Grayson Wright
December 20, 2019 6:59 PM
Let's have a nice cup of tea (Advanced). by Grayson Wright
"Hello, everyone," said Grayson Wright to his Advanced Charms class, looking around at the group of familiar faces. His demeanor was still, even after all these years, never completely relaxed when he spoke before a group, but it was far closer to that standard than it was with any other class. "And welcome back."We're going to start off today with a relatively simple open-ended task," he informed them. "Each of you will receive a teacup." He held up one of the plain white porcelain vessels on the side table as an example. "Each of you will need to customize your teacup, using only charms - though this can include charms placed onto items like paint or stencils - to do so, and using at least three separate charms on your cup. Write down each spell as you use it, and why you made the choice to use it, and how well the later spells worked after you began trying to further charm an already charmed object.
"This will help you start reviewing for your RATS, of course," he acknowledged, "but it's not purely old material. This issue of building up spells - multiple charms of multiple degrees of complexity on one item - is something we'll come back to again and again this term. Which spells work well together? Why do some work together on one object, work separately on the same object, or clash and misfire if cast on the same object? Is it the nature of those spells, or of what you're casting them on, or both? How can you, as an independent young adult once you turn seventeen, for those who haven't yet - how can you determine if an idea you have is safe to try or not?
"To help us start considering those questions, we'll have group discussions as you finish your teacups," he said, pointing to one side of the room, which was currently empty aside from a single desk with a quill standing of its own accord on a sheet of parchment next to an odd contraption seemingly filled with colorful little square envelopes. "As you finish, pull up a seat and begin discussing your results - and make a cup of tea if you like," he added, nodding to the little envelopes, which were in fact an assortment of tea bags. Last year, in the midst of a tiring year, Gray had finally succumbed to the temptations of caffeine, and had become rather fond of the stuff since. "It's a good chance for the seventh years to practice aguamenti, and everyone to practice heating charms. The quill will take notes as the discussion goes along, so everyone will get a copy regardless of when you finish your teacup and join in. Homework will be to read that transcript and write three questions you would like to have asked based on it.
"As always, I'm here - " he waved vaguely at his desk - "if you have any questions or if things start exploding. Though I hope you won't cause many explosions, it's still a possibility even for our seventh years, so you'll have to do something truly reckless and foolish to get in trouble for it if it happens," he admitted. "Other than that, though, everyone come get a cup and saucer and get started."
OOC: Welcome back to Charms! This lesson is a chance to gain lots of points for creativity, both in using established charms and in making up your own, if you like. You may post in either section, or in both; usual scoring rules will apply, with the best of your posts getting the most regardless of which section that post is in. Any questions OOC, catch me in Chatzy or tag me in OOC; any questions or explosions IC, just tag me here. Have fun!
Subthreads: Design and Practical
Theory Discussion
16
Grayson Wright
Let's have a nice cup of tea (Advanced).
113
Grayson Wright
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System
December 20, 2019 6:59 PM
System
December 20, 2019 6:59 PM
Tatiana Vorontsova
December 31, 2019 7:38 PM
My brain hurts now. by Tatiana Vorontsova
Tatiana loved looking at art, and loved reading about art, but she had never had the patience for making much of it. She had been given the lessons in watercolor and pastel and sewing and papercrafts and flower-pressing and making collages, the same as her sisters, but almost always ended up reading aloud or playing her balalaika while they worked at handicrafts. The techniques were not beyond her, but she simply didn't have the patience.This had made the process of packing as many charms as possible onto a teacup while decorating it something of a challenge for her, but she had tried. Thinking of the porcelain teacups they used sometimes at home when they did not use stakany, she had tried to use a Severing Charm to remove the handle of her cup. She had broken the whole cup three times before she had managed to get it finely targeted enough to actually do what she had wanted it to, but she had managed it. Then she had spent far too long trying to think of a charm to smooth away the last of the bits where the handle had met the bowl. Then she had gotten to start the really difficult part: decorating.
She had quickly decided that if she tried for a true pattern, she would be doomed. Unfortunately, she had still underestimated the difficulty of even a relatively simple pattern of blue and red diamonds. She had had to cast the color changing charms over and over again, drawing the colors through each other in a way that reminded her of watching Katya with her watercolors - a process which involved as much removal of things as placement, or so it seemed to her, to get the desired effects sometimes. Then she had had to figure out how to make the borders to the diamonds. On the cups at home, that would have been thin strips of gold; here, she had had to get creative. Rummaging in Professor Wright's supplies for them, she had managed to find some threads, use yet another color change charm to make them look like gold, and then sticking charms to adhere them. It had reminded her of using bits of straw to make patterns on eggs for Pascha at home - one of the artistic pursuits she had had reasonable success with as a child, but which still took more time and concentration than she might have liked.
It also made the surface of the cup feel funny, textured, even though it only looked textured if one knew to look. Happily, a cup like this was held by the rim (she had used an engorgement charm to extend the lip of the cup outward a bit to make this easier, only to then swear several times in Russian upon realizing this necessitated repairs to her color charms) and so she wouldn't be distracted by that during the theory chat, which she went over to join with a sigh of relief. She did not necessarily enjoy theory or class discussions - too much English, especially when her brain was already tired from all the work it had done to figure out how to make something presentable of this cup - but she was allowed to make tea and then drink it during the discussion group.
The offerings were only English tea, of course, but she could make do. Right now, weak dust meant for Americans would be the nectar of the gods. She put two teabags in her cup to hopefully eventually achieve something resembling decent strength.
"You need samovar, professor," she informed Professor Wright before taking a seat.
"I know one thing," she announced. "Severing charm, it is hard to use on - this," she said, not bothering to even try to remember the word for the material which comprised the majority of the vessel resting on the saucer which rested on the palm of her left hand. "When I use enyourgmant charm, that made color change charm...not so good. But I use it many times - many many! - to make...this." She pointed to the pattern and looked forlornly into her teacup, where the tea was definitely still both too hot and too weak to drink. "We need charm to make tea make fast," she added, though this was not necessarily relevant to their assigned topic.
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Tatiana Vorontsova
My brain hurts now.
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Dorian Montoir
January 11, 2020 9:47 PM
I would love that to be possible by Dorian Montoir
Each of you will receive a teacup. Rarely had a lesson ever begun with such pleasant words. Dorian could not exactly sit up any straighter or be cued to pay more attention by these words, as he almost always had excellent posture and gave teachers his full focus, but they definitely pleased him. He had, perhaps, had a slight tendency to let his mind wander this term too, but today’s lesson promised to hold his full focus. As Professor Wright expanded upon the details, there was also the promise of drinking tea and discussing theory, so it just kept getting better and better. Although he could spot one logical flaw in what Professor Wright had said. He personally had been working on variations of augamenti to conjure water at different temperatures. Understandably, other people had not prioritised this and might need to heat their water. In what? was the question that sprung to mind, for he could see no receptacles other than the cups which they were being provided. Dorian had, in his cups of tea with Professor Brooding, got somewhat used to the idea of making tea directly in the cup. It still seemed a little vulgar to him but when you were using the low grade pounded dust they put into teabags, it all mattered a good deal less. Still. He very much hoped that Professor Wright was not suggesting they poured cold water over a tea bag and then heated it up. Or that they created a cup of boiling water and then dunked the teabag into it. Or, oh dearest Shénnóng, protector of all things tea, that people heated the water to what they deemed drinking temperature only and then dropped the bag in.He refrained from raising his hand to ask with what they were supposed to make their tea, although it was sorely tempting to do so in order to drop in some guidelines to his American classmates on how it ought to be done. It would be rude to call attention to a teacher's ignorance like that, and even though Dorian undoubtedly knew more about tea than Professor Wright did, the man had not tried to claim any expertise on the subject. He had merely tried to provide them with a class treat, and it would be very churlish to suggest he had done it incorrectly. Dorian thought he might quietly ask about kettles or other receptacles but he was not going to do so publicly. He was torn on whether to try and finish quickly in order to get the tea station set up more properly before people could go over and commit crimes but he was not sure he could bring himself to rush his work, especially not on a project he cared so much about. The Americans, and the poor teabags, would just have to fend for themselves until he was done. He just thought it was quite lucky that - given that he may have to observe poorly equipped Americans attempting tea in his peripheral vision - Professor Wright had said they wouldn’t be in trouble if things ended up on fire.
He collected one of the standard issue pristine white, handled, Western-style cups of medium capacity that Professor Wright was handing out, gratified that they did come with saucers. His typical Chinese cups did not require such an accessory but for Western tea time, it was quite proper. He supposed, one of his spells could be vanishing the saucer if he restyled his cup to be more Chinese in appearance - except both of those were Transfigurations. Hm. He set the china down on his desk, returning to the parchment where he had taken the notes about the day’s lesson. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been going to launch straight into this without a plan, but this underlined his need to really think it through. A lot of the things that sprung to mind when he thought about modifying the teacup were Transfigurations. He tended to embellish his cups with little designs that way, and then set them in motion using charms.
Professor Wright had mentioned something about charming paints for different effects, so presumably he could still embellish his cup like that, just it was likely to be slower and perhaps less neat than his transfiguration. He was decent-ish with a brush, but more used to working with ink on a two-dimensional surface. And again, he could not change the materials to anything more familiar because that was back to Transfiguration. He also suspected that ink would not hold well on a cup but a more familiar style of brush would have been nice.
He jotted down all the Charms he could think of to do with the cup’s appearance - he could hand paint a design and then animate it, or change the colours of the paint, or produce some kind of effect where they cycled through different colours. He could make things flash, but that sounded gaudy (he noted it for completeness, even though it would not personally feature amongst his choices). He could alter the cup itself by enlarging or shrinking it. Thinking over the spells he’d used during their party planning, there were things like anti-spill and anti-breaking charms but that had been because they were for children - he wasn’t an incapable infant who had no idea how to use a teacup. Still, he noted them, as the aim was a comprehensive list. Finding they were naturally falling into groups, he titled this one ‘Safety/practicality.’ He had had Isaac do an age line at the party, and was rather keen to try that out, although that would not be on the cup itself but on the surrounding area, and thus irrelevant once he moved over to the theory table - unless he could place it on the saucer, as that would be a very practical way of making sure one’s tea stayed safe from small hands wherever one was consuming it (though one could also teach one’s children not to touch, and that was what he would do). His notes did say the spells should be on the cup though, so he wasn’t sure that would count. Perhaps he’d try it as an extra. In terms of the other safety spells, he supposed he could pretend it was a travel set. His own beloved teapot and cup did have anti-breaking charms on them due to the need for them to be carted around so much. However, domestic sets did not. He remembered the transition period where he had had his own, unbreakable china, but had been invited sometimes to sit with Mama at her table and use proper cups so long as he did so with care. A gentleman held his cup carefully. Bié sa. Bié meng ji. Bié dapò. Don’t spill. Don’t slam. Don’t break. Thinking through his mother’s sets also gave him further ideas. She had a set of cups that danced before your poured into them, and he’d heard about teacups being made to bow to their guests. He placed these under a separate section entitled ‘animation/novelty.’
That gave him four broad categories - appearance, structure, safety and animation. His thoughts had fallen out naturally in a rather organised way, and it seemed to him a good starting point. Perhaps charms would combine more easily if he picked them from different categories - things that served different purposes would be less likely to interfere with each other, perhaps. He supposed he could test that by piling on charms in the same category, though it went against his principles to try and test his teacup to destruction. He would just have to compare notes with others at the end, and see if anyone else had been less fortunate and whether their misfortune confirmed his theory or not. That just left him having to choose a combination of spells that represented a broad enough range of categories and were also things he was willing to do to a teacup. He would paint it, and animate the design, but he suspected it was worth leaving that until the end, because he didn’t want to upset his artwork (figuratively or literally). Structurally, he could enlarge or shrink it, but - as he couldn’t make it into a handleless Chinese cup - he initially couldn’t see the point. He tended to find that Western tea went cold by the time you got to the bottom of a cup, and this prompted him to add insulating/heating charms to his list of practical ideas, which was helpful because he liked that more than any of the juvenile ideas. He supposed that might go well with enlarging it, as those two features complemented each other - perhaps not in a magical sense, but in the sense of making a pleasing and cohesive product. He also preferred that notion to any of the animations - he was quite confident in his ability to execute similar spells after using them on the soft toys last year, and whilst it was a fun set of charms to play with, the professor already knew he was more than capable, and it didn’t quite fit in with what he wanted here; if it wasn’t going to be a full set doing a choreographed routine, it was going to just look odd, and having a clumsy Western cup scampering about for the sake of it did not appeal to his aesthetics. Plus, it would make putting it behind an age line rather redundant if it could just run off.
He began by enlarging it, figuring that stretching the surface on which another charm had been cast was more likely to lead to fractures in that, and then began considering how to cast his warming charm. It might have been better placed on the saucer, but again, that would not meet the task requirements. So, he should cast it on the cup. That was slightly tricky, because he wanted for the cup but not the handle to be hot. He could try keeping the handle very separate in his mind. He turned the cup over, reasoning that it might be easier to separate the base as an entity in his head. That would also mean he was casting his second and third charms on different parts of the cup, which was probably another way of keeping things well organised and explosion-free. He cast the spell, and tested it by touching a finger to the cup’s surface. It felt pleasantly warm. He suspected he ought to show that to Professor Wright before he made tea, as the effect would be rather harder to notice once the cup was full of hot liquid. Still, he had painting, animating and an age line to go before he was at that point.
He got up from his seat to go and collect some of the paints that had been provided. He would just take black, and undoubtedly would use it to paint one of his customary little rabbits on the cup. He was still torn between animating it just to hop about or working some kind of effect to have it cycle through different rainbow colours, either instead or as well - he thought it might look rather fetching for it to change as it moved, but that was of course, heaping more and more on, and going against his categories theory. He could practise on paper and see how well that held up before trying it on his cup, as well as making sure he was happy with how any of the possible designs looked...
He turned to make his way back to his place. He had been fairly intently focussed on his work until that point, and wondered whether it said something about his reputation that none of his classmates had attempted to come between him, serious study, and a teacup. However, as he was gathering paint supplies, someone seemed to ready to take advantage of the break in his concentration.
13
Dorian Montoir
I would love that to be possible
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