just so I can discuss my funky theory without stepping on any copyright rules, you're insane.

Because I want to be obscure.

Because I like capturing moments in fiction more than I like constructing universes.

Because it's fun.

Because I like exploring alternate universes, and I don't want to spend my free time creating one universe so that I can then create an alternate universe of my first universe, just so I can do a vague job of discussing the actual alternate universes I wanted to discuss in the first place.

I feel like you're writing your own story, but using someone else's characters, and . . well, at the moment, I feel like that's lacking in effort.

I'm sorry, do you mind repeating that?