Take Poseidon’s trident away and give him a sword and people aren’t going to be impressed.
But the point is that it’s the people who aren’t going to be impressed. Not some random “rights holder” that has that title only due to an arbitrary shuffling of tokens of value that happened out of sight in some hidden office or courtroom. Churches may try to declare particular ideas to be heretical, but if the general populace goes against those declarations they quickly change their tune or get schismed.
If someone back in ancient Greece had somehow “bought the rights” to Poseidon and decided that from now on he’d wield a sword (so that he can sell Poseidon-branded swords or something), he’d have been ignored. People would keep telling tales of Poseidon’s trident, and the tales with the sword would just vanish into irrelevance because nobody would retell them.
Having seen things much like this happen to a number of franchises I’ve loved since childhood, I really wish this was still the way of things.
But the point is that it’s the people who aren’t going to be impressed. Not some random “rights holder” that has that title only due to an arbitrary shuffling of tokens of value that happened out of sight in some hidden office or courtroom. Churches may try to declare particular ideas to be heretical, but if the general populace goes against those declarations they quickly change their tune or get schismed.
If someone back in ancient Greece had somehow “bought the rights” to Poseidon and decided that from now on he’d wield a sword (so that he can sell Poseidon-branded swords or something), he’d have been ignored. People would keep telling tales of Poseidon’s trident, and the tales with the sword would just vanish into irrelevance because nobody would retell them.
Having seen things much like this happen to a number of franchises I’ve loved since childhood, I really wish this was still the way of things.