Catching the moments – ColeMarie Soliel’s vision of Fantasy Faire

In this lovely machinima, ColeMarie Soliel has brilliantly captured a selection of the moments that made up Fantasy Faire, giving us all chance to remember the places and the people and the events that made up this year’s Fantasy Faire.

Enjoy!

LitFest Tours Part 4: Tales from Egregore

Over the next few days, we will be publishing stories and poems that were written in response to the different Fairelands and shared with us as a result. But we would still like to add your tales to our collection. So if you wrote a Tale of one of the Fairelands, and would like to add it to our collection, send it to fantasyfaireshortstory@gmail.com before May 31st and we will add it to the relevant pages on the website. And we’ll be selecting some of the Tales for broadcast on Fantasy Faire Radio too!

Egregore, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

“The Giant of Egregore”
by Talia Sunsong

I am a god,
Declared the giant
We are playthings of the gods
The toys cried
The toys escaped
Hiding under the land
In anger
The giant smashed his piano
The keys scattered
As they ran
The toy’s feet
Play a revealing tune
The giant will find them
Yet there is still hope

The angel plays her lyre
Come dance with us
Call the unicorns
They churned the leaves
Over the scroll
The secret
Penned by the giant
He commanded the unicorns
Destroy it

The unicorns sing
We dance and churn the leaves
The secret lies beneath
Come find it toys
Read the magic spell
Escape the giant

So the toys raced
to look beneath
the unicorn’s hooves
to piece together
the spell
The words waved
beneath the Unicorns

The giant stomped closer
The toys read faster
The giant reached
The spell recited
A portal opened
The toys jumped

Made it through
The door closed
Giant blocked
Now the Toys
Live Free

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Egregore, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

Sarah’s Gone
( A Memory Poem Triggered by Egregore)
by Zander Green

You break open my house.

You split the walls, strange light pours in, I cannot see your face.

But I know it is you.

Summer, red wine and that song you loved, the cat whose name I can’t remember, vanilla and traffic by the park –

All come pouring in –

Strange light –

So I know it is you.

You see,

Alex said, “Sarah’s gone.” But that isn’t what happened first.

First was opening your door and knowing before seeing what you had done.
Then came the smell. And I knew it was you. I knew you would be lying there.
Your legs at odd angles. Did you make the cuts while standing up? Did you fall?

I am eighteen and I love you and you have spilled your life on the floor of this room.
I am eighteen and you are the sun and perfect as nothing has ever been.

And I am eighteen.

Time beyond measure passes (days?) and you lie in the earth and Alex says,

“Sarah’s gone.”

A moment passes.

And I am fifty.
Still scrubbing at the stain.

I am fifty and you crawl from the Earth –
Break open my house.
Strange light pours in
And I know it is you.

I am fifty and
I build worlds now
Where you might have been happy
And been my sun
And perfect
As everything is.

Egregore, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“To Write, Perchance to Play”
by FidgetsWidget
All photographs in this section by the author

The first thing Fidget did on arriving in Egregore was to land smack-dab with her nose on a white key.

And it made a noise.

Never give a Dinkie keyboard keys that make noise to run up and down on.

Or that is what you will hear for the next 10 minutes.

Then, of course, there was the apple.

Fidget had to play with that 20 times before she was done with it.

Eat, Get Poisoned, Die!

Well, then Fidget had to play the Harp, wouldn’t you?

And the Unicorn ride.

Some days when you adventure, it’s all about playing.

The writing for today is:

“Go Play!”

“Hey Nonny Nonny” – now it can be told!

The “Hey Nonny Nonny” song is now on YouTube for you all to enjoy. There’s a link to the Fantasy Faire site from the video.

Over the next few weeks, I am hoping to edit the footage we have of Much Ado into a series of videos for our new YouTube Channel – so keep checking!

What people may not know is that the song wasn’t originally part of the planned performance. That it exists at all is all thanks to the amazingly talented Zander Greene.

The Creation of a Fairelander

Fayrechild over Kakushi Pasu – photograph by Wildstar Beaumont

You set up your business and you’re working on your own… and your friends support you, but you’re working so hard and feel alone. You might try to get into one of the monthly events, but the best ones are tough to get into, and the small ones are often just pop-up shopping malls.

But then you apply for Fantasy Faire. You come here with your new store, and there are people to welcome you and talk you through it. And you are given your store building to decorate in advance, and you think … this looks nice.

Then you come in and realise that your store is just a part of this fantastic land with all sorts of wonderful things around you. And that YOUR land is just a part of a whole incredible series of lands, all filled with people planning the most amazing things. And you’re in a group that’s filled with friendly people, and jokes and plans and ohhhhh the an…ti…ci…PATION!

So you begin to make friends there, and the names you see in chat start to bump into you inworld, and everyone is friendly and excited and tells you about the buses and the parties and the legends and the stories. And suddenly you are a part of a community like no other.

Maybe you have a bunch of kiddies fighting to save the world on your doorstep, or maybe they are elven warriors, or the nicest set of demons you could hope to meet. And you see stories about your land appear on a fantastic blog, which is packed with information and stories and pictures. Maybe you go to see an author you love reading, or The Most Amazing Dance Show. Perhaps you take time to do the Quest – and get your own gift back together with a positive cascade of others!  You listen to the radio which talks about the people you’ve met, and the injokes that you share. Of course, you go to the parties and the jail and bails and you find that they’re everything people said they were.

And you realise that you are a Fairelander, and will be from now on.

Giants, tinies, Jaegers, elves, unicorns and other fae folk – even some humans! – at Clover & Dru’s Bail and Jail – photograph by Avariel Falcon

Support the Fairelands Players!

Last year, the Fairelands Players did a simple live reading of shortened version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This year we have produced a much more ambitious production –  Much Ado About Nothing – which we hope you have all enjoyed.

You’ll be able to hear the radio productions of these plays on Fantasy Faire Radio on special occasions over the coming year.

We would like to go on to develop more plays and performances for your pleasure, and to do this, we are asking YOU to become sponsors of the Fairelands Players.

To do this, we are asking you to sponsor an actor.

Our plan is to create alts who will perform as actors in the productions. We will use the sponsorship to buy everything needed to equip an avatar to perform – skin, clothes, bodies, hair etc etc.

And, because we are the Fairelands Players, 50% of the sponsorship will be sent straightaway to Relay for Life.

If you sponsor an actor, your name (or that of your business) will appear on the actor’s profile (As in “I am a member of the Fairelands Players and my founder sponsor is xxxx”) along with a link to your blog, business or whatever you would like.

We will be starting to sell these avatars after today’s performance of Much Ado About Nothing.  If a group of people would like to get together to sponsor a Fairelands Player, they are very welcome to do so and all names will appear on all publicity.

The sponsorship per actor with be 15,000 Lindens and we are planning to establish three initially after the performance and at the Live Auction. If bid offers go higher than this, we will establish more sponsorships until we have a fully-functioning cast.

 

Much Ado About Nothing: A Faireland Players Production – today at 10am in Opal Flight

Today there will be a second staging of the magical (and we do mean that!) interpretation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing on Opal Flight.

The soldiers, led by the noble Don Pedro (Corwyn Allen) are returning from victory in war and looking forward to a little rest and relaxation. With accommodation generously provided by Leonato (Elrik Merlin), it’s not surprising that some of the army begin to think about love… and young Claudio (Mavromichali Szondi) is much taken with Leonato’s daughter Hero (Christy Grantham/Catalina Staheli).

But one who resists all talk of love is Benedick (Zander Greene). He is completely impervious to falling in love, scorns the whole thing – and Leonato’s niece Beatrice (AvaJean Westland) is in total agreement with him. It’s the one thing that they do agree about – they quarrel about everything else!

Election Special! The state of the polls – Sunday am

And here at the Fairelands, in breaking news, there have been changes at the top of the leaderboards in two of the races – although in the third, the candidate has increased her lead.

In the race for King, Willie Wonka has once more overtaken Severus Snape and by a comfortable margin too! Is Snape destined always to be the runner-up?

And we once more have Leia Organa at the top of the leaderboard. She’s overtaken her main rival, Margo Hanson, and has buit up a very convincing lead! Will their fortunes be reversed today?

Finally, Rhiow has once more placed an authoritative paw on her position as leader in the election for Chancellor. The race has closed between her two closest rivals – Hedwig the owl and The White Rabbit (only five votes between them!) but they are both some way behind the wizardly cat!

Who will win? We will find out later today at the end of the Live Auction. But remember – only YOU and your Lindens (I mean votes!) can decide.