This post is a compiled snippet from a Twitter thread that I've transported over here for posterity. The original thread started here: https://twitter.com/b_cavello/status/1173315326915706880

Reading this morning about the psychology of fan fiction and the gravitation to the superficially familiar (names, aesthetics, etc) even when the other aspects of characters or settings are extremely divergent

Thinking about the implications for persuasion/propaganda/inspiration and the role this same phenomena in historical and religious stories

One of the fabulous and fascinating things about fan fiction is that it can all be based on the same original material and yet from one fan creator to the next, the interpretations and adaptations are WILDLY different

Character recognition is incredibly robust against major deformation in behavior or alignment so long as they maintain some recognizable features in the form of hairstyle, color scheme, or special skill/super power