One of the most interesting parts of a writer is keeping genre focus. Especially when writing fanfiction, especially when there's a descriptive blurb about your project that you have to adhere to, you find yourself meeting limits.
I'm always tempted to take a dramatic approach to relationships --- or do what I think are more psychologically interesting choices than what might be found in something like Fate Stay Night. But then I always remember that it's a shounen. The reader signed up for certain things, and digressing with more shoujoy topics can annoy people or cause lack of interest.
Still I don't think it's impossible to use influences from other genres to effectively create a shounen that's a little more nuanced, or more simply, borrow from the best of other genres. I just think it's hard to find a balance without losing focus.
I said before that the tropes listed on TVtropes (extremely shounen oriented btw, I find very few shoujo tropes there) are things to be avoided. I know people disagree with me, but I have an aversion to tropes in general. However tropes are tropes because they fit the confines of their genres very well, they target and pander to their demographic in a very specific way. Not saturating your story with tropes is like not using cheese in pizza, it might still work, but it might lose its familiar taste and usual audience.
What are everyone's thoughts on this.
