I forgot to say: You know, in weird ways I think fanfiction can be more revealing than original fiction, because you have the information about the writer you get from any story, and you have additional informaton about the divergences and commonalities from the source.

But then, by assuming that, I'm assuming a kind of objectivity to the reader's interpretation of canon that I'm not sure can be supported. Maybe the reader doesn't learn more about the writer; maybe they just learn more about themselves. That 's a good postmodernist view, I guess, but I find it uncomfortably solipsistic.