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Seven Lost Emotions
The Seven Lost Emotions are seven emotions that humanity once could feel, but now cannot. One is said to be contained within each of the tentacles of Tentacled Ancient Beast Yamshothog. The first, Insouciance, was released (and no longer forgotten) by Harbinger Portent. The remaining six emotions remain, to this day, forgotten, save for the names of three: Bliminity, Frippiness and Syracuse.
In Book 6 of the Cycle, the Elemenstor Grimfleur claimed to have for sale a newly recovered lost emotion: Rapidance. However, it turned out that this was in fact a totally new emotion of his own invention, and not one of the lost emotions at all.
The return of the last Lost Emotions is expected before the coming of The Ending Times, as the mad prophet Nostril wrote in his poorly-selling anthology of prophecy The Tymes They Are A-Endinge:
"And lo, Battal shall be a-quakened. The wyse menn shal feel wonder, bliminity and frippiness at the signs in thee heavens."
Nature of the Lost Emotions
The nature of the Lost Emotions is hard to pin down in any significant way and harder still to express in already-existing language.
As they are still Lost, Bliminity, Frippiness, Syracuse and the three remaining unnamed Lost Emotions are undefined by canon, although agreement has been reached among a cohesive set of well thought out fan works. Therefore, the names of the unnamed emotions and the descriptions of all except Insouciance (due to its rediscovery), listed below, are fan-defined pseudo-canon or 'fanon'.
The Lost Emotions:
- Bliminity: One of the explicitly named unrediscovered Lost Emotions. A specific type of feeling of empathy felt for one who has exploded into many little pieces. It is unique in that it is the most pleasant such feeling.
- Frippiness: One of the explicitly named unrediscovered Lost Emotions. An emotion that comes with the realization of a vaguely amusing mathematical fact concerning something about you, such as your age or the letters in your name.
- Syracuse: One of the explicitly named unrediscovered Lost Emotions. Imagine awareness of one's own swarthiness mixed with the feeling of victory you get when you have just finished eating something larger than your head, then color the resulting emotion puce. That's syracuse.
- Vickension: A sense of victory coupled with a sense of dread. To recreate this emotion, wrap a large-denomination note or bill of currency around a rock, then get someone to throw it off the top of a high building. Then leap after it and try to catch it. If you actually manage to catch it, the feeling you get just as you realise just how far it is to the ground is a fair approximation of vickension.
- Perundive: The feeling that you know the smell of something has changed. To experience this emotion you should get someone to sneak into your house at night and replace the antiperspirant/deodorant/aftershave/perfume you use with a different one in the same container. This is likely to cause you to feel perundive.
- Coathlet: The feeling one has when is doing something only for the sake of having something to do. It has connotations of having wasted one's life. This emotion is easiest felt by those who have quiet jobs which allow them plenty of time to waste time on the Internet. On particularly quiet days coathlet can spur hundreds of lines of addition to a wiki.
- Insouciance (no longer lost): expresses something like "nonchalance", "blithe lack of concern", or "meh". The average density of paper used in an office is 80g per square metre. The emotion you feel when considering the previous sentence is quite possibly insouciance.
Not A Lost Emotion at all:
- Rapidance: a feeling somewhere between "itchy feet" and "uselessness" and connotes a desire for adventure, specifically magic-wielding evil-slaying epic-quest adventure of the flavour so often portrayed in ELotH:TES. Rapidance of course actually exists in plentiful supply throughout the saga, though the name of the emotion is indeed Grimfleur's invention, as is his method of condensing it into bite-size pieces for distribution.
Because of the loss of Frippiness, Frippiness Gas has no effect on Men.
Each of the seven lost emotions is associated with one of the Biological Elements.
Discussion
Many years ago I saw the Lost Emotions named and even defined in a fan work of some kind. I actually committed them to memory to impress girls, but have long since forgotten them again (it didn't work). Anyway, I can't even remember the name of the thing I was reading - I think it was a version of The Elemenstor Saga Companion which covered fan fiction; it may even have been online - let alone the Lost Emotions themselves. I think it would be great if we could have them listed here even if they are unofficial so, anybody who knows what I'm talking about is encouraged to list what they can find here. A link to a mirror of the site if it still exists would be even better! Cheers. |
I remember what you're talking about. I had a copy of that written down somewhere, I'll have to see if I can find it. One which I do remember offhand was "Vickension", defined as something like "A sense of victory coupled with a sense of dread." I remember that it was usually associated with winning at something very thoroughly, and then while feeling victorious also knowing that the other person was going to beat the crap out of you for it. -Ian |
Yeah.. the one I liked was Perundive. You know.. the feeling that you know the smell of something has changed. |
I've been trying to work Coathlet into regular conversation--the feeling one has when is doing something only for the sake of having something to do. It has connotations of having wasted one's life. |
Comments (2)
Anonymous said
at 7:14 pm on Jan 4, 2006
Why are the 7 Lost Emotions featured under famous items of Battal?
Anonymous said
at 7:16 pm on Jan 4, 2006
where would you put them?
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