The Boggart Game

[Anarchy]

Riddikulus! the podiums stretch even further upwards, becoming fluted gothic columns and the heads of those dusty administrative types are now grotesque stone carvings in the high vaulted hall where your certs are being presented (needless to say, your's is a first class). I think the American architects and stone masons who built such places were a bit too straight laced and puritanical to put a sheela na gig up there, but it was your boggart and he should have kept his mouth shut, so you are welcome to have a row of them down either side of the hall if you want to.

The boggart is before me, it's a job interview, I really want that job, but, after a night in the cold and damp (low single figures centigrade) snow covered bouncy castle cottage the boggart is pretending to be me, speaking in a boring monotone, stammering and trying to make in appropriate nervous funny remarks.

 

[sun seeker]

Riddikulus! The boggart turns into a gigantic wad of ooey, gooey chewing gum that divides into two parts and stuffs itself into the interviewer's ears so he has no idea what you are saying, giving you time to change tracks and have a good laugh. Fortunately the interviewer has a sense of humour and after you help him get the chewing gum out of his ears and you are both done laughing, he makes you a cup of tea and you sit down for a relaxed, friendly conversation about how much you are wanted in the new job they are offering you and what a magnificent salary you are being offered.

Hmm... I love this idea but mine could be so many things and some of them are hard to put in writing. Choosing one... okay, my boggart is a letter I get in the mail in an official-looking envelope, telling me I neglected to pay a library fine twenty years ago and the interest amounts to a hundred thousand dollars and a collection agency will be arriving shortly to take away all my belongings.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

Riddikulus! It's an angry envelope, like the one Ron Weasley gets when he destroys the families awesome flying car. You take the envelope from the mailbox and see it starting to smoke, better open it before it explodes in your face.

So you open it and all these voices come out telling you in very official voices about how they will take away what you own. While you were reading the letter a truck parks on your lawn and the people from the collection agency get out.

But the letter is still in your hand and it's angry. The dudes from the collection agency approach you and suddenly the letter decides that it's had it. It flies towards the men and starts biting them and screaming at them with the voice of Ron's mother. You keep the letter and the next time the officials send an agency, the letter bites them too. This repeats until all the collection agencies want to stay away from your house. ;)

____
I step forward now. The boggart turns into the people from my new job, who point and laugh at me and say "you really thought you could work here with PTSD?"

 

[Anarchy]

I step forward now. The boggart turns into the people from my new job, who point and laugh at me and say "you really thought you could work here with PTSD?"

The Boggart is doing the same to me too, and offering me the carrot of avoidant behaviours and isolation, and the big stick of triggers.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

This game has been kind of abandoned and accumulated dust since last year. Maybe we can attempt a single try at reviving it?

I´ll explain the game again for clarity:

Neville Longbottom is scared to death of Snape. At one point, they have an Defense Against the Dark Arts class. There's some rattling in the cabinet and loud noises as they all enter the classroom, and professor Remus Lupin explains that there's a Boggart hiding in the cabinet. A Boggart is a creature that will take the shape of the thing you fear most, when it is confronted with you personally.

I´ll start and think of a boggart I´ve been having recently, and provide an example on how I could turn it into something ridiculous. Then the next person gets to say what shape their boggart has aqcuired (i.e what they are afraid of), and the poster after them will think of a way that they can ridiculize the posters´ boggart (and then post their own boggart).
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I step forward and my boggart turns into a monster made of drippy, stringy slime. I step back, bewildered, but then I think of how I could disarm the boggart.

Riddikulus!

There now is a magnifying glass behind the boggart that filters sunlight from the window. The sunlight travels through the magnifying glass and starts burning the boggart, who shrieks and screams and then flies back into the closet, waiting for its next unsuspecting victim.

 

[angrypanda]

I'm totally game!
A boggart is chasing me in the shape of a man with a gun through the forest!

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

Riddikulus!

The shape of the man is still chasing you, but his gun now shoots Angry Birds, who get really mad at him and attack him. You get to escape safely!

(I already posted a fear of mine above, and I cannot think of a fear right now, so I invite anyone to think of how the boggart would appear to them, so we can make it look like a fool!)

 

[Kintsugi]

I just want to first say that I was thinking deeply about whether or not to dig up this thread almost exactly when Radise revived it. :) (Addendum: I just went back and read her Sunday post, noticing that she too used the word revive. Maybe we have a psychic connection.)

My boggart is a massive pile of grad school paperwork waiting to be done, looming 100ft tall and sporting fangs armed with stress hormone, which drip leisurely from the razor-like teeth. I hide ineffectively under a blanket and tremble!

 

[angrypanda]

Riddikulus!

The thousand sheets of paper start to blow all around the room and start folding themselves into paper airplanes. As they circle you instead of dropping stress hormone they drop pieces of your favorite candy!

Today my boggart is my best friend! I imagine she's plotting to destroy me then belts out an evil laugh while I'm lying on the floor sobbing!

 

[Kintsugi]

Riddikulus! Your best friend is only laughing because she has just remembered a wickedly funny anecdote she was going to tell you about some tandem bike riders she watched crash into a food truck last week. :D

 

[Kintsugi]

Ah, shit, sorry. Forgot to name my own boggart.

The boggart becomes a seemingly omnipresent mass of sentient dirt (think the microbots from Big Hero 6), gathering together to form an amorphous and queasily instable, shifting, monstrously tall silhouette that arches over me, daring me to tackle the chore of eradicating it from my dwelling. I feebly hold up a lightweight vacuum but cower before the impenetrable mass.

 

[Anarchy]

Ridiculous!

The Boggart morphs into a "dust bunny" that scampers off down the dust bunny hole of your vacuum cleaner, never to be seen again.

The Boggart has infested my CV/resume, turning it into every critical opinion that I've ever felt like being directed at me
Every endless conflicting criticism of "that's not how a CV should look, youllhafta..." Follwed by the endless hours, days, weeks, months; of trying to follow the instructions, only to be told time and time again that it's wrong, go and start again
Ask someone else to proof read the new one, and no, the whole thing's totally wrong, that's not how you do a CV, start all over again, you're absolutely no good at x,y,z, so don't claim that you are...