Selina Skies
December 01, 2023 6:02 AM
Beginners - Stringing You Along by Selina Skies
Selina had neither received a direct petition from Summer herself nor news of Professor Wright being brutally murdered, so presumably whatever issue she had with being sorted into Aladren had been resolved. Selina was therefore, cautiously calling the new year ‘off to a smooth start’ and was ready to get down to the actual business of teaching.“Good morning,” she greeted the beginners as they made their way into their first transfiguration class of the year—for some of them, their first transfiguration class ever. “Transfiguration is often viewed as one of the more challenging branches of magic, and whilst that is true, I also believe it’s a subject which offers multiple ways in and multiple ways to be successful. For some people, that route is imagination. Some people find visualisation skills to be very useful and be their way in. Older texts even talk about this ability like it is synonymous with transfiguration, though that is not the case. Transfiguration is also concerned with matter and energy, and the scientific or logical amongst you might find that to be the best way to examine it. It’s also a subject that responds to strong force of will. Whichever your strength is can be your starting point for the subject.
“Today, we’ll be working on changing either a stick or a drinking straw into a piece of string. Second years will have a straw. Can anyone tell me why that might be?” She called on students, taking answers until they’d hit on the fact that the second years would need to make their object solid, whereas that was already gifted to the first years. This led onto a further discussion of the similarities and differences between each object and a piece of string.
“I encourage you, if you are new to the subject, to take these kind of notes and make these kinds of comparisons formally before attempting the spell. It can help to do a thorough compare and contrast to make sure you’ve thought in detail about what you’re changing. The wand movement for this is a straight horizontal slash, with a loose wrist. Everyone try that.” She made them repeat it three times, keeping an eye out for students who didn’t do it correctly and trying to add general feedback into her instructions, whilst making a note to get to them sooner rather than later.
“The spell is linea. The materials for your grade level will come to you.” She flicked her wand, assigning different items to the relevant students. “If you have any questions or difficulties, ask your neighbours or raise your hand to get my attention. You may begin.”
OOC: OOC - welcome to Transfiguration. Please keep class posting realistic. This is a writing site, so quality of writing means more than claiming to just 'be the best' at the spell. Remember that Hermione, the best witch of her age, struggled with Transfiguration at first. That said, feel free to have more scope and variety than the outright failure most people experienced in the book. You are also free to make up relevant information that your character is reading in their textbook.
You are being supervised, so if things are going wrong, Selina would step in before anything got terribly out of hand. Please tag me in the subject line if there’s something that needs my attention.
Have fun, have a go, if you’re unsure about anything, ask on the OOC or in chatzy.
Subthreads: That's not very kind by Wesley Wu with Rowan Westfall
Transfigurations is fun, right? by Edu Alamilla with Violet Calhoun
Look at me! Dora the Student! by Dora Xavier with Mathias Melcher
Seems more like you're providing a shortcut by Ursula Arcadius with Alma Brockert
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Selina Skies
Beginners - Stringing You Along
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Dora Xavier
January 05, 2024 9:57 PM
Look at me! Dora the Student! by Dora Xavier
"Good morning, Professor!" Dora called back cheerfully when Professor Skies greeted the class. The class. Dora was a part of the class. She suspected she might eventually come down from this ebullient high that every new Sonora first was evoking in her, and it would all become just an ordinary Sonora existence again, like she'd lived for her entire life, but being a student was still exciting and new and made her feel so grown up, but she doubted it was in any danger of fading out any time soon.She tried very hard to sit still and pay attention as her transfiguration teacher - she had a transfiguration teacher! - dove right into their first lesson.
She wasn't quite sure what her strongest approach would be to the subject. She had a pretty good imagination, but she could also be quite willful (she knew this because that was the word Dad used sometimes when he was trying to be nice while explaining why she was getting in trouble again). Science and logic, though, would probably not be her approach. She figured she'd try both imagination and will, and see which worked out the best for her, or maybe she could even try to figure out how to use them in combination.
She'd be starting with a stick. She had some basic understanding of transfiguration, from hanging out with Edu and Zeus last year while they were trying to do homework (not always successfully once she got involved) so she raised her hand eagerly, and got to answer, "Because the stick doesn't need to change as much!" Which was apparently close, but not everything Professor Skies was looking for because she kept taking answers until someone said the stick was solid. Which was kind of what Dora had meant, she just hadn't gotten that specific.
She guessed that was kind of what they need to work out as the assignment before trying the spell. Sort out all the ways a stick and a string were the same and different, using specific details to focus on when imagining/willing it to change.
Dora mimicked the wand movement with the teacher as she demonstrated it for them, repeating it several times, and then looked over to Summer to make sure she was doing okay without the visual aid, though the professor had at least described the motions verbally, too.
She wasn't sure her own wrist was entirely loose like Skies had said, and she tried again with her wrist facing up instead and got corrected for that (or, rather, Professor Skies told the whole class not to do that), so she guessed wrist position was somewhat important.
"Linea," she repeated the incantation as a stick landed in front of her. She had a stick that she was going to turn into a string! This was so awesome!
Okay. Sticks and strings. They were both long and skinny. Sticks were stiff and strings were flexible. Sticks had fibers, kind of, and strings definitely had fibers. Strings were usually made of plant material, and sticks had been a part of a plant (Dora wasn't sure if that was useful or not, but it was something that crossed through her mind.) Sticks had bark. Strings did not. Sticks were brown while strings could be colorful, especially the ones she used for braiding friendship bracelets.
She picked up her wand again and practiced the loose wrist thing a few more times until she felt she was doing it right without her horizontal slash getting too sloppy. She looked at her stick. No, she stared it down intently. Then she did the wand movement, and said, "Linea!" like it was an order and she pushed all of her will at the stick.
And nothing happened at all.
She huff in disappointed annoyance and picked it up. It was still a completely normal stick. She grimaced. "Guess I need to try imagination. Will didn't work." She looked over to see how her neighbor was doing. "How's it going for you?"
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Dora Xavier
Look at me! Dora the Student!
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Mathias Melcher
January 31, 2024 7:20 PM
*looks* Nice to meet you! I'm Mathias the Poet (and also a student) by Mathias Melcher
OOC: Poem brought to you by words used on Words By Friends 2 BIC:
Mathias’ second year at Sonora had started with a slight disappointment. Well, slight for him anyway, he was pretty sure it sucked way more for Connie. Like, he wasn’t saying that Amethyst and Hansel weren’t good choices-the former was one of his cousins and what intel, Sonora being a pretty small school and Mathias being the Sort Who Collected As Much Intel As Possible, he had on both of them was largely positive-just that Connie would have been a better one, because she would be the best Head Student in the world as being Head Student was like being a big sister (or brother) to the entire school. As Connie was the best big sister ever that meant she’d be the best Head Student ever.
Unfortunately, because the people his sister seemed to talk to most were himself and Professor Wright-and Connie was’t wrong, the professor was absolutely a fascinating person-it had not been very conducive to her getting the honor, as neither of them was able to vote for her. And while he didn’t know who voted for who-voting being something that Mathias felt he didn’t have a right to ask about-she still might have gotten less votes than the people who won. Especially since Amethyst had made it very clear -clear enough that a second year who was only distantly related to her picked up on it-that she wanted it badly and people who were more closely related to her than they were to Mathias and Connie-and more closely related to her than to Lydia Priory either-such as Liesl and Christopher were able to vote. Christopher was Amethyst’s first cousin so of course he would vote for her.
At least that’s how he thought that worked. Mathias actually didn’t have any first cousins. His parents were both only children. The closest he had was his dad’s first cousin’s daughter Kirstenna and her children Prisca and Finn, both of whom would not be in school yet when Mathias was up for Head Student. Hopefully, he would not be found unsuitable like a few people last year. He was not one hundred percent sure what Xavier had done but he was pretty sure that Ray Thorn had been excluded due to getting pregnant. Mathias didn’t know exactly how he felt about that but she probably had enough to do with having a baby.
Anyway, as for his mom’s side of the family…well, he only knew his grandma. However, this was not an unusual thing, sometimes people had relatives that were awful and that they didn’t really talk about. Again, Mathias had gathered some intel like that Charlotte O’Malley’s biological grandma and full aunt-as in her dad’s full biological sibling, as opposed to step-siblings like Violet’s dad or half siblings like Peyton-were not people that they talked too or about either. So it wasn’t just his mom and grandma.
And this was a thing that Mathias had to be sensitive about. He’d no more ask his mom and grandma about it than he would Charlotte about her less pleasant family members-he figured any other family on his mom’s side had to be unpleasant or they would be part of his life like Kirstenna was and figured it was similar with the third year..Of course, with Charlotte, he also wouldn’t ask her based on not knowing her well-though as she was his cousin he should try to, same with Misty, Alma, Jason and Libby though he was not so sure about Desmond, who seemed disdainful of and outright disgusted by the younger Aladren and also was possibly the most uptight person he’d ever seen, possibly more so than his grandfather, great-grandfather and Headmaster Brockert put together- and, more importantly, the fact that Charlotte probably didn’t know any more on the subject than Mathias himself did. Besides, that legitimately fell into the none of his business category. It would be insensitive to the Teppenpaw and her father. (And her siblings and grandfather and step-grandma and so on.)
Anyway, the fact that Connie was disappointed about not getting Head Student put a damper on things for the second year, mostly because he did not like seeing her sad. Head Student was unfortunately a popularity contest and Mathias guessed Amethyst and Hans were more popular than his sister. From all he could tell, Amethyst had that personality. Of a popular girl minus the fact that she was not evil. Though Mathias, astute and downright nosy as always and this being his family albeit distant, had heard rumors about one of the seventh year’s older sisters.
He pushed these thoughts aside as Professor Skies started class, and gave her his full attention both out of the respect that she deserved and genuine interest. Also, academics were important in the Melcher family and one way he had yet to disappoint his grandparents and great-grandparents. Plus, while his parents might be more concerned than ashamed if Mathias failed to succeed academically, he was pretty sure that Dad and Connie were eccentric geniuses and his mom was a less eccentric genius, he wanted to add to this image of their family.Though he was sure he had the eccentric part pretty much down.
Apparently today,Mathias would be changing a drinking straw into a stick. An activity that he was sure was more about fundamentals of Transfiguration than practicality. Why he would ever have need for any stick other than his wand-which was not really a stick as he was pretty sure that was not how wands were made, he’d have to ask Gwendolyn or Misty since their dad was a wandmaker and maybe more inclined to tell them things about his line of work than Grandfather and Great-Grandfather were to tell Mathias about the Melcher Academy’s secrets-for any reason was beyond him
Still, Mathias dutifully came up with the similarities and differences between the two objects. Though of course, he first considered whether or not he used logic-science was a Muggle discipline that he knew nothing about but probably would do well in if he did-creativity or will. He was pretty sure it was mostly a combination of the first two. For one thing, it depended on the assignment. If there was a design element, he liked to make it creative and unique. However, even if it didn’t, like today, where Mathias tended to use more logic, he still generally liked to also consider himself creative. After all, he was a poet!
And remembering this fact, he came up with a poem and turned to the girl next to him, Professor Xavier and Professor Carter-Xavier’s daughter, Dora. “Hey, listen to my new poem!”
Mathias cleared his throat and began.
“Man grunt
Wilt foam time
Ye maw goody.
Vows
Hex hoop
Lunch”
He finished and looked at Dora expectantly. Mathias hoped she liked it.
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Mathias Melcher
*looks* Nice to meet you! I'm Mathias the Poet (and also a student)
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