Your discussion of your childhood reactions to stories is very familiar to me. I remember always feeling that way about stories, always watching or listening to them as if they were fluid and interactive, always thinking I want to play with the toys, too. I guess my earliest fanfic really was when I first insisted that this little piggy had roast beef and this little piggy had some too, because there were not going to be any starving pigs in my remix. I still feel that way about stories, and I love interacting with people who do too, regardless of what stories fire their imaginations. (And there are still no starving pigs in my remixes.)