I wonder if there is a strange counter-intuitive thing happening in which more source material creates more gaps. RPG games that have 50+ hours of story would be more likely to fall into this bucket than other kinds of story-media. But, as for other media, I was also thinking B5 (points down) when reading your original post but I didn't include it. Also, the Harry Potter universe has oceans of source material.
When the canon is no longer than a single movie (90-150 minutes) or a single novel (300ish pages), the story is likely (but, obviously, not required) to focus on one principle protagonist who we only know through the one major conflict that is central to the story, and that conflict is wrapped up during the last few minutes/pages. Stories like that usually leave a sense of satisfied closure in me and that satisfied closure means I'm not likely to seek out fanfic (and probably not interested in an official sequel either, but that's another matter). Huge, sprawling canons with oceans of source material and multiple protagonists expose a richness that cannot be covered without a hundred of points of view and thousands upon thousands of hours/pages of story. Suddenly *any* minor character, even an unnamed bartender, becomes a potentially interesting character merely because their point of view can shed new light on Something We Care About.
So, yeah. The more I think about it, that tension between #1 and #2 is necessary (unless someone just wants to ship and write porn ^^).
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When the canon is no longer than a single movie (90-150 minutes) or a single novel (300ish pages), the story is likely (but, obviously, not required) to focus on one principle protagonist who we only know through the one major conflict that is central to the story, and that conflict is wrapped up during the last few minutes/pages. Stories like that usually leave a sense of satisfied closure in me and that satisfied closure means I'm not likely to seek out fanfic (and probably not interested in an official sequel either, but that's another matter). Huge, sprawling canons with oceans of source material and multiple protagonists expose a richness that cannot be covered without a hundred of points of view and thousands upon thousands of hours/pages of story. Suddenly *any* minor character, even an unnamed bartender, becomes a potentially interesting character merely because their point of view can shed new light on Something We Care About.
So, yeah. The more I think about it, that tension between #1 and #2 is necessary (unless someone just wants to ship and write porn ^^).