anyway.

This makes TLB go "Should I mention..."
... that characters are also an illusion? Or should I hold off while people absorb the issue about ownership?

This makes LP go "By that token,"
isn't the whole game an illusion?

This makes CS go "Players"
Remember to mention that players are an illusion while you are at it.

It all depends on the vantage point you choose to take. For any concept (player doesn't equal person playing a game) one can find an interpretive level where the concept can be viewed as a construct.

The important thing is to never mistake your interpretive position for a fact. It is only a fact at that interpretive level.

As Vincent makes clear in this post.

This makes CS go "Ha!"
Cross posted with LP!

This makes VB go "yeah, I disagree..."
There is a point of view from which characters are an illusion, but it's even more removed from actual play than the theory point of view.

This makes CS go "Characters"
To my mind, if calling characters illusions is theoretically productive, then I can see a point to it. If it is merely shoking then not so much.

Recognizing the way in which characters aren't inherently integral within roleplaying (or don't have to be) might open up new vistas of theory and design.

For instance, recognizing that characters are merely things we construct when we play allows us to choose to construct radically different sorts of characters, or even things that we wouldn't recognize as characters.

Imagine a roleplaying game that produces the RP equivalent of Koyaanisqatsi.

This makes TI go "Hey CS"
Have you had a chance to play Universalis? It does very much what you're talking about here.

This makes CS go "Universalis"
I'm familiar with it, but I've never played it. Ap's I seen from it have tended towards a "there's a bunch of characters that we all control" style rather than a "What characters? Why would we need characters?" style.