In particular, fictional characters within a work are presumed to be simply ideas unless they are sufficiently developed to legally constitute elements of expression.

FORBES: Protecting Fictional Characters: Could You Legally Write A New Harry Potter Novel?

We are to know that Wall knows that we know that the work is fictional quotation marks set in quotation marks, and, if we detect the odd quotation from a quotational painting by Manet, we may go straight to the head of the class.

NEWYORKER: Flashes of Light

This axiomatic principle is easy to state but can be difficult to apply in the context of fictional characters because a properly copyrighted work does not mean every element of the work is protected.

FORBES: Protecting Fictional Characters: Could You Legally Write A New Harry Potter Novel?

By coincidence, photo retailer Photojojo featured a pointer on its Twitter feed today to the pop culture blog Accidental Mysteries, and a lovely spread on Camera Comics, a 1940s comic-book series glamorizing the work of historical photographers like Matthew Brady and fictional heroes like Jim Lane Insurance Investigator!

FORBES: The (Real) Heroism Of (Some) Photographers

Her work raises the interesting question of how much a fictional story about a fictional self can shed, and still remain a story about a vivid self.

NEWYORKER: Songs Of Myself

The setting is Hanmouth, a fictional location in Southwest England, where along the outskirts of town exist a population of violent, work-shy, welfare-dependent scroungers pacified only by soap operas.

NEWYORKER: Blighty