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He hung in a rough rope net attached to the trees, sometimes descending
to make strange objects, suddenly staring at you, sometimes dancing, al-
ways wild. In later years, he was joined by a female ogre with similar traits.
As you can see, here we begin to diverge from the period into the fantasy
roughly associated with it. The Furries wear fox tails in the anatomically
appropriate areas. Recently the Norcal Faire has begun to “theme” several
of its weekends for fantasy genres such as faeries and pirates. Another sort
of morph is based on geographic differences. One may now see a full-up
samurai, for example, or a Persian—from the same historical period, but
from different places and cultures. The guilds of hardcore Elizabethan pe-
riod re-enactors, who have special status among their kind, have often re-
sisted such intrusions, but deviations continue to appear, either to fade or
to be assimilated.
What doesn't work so well at the Faire is the attendance of folks we
might call “tourists.” They come to look at the people in weird costumes,
ogle the ladies in corsets, buy a few things, maybe have a few beers. They
don't costume. For those of us who are there for the fantasy, they are no
fun. But since the Faire is owned by its tradesmen, tourists are a good
source of revenue. Further, the Faire presents many tempting opportunities
to rent or buy costumes and accessories, and it is prepopulated with role
models (both staff and guests) that can often turn tourists into participants
in the fantasy.
Long-time Faire-goers develop characters, acquire costumes and para-
phernalia, and bond with each other in guilds or informal groups. If the
community accepts a particular aberration or extension (the barbarian, for
example), that group of characters may grow for future Faires. The point
here is that the devoted individual interactor usually comes with a charac-
ter attached. My off-kilter character is a defi ant witch. I have not so far been
set afl ame.
Blossoming Geometries of Plot
The examples drawn from Medieval theatre lead us from a two-dimensional
curve to a three-dimensional version of the modifi ed Freytag triangle. In
the 3D version, we can see that a fi eld of possibility can be designed to cre-
ate the probability of a satisfying plot for any unique interactor. The design
of the fi eld uses temporal as well as spatial arrangements to infl uence the
shape of each unique plot.
 
 
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