by Drawde » Tue Dec 04, 2012 5:01 pm
Originality versus canon is a fine balancing act which varies from person to person, and from day to day for individuals.
We are reading fanfiction here. There has to be SOME canon in there, or else we end up reading original fiction. Most of the time, when reading fanfiction you don't want to run across a story where the only canon is some names. But if the story is too close to canon you might as well read the original.
Crossovers add more variables to that. In a simple two-setting crossover, one of the settings is usually dominant. It's a Sailor Moon story with some Ranma characters in it, or a Ranma story with some Sailor Moon characters in it. And someone who doesn't know the crossed setting, or just plain isn't interested in it, isn't going to like running into a Sailor Moon story with Ranma characters in it, when what he wanted was a Ranma story. And then there's the fans of the crossed setting, who are expecting at least some canon to be there even if their setting isn't the dominant one.
So, for the above scenario, you run into people like me who will skip the story because we're trying to read Ranma fanfiction and not One Piece fanfiction. Or you find the opposite, where the One Piece fan doesn't like the Ranma characters. There's the fans of both settings who don't like it if the characters from one or both settings don't act like the characters should (what's the point of adding Ranma to One Piece if "Ranma" isn't anything like the original?) Then there's the fans who don't like it if the changes change too much canon (either the story focuses on Ranma when they wanted the canon One Piece charaters, or adding Ranma takes One Piece completely off the rails). And there's also ones who don't like it when a story follows canon too much (Ranma changes NOTHING from One Piece. The one differences is that Ranma is added to some conversations, so might as well not be there at all).
Add to this that some days you might want to read different things. Today you might have wanted to read something about the One Piece characters, but find a story where just the setting is used to add a crossover character to it. Or maybe you're just in the mood for an "overpowered Ranma gets back at all who wronged him" fic.
There's just too many people out there. "You can please someone every time. You can please everyone some of the time. But you can't please everyone all of the time."
PS What's with forums, where when typing a post in a section with a scrolling window, that the section constantly jumps when typing when the post gets past a certain point? I don't want to have to type the post out in Notepad and then copy/paste it into the posting window just to be able to read what I'm typing.
Unless I say otherwise, if I'm discussing Ranma canon, I'm talking about the MANGA.