Here’s another point: TFA is openly for the fans. It didn’t come carrying its own voice or knowing part of the saga that needed to be told, it came to celebrate and re-experience what already was.

From the start, it wasn’t designed to be the focused reality of the continuation of SW, but to conjure up images from the part of the SW reality which has already completed, while putting those images within the framework of a continuing story.

There is a difference between what the story that comes from the goals of TFA is, and what a story made to be only its own self, in its own space, would be. TFA takes the slot of this next period of SW, but uses it as a fanciful flashback. It breaks stride with SW OT, and while it presents itself using many of the same tones, and is excellent in doing that, it doesn’t carry what was established in SW forward, and seems to exist out of a distinct frame of mind from the OT, while presenting facsimile images.

I think it’s described very well as being a fanfic.