Fans Reconstruct Heroes: Modeling Fictional Characters in Participatory Culture

The study of fictional characters has always been a crucial part of literary research. Characters are one of the core elements that drive the development of narratives and convey the themes and messages of literary works. With the rise of participatory culture, especially fan cultures, the way people interact with and reinterpret fictional characters has become more complex and dynamic, a change that poses unique challenges and opportunities for analyzing character representation across cultures, genres, and platforms. This paper reports on, documents, and discusses a formal ontology that enables the systematic modeling and comparison of fictional characters across cultures and reading communities. Building upon literary theory and incorporating insights from crowd-sourced online databases, the GOLEM ontology provides a framework for analyzing both canonical characterizations and fan-driven reinterpretations.