I have little understanding of the FVII Compilation, as I have played/watched exactly none of it. But as an outside observer, a few factors seem to be in play there.
1) Platform smorgasbord. AND HOW. This seems to have a separating tendency, but this appears to be counteracted by...
2) Fan loyalty, a cohesive force. A hugely popular franchise, and people will go out of their way (and platform comfort zones) to get some of these installments. Cell phone games probably excepted. Except it seems to be that a large portion of the most loyal fans are people who joined fandom way after the original -- when AC was released, perhaps -- and it's these relatively new fans who seem to be driving the franchise now, which creates...
3) Divides with the oldest fans/OGC loyalists, who seem to regard a lot of the newer installments as needless retconning, angstifying, prettifying, and oh yeah, money-milking nonsense. So we have another separating force -- and one that kind of straddles the line between "separate fandoms" and "separate canons" -- because it seems arguable (again, outsider, outside) that the newer installments ARE separate canon. They're ostensibly about the same characters and all within a tight timeline, but the amount of retconning, judging from the complaints I see, is slowly approaching comic book proportions.
I'm a bit confused on this issue. X-2 certainly changed the world mechanic a lot compared to X, but we kind of knew that was coming based on X's ending, and no one's backstory was rewritten (well, except maybe Spira's, you know >.>). And while there is certainly a fair amount of grumbling about how X-2 can't be canonical, it seems like with only two installments and pretty tight links between the two games, the grumbling is not really as... prodigious as in the ever-expanding VII Compilation, where every new installment seems to tweak something from OGC and from whatever was released just before. The Ivalice games, meanwhile, reference each other quite a bit, but they are by and large separated by nice, safe, gulfs of time and distance and don't interfere with each other much (RW excepted). SO I am not sure what is going on canonicity-wise with FFVII Compilation. However, I do seem to see a fair number of...
4) Fans who seem to be part of the Compilation fandom as a whole rather than any specific entry's fandom. Another cohesive force! These people seem to pick and choose the bits of canon they find most awesome and make up a kind of personal synthesis-canon, and kudos to them.
... and those are my thoughts on yaoi.
Up next -- things that are actually relevant to fanwork-categorizing interests!
In which I turn to the vexing problem of Compilation VII
1) Platform smorgasbord. AND HOW. This seems to have a separating tendency, but this appears to be counteracted by...
2) Fan loyalty, a cohesive force. A hugely popular franchise, and people will go out of their way (and platform comfort zones) to get some of these installments. Cell phone games probably excepted. Except it seems to be that a large portion of the most loyal fans are people who joined fandom way after the original -- when AC was released, perhaps -- and it's these relatively new fans who seem to be driving the franchise now, which creates...
3) Divides with the oldest fans/OGC loyalists, who seem to regard a lot of the newer installments as needless retconning, angstifying, prettifying, and oh yeah, money-milking nonsense. So we have another separating force -- and one that kind of straddles the line between "separate fandoms" and "separate canons" -- because it seems arguable (again, outsider, outside) that the newer installments ARE separate canon. They're ostensibly about the same characters and all within a tight timeline, but the amount of retconning, judging from the complaints I see, is slowly approaching comic book proportions.
I'm a bit confused on this issue. X-2 certainly changed the world mechanic a lot compared to X, but we kind of knew that was coming based on X's ending, and no one's backstory was rewritten (well, except maybe Spira's, you know >.>). And while there is certainly a fair amount of grumbling about how X-2 can't be canonical, it seems like with only two installments and pretty tight links between the two games, the grumbling is not really as... prodigious as in the ever-expanding VII Compilation, where every new installment seems to tweak something from OGC and from whatever was released just before. The Ivalice games, meanwhile, reference each other quite a bit, but they are by and large separated by nice, safe, gulfs of time and distance and don't interfere with each other much (RW excepted). SO I am not sure what is going on canonicity-wise with FFVII Compilation. However, I do seem to see a fair number of...
4) Fans who seem to be part of the Compilation fandom as a whole rather than any specific entry's fandom. Another cohesive force! These people seem to pick and choose the bits of canon they find most awesome and make up a kind of personal synthesis-canon, and kudos to them.
... and those are my thoughts on yaoi.
Up next -- things that are actually relevant to fanwork-categorizing interests!