blindingly self-evident!

So I'm having this... thought. About fic. About how you read a fandom, often with a favorite pairing, and that means that you read all these stories, dozens, hundreds of stories, in which you have two or so characters, and the whole point of your reading all of those stories is that in every single one you get the same characters, but the whole point of your reading all those stories is that in every single on you get something different. And that could possibly mean something, about something, but I'm not able to pull it together into words tonight.

But... fic, as a form of literary output (or, obviously, input) is a relatively new thing - it's, what, thirty or so years old? So what does it mean, that we sit around and tell each other these stories, over and over, the same story different in as many ways as we can imagine? Alternate universe physics in pop cultural format? Some individualistic expression of subjective reality? I have waaaaaaay too much time on my hands?