As someone who does not own the DVDs and only rents them every now and then, but enjoys fandom, I am at times put off by the fervent deference to canon.
But, actually L&C fanfic breaks - or at least tweaks - canon a lot. I'm not sure why you refer to a fervent deference to canon - our writers deviate from canon all the time. How many hundred variations do we have on their first kiss, the big revelation for Lois, first declarations of love, etc. All of those are altering canon from what we saw in the show, but almost everyone loves these variations.
And because the show was so kind as to present us with an alt-Clark, that gives people a whole other universe to play in that a lot of shows don't provide.
However, it's also a given that the point of OCC will vary just as much with readers as it does with authors. Although I do think that there is a majority of general concensus on what the characters should be that generally underpins things and most stories don't deviate too far from that majority concensus.
I think this is the key. Not so much that people aren't willing to deviate from canon, but that they're less willing to embrace deviation from their vision of the particular characters. Certainly there have been stories posted where I thought Clark was acting OOC, for example, yet many disagreed with me and cited examples from the show to back them up. I was not necessarily convinced, and just have to accept the fact that we each view circumstances a bit differently.
However, you can have stories - here or in any other fandom - where the main characters appear to bear so little resemblance to the show where the writer could attach just about any name to those main characters, because to most people it's no longer Lois and Clark.
Kathy
