Fanfic authors ostensibly choose from the same palette of 
characters.  This does not imply they're going to paint the same pictures.

Ah, but when the individual colours are poluted with other pigment so that
they are hardly recognisable as the original colours, apart from where
they are in the palette, then why bother using that palette at all?

	It all depends upon who is making the call, now doesn't it?  Do 
you contend that everyone should be writing within the same 
narrowly-defined canon?  Or perhaps you mean that we should all be 
writing IRC fever-dream spamfics?

All I'm saying is why screw around with the characters that people know and
turn them into something that they aren't? They may as well be an original
piece if they aren't recognisable as the actual character, apart from the
name and physical traits. I'm sure someone could have Kasumi actually being
an axe wielding psycho going around comitting mass muder when she's not doing
housework, but that's totally against what the manga states to be the truth.
It says that 'Kasumi is the perfect saint'. And someone could have Ryouga
fall in love with the male Ranma, and they could go off and do whatever
together as a happy couple. But that's totally against the manga, too. There
has to be a reason for the change stated in the fanfic, if it's a serious
fanfic (ie, one not just done for laughs), so that people can understand
the changes in the character - otherwise they just see the characters they
know mutilated and wrong... What's the point in that?

Kun-chan...