Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
November 12, 2021 6:56 PM
Beginners - Don't Explode by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Tarquin sat at the teacher’s desk, holding the lesson plan up both so that he could read it and also to avoid much interaction with the incoming students. He had read it very thoroughly already, but it wouldn’t hurt to go over it again, especially when it formed such a convenient barrier between him and social interaction.Selina had come down with a stinking cold and a fever, and had been sent home to rest. She was overdue a holiday, given that she’d stayed over Midterm, and he hoped she might take a few days off more than she needed to recover from her physical symptoms. He doubted it though. Isis already had a fairly full day of classes, so he had agreed to cover. The plan was written, it was an easy spell well within the capabilities of an adult wizard. All he had to do was make sure the children didn’t explode. That sounded easier said than done. He was very used to being around only a small, select number of the students, and they tended to be the quiet and more well-behaved ones. Also the whole Xavier thing, though he had only meant ‘explode’ in a purely facetious sense when he’d had the thought. He sort of hoped that if he hadn’t shown any signs of becoming less stable until now, he wouldn’t choose today to start.
“Good morning,” he stated, once they were all seated. “Professor Skies is absent today, so you’ve got me. We’ll be following her plan exactly, so any complaints can go to her when she gets back,” he said, with an arched eyebrow that suggested they probably wanted to think long and hard about that, and that what he was actually saying was not to complain or try to tell him this wasn’t how she did things.
“Your task today is to turn a bottle into a vase. As you all have the same task, points will be given based on how far the original ends up from the bottle in terms of material, colour, pattern and design, and overall shape. You should prepare a sketch or labelled diagram in advance for how you want your vase to look, then write a reflection after it is complete. How close is your finished product to your plan? Was it easier or harder than you imagined? Did anything change about your plan during casting? How many attempts did you make, and what were some of the difficulties you encountered? If attempting this project again, what would you change about your design? The notes say ‘continue reflective practises in journal’ so I assume this process is familiar to you all.
“The spell is vasis with a spiraling wand motion above the neck of your bottle. Like so.” He made a quick, slightly awkward vase just to prove he could, and briefly held it up. “Off you go.”
OOC: As noted, the journal practice should be familiar to them. Posts will be graded on length, relevance, creativity, and realism. Have fun. Don't explode.
Subthreads: I will endeavor not to blow up then by Hansel Hexenmeister with Iris Cobb
I wouldn't dream of it by Verdillia Scurlock
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Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Beginners - Don't Explode
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Hansel Hexenmeister
November 12, 2021 10:54 PM
I will endeavor not to blow up then by Hansel Hexenmeister
Hansel was surprised to see the librarian sitting in Professor Skies' seat as he walked into his Transfiguration lesson. Huh. With a slightly confused frown at the man, he made his way to his usual seat and got his supplies for class out: wand, ink, parchment, quill. His unasked question was answered soon enough when the librarian explained that their usual professor was absent and he was fulfilling the role of substitute.Satisfied by that explanation, Hansel listened to the lesson description attentively. It seemed straightforward enough. He was a second year now and he felt quite qualified to turn a bottle into a vase at this point in his education. He still had a little trouble with some pronunciations, but he was getting better at it, and today's incantation didn't have any of the sounds he struggled to produce.
As recommended, he started with a sketch of his potential vase. He didn't have a lot of personal experience with vases. Dad didn't have any. Flowers didn't grow in the badlands of Utah and if Karl bothered buy any, it was to grow in one of the habitats, not to stick in a vase to die. Teppenpaw, headed up by the Herbology professor as it was, had quite a few plants in the common room, but they were all potted and thriving, rather than suffering the slow inevitable end that faced rootless stems stuck in vases.
Still, he knew what a vase was and was pretty sure he'd even encountered a few in real life, just not very closely and he couldn't specify any exact details about when or where he'd seen them. He did have a pretty good mental image of a crystal one though that he tried to sketch out on his parchment.
Hansel . . . was not a good artist. It looked nothing like a crystal vase. He labeled it, though, so he could at least try to explain what its expected features were supposed to be in words if not visually. Material: Kristall - transparent, colorless; Shape: wider Bulb on the Bottom for stability, narrow Neck, flare outward to spread Flower Arrangement, hollow inside; Decorative Flourish: lots of Facets for catching Light and making Rainbows
He looked at the bottle he'd been given. It was sort of a greenish glass, translucent but not clear and easy to see through like the crystal would be, with a similar basic shape to what he wanted with his vase, but far less fancy. He could do this.
He readied his wand over the bottle, then spiraled it around the bottle as he cast, "Vasis!" and imagined the clear crystal vase he wanted to appear in front of him in place of the green glass bottle.
The green vanished readily, and the shape changed, but not exactly to the elegantly facetted crystal he was hoping for. It was more like if a lovely crystal vase had mated with a prickly cactus. The facets were not so much delicate sun catchers as a dangerous defense mechanism intent on protecting this vase from theft by impaling anyone who tried to touch it with sharp crystal spikes.
"That . . . is not exactly what I was going for," he remarked out loud.
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Hansel Hexenmeister
I will endeavor not to blow up then
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Iris Cobb
November 13, 2021 10:11 AM
That sounds like a good idea. by Iris Cobb
Iris was still looking for someone to ask her to the ball. So, when time came for transfigurations class, she sat down next to one of her potential candidates, Hansel. Right off the bat though she noticed this was going to be an odd class, the Librarian was here instead of Professor Skies. He didn't give much explanation on her absence either. She hoped Professor Skies was okay. She had seemed fine over break, if not a bit distracted. Well, if she wasn't back in a few days she may need to ask so she could send a get-well gift or something.In the meantime, she listened to the lesson plan for the day and took a few notes. She perked up at the talk of making a drawing first, it wasn't an uncommon suggestion, but she still liked doing it. Drawing was fun. Once they were set free to work, she thought for a moment trying to think of a good vase. She wasn't bad at transfiguration, but she wasn't especially good either. She could do this, but she thought perhaps to keep it somewhat simple. She drew a decent looking glass vase with a bulb at the bottom and a long neck, she couldn't resist drawing some flowers on it for decoration. She thought they came out looking okay.
Then pulling out her wand, she focused on her design and the bottle in front of her, "Vasis!" she commanded with the requested twirl of her wand. The bottle in front of her shifted and took the desired shape and material, unfortunately the 'flowers' on it were mere blobs of color. She sighed and tried to think of how to do that better.
Iris looked over at Hansel and his creation when he commented. It was certainly interesting. "No?" She asked, "It's an interesting design, but I reckon using it might prove dangerous. What was it supposed to look like?"
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Iris Cobb
That sounds like a good idea.
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Hansel Hexenmeister
December 02, 2021 10:00 PM
I thought so, too. by Hansel Hexenmeister
His talking to himself out loud - a habit that he probably ought to break now that he lived around other people when he was at Sonora - attracted the attention of the girl sitting next to him. His eyes drifted over to her vase and it was a nice abstract bit of artwork that didn't look anywhere near as lethal as his own.He showed her is sketch, though that didn't look much more like what he'd intended than the actual bottle-turned-vase did. "It was supposed to be kind of textured glass? Like . . ." he tried to think of an example, though he couldn't recall where he'd seen anything like it any more than he could recall seeing vases in general. "Like prismed bumps that catch the light and make rainbows everywhere?" He couldn't imagine his dad had anything like that but he couldn't think of where else he could have ever run into it, since he thought he'd remember it with more context if it was something he encountered as recently as sometime at Sonora. But he hadn't really gone anywhere except home and Sonora . . . and one time he went to Germany to visit Johana Leonie and her family when Hilda wanted to see them over the summer. It must have been there, he decided.
"Anyway, it's supposed to be pretty not hazardous. Lemme see if I can get this to be less of a lethal weapon that Professor . . . Mister? Mister Fox-Reynolds will need to confiscate."
He waved his wand over the spiky vase and cast again, "Vasis!" being a bit more careful on the pronunciation this time, and imagining the spikes melting back into vase as angled corners rather than pointy protrusions.
It worked . . . to a degree. It still wasn't exactly what he was aiming for, but it was closer. It looked a bit more like zig zagged ridges than numerous facet points, but he wasn't going to argue with it any more. It wasn't going to kill anybody like this and it didn't look like a bottle anymore, so that was about what they'd been asked to accomplish. "It looks much safer now," he noted to Iris.
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Hansel Hexenmeister
I thought so, too.
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Iris Cobb
December 03, 2021 11:17 AM
Any other thoughts? by Iris Cobb
Iris looked at Hansel's sketch, she hated to think it but it wasn't very good. Still he'd labeled bits of it, so that helped even if some of his spelling was a little odd. "I see," she replied, not quite sure what else to say. His description of his desired outcome was a little bit outside of her own experience. 'Textured glass like bumps and made rainbows'? It certainly sounded pretty, but she'd never seen anything like that anywhere. "It sounds pretty and non-hazardous," she added with an encouraging smile as he attempted to fix all of those spiky bits he'd made.She watched as his vase shifted in form and became a bit closer to what he had drawn to start with. How close it actually got to what he wanted, she still wasn't sure. At least based off of his drawing. "It does," she agreed, "Plus, it is prettier as well. Do you think it will make rainbows?" This bit of his description had really intrigued her. She wondered what sort of extra magic he'd put into the spell they were casting to add that effect.
Iris looked at her own drawing and results. "Mine was supposed to look like this," she showed him the drawing that she had made of perhaps an overly flowered, but simple vase. She liked drawing flowers and the ones on the pictures had come out pretty well, but the images hadn't transferred to her vase other than the blobs of color. "Do you think I should try to fix this, or just leave it as it is?"
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Iris Cobb
Any other thoughts?
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Verdillia Scurlock
December 08, 2021 3:21 AM
I wouldn't dream of it by Verdillia Scurlock
Verdilla took a seat in transfiguration, noticing it was the librarian at the front of the room. She was quite familiar with him, both from being quite a frequent reader, and also from smooshing around the library, practise being the kind of person who had one at home. Although, most of their book check-out interactions had been fairly brief, and she had stopped swooshing any time he appeared in the vicinity because she didn't think he'd approve.She hoped Professor Skies was alright. She was both quite stylish and competent. Not a match on Professor Brooding-Hawthorne on the former, but possibly a little more on the latter. There was a terribly nasty cold, or several of them, which was to be expected after winter break. It was one of the great advantages of being magical that such things were easily cured, but Professor Skies was probably far too dignified a person to teach with steam pouring from her ears. Verdillia certainly didn't like to be out and about when that was the case, and when the alternative was being pampered and indulged in bed or on the settee.
The lesson was motivating, as she loved the opportunity to do design work, both for its own aesthetic, and because it was an open ended chance to stretch her magic as far as she could. The only issue was the sketch and the reflecrion. She did not want to have to say she had failed in any element of her design, but she didn't want to limit herself to something overly simple. But perhaps she could embellish beyond her original design if she finished easily. That was surely better than having a complex design and falling short.
She pulled a set of pencils out of her bag, considering which to use. She had been to art classes, so she knew how to use her materials properly. It was probably best to use the hard ones for outlining and details (even if she couldn't really see the difference between slightly and very hard pencil) with some soft pencil for shading (even if she wasn't very good at it - it was still important to try to do the thing properly). She drew out a fairly stereotypical vase shape (she probably ought to know the names for different types), figuring that originality was less important than difference from the original bottle. This design involved removing all of the neck and widening it, as well as tapering down the bottom. She added these facts to her annotations. She did a nominal bit of shading before reaching for her colours, putting a thin strip of gold around the neck and then beginning a pattern of chrysanthemums in orange.
"This will be a lot of work, but I hope it's achievable," she commented to her neighbour whilst she coloured her flowers.
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Verdillia Scurlock
I wouldn't dream of it
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