What rhymes with chess? [VI & VII years] on Charms

Professor Olivers

July 06, 2015 9:52 PM

What rhymes with chess? [VI & VII years] by Professor Olivers

There were strange things going on at Sonora again, random posts that were little disturbances but spread rumors that Florence didn’t exactly want to know about her students. It wasn’t overwhelming at all, at least not yet, but she hoped nothing was going a muck on school grounds.

For today’s class Florence had set up the desks so that there would be two at a table sitting across from each other. On the table was a chessboard all set up already with its black and white pieces. Florence herself was dressed in a black-and-white ensemble, one that seemed to tie in both her position as coach and the theme of this class. As her Advanced students came in, she directed them to partner up at a table. Once they had settled in, she clapped her hands to get their attention.

“Welcome to Chess 101,” she said with a smile. “Today we’re going to be playing wizard’s chess. But the catch is you have to implement the lesson we learned just yesterday. Can anyone tell me what that was?” She called on students until one got the answer right: the Animation Charm. “Remember that you will be in control of these chess pieces; that means you have the freedom to tell them what you want as you play chess. Create rules for these little statues to follow in order to make your chess game a little more organized.

“You may not be able to finish your game in class today, but make the chess pieces move as flawlessly as possible. It’s not who wins the game but who can get the pieces to work and follow your directions without misbehaving or being too stiff. Good luck!”

OOC: Have fun with animating these chess pieces! Florence would step in before any serious injuries could take place, but be creative! Two hundred words minimum as usual. Tag Prof. Olivers if you need any help/have any questions!

Subthreads:

Less, mess, dress, confess.... by Julian Umland, Teppenpaw

This is going to be a mess... by Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus

0 Professor Olivers What rhymes with chess? [VI & VII years] 0 Professor Olivers 1 5

Julian Umland, Teppenpaw

July 08, 2015 8:00 PM

Less, mess, dress, confess.... by Julian Umland, Teppenpaw

Julian had not expected to find her Charms classroom set up as though it was about to be used for a chess tournament, but the Charms classroom was put into strange configurations often enough that she wasn’t deeply surprised, either. She just sat down on the edge of a chair near the door where she could get up quickly if she needed to if the boards really were left over from a chess tournament but on the White side of the board just in case they were going to spend some or all of the class period playing chess. Normally, that would have seemed out there even for Charms, but after their last lesson, she didn’t think it was an unreasonable assumption.

It was also not an assumption which either thrilled or troubled her. ‘Brilliant’ was not an adjective anyone would ever attach to her play, but Julian guessed she would count as a competent player. She beat John more often than he beat her, anyway, and at least made Dad and Paul work for it when they beat her. She even beat Paul often enough. Not brilliant, but competent; if they played chess in class, she was sure she wouldn’t disgrace herself at least.

She didn’t beat her father very often, though. In general, if one of her parents was doing something that could be considered remotely ‘high-brow,’ it was her mother – Mom was the one from the Central Canada elite, the one with the impractical humanities degrees and creative tastes in food and drink and casual references to past world travels that included more of the world outside Canada than the northern U.S. – but her father was the one who had taught Julian and her brothers to play chess. Mom could play, but wasn’t very good; Dad was the one who, growing up with an affectionate but awkward and not very talkative single father on a farm in Saskatchewan, had played multiple games almost every night he wasn’t at school for years and years. While Grandma, his ‘voice,’ had been living in America, Dad joked that Grandpa had only had two enthusiasms: his fruit garden, a private indulgence separate from the rotating crops he grew for food and money, and what he called the German chess tradition, an enthusiasm strong enough that he and Dad had once somehow scraped together the money and paperwork to go overseas and watch the then-German wizard chess world champion defend his title right after Dad finished school. Dad himself was not that enthusiastic, but he enjoyed a good game; she knew he was a little disappointed that Stephen was a decent player who didn’t really care for the game, that John was enthusiastic but not that skilled, and that Joe just didn’t have the knack for the game at all. Julian liked to think John and Joe might still grow into it, though, if only so Dad wouldn’t be completely bereft when she and Paul were completely out of the house. They had a few more years….

She was happily distracted from the thought of how old she was by confirmation that they were, in fact, playing chess – if they could animate their own pieces. Julian honestly preferred normal chess to any of the magical variants, as it took a lot less effort to just pick up a piece and put it where she wanted it to go, but could see the benefit of knowing how to animate things. Transfiguring them to arguably – Julian accepted the argument that they were because giving something the ability to move was an add-on, but giving something the ability to think and talk back if it didn’t trust the player was, even if it did have to obey the player whether it wanted to or not in the end, to change its essential nature – be ‘alive’ was another thing, she always wondered who had come up with that, but the ability to make something move according to set patterns without all the backtalk was an entirely practical skill. And this was at least a reasonably interesting way to do it….

Animating them all at once, but keeping some of them still until she told them to move, was going to be tricky. You all dutifully move was all well and good, but they had to know what their duty was. She thought the easiest way would be to charm all of each piece category, the pawns at once, or maybe in groups of four since she had only learned the spell yesterday, and then the Knights, and so on, and give each set its prescribed moves and order them not to move until she told them to. For now, though, she needed to work out the social niceties, including making sure her partner was okay with working with her and that her partner knew how to play chess. Just because everyone in Julian’s household at least knew the rules didn’t mean everyone in all households did; when Paul and John had first joined the family, Julian had spent a while thinking they were both impossibly stupid because the rules of chess were probably the least important thing they hadn’t known which she had always assumed until then that everybody knew.

“This should be fun,” she said with a smile. “Do you mind playing Black?”

16 Julian Umland, Teppenpaw Less, mess, dress, confess.... 254 Julian Umland, Teppenpaw 0 5

Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus

July 10, 2015 8:40 PM

This is going to be a mess... by Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus

Over the last week of school, Ginny had heard rumors about certain initials being carved into one of the trees in the Labyrinth Gardens. For a few days, Ginny had been too scared to actually seek out the tree just to confirm the rumors that she had heard, but, eventually, her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had gone for a walk. It had taken her some time to find it as she was only in the gardens on some occasions when she had nothing better to do and didn’t want to really use energy for dancing. She used to go into the gardens all the time. Ginny used to love to climb trees and smell the roses. She wasn’t sure when that had all stopped. Well, not stopped, but decreased exponentially.

After finding her way around, she finally located the spot where the initials were originally written. They were no longer there, but a note left by the groundskeeper have been enough for her to feel utterly embarrassed by the situation. She had no idea who had done it. The only person she had ever told about her feelings who was currently at the school, was Francesca, and Ginny trusted her friend to know that she would never betray her trust that way. Ginny was having a difficult time as it was with dealing with her feelings for Adam and now it seemed as though someone was trying to make a fool out of her. If Adam had any idea about how she felt about him, he would never want to remain her friend. This was all so humiliating.

Ginny sighed and took a seat in the Charms classroom. After taking some time to think it over, Ginny realized that the initials were probably for some other couple that had nothing to do with her and Adam. How else could the initials on the tree explain it? If Francesca hadn’t done it and Ginny hadn’t done it, there was no way for the initials to have gotten there and be about her. Just, no way.

When she finally focused in on the class assignment, Ginny felt the desire to groan. She was not good at Wizard’s Chess. Or any sort of chess. She used to play this with her dad was she was little, but she had no idea what she was doing and her dad was just the sort of man to play along and let her win. She never really touched the game since and knew that if she played against someone who was a competitor and knew the game well, she was going to be destroyed and look like a complete idiot.

She really wished that she could just pick up a doll and do all of this with instead of actually play a game against another peer.

As much as she wanted to pair up with Francesca or Adam, Ginny was also nervous that they would get annoyed with her for not knowing how to play. She would just have to be honest with whoever it was that ended up sitting next to her. When they were asked to pair off, Ginny gave a shy smile to the person who chose to work with her. “I should let you know that I really do not know how to play this game and will be really terrible with this assignment. I apologize in advance.” Ginny advised them, feeling really sheepish about the whole thing. She would rather be honest with them instead of proud and pretend she was something that she was not.

6 Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus This is going to be a mess... 0 Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus 0 5