bakerstreet | five senses bingo.

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five senses bingo.

FIVE SENSES BINGO

When we write, we can create sharper and more effective imagery when we use the five human senses in our descriptions and narrative. This meme is a way of working with how we depict and replicate these senses in our tagging.

The challenge is to incorporate all five senses as much as possible into one coherent thread.

How to play -

1. Top-level with your character. Include prefs and info as you like.
2. Pick EITHER one full table or combine from the various tables, though all five senses must be covered.
3. Prompt others with your five different types of inspiration and include them as sensory descriptions throughout your thread.

Example: A thread taking place on a starlit night (sight 01), Character A sitting on a slab of marble (touch 01) while Character B fishes out some sweets (inspired by sugar, taste 01). The air's heavy with the smell of wet concrete (smell 01) from the city downtown and they're thinking of that one time they listened to the sound of baby feet together, padding across the floors back home (inspired by Mendelssohn, sound 01).

However, feel free to interpret each prompt as literally or abstractly as you want.
4. Happy writing!

TABLE 1

01	SIGHT	starlight	02	TOUCH	marble
03	TASTE	sugar	04	SMELL	wet concrete
05	SOUND	mendelssohn

TABLE 2

01	SIGHT	statues	02	TOUCH	polished wood
03	TASTE	salt	04	SMELL	newly mowed lawn
05	SOUND	chopin

TABLE 3

01	SIGHT	road	02	TOUCH	soggy earth
03	TASTE	lemon	04	SMELL	sunday roast
05	SOUND	mozart

TABLE 4

01	SIGHT	lavender	02	TOUCH	feathers
03	TASTE	vodka	04	SMELL	bouquet of flowers
05	SOUND	beethoven

TABLE 5

01	SIGHT	rain	02	TOUCH	skin
03	TASTE	umami	04	SMELL	dried sweat
05	SOUND	debussy

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[no smut]

[ How does sight T5 (rain) | touch T1 (marble) | taste T3 (lemon) | smell T1 (wet concrete) | sound T1 (Mendelssohn) work for you? If you'd rather I write the starter, let me know, and it won't be a problem at all! ]

Party. Please. Pretty. I know.

They call him away for a job but he sends her an address for later. The kind of parties he goes to might not be the kind a girl like Madeleine is used to, but Rayflo has an inkling that she might enjoy it nonetheless.

Posh and polished gets old pretty fast in his experience. Besides, he's not one of her esteemed clients. Just a chance-encounter low-life.

Raiden's picked an abandoned warehouse for her little side-business, makeshift ring for the fighters at the centre, spaces for dancing and drinking arranged around it. Rayflo's watching the fight, cheering the underdog on, when there's a light ripple in the moodscape. Something light and breezy, reminding him of springtime and a piece of music the old man loved to play when he was teaching his grandson valuable life-lessons.

Glancing away just as his fighter gets a good uppercut in, he spots her in the crowd and waves.

Madeleine certainly loves mysterious addresses sent her way from relative strangers, relative because sleaze knows sleaze, yes, and what more is there to care about than those rare moments of reflection? Seeing yourself, just a little, just a tiny bit, in another person. She lives for those.

As such, she turns up on the given night, given time, finding the warehouse packed with people who couldn't care less whether they were dancing or fighting - and she'll give them that, sometimes both look equally choreographed. Watching the fighters, the actual pair of them, with their actual fists and actual blood-letting, out the corner of her eye, she makes her way through the crowd, carrying the scent of the soaked pavements and asphalt with her from outside.

Even in this company, however, he stands out and she'd have recognised him without the wave, though she responds with a widening smile, slithering around people left and right to cross the distance between them. She has dressed to mingle, not to stand out (too much, she won't be noticed for her clothes tonight), a short, sleeveless dress in a shade of white that invites blood spatter as much as it invites puke or tequila spills or undress. It clings to her and she, in turn, runs her hand up his arm in greeting.

"Some would say you don't know me at all, inviting me here," she says, voice amused, "but I'm going to say you know me too well already."

[ ooc; info and permissions in journal, f/f for shipping, but gen pref. reverse prompts: sight T3 (road) • touch T3 (soggy earth) • taste T2 (salt) • smell T5 (dried sweat) • sound T2 (Chopin), but you're more than welcome to bring your own. ]

[ The performance itself was a curious experience, stories of old told in ways she's never seen before, converted into what must amount to a very basic, human experience of love and loss. It angers her, still, at her core, seeing what they've made of the olden days, how they've inserted themselves in the world with such unabashed, shameless tenacity. Most of all, though, it makes her contemplative. She's running on multiple narratives - those of her host, caught in her neurological systems; those of old, of Illyria; and this new reality and all its odd, contradictory sensations (sound T2 (chopin)).

She's backstage now, ignored by mostly everyone, approached by only a few who've quickly found other things to do than bother her. There's a pungent smell of human exertion back here; sweat, blood, tears (smell T5 (dried sweat)). It leaves a salty taste at the back of her throat (taste T2 (salt)). Nose wrinkling in distaste, she runs her hand over a large, feathery headdress (touch T4 (feathers)), seeing its resemblance to something that used to be, though this... it's a shadow-copy, at best. Less. Just as the blue-painted human, performing athletic tricks on stage, like a true mockery of the one they now call Shiva as it used to be, greater than worlds.

Outside, the sky's opening up in stages, rain beating down upon the roof (sight T5 (rain)). Without the loud bleating of the orchestra - human music will never appeal to her - the sound stands out to her, amidst footsteps and people talking in the background. She keeps still for a moment, savouring it. ]

[ The smell of her, Celeste, the only place outside bed where she actually sweats being here, on stage, is still clawing at Etelka's nostrils like a wild beast, equal parts untamable and mocking (smell T5 (dried sweat)). Tonight, her ballerina was too tired, being a shadow is exhausting business, chérie, as you'd know, and she hadn't even been allowed into her dressing room, the necessary invitation deliberately withheld for minutes. Until it became flat-out embarrassing to stay put. The other dancers who'd filtered by tried not to stare, and as such they've all failed tonight, isn't that so?

Although - it had been a beautiful performance. You'd think Celeste's rain dance had worked, raindrops now tapping against the roof high above their heads, streaming down the few glimpses of window glass that Etelka passes on her way through the backstage area (sight T5 (rain)). Costumes and props, sets, mythological India in painting jobs and feathered fans which she brushes her fingers over much despite herself (touch T4 (feathers)).

The creature, because it's a creature, it's certainly not human, makes Etelka stop in her tracks. She belongs here, she thinks, against this backdrop, and yet she doesn't, both contradictory thoughts true at the same time (sound T2 (chopin). ] Finding yourself at home? [ They're alone currently, even the stagehands have discarded the place. They're all that's left of the fairytale's magical universe. Perhaps in that, she wonders whether either of them finds themselves at home anywhere. ]

[ Amidst humans, she's used to many varying sensory sensations, none of them pleasant - but here, far away from Los Angeles, she's grown less accustomed to the smell of vampires, mingling amongst the rest. It's not that they aren't here, obviously. She just hasn't gone looking for them.

Nor they for her.

She turns her head slightly sideways, taking in the newcomer. She's dressed like most she'd seen amidst the human audience, in clothes befitting a small feast, perhaps, a celebration. They dress like that for cultural events as well, she's learned. It's very odd but then again, so are their cultural events. In her days, there would have been violence, mayhem, torture. The earth painted in entrails and blood. ]

Never. [ She reaches for a glittering mask, hanging amidst a row of costumes and fake jewelry. Takes it off the hook, turning it gently between her fingers. ] All these fake items of splendour - it's worse than the outside world. Here, they simply fool themselves.

[ She holds the mask up. Looks through its eyeholes. Blink blink. ]

[ Definitely not human, no. Etelka frowns and looks the creature over, somewhat hesitant about applying neither gender nor race to these streaks of blue on deadly pale skin, the neon hair, the unsettling eyes blinking at her through the mask she holds up. It seems to transcend such human boxes, doesn't it? She is only appropriate seeing as female is what it most vaguely resembles.

Reaching out carefully, she takes the mask from the creature and turns it over in her hands slowly, holding it up before her face, too. Reflectively. Her eyes blinking back at the stranger, blink, blink. Ready for another night of make-believe. Make-believe that Celeste will welcome her afterwards, open arms and parted thighs. Make-believe that the world is truly so black and white as getting your steps right or getting them wrong. Make-believe that the nocturnal world ends at sunrise. ]

They may be fools - [ She thinks of these simple worlds in ballet, how humans subject themselves to that in order to bring that simplicity with them outside into the twilight where the nuances are grey and plenty. Like a shield, that's how they use it. Carefully, she lets her hands drop, mask dangling from between her fingers. ] - but they're also creators.

[ The vampire blinks back at her and Illyria gets a jarring sensation of sameness, an illusion like most of what she's seen tonight. The vampire seems to blend in along human customs in a way she probably never will. It's a given, of course; they're halfbloods, vampires, and true demons are of a different class. Illyria, incomparable to both.

All the same, it's been a while since anyone even tried to mirror her back. ]

The old world prevails, still, in pitiful fragments. Ancient concepts and ideals, thinned down for human amusement and consumption. [ She touches a necklace, fake stones and crystals glittering in the darkness. ] It's a mimicry. But beautiful, in glimpses.

[ She liked the rain dance, the dancer on her tip-toes, spinning in reverence. Such a display would not have displeased her, back when. ]

The vampire did a better job than the rest.

Don't tell her. I wouldn't see the shadow of her for years, if someone stroked her sense of vanity like that.

[ Off to the side the mask goes, ending on top of similar, but different jewellery to the fake stones the creature was looking at before. Etelka thinks on her wording - the old world, ancient ideas and concepts, like a mythological dinosaur in their midst, exactly that strange and unfitting. Then, she thinks about the Babylonian queens, the Egyptians pharaohs, worlds so incredibly harsh and enthralling at once. Is that where this creature heralds from?

Like a beautiful glimpse.

Voice not quite amused, but not quite neutral either, she makes an acknowledgement, because it seems inevitable and perhaps because it seems appropriate, too. It's an observation, that simple, but with layers upon layers of emotion to give it depth, weight. Quite a heavy weight. ]

Especially once she realised, it was someone not of this world.

[ Pause. She tilts her head sideways, turning fully towards the vampire, her outstretched hand slipping over gauzy fabrics and silky bands. This vampire, she thinks, isn't young - she's like Spike, possibly, more than a hundred, less than three. They both know little of what came before, as most in these modern times. In almost every respect, her heritage truly has been reduced to sand and dust. ]

I am Illyria. I ruled as king of gods, back when the world was still new.

[ It hurts, viscerally, to speak these words, to know the truth behind them. She'll never be what she was; it's a fact as solid and secure as the ground beneath her feet. She looks away slowly, gaze gliding over the clothes hanging from the rack, glimmering costumes, a confusing mix of decadence and fantasy. ]

I would have drowned her in the sky, as a sign of appreciation. [ She looks up, her movements jerky now, reptile-like. ] Today, all she gets is applause from human hands, primarily. Weak and insubstantial. Who wouldn't want more than that?

[ In her time, Etelka has met many who believed themselves gods in this world, yet weren't and could be taken down with the right weapon, the right weaponized words. Still, she doesn't doubt for a second, looking at Illyria, that she speaks the truth and did, once, in an ancient order of things, rule as king of her kind. Of all kinds. The mental image simply fits.

At the other's wording, drowned her in the sky, her lips quirk a little, a slight smile forming, not mocking, but unconvinced. A few rows down, Nikiya's first costume's hangs on the rack with a label attached that she knows will read Celeste's current name, the one she will become famous under this time around. Martin. So plain, so unworthy of her. Etelka moves back a step, two, to run her fingers over the thin skirts that billow at every movement. Then, she looks at Illyria. ]

Human applause can accumulate over centuries, though, and Celeste is collecting a treasure of it, don't be mistaken. Your appreciation would only be the huge diamond on top. [ Smile sharpening, yet it still comes off as weirdly fond, when she adds: ] She never knew whom to afford differential treatment, who deserved it.