I will be honest: the ownership people feel toward characters–characters like Captain America, Sherlock Holmes, Marylin Monroe’s screen persona–has always baffled me.

I mean, it’s one thing to identify with a character, to yourself, or your idealized self, in that fiction. I am certainly not one to throw stones at that, what with my glass house and all. Rather, what confuses me in the anger and defensiveness people get when the character changes, or is reinterpreted, or the trappings of the character is appropriated  for something else. There’s an element of “How dare they…!” that I’ve never understood.

I may have an inkling, though…

More over at the blog