Continuing the conversation (Prof. Duell) on Labyrinth Gardens

Xavier Lundstrom

February 01, 2023 3:19 PM

Continuing the conversation (Prof. Duell) by Xavier Lundstrom

"It's not the worst," Xavier answered a little defensively when she asked how sitting in the sun was going for him. It felt pretty rich that the person who always lectured him on patience and taking things steady was now picking on his lack of instantaneous results. He couldn't shut his mind off, but he felt better for trying it with the sun on his skin and a feeling of freedom.

The displacing thing was annoyingly accurate though, given that his head felt full to bursting and yet- it was so accurate that he pushed It firmly to the back of his mind, not wanting to examine it any more than he had to.

That left emptying himself out. He was going to presume that was metaphorical, otherwise it was going to get really gross, really fast. What did that mean? Screaming into the sky?

As she settled down by a tree, the suggestion seemed to be talking. Though apparently he was free to choose. 'As always.' He let out a bitter laugh at that.

"If asked to describe my life for the last four years, I don't think 'freedom to choose' would make it anywhere into the possible contenders. Don't argue with that or psychoanalyse me," he added, because she had said he could determine how this conversation went, and it felt good to be able to tell someone what to do.

He sat in the stillness, half thinking about her suggestion of pouring out, half resisting. Because he didn't want to be told what to do? Because he was afraid of what he would find? He didn't want to be stubborn or contrary or cowardly by nature, though that then rebounded on him as feeling, once again, like she knew that and was using it to her advantage. He didn't want to be stubborn, but he also didn't want to be manipulated.

What things did he want to let go of?

"When this started - when I found out about being a Seer," he clarified, "it felt really good. It solved so many problems - why I was getting migraines, why my magic wasn't working. I thought it would make everything better. And, I guess it did... Like, I don't want to go back to having those problems but now... Now I know Oz is gonna get hurt, and all this other horrible stuff, only I don't know enough to do anything about it." One solution was to stop asking the world for more information, but right now the problem was he had just enough to be worried. It was too tempting to think that if he looked for more, it might help make things better. Besides which, the visions weren't always painful. There was the image of him and Oz, clearly settled in together as adults, which felt like an unshakable fact. Even the things he didn't like Seeing... They trod that fine line between horror and fascination, like staring at wrecked cars on the highway. On top of all of that, it was the thing he was truly good at. It was power after years of being powerless... Those things danced in the edges of his awareness - a little voice in the back of his head that said he was doing this wrong and making bad choices. One which, after years of being helpless and having no choices, he didn't want to listen to. "I can't look away, even though I don't always like what I'm seeing," he managed, to stave off the advice that maybe he should stop or take a break if it was all too much. He didn't want a break. He wanted more.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Continuing the conversation (Prof. Duell) 1529 1 5

Giselle Duell

February 06, 2023 5:57 PM

Conversing is good by Giselle Duell

Giselle was pleased that Xavier had chosen to sit down. It gave her a small hope that maybe she hadn't yet completely failed Xavier. He began talking which she also to take for a very good sign. His opening statement about his life for the past four years didn't come as much of a surprise, but his directives after it cut her deeper than she would have thought. It didn't take her to long to maybe figure out why. Her own experiences of the past, while quite a bit different that Xavier's still had the same lack of 'freedom of choice'. She had been working since then to put that behind her, to grow and be a better person than she had been 'raised' to be. Xavier didn't know about her past, but did she still give the impression that she would be one to tell someone who they were, are, would be? Her spirits sunk a bit.

"Of course," She replied back quietly, "I'm sorry if I ever did, or even gave the impression that I might try to twist you into someone you are not." Giselle paused for just a moment, "Please, tell me if I ever do anything like that. I don't want to." There was definitely heavy emotion in her voice as some of Lia's psychological abuses came back into her mind. She took a deep breath and moved away from those thoughts again. This was not about her, it was about helping Xavier.

She listened intently as Xavier spoke, he spoke about problems she knew so well. Once it seemed like he had said all that he wanted to say for the moment, she ventured a comment. "You are suffering from the Seer's Curse. We do have a gift, but as many things do, it comes with a price." She sighed gently before continuing. "Whether or not you think the price is worth it, is up to you and largely irrelevant. Oz will get hurt, and there isn't really anything you or anyone else can do about it. Fortunately, such injuries are easily repaired, and I don't see any permanent damage resulting from the incident. The question in such a case is what do you do with the information if you cannot use it to stop the problem?" Again she paused briefly. "A few years ago Valentine had an flying incident. I knew something was coming, but not what or when. It was not a pleasant experience for anyone."

"I'm not sure if I have any advice for you though, I can try if you'd like. However, it is said that experience is the best teacher, and working your own way through may have deeper, lasting results.

2 Giselle Duell Conversing is good 1517 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

February 07, 2023 3:14 PM

Not when it's about how everything sucks by Xavier Lundstrom

"No, it's not you," Xavier huffed, almost annoyed that she had turned it around to be about her. Couldn't she See what was really bothering him, or work it out with common sense? And whilst no one in his life went so far as to be on the other side and try to justify what had been done, he was starting to hear a lot of 'what good does it do to be angry?' or pushing to focus on the here and now or the future - words which tried to explain away or tame his feelings about a bunch of people who had ruined his life and never apologised, and never would. He could be glad they were gone and still fuming mad at them at the same time, and he had every right to be.

"Thanks. I will," he added, when she said he could speak back against anything he didn't like. In spite of the fact that he found it easier to be snappy and backchatty with Professor Duell - because she had never enforced otherwise? because she seemed vague and unauthoritative? because he was, at this point, a long way past having a fig to give about such things? - the permission helped. Just the fact that she didn't want to do that... It was so thoroughly opposite to the Center. Though the words were like a bandaid on a wide open gash, because where had that attitude been when he'd needed it most?

And great, they were back to how it sucked to be a Seer. That was a super fun topic that he never got tired of... No other branch of magic went around talking about itself like it was terrible to be able to do it. They'd already covered how he would be seen as a liar or a fraud or just feared for being a weirdo in Why Your New Power is a Burden 101 but hey, there was more...

And broken arms didn't matter because magic. He held back the scoffing noise that had risen in his throat. Had she ever broken a bone? Did she know how much it hurt? And she had poked her tealeaves or thrown some bones around or whatever and decided it would all be fine, but she hadn't Seen it like he had - she didn't have a vivid memory of Oz in the changing room, pale faced and protesting that he was fine, or of him lashing out at the medic because he hated doctors and he was scared and he didn't want to need the attention... Sure, they could fix up his arm in a few seconds but the social repurcussions? The exposure of what pushed his buttons to all his teammates? The fact that he was scared and reliving the worst thing that had happened to him as a kid and all the guilt he'd felt about it? And Xav couldn't even talk to him about it... He had no idea which bits of that he knew from Oz telling him himself and which he'd accidentally poked his nose into without realising. In their 'how this works and why it sucks' lessons, they'd also covered self-fulfilling prophecies and influencing the future by knowing about it. What if him freaking out was what threw Oz off his game?

"It still matters!" was how he distilled his feelings into words.

"Why can't I?" he asked, when she said he couldn't stop Oz getting hurt. "There has to be a point to being able to do this. You use the results of what you See all the time - you put things out where your students sit. We're allowed to use it. You're always telling me that what I See isn't fixed or shouldn't be taken for granted or something," he added. He was sure he had heard some advice to that effect. He had mostly ignored it when he'd liked what he had been Seeing.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Not when it's about how everything sucks 1529 0 5

Giselle Duell

February 11, 2023 8:47 AM

Not talking about it never fixes anything by Giselle Duell

Giselle was beginning to struggle. There had been a reason that she had positioned herself essentially back-to-back with Xavier with the tree between them. He was not easy to work with, and she was not good working with people to begin with. Since her arrival at Sonora a few years back, she had been made aware that she was one to give off fairly obvious 'visual cues' to her mental state that she was unaware and unfamiliar with. At the moment, she was pretty sure she was beginning to give off some of them.

Yes, she understood that Xavier thought he had a terrible time growing up. He was miserable and angry. But she was probably sure he didn't want to compare his growing up to hers. What had happened to him was terrible, and despite what he thought, she did understand that. Being separated from your family, and tormented by those in authority? Yeah, she got it. But it didn't seem like that was what he wanted to hear. It sure seemed most of the time like he wanted to martyr himself in his own misery. Would she have been different at 15? At least he had friends here, and people trying to help him. She hadn't.

Giselle attempted to center herself again, and not let her own past interfere with what she though Xavier needed to hear. As such, it came out a bit cold and perhaps a bit harsh. "I do put things where my students sit. That does not change things, it is just acting upon the decisions they will already make themselves." He just had to point out another thing then that she had attempted to change with more gentle means with little result. That fact did not help soften her tone. "Perhaps if you would actually listen to all of the instruction I try to give you instead of only the parts you like, you would understand better. "

She took a breath and tried her best to calm some of her emotions, "Can you answer this scenario for me? Lets say that tonight you discover all of the details around Oz's accident. You know without the shadow of a doubt that thirty-six minutes into his next Quidditch game, Oz's team will have the Quaffle at their opponents goals trying to score. All attention is focused there, but Oz himself isn't he is, for whatever reason, on the other side of the playing field. At that moment a bludger will slam into his shoulder and crack against his broom. His arm will go numb and the broom spirals uncontrollably to the ground. Everyone will turns to watch, but no one can react fast enough and he will hit the ground and break his arm." She paused, "Forewarned with this information, what would you do?"

2 Giselle Duell Not talking about it never fixes anything 1517 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

February 13, 2023 2:46 PM

So, got any good news for me? by Xavier Lundstrom

It was annoying when Professor Duell just didn't get it. It turned out, it was even worse when she did. At least when her spot on observation was not in his favour...

"Well, maybe if it wasn't all contradictory and confusing!" he replied, slightly more snappishly than she had. She had shot down his argument pretty easily but it did still come back to the same ideas of fixed versus non fixed - of this having to have a point because even with one it was painful and scary enough, without it would just be torture.

She then laid out a horrible description for him.

"Tell him not to end up there. Heck, get him to cry off sick altogether." He wondered what his odds in succeeding at that would be... A broken arm was strongly demotivating, and if it was a home game, the dorms would most likely be empty, which he could make strongly motivating... "Ask for more people supervising the match. Warn them to look out for him. They should believe me, given what I can do." Professor Duell had chosen a particularly interesting version of the scenario... Xavier had been assuming Oz would get hit by a Bludger, which was just a natural part of this very stupid game he played. The only options then would have been changing Oz's behaviour. But she was laying out a scenario where there was actually fault at play - people were supposed to stop the players from falling like that. "If it happens, tell the medic to handle him differently. There are a dozen things I could do!"

13 Xavier Lundstrom So, got any good news for me? 1529 0 5

Giselle Duell

March 05, 2023 9:18 PM

Not really. by Giselle Duell

"It," Giselle started to snap back, but then stopped herself. She did not want to get into an argument with Xavier, she was pretty sure that would not be helpful or productive. Instead she took a breath and attempted to control her emotions before she tried again. "Perhaps if you explained what parts specifically are contradictory and confusing. If we look at the examples we have been working with, when I am laying out papers for students I am not seeking to change anything. I determine where they will sit and put their work in those places." That was true for the most part, as long as someone else wasn't attempting to use divinations to see where she would put the papers in a battle to try and mess her up. But Giselle wasn't about to try and tell Xavier about Anya's antics, she didn't see that as useful at the moment. Or probably ever.

"However," she then continued, "Looking into the future specifically for the reason to alter it, invalidates any information you may have gained. You looked into what would happen without your involvement. Using that information to involve yourself changes everything, and it always will." He would have known this if he had been paying attention in class. "This is why the vast majority of the wizarding community does not believe in the divinations discipline, it cannot give solid answers in a way that people want them. You can try to factor your involvement, but that is when things become very abstract, symbolic and nearly impossible to comprehend. You are trying to understand a constantly fluctuating outcome." There was another bit of information that she was pretty sure he wouldn't like, and most likely would ignore, but it was something else to put out there. "The other reasons, as the great minds of this discipline have reasoned, for the confusing symbolism is to allow for people's will to interact. The less information you have certain of what will happen, the more freedom you have interact with it without changing things that are certain."

She did have to smile slightly at his suggestions, "Those are things you could do, and there are still more if you think. Sometimes the great diviners act in subtle ways that aren't noticeable but still shift things in there favor. So, given the information that acting to directly change what you've Seen will completely invalidate what you have Seen, and that acting outside the bounds of the vision on the information you've learned can still move things in your favor, what else might you do?"

2 Giselle Duell Not really. 1517 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

March 06, 2023 6:17 AM

...inspiring by Xavier Lundstrom

OOC: CW passing mention of vomiting BIC:

He'd made her mad. Why did this relationship suck so much? He should have been her favourite. After years of having to teach frauds to stare into teacups and pretend they found it meaningful, she finally had a real student. And was she taking advantage of that? No. She was getting mad, and not helping him. Sure, his powers were well developed, but a lot of that was down to his own efforts.

"You keep telling me that what I see is fixed but also that acting on what I see changes it! But also that it can accidentally make it happen via self-fulfilling prophecy. So it's like... Act or maybe don't act because it's definitely going to happen regardless unless it's not but maybe you're going to make it! What about that isn't contradictory or confusing?! And as for not involving myself... How can that even apply when I have visions with myself in them?!"

He was beginning to agree with the vast majority of the wizarding community about divination being a bunch of hokum. And he could do it. But if all you could see were things you had to ignore in order to not influence them, or things you’d inevitably change, then what was the point? Unless you poked around in something as ambiguous as tealeaves, where there was room to let people make up their own interpretations after the fact—which was what she seemed to be saying at the end.

“If I could stave off my migraines by going ‘hmm’ and ‘ah I knew it’ at a bunch of tealeaves, I would,” he said. “But the Fates have decreed that they want to dump a boatload of visual information into my brain at regular intervals and if I don’t let them, my magic gets backed up and I have to lie in a dark room for at least a day, puking my guts out from the pain.” The migraines were the bad cop, to the good cop of how it made him feel special and capable—two things the school had constantly denied him—when he looked into a crystal ball and saw the world opening up before him in a way that it didn’t for other people. He was lying to himself when he said he would have taken ambiguous blobs of tea over that… Even if the results were driving him crazy.

The one part that gave him hope was that she did seem to be encouraging him to act. She hadn’t dismissed his suggestions out of hand, and was pushing him to think of more subtle options. Going to the medic behind Oz’s back rather than yelling at Oz to his face was about as subtle as he could think of.

“Like what?” he asked, without a whine in his voice. The worst part of all this was feeling hopeless—like Oz was going to get hurt and there was nothing he could do about it. Which she had said would happen. “What would you do about it?” he asked.

13 Xavier Lundstrom ...inspiring 1529 0 5

Giselle Duell

March 10, 2023 9:18 PM

Yeah. I know. by Giselle Duell

Xavier was getting worked up, and Giselle knew she wasn't helping with that. She thought his level of rationality dropped when this happened, and it was apparently her job to help him manage that. It did occur to her that she had been a Seer for as long as she could remember, and Xavier was still very, very new to this. Everyone said she had been an absolute terror in her younger years, and perhaps Xavier was doing better than she had done. But there were plenty of reasons for that. If this was the Fates idea of balancing the scales for her younger days, what was coming to make up for her school days?

Giselle took a deep breath and once more tried to calm and center herself. "All of that is true, but also needs a unique perspective on things. Keep in mind that you can only perceive things from your own point of view." He was going to complain about that, but so be it. "Those fixed things are things that you have seen. Anything that you perceive clearly becomes fixed because you have seen it clearly." It was a rather critical distinction to understand.

"This is why diviners and Seers work so much with interpreting symbolism. Meaning can be pulled from them, and they allow enough obfuscation to work with." She sighed gently, "This is why seeking out a clearer vision of what is to come is usually counter productive. Most of your other classes will tell you to dig and learn all you can, but depending on your goal, that isn't how this discipline works. Doing so just limits your options." The end of her speech came out sounding almost like an apology.

She only thought about his question for a moment or so before responding, "Your idea about talking to the medic is a good one. Nothing in the example has shown anything past the injury, so anything you do past that point is fair game. If you positioned yourself close enough, you could be ready to cast a full body-bind on him the moment he landed to prevent him from doing any extra damage, or convince some staff member to do it."

"This is where the lack of information gives you more freedom to work," Giselle continued, "In the example I specifically said you know that he broke his arm. If instead you only know that he only injured his arm" she paused a moment for effect, "That could have come from the Bludger hit. Now you know hitting the ground like that could break his arm, but it's not a certainty. You could do something to soften his landing, and he'd still wind up with an injured arm, but not a broken one. If instead you looked purely at a symbolic representation where a bird flying as the sun passed it's zenith is hit by a flying rock and falls to the ground..." She paused again for a moment, "You could do nearly anything, because there is nothing in there that specifically links any of that to Oz having an incident while playing Quidditch."

2 Giselle Duell Yeah. I know. 1517 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

March 11, 2023 4:19 AM

So, what do I do? by Xavier Lundstrom

When she said he only saw his own perspective, she presumed she meant for things where he’d been part of the vision. He’d certainly seen things that were nothing to do with any situation he would be part of. And for some things, perspective was less relevant… He was pretty sure that him and Oz snuggled on a couch together, looking much older than they did right now, meant the same to both of them.

Anything he saw with certainty was, or became, set in stone… Which was why other Seers didn’t do it much. He dimly remembered this sort of caution from the start of their training, but at the time it hadn’t made any sense—it had sounded like superior knowledge, combined with a chance to shape the future.

“Me seeing things makes them certain to happen?” he clarified. Whilst it tied in with a lot of her warnings about the perils of seeing the future, it didn’t tally with a lot of the peppy ‘don’t be afraid of Seers, they’re just looking at the future not shaping it’ promo material he’d come across in happy pamphlets about why his classmates ought to make the smart decision of not ostracising him if they found out about his powers.

His mind drifted back to yellow plaid pyjamas and laying across Oz’s lap like he belonged there… He would get that. He had made that happen? But by the same logic, he was also forcing Oz to suffer a broken arm somewhere along the way… He didn’t want to be responsible for that, but he hadn’t exactly asked for a vision of it. It was just one of the many pieces of information that had been dumped into his head somewhere along the way. Not exactly against his will, given how much time he spent with the crystal ball, but he hadn’t been snooping on Oz’s future specifically. Much.

Her comment about the medic was less than reassuring, considering that ‘past the accident’ was precisely what he’d seen, leading him to infer the accident from its content. If it was true that the bits he’d directly witnessed couldn’t be changed, then what was fixed was Oz lashing out at Miss Katey.

“I don’t think I want to see as many things as I do right now…” he sighed. “But if I try to stop, then I don’t know what will happen to the rest of my magic…” And even if he stopped, it would be there just teasing him—he knew he could know so much more, be so much more, and he was just going to sit back and not use it? “How do you do this without going crazy?”

13 Xavier Lundstrom So, what do I do? 1529 0 5