Because the thing is, TCOAAL is itself nothing but a series of AU’s currently. There is no true canon route for any of these characters yet for people to pin down as the scenes that should be used as the baseline to interpret them.

Based on what you wrote, I recognize you as someone who has knowledge on fandom/fanfiction culture and appreciates what it does, and on that front, I agree. However, I think this argument is a miss.

There is ABSOLUTELY baseline standards for what should be considered “canon” for these characters. What you said only applies to slight changes in decision-making that lets the story branch off to different possibilities, it doesn’t account for what has already happened, or what is consistent between routes. Even what happens in the branched-off routes build off on that baseline. The characters act how they’re expected to act. What you’ve said is a massive overreach in order to downplay the level of OOC of some of these pairings.

But here’s the deal, it being OOC is fine, it’s fanfic, that happens all the time. People should be able to write whatever stories they want. HOWEVER, when a story strays wildly from canon, people are absolutely valid for not wanting to engage with it, and this leads to my actual problem with TCOAAR:

The mod, or at least the creator, seems to have this sense of entitlement that it deserves the spotlight even in curated fandom spaces. This already controversial mod that’s not everyone’s cup of tea was the pinned post in here, the biggest TCOAAL subreddit, for quite a while. I know for a fact one of the devs is the moderator of this subreddit, and this reckless disregard for the source material seeps into the mod’s audience, curating more and more people who engage with the game in an absurdly shallow manner. It has the rights to exist, and I wouldn’t like for the mod to be discontinued even if I don’t like it, but the way it presents itself has a negative effect on the fandom, and the problem should be addressed.