Professor Skies
March 25, 2017 7:44 AM
Advanced class - where's it gone? by Professor Skies
“Good afternoon,” Selina greeted the advanced class. “Welcome back, and thank you for choosing to continue studying Transifugration. We’ve got a tricky road ahead to RATS level, but I hope you’ll also find it interesting and rewarding.” Although Transfiguration was a difficult subject, it was regarded as a core part of magical education, and as such a large number of students always tended to keep it on, as it suited both those with specific ambitions in a number of high powered fields such as healing or auror work, and those with no real idea what they wanted to do but who figured a good set of grades in solid, respectable subjects was the best way of hedging their bets.“For this part of the year, we will be spending Mondays and Wednesdays focussing on vanishing.” Vanishing seemed flashy and exciting at first. The ability to make something disappear! For there to be nothingness where something had been before! The initial God-like rush would soon fade when the students realised that it was just reciting the same spell again and again, whilst the objects they were given to perform it on got increasingly complex. The only way it could potentially be very interesting was if, to demonstrate the practical applications, she unleashed a bear as their final exam and told them that they had until it had crossed the distance towards to them to successfully vanish it. Perhaps they’d do that in the mirage chamber if any of the students started getting bored or cocky….
“Essentially, it’s a drill. You must exercise and build up your strength, and so we will be doing this twice a week, alongside learning the theory in these lessons. During your other classes, we will focus on different advanced spells - you can see a week by week breakdown on your schedules - so that class doesn’t become too repetitive.
“Before we begin today, we must discuss what it means to vanish an object. In today’s lesson, I will introduce the theory of vanishing space, and some of the key questions we come across in vanishing theory. Over the next few weeks, we will look at rival theories, including universality.” Behind her, the chalk was scribbling a series of questions, beginning with ’Where do vanished objects go?
“Let’s try to answer this question by some examples…. For example, let’s say I vanish the photograph on my desk,” with a wave of her wand she did so, the filigree frame and its contents sliding out of existence. “Now, if I want it back, I am probably the only one in this room who can achieve that. This is nothing to do with magical power, as I’m sure my seventh years are up to this level by now, but because - unless you have made detailed studies and have excellent memories - I am the only one who really knows what the picture looked like.” With a wave of her wand, the picture reappeared. “This, alone, tells us very little… Of course you cannot conjure something without knowing some details of it - security would be a nightmare if anyone could just will the plans of a major public building into existence. But, once you do know, is it merely accurate visual memory and imagination that allows this to happen, or is it because I am bringing back the same object that existed before? This argument is somewhat the crux of the different theories.
“Now, what if I want to conjure something that wasn’t here before? Whilst it’s subject to certain limitations, they are somewhat flexible. The subject of where conjured things come from is directly relevant to the question of where vanished things go. I was able to re-conjure this photo accurately because I knew what it looked like, but I can conjure things a good deal more complex than that. I could conjure an owl, for example,” she waved her wand, and a lovely barn owl appeared perched on her desk. She threw it a treat. “Now, of course, I know what a barn owl looks like. But this is fully functioning owl. It’s eating. It’s doing that thing they do with their necks,” she observed, as it swivelled at seemingly impossible angles to view the class. “And I have no idea how that really works. I know broadly that it has a digestive tract and what that’s made up of. I know it has complex physiology in its neck. But without knowing all the details of it, I have made an owl. Can this come only from my imagination? I know what an owl should be able to do, and if I imagine it doing that, is that sufficient to fill in the blanks? Or is it that this owl always existed, and I have just caused it to be specifically here? At points the study of vanishing and conjuring borders on the philosophical, and we may not be able to answer those questions accurately or definitely. However, vanishing space - the theory we will discuss today - holds that the latter is much more likely that my imagination and world knowledge are sufficient to bring forth the range of objects that I demonstrably can make. Everything that can be conjured must exist somewhere. And everything that is vanished must go somewhere. If something was destroyed by vanishing, I would have to make a new owl from scratch, and we doubt my ability to do that adequately. We will get into where that is and the evidence supporting it later, though if you finish your practical work early today, you can start reading chapter two of your textbook, but essentially vanishing space sees there as being a place beyond on our reality where these items go and come from. Once you finish chapter two, you should be able to list two practical examples of real world magic, that you know can be performed, and which some argue lend weight to vanishing space, and why these people hold that they do that.
“Before we get to that though, your practical for the day will be to vanish snails if you are a sixth year, and to vanish a toad if you are a seventh year.” She floated around boxes containing the animals to each student. The syllabus had been changed in recent years to push the students a little harder, and so they were going in a bit deeper than perhaps older relatives might have done.
“The spell, as you should know from your reading, will be ‘evanesco’ for all vanishing spells. You can talk quietly as you work, especially regarding the theory, and I’m available if you have questions. You may begin.”
OOC - as usual, points are awarded for length, creativity, relevance and realism. I am very happy to have your character explore and ponder theories - it is most actively encouraged. However, to keep our reality consistent and/or open source, it would be considered polite if you preface such remarks as being your character’s understanding, rather than direct quotes of textbooks. This means we don’t end up with direct contradictions of what each other is saying, or bits of theories that don’t mesh well together. I’m very happy to discuss quantum transfiguration with anyone who would like to, and to try to come up with an Ultimate Sonora Canon containing several different well-formed theories for writers to draw from and/or contribute to in future.
Subthreads: You tell me. by John Umland, Aladren
You lost me by Lauren Song - Teppenpaw with Owen Brockert, Teppenpaw
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Professor Skies
Advanced class - where's it gone?
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Professor Skies
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John Umland, Aladren
March 27, 2017 9:45 PM
You tell me. by John Umland, Aladren
For one moment – one single, blessed moment – John forgot everything that had happened and silently grumbled in his head at Professor Skies’ announcement that they were going to spend two days a week drilling on Vanishing. Then, though, he remembered, and took to using a few choice expletives in his head instead.His old wand, Mr. Chenar had told him when he was eleven, had been temperamental. As a result of this temperamentality, it had taken John most of two years to get his abilities properly under his control. His new wand was, apparently, not so temperamental, which helped, but the fact remained: John still was not as adept with it as he had been with his old one before the accident. Mr. Chenar had tried to cheer him up – maybe, the wandmaker had seemed slightly disturbed for some reason, though John had chalked that up at least in part to his own haggard appearance at the time – by noting that the new one was quite an inherently powerful wand, which probably helped more, but fact remained: John didn’t have two more years to learn. He didn’t have all of one. Plus, something that did not help at all was how frustrating it was. John had struggled those first two years, but by his fourth year, he had begun to largely regard going to class as a formality. His real learning, finding out where the limits of his abilities were and then over-extending himself by inches until he increased where those limits stood, had mostly taken place in isolated parts of the Labyrinth Gardens. Now he, who had built most of his confidence around the assumption that social skills were not really necessary when simply out-magicking the vast majority of his classmates if they decided to antagonize him was an option, was, at best, on a level with his classmates. At worst, he might actually currently stand a little below some of his classmates, if not in magical power – that was innate, he’d gathered, and – at least in magical dexterity. This meant he actually probably needed these long, boring days of drills, needed to walk sedately where he was used to running and spinning about as he pleased, impiously proud and confident in his own strength, never thinking that it might all just abandon him while he was still alive….
It’s Joanie’s fault – she should have left it alone and neither of us would have any problems now. It’s Julian’s fault – if not for her, none of it would have ever happened. It’s…Oh, God, I’m Napoleon in Hell.
He tried to concentrate on what Skies was still saying to the class, but tuned back in just as she mentioned rival theories of Vanishment. He could no longer think about that without thinking about Lenore, which was a problem. He had confessed (he had started demanding a priest as soon as he’d been able to demand much of anything, answering all inquiries about whether he wanted or needed anything with that until Mom had given in and persuaded theirs to come see him at home, John having at the time still been virtually confined to the sofa), he had been forgiven, he had done penance. It was as if it had never happened. He had no reason to ever think about it or feel guilty about it again. His neurons, however, refused to see reason in this, just as they had refused to see reason that time he’d gotten a stomach virus the same day he’d eaten lemon sorbet and had afterwards not been able to touch anything lemon-flavored for six months –
No – he couldn’t blame his brain. It was probably his own fault. If he had gone to church more often when he’d had the chance, he wouldn’t remember it anymore, but he hadn’t set foot in one since he’d left home. He had stood outside one for a while on several occasions, but had not been able to bring himself to go in. Nor had he prayed the Rosary, or done the daily readings, or the Angelus…pretty much the only thing still standing between him and total dissolution was breaking the Friday fasts. He still hadn’t done that. It was like a joke: maybe he was suddenly, uncontrollably questioning everything he had ever believed, but there was a difference between that and suddenly beginning to act like a Protestant….
Jokes didn’t take away the question, though: what did it all mean?
Since he was very young, Mom had told him he was special, that his brains and skills were gifts given to him by God because he was destined for something greater than most people, and this had seemed entirely reasonable to him. Now, though, everything that had made sense no longer did. In trying to do what he’d thought he was supposed to, he had lied to his sister and driven her away, straight into the arms of Wrong people he'd then helped as they'd worked to drag her down to their level. He had then driven away his brother and his mother when it had all fallen apart and with it how they thought of him. Now here he was, alone in a foreign country, half as powerful as he was used to being, and he didn’t see any clear way out of that situation.
He was forced to accept one of two things: either he had been Wrong about everything and he was actually in serious trouble with the Almighty and needed to do serious penance, or…or he had been Wrong about everything not on ethical grounds, but because there was no system. Things just happened for no reason. There was no Good, no Right, no Wrong, no Rules – just animals with a complex communication system which made them think they were little demigods when they were really no better than anything else. And that made sense, in a way. Young crows would steal things simply because they were shiny, but grew away from that behavior as adults. In some species, older siblings looked after younger ones along with the parents, and brothers continued to visit each other even after leaving the nest. They hunted cooperatively, had vocal tones that meant certain things – it was a simpler language than that of humans, to be sure, but it was fairly sophisticated communication nevertheless. And chimpanzees apparently formed cliques. Humans liked to think theirs were purely social and those of chimpanzees were purely sexual, but most human social dynamics seemed to be based on the same things. That was why he maintained the medievals had been right to classify the love between friends as a higher and better love than that between spouses or lovers; it was closer to that of the angels, who did not have bodies and thus did not suffer physical cravings. It was not about survival. It gave the illusion that one could ignore the obvious second part to man may not live by bread alone, which was that maybe not, but he may not live without any at all, either, in general circumstances.
So we worked and waited for the light, and went without meat and cursed the bread, and Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.
That was the great argument against living by bread alone, of course – one had to have something to live for to muster the will to continue living. Better, John had been taught, to die for lack of bread, either for just a lack or for having overpowered one’s own will with the aid of the Almighty, than to live thinking oneself virtuous when one had faced no troubles. That was what asceticism was about – proving oneself above mere appetites. But if they were all made of the same stuff, what was the point of making such a point of being human?
He needed to read Catherine of Siena again, he knew, and the Lady Julian, and the Desert Fathers, and pray to them for help. He wanted to, even – right now, that was. Every time he tried to pray, though, he was seized with a combination of dread and horrible lethargy and could not bring himself to do it, and he couldn’t read the works of the saints right now anyway - he had left them all in Calgary and doubted there were copies buried in the library here. Right now, though, he did have work to do, and so, for a moment, could let himself believe he would find the courage to try to fix himself later.
And indeed there will be time, time for you and time for me, time for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of toast and tea….
As a seventh year, he had a toad before him. Last year, he was sure, he could have vanished it with little trouble. Now, he had no idea. He turned the new wand – hard still to think of it as ‘his’ – between his fingers. He and Mr. Chenar had had tea and a pleasant conversation, and had begun with what the wandmaker called the ‘usual suspects’ for someone of whatever it was he perceived John’s character to be – walnut, chestnut, fir, hornbeam, red oak, pine, ebony, more sycamores like his old one – but in the end, the one Mr. Chenar had declared the best fit had been made of yew. John had been something less than amused – a long-lived tree, of which every bit was poisonous and which was best-known for growing in cemeteries? How lovely – but it and its dragon heartstring core were supposed to be fairly independently powerful, which would hopefully help him make up for the skill gap he was at least temporarily saddled with. He looked over the toad, then at someone, hoping to both put off being visibly less skilled than last year for a bit and to cheer himself up a bit by starting a good argument.
“She made a good pointabout…ourdoubt…any of us could construct a – functional - life-form,” he remarked. “But I don’t think Vanishing Space adequately accounts for – conservation of mass, energy, what conjured objects – are, how they don’t last…or where Conjured objects come from. It – it assumes a one-to-one ratio of Vanishing and Conjuring!” For about three seconds, John felt a genuine smile flicker across his face. I’d – it makes more sense that – specifics, the photograph, maybe – it’s a variant on Banishing, don’t you think?”
OOC: John’s comment about being “Napoleon in Hell” is derived from “The Great Divorce,” where one of the damned tells the narrator, an avatar for Lewis, about Napoleon’s palace: it is brightly lit, but empty except for the rain (roofs in Hell are not ‘real’ enough to keep out the perpetual rain there in TGD) and Napoleon himself, a “tired little man” who cannot not stop pacing and blaming this or that other person for everything going wrong in his life. His comments about love are also Lewisian, drawing from The Four Loves and The Discarded Image. I also somehow combined Ivan Karamazov with Queen Elsa in John’s long digression on his crisis of faith; that was not where I thought I was going, but it seems to be where we’ve ended up. The wand woods named are based on notes on the Harry Potter wiki. Lines, slightly misquoted (I did them from memory since John is supposed to be remembering them off the top of his head), are taken from the poems “Richard Corey” by Edward Arlington Robinson and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot.
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John Umland, Aladren
You tell me.
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John Umland, Aladren
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Lauren Song - Teppenpaw
April 18, 2017 5:35 PM
You lost me by Lauren Song - Teppenpaw
The idea of making things vanish sounded exciting, exciting enough to make her brighten up just a little. Transfiguration was her favorite class, but it was also the hardest. She just could not understand the theories sometimes and especially didn't understand the arguments that often went back and forth. She just liked the spells and techniques in Transfig and hoped it helped her somewhere in the future.Yes, she was sixteen and had no idea where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do. She was going to be graduating in just two years and couldn't decide what she wanted to do. The future aside, she hadn't even made out with anyone on the Quidditch pitch at the dead of night or snuck out past curfew for a snack.
As soon as Prof. Skies introduced the new topic, she soon brought up the catch: theory. Lauren rested her forehead against the desk and groaned. It was going to be a long Monday. She couldn't wait to go back to her room and chill with her roommates at the end of today. She really loved their annual room-decorating catch-up sessions at the beginning of the school year, but class was getting harder to put up with especially as the lessons got more and more into theory.
Lauren tried hard to pay attention to whatever Professor Skies was saying about theory, but soon it was going in through one ear and out through the other. To her it sounded like a foreign language. Lauren hated feeling dumb, but it took her a long time these days to really understand what her professors were talking about. She hated all this theory stuff, but it seemed like all the professors loved dumping this kind of information onto their advanced classes. Maybe it had been a mistake to take so many.
Professor Skies was still talking, but Lauren's mind wandered to starting a fire in the middle of the class and disturbing everyone. If she could do non-verbal spells and secretly light someone's quill on fire that would be so terrible of her, but at the same time so unlike her. Lauren smiled to herself, imagining jumping onto the table and screaming at the top of her lungs just for the heck of it. She imagined herself all grown up being in Professor Skies's position as a professor. Lauren couldn't imagine teaching a bunch of students like herself that didn't really want to listen to what she was talking about. She felt a little sorry for Professor Skies then, and tuned back in just to nod and smile as a supportive student.
Always the supporter, that Lauren Song; always reliable and so responsible.
The box of snails came to her for the practical lesson and Lauren picked one up with two fingers, wrinkling her nose at it. "So I didn't really get what Professor Skies was saying about the theory, honestly," she said to her neighbor. "I got 'everything that can be conjured must exist somewhere,' and, 'vanished objects must go somewhere,' but other than that she lost me." Lauren pointed her wand at the gloomy-colored snail. "Evanesco." Unsurprisingly, nothing really happened. "Do you think knowing these theories actually helps us in our practical work?"
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Lauren Song - Teppenpaw
You lost me
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Lauren Song - Teppenpaw
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Owen Brockert, Teppenpaw
April 20, 2017 1:37 PM
Possibly making it worse. Sorry. by Owen Brockert, Teppenpaw
It felt weird for Owen, being in Advanced classes. He felt like a chapter in his life was coming to a close, and it felt kind of sad to him. Like when he finished a story that he wrote. He was always sad to see that part of his characters' lives end, even though he was just going to write another one. It was part of the reason his stories were a series. He'd created the world of Cookies and Cream and their friends and enemy and now he was rather attached.Of course, there would be positive things about getting through Advanced classes and graduating. Like, Owen would be able to-probably, hopefully-marry Jemima. And he could write books and she'd illustrate them, just like now, only they could get published then and he could hopefully share his writing with kids everywhere. Plus, maybe they could even travel and go to Brazil for real.
And on a more immediate note, he didn't have to take Defense anymore. No more being forced to hurt people or worry about them hurting him. No more potentially looking inferior to the guys in his class and feeling inadequate. Wimpy. Weak. Pathetic. Like he wasn't good enough for Jemima-or rather that her family would think he wasn't.
At least now Owen was in Transfiguration, a class that rather made him feel the opposite of those things. He was actually pretty good at it though he certainly didn't think himself anything special. Not that he was normally full of self-loathing-aside from of course when it came to things that were related to anything physical-it was just that he wasn't one to act like he was better than others. Owen didn't even act that way about writing and to his knowledge, there weren't even any other writers in school.
He listened to what Professor Skies was saying. He rather liked the idea of another dimension where vanished things went. It appealed to the sixth year's imagination. Maybe in his next story one of Cookies and Cream's friends could get sent to another dimension by Lord Cockroach and they had to rescue them! Or one of them could themselves and the other had to use their wits and the help of the other characters to rescue the other. That would be cool, especially because then Owen would get to talk about what was in that dimension.
He wanted to get to work on this now. That was the thing with classes sometimes, it wasn't as if the Teppenpaw disliked them in general, it was just...sometimes he was just inspired to write and that's where his mind was. Of course, usually it was on Jemima rather than class anyway but he still tried to pay attention.
Owen got a snail and started to go about sending it to another dimension when Lauren spoke up next to him. "Well, I mean, I think she was talking about like you have to know what something looks like to be able to bring it back after sending it away. I think most of it sounded more like conjuring rather than vanishing. If that makes sense." Owen added. He was trying to be a little more interested in academics so he could talk intelligently with Jemima's family since he couldn't do the athletic stuff. He still massively preferred creative endeavors though. Academic theories could be very dry.
He went on. "But, no. I mean, in this class especially, I feel like it's about like visualizing something being there or being gone. Or like, in the past when it was one thing into another and she gave more credit for patterns, it was more about being creative and picturing said pattern. "
Owen pointed his wand at the snail. " Evanesco " The snail's shell vanished as did one of it's antennas. "Right now, there's a shell and an antenna in another dimension. I wonder if the latter is just floating in midair." He turned to Lauren. "What do you think vanishing space looks like? Is it just a bunch of animal bits and another partial transfigurations as well as the completed ones? Or like what if someone sends a predator animal and something it eats? Would the predator eat it's prey? I mean, you can't bring that animal back if it's eaten."
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Owen Brockert, Teppenpaw
Possibly making it worse. Sorry.
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Owen Brockert, Teppenpaw
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Lauren Song
April 20, 2017 5:49 PM
No hard feelings here by Lauren Song
Lauren nodded in agreement with Owen's words. She understood the theories behind conjuring for the most part, and in comparing the two it didn't seem that different. "Yeah, it does," she replied. It was simpler when Owen said it, and much less verbose than Professor Skies's explanation. Yes, she definitely preferred practical lessons more. Her RATS exams were going to be pretty tough next year."Yeah, right, like transfiguring rocks into pillow or birds into teacups. I think it's this whole talk about dimensions that throws me off." Owen was much better in his attempt and Lauren nodded approvingly. His imagination made her smile as she pictured what he described. "I can't imagine there being a whole other world of blank space just for these vanished objects. I used to wonder if animals felt pain when they were caught in mid-transfiguration, but now I wonder if they know they're in between dimensions."
She paused thoughtfully. "There would have to be some kind of way to keep predators from eating prey in this other space. They're all probably too disoriented to even think about eating each other." She chuckled at the thought. "Probably not a theory that would impress Professor Skies though."
It was a little lonely sometimes knowing both of her best friends had another "best friend" in the male sex while hers was just her brother Isaac, but at the same time Lauren liked being the supportive friend, especially in Ginger's case. She didn't have any hard feelings towards any of the boys, but she'd never really made an effort to get to know any of them either. Lauren remembered thinking Owen was pretty cute before he and Jemima had started dating. Now she just saw him as "Jemima's boyfriend," but that gave more of a reason to get to know him better since her roommate liked him so much.
"Evanesco." This time her snail's shell disappeared and the poor thing looked naked and even more disgusting. "Hope it's not too cold without its home, wherever that may be now," she said sympathetically. "Um, do you remember how to bring it back?"
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Lauren Song
No hard feelings here
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Lauren Song
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Owen
April 24, 2017 2:45 PM
Good :) by Owen
Owen nodded. He personally was inspired by the whole dimensional aspect but not everyone thought like him. "Honestly, the idea is a bit scary if you think about it. I mean, if you're really powerful, someday you could possibly vanish a person Which means a really powerful person could vanish you " What an awful thought. If someone didn't like him, they could send him away.Fortunately, he couldn't think of anyone who would do that to him off the top of his head. Owen had initially worried that Andrew would be mad at him for waking up in the morning wheezing and disturbing the other boy's sleep but Andrew seemed to be pretty patient with him. As for Theodore, well, Owen just didn't think he'd go that far. Plus, Jemima made it sound like her brother had no issue with him. Which given he'd cornered Owen about standing in the way of Jemima's dreams-something very confusing as that was one of the last things the Teppenpaw wanted, he very much wanted her to be an artist, her creativity was one of the things he loved about her in the first place-Owen was less than sure about. Maybe that was the problem and not his lack of athleticism. Unless Theodore assumed that as a non-Quidditch player, the sixth year was some how less worthy and more likely to stand in Jemima's way.
Anyway, the thought of being Vanished was dreadful. Especially if he went there incomplete like both of their snails had. What if like, his internal organs got separated from the rest of him? Owen would literally die. "Maybe like, there's something in that dimension that prevents mortality? Like it's a rule there. Except that well, if that was the case, some people who want to be immortal would try to get sent there to live permanently and that just doesn't work. From what I understand, people go to great lengths to do so at times, but then maybe they want to be in this dimension and be immortal. "
"Good job" Owen complimented Lauren on her progress and continued."Um, I think it's the Conjuring spell." Which was a shame, as that was harder to do. Once you got rid of something, it was hard to bring it back. Owen guessed you had to really want something gone or have both spells mastered first. "I suppose you could wait for it to wear off. I mean, sometimes when you do spells and stuff, they don't last." He tried again. " Evanesco " This time the rest of his snail vanished.
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Owen
Good :)
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Owen
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