Challenge Mini-Games Challenge (Now Open For NEW 2024 Challenges!)

@Kahara Excellent to have another participant in my Edgar Allan Poe Poetry Challenge

Your quote is one of the most evocative portrayals of grains of sand slipping through fingers that I have ever read. I hope you will be able to hear the noise of the ocean as I did:

“I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of golden sand–
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–I weep!”--A Dream Within a Dream

 

Have you ever had a feeling that you just can't describe? A feeling too large, too small, or too abstract for words? Well, verbophile John Koenig did, and what began as a tumblr project soon turned into a New Your Times bestseller: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Obviously, such a dictionary is just ripe with fanfic prompt potential! So, to play, I thought we could do something different with the . . .



To play The Bingo of Obscure Sorrows, the rules are simple: pick a row up, down, across, or diagonal, and write a story inspired by those five words. Please note that you don't necessarily have to use these exact words within your story, though you may do so if that's how you're inspired; take the prompts as figuratively or as literally as you'd like! You may even choose more than one row. if you're feeling particularly daring. As many participants who would like to sign up are welcome, since this isn't a traditional "five slot" roulette.

I placed the complete list of definitions beneath the spoiler tag. It's up to you, whether you want to look at the definitions first and then pick a row, or be completely intrepid in choosing your prompts blind.

Spoiler: Definitions of Obscure Sorrows

As defined by John Koenig:

• Ambedo (n.) a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life, a mood whose only known cure is the vuvuzela.
  
  
• Austice (n.) a wistful omen of the first sign of autumn—a subtle coolness in the shadows, a rustling of dead leaves abandoned on the sidewalk, or a long skein of geese sweeping over your head like the second hand of a clock.
  
  
• Chrysalism (n.) the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.
  
  
• Ecstatic Shock (n.) the surge of energy upon catching a glance from someone you like—a thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile—which scrambles your ungrounded circuits and tempts you to chase that feeling with a kite and a key.
  
  
• Etterath (n.) the feeling of emptiness after a long and arduous process is finally complete—having finished school, recovered from surgery, or gone home at the end of your wedding—which leaves you relieved that it’s over but missing the stress that organized your life into a mission.
  
  
• Exulansis (n.) the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.
  
  
• Fata Organa (n.) a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production.
  
  
• Fitzcarraldo (n.) an image that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling back and forth in your head like a dog stuck in a car that's about to arrive home, just itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality.
  
  
• Flashover (n.) the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you’ve built up through decades of friction with the world.
  
  
• La Gaudière (n.) the glint of goodness inside people, which you can only find by sloshing them back and forth in your mind until everything dark and gray and common falls away, leaving behind a constellation at the bottom of the pan—a rare element trapped in exposed bedrock, washed there by a storm somewhere upstream.
  
  
• Hanker Sore (adj.) finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.
  
  
• Kairosclerosis (n.) the moment you realize that you're currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it's little more than an aftertaste.
  
  
• Kenopsia (n.) the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.
  
  
• Keyframe (n.) a moment that seemed innocuous at the time but ended up marking a diversion into a strange new era of your life—set in motion not by a series of jolting epiphanies but by tiny imperceptible differences between one ordinary day and the next, until entire years of your memory can be compressed into a handful of indelible images—which prevents you from rewinding the past, but allows you to move forward without endless buffering.
  
  
• Liberosis (n.) the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.
  
  
• Mahpiohanzia (n.) the disappointment of being unable to fly, unable to stretch out your arms and vault into the air, having finally shrugged off the ballast of your own weight and ignited the fuel tank of unfulfilled desires you've been storing up since before you were born.
  
  
• Mal de Coucou (n.) a phenomenon in which you have an active social life but very few close friends—people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time— which is a form of acute social malnutrition in which even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you’ll still feel pangs of hunger
  
  
• Midding (v. intr.) feeling the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it—hovering on the perimeter of a campfire, chatting outside a party while others dance inside, resting your head in the backseat of a car listening to your friends chatting up front—feeling blissfully invisible yet still fully included, safe in the knowledge that everyone is together and everyone is okay, with all the thrill of being there without the burden of having to be.
  
  
• Mimeomia (n.) the frustration of knowing how easily you fit into a stereotype, even if you never intended to, even if it's unfair, even if everyone else feels the same way—each of us trick-or-treating for money and respect and attention, wearing a safe and predictable costume because we're tired of answering the question, "What are you supposed to be?"
  
  
• Moledro (n.) a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you'll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory
  
  
• Opia (n.) the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable—their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque—as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there's someone standing there, but unable to tell if you're looking in or looking out.
  
  
• Rubatosis (n.) the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
  
  
• Scabulous (adj.) proud of a scar on your body, which is an autograph signed to you by a world grateful for
  
  
• Waldosia (n. [Brit. wallesia]) a condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brain's way of checking to see whether they're still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.
  
  
• Xeno (n.) the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

The Index of Participants

• ViariSkywalker | Diagonal: scabulous, chrysalism, opia, fitzcarraldo, ecstatic shock
• WarmNyota_SweetAyesha | Row One, Across: ambedo, liberosis, austice, kenopsia, ecstatic shock
• Chyntuck | TBD
• RX_Sith | Row Five, Down: ecstatic shock, mal de coucou, moledro, exulansis, keyframe
• earlybird-obi-wan | Row Two, Down: liberosis, xeno, flashover, chrysalism, hanker sore
• amidalachick | Row Five, Across: scabulous, hanker sore, rubatosis, kairosclerosis, keyframe

The Index of Replies

• home for me but for him? by earlybird-obi-wan

 

Aw, yeah.

Adding you to the index now!

 

You're right, they would! I can't wait to see what you make of that combination! I put you down for the whole first row across, which also includes the words austice and kenopsia if you are so inspired.