~~ the myth of the anti-fanfic

I was just thinking earlier that oddly enough, after my initial indignant 'wtf??!' reaction to the idea that many people felt new canon (both HBP & OoTP) was 'just like another fanfic', I find myself fascinated with the idea. Often enough people seem disappointed that it's not somehow qualitatively different enough from fanfic-- that it's not... inherently superior? That it doesn't, as a piece of writing taken on its own merits, re-establish the hierarchy of canon on top, fanon on the bottom. Suddenly, after years of swimming in the fanon sea, canon is just another fish, albeit a much larger, more puffed-out fish.

Actually, I can empathize with the feeling pretty well-- it's just that I found myself thinking, with both books 5 & 6, that this is much better that any fanfic I'd read at, er, predicting canon, I guess? I don't know if that makes sense, but whenever I read extrapolative in-Hogwarts fics, something is -always- off. Always. With the actual books, even if something happens that I didn't expect, they're so inherently linear and rational that I could always see the progression, the why, so in the end I can accept it.

    In nearly all fanfic, either some character isn't given enough attention, or some other character seems to be drawn too sympathetically (that is, one thing I really love about Rowling is how unsympathetic even her heroes are a lot of times, though I realize most people hate this), or we have plot devices (that is, ways to kill Voldy or what have you) that come out of nowhere and don't seem really all that connected to the rest of the books. I can't think of one, not even one in-Hogwarts H/D fic where I felt the Riddle and Snape storylines was dealt with satisfactorily, without something being brushed off or left well enough alone entirely.

Then again, I'm very very very picky with fanon, perhaps moreso than with canon because fanon has definite guidelines (that is, canon is its constant shadow) whereas I do believe canon has much more... uh, ability to redefine itself by introducing new information, sometimes out of left field (which always feels even more anvilicious in fanon, though it's still groan-worthy in canon). As a reader, I'm much more willing to swallow things whole in canon because... well, the closest analogy I can come up with is that it's like a floppy disk that has both write and read access enabled, whereas with fanon you have read access but to write you'd need to use another disk.
    I do think that differences in this 'willingness to swallow' are behind people's response to canon as if it was a fanfic. I mean, I can even see how a fanfic could be seen as having more leeway, because canon -should- be more 'responsible' whereas a fanfic has no responsibility and can be 'just for fun'.

( I am, therefore I ramble. )