Having followed the same story and seen the arguement, my position would be 'what you're observing is accurate but not necessarily a problem'.
A case could be made that any fanfic that isn't written entirely to slot perfectly into the source canon without changing any of the stations of canon is someone writing their own story inspired by source material rather than respecting the canon. I don't think anyone here would argue that seriously, but it could be claimed.
Most AU (and most alternate history stories) work on the principle you're advocating, have a single point of divergence and try to have everything flow from that. That's certainly how most of my AU in fiction works - to use Davion & Davion (Deceased) as an example, other than Hanse's ghost haunting John, things are as they were in canon and only change because of direct and indirect results from that.
But there are plenty of stories that change much more, that are not just diverging but start from significantly different set-ups - look at the 'Game of Thrones but around a modern day coffee shop' sub-genre or whatever it is... okay, maybe don't look at that but it possible to write a story that is based on a canon but makes more than a single change. I am currently doing this with Opalescent Reflections - not only are there two notable and unrelated divergences to set the story off in canon and several more subtle background changes to serve the story, some of them centuries before the start, that nonetheless have left the various characters and general politics untouched when 'really' (whatever that means in context) they should have had effects.
Beware of Cloud pretty clearly started with the intention to be a simple single divergence, but as it's been written the decision has been made to explore background details that weren't relevant to Beware of Chicken and write his own answers, which has left the setting distinct in some ways from how Casualfarmer described them. As long as that's acknowledged and the characters and setting are still recognisable, which I personally find to be the case (you are, of course, entirely within your rights to disagree) I don't think it's a problem.
These differences can build up to the point that that this is no longer the case, and I can think of a few examples of this happening and generating distinct properties - even published ones (the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMasters Bujold had their seeds in a Star Trek fanfic, for example). There's a degree of spectrum to this.
All of this has little to do with the overall quality of any story. There are, I am sure, good and bad examples at every point on that spectrum because, if nothing else, no one starts out good at writing and the fanfic community is littered with everyone's first attempts.
A case could be made that any fanfic that isn't written entirely to slot perfectly into the source canon without changing any of the stations of canon is someone writing their own story inspired by source material rather than respecting the canon. I don't think anyone here would argue that seriously, but it could be claimed.
Most AU (and most alternate history stories) work on the principle you're advocating, have a single point of divergence and try to have everything flow from that. That's certainly how most of my AU in fiction works - to use Davion & Davion (Deceased) as an example, other than Hanse's ghost haunting John, things are as they were in canon and only change because of direct and indirect results from that.
But there are plenty of stories that change much more, that are not just diverging but start from significantly different set-ups - look at the 'Game of Thrones but around a modern day coffee shop' sub-genre or whatever it is... okay, maybe don't look at that but it possible to write a story that is based on a canon but makes more than a single change. I am currently doing this with Opalescent Reflections - not only are there two notable and unrelated divergences to set the story off in canon and several more subtle background changes to serve the story, some of them centuries before the start, that nonetheless have left the various characters and general politics untouched when 'really' (whatever that means in context) they should have had effects.
Beware of Cloud pretty clearly started with the intention to be a simple single divergence, but as it's been written the decision has been made to explore background details that weren't relevant to Beware of Chicken and write his own answers, which has left the setting distinct in some ways from how Casualfarmer described them. As long as that's acknowledged and the characters and setting are still recognisable, which I personally find to be the case (you are, of course, entirely within your rights to disagree) I don't think it's a problem.
These differences can build up to the point that that this is no longer the case, and I can think of a few examples of this happening and generating distinct properties - even published ones (the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMasters Bujold had their seeds in a Star Trek fanfic, for example). There's a degree of spectrum to this.
All of this has little to do with the overall quality of any story. There are, I am sure, good and bad examples at every point on that spectrum because, if nothing else, no one starts out good at writing and the fanfic community is littered with everyone's first attempts.