there's a p common attitude in fandom spaces (fandom in general, not a specific one) that's like "why care about canon, or the characters being ooc? we're here to play with the dolls any way we like" and as much as i obviously am a person who thinks about canon a lot in theory i'm into that. in practice though when popular fanon takes things in a wildly different direction from canon so often it's in the service of taking something that was originally canonically weird and interesting and making it blander. it's flattening a complex character into a broad archetype i've seen a million times before, it's taking two characters with a complicated canonical relationship and writing them in a way where you could find-and-replace the names with any other popular migratory slash fandom pairing and the fic would make as much if not more sense. if you're going to break away from canon at least do something interesting? don't make it less weird? i feel like i'm watching someone take a really beautiful expensive cut of wagyu steak and grind it into hamburger to cook it well done and cover it in ketchup
