Performed attraction · HOTH-03
Persona or mystery changes romantic perception
Attraction attaches to a performed identity whose effect depends on maintaining the performance.
What this relationship type claims
reuses the mechanism of. A repeatable dramatic device recurs while surface content changes. Distinct from plot-mirror, which aligns a whole sequence of beats.
Read from the other side, the same record says supplies the mechanism for. There is one record here, not two. Chronology rule for this type: Source must predate target. Violation is a hard validation error.
Chronology
| Side | Work | Where | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| ↑ earlier | NewsRadio | NewsRadio S02E16 “Houses of the Holy” | 1996 |
| ↓ later | Community | Community S01E17 “Physical Education” | 2010 |
The earlier side
Beth becomes attracted to Theo through his magic and mystery; after forcing him to explain the tricks, she says the magic is gone and loses interest.
The research describes this side rather than quoting it, so no exact script anchor is attached. The episode link above still resolves.
The later side
Annie responds to Abed’s Don Draper performance and later to his Han Solo persona; the paintball story explicitly separates Abed from the role when the context ends.
Described rather than quoted in the source research.
What changes on the way
Magician mystery becomes pop-culture role performance.
The changed element is part of the evidence rather than noise. A function can move to a different character, a power relation can reverse, several sources can combine, and the same mechanism can produce a different result.
How this record is graded
Working hypothesis Connects evidence that still requires testing.
The source research wrote this status as: “Working structural lead”
Sources
- Community ↔ NewsRadio Trope, Concept & Dialogue Index, Project research (Google Sheets), 2026-09-22 — row HOTH-03What it proves: Nothing on its own. It is the project's row-level index of mechanisms, each row carrying its own evidence status.