Advanced - What's the Story? on Transfiguration

Selina Skies

March 09, 2024 9:44 PM

Advanced - What's the Story? by Selina Skies

“Good morning, class,” Selina greeted the advanced students. “We will be diving into some folklore today, as a jumping off point for our next unit on human transfiguration.” She hoped that was a more exciting way of delivering the news ‘we are having a theory lesson.’ Those weren’t always the most popular, but this lesson was usually well-received, being more about story-telling than mind-bending magical science.

“Although non-magical people do not know about the concept of animagi specifically, the idea of humans who can turn into animals is perhaps one of our least well-kept secrets. Or perhaps, such a common human fantasy that people have invented it over and over again, without even having access to magic.

“That’s what we’ll be looking at today. On the board is a list of myths and stories, from both magical and non-magical cultures around the world. You’re going to research one of these myths, and the associated magic around human transfiguration in that culture, which does not just mean animagi, but covers multiple different types of magic and transformation. Can anyone name another one?” She took various answers about the differing ways humans can transform or be transformed into animals. “You will also compare your story to the research, and discuss how accurate the portrayal of magical transformation is. This applies to both magical and non-magical texts, as many magical texts are still myths or overly fanciful depictions of what we wish magic could be.

“You may work alone or in pairs, and may spend the lesson here or in the library—though I warn you, I have pulled many of the useful reference books for this lesson, so do check what’s here first.” She indicated a stack of books, which included not only the folklore itself but books on magic in other cultures.

“This is due a week Friday, and you will have one more lesson to work on it after today. That should be enough time to complete it, though if you don’t, it will be up to you to do so for homework. You may begin.”

OOC: Here is a list of shapeshifter stories in mythology, though feel free to find others/use ones you know/make up magical stories (along the same lines as Babbity Rabbit in Beadle the Bard - or use that).

You are allowed to make up non-canon magic around animal transformation (examples in the books include turning Malfoy into a ferret, and Hermione accidentally half catting herself, which could be expanded upon, as well as werewolves and animagi).

Subthreads:

Oh! Lore! I'm trained in this! by Phil Carson with Christopher Brockert

The Rat Princess by Lydia Priory

13 Selina Skies Advanced - What's the Story? 26 1 5

Phil Carson

March 15, 2024 9:19 PM

Oh! Lore! I'm trained in this! by Phil Carson

Phil sat up straighter as Professor Skies started talking about fiction with super powers. Sure, Marvel wasn't exactly the same as myth and folklore, but there were definitely people changing into not people - or other people - in his comic books. His hand shot up into the air as she asked about other kinds of human transfiguration in stories. "Shape-shifting into other people!" he offered when he was called upon. Mystique was a prime example, and Loki could also pull it off with no trouble, and on the DC side there was Martian Manhunter among others. Even Disney's Encanto had one of the kids being a shapeshifter who easily turned into his relatives for dramatic effect.

Sadly, he didn't see X-Men listed on the board as one of the myths to research, which was mildly disappointing. Still there was the Norse Mythology, which was where Loki came from to start with, so he could probably tie in some Marvel stories to that as being generally related and an expansion of the myth.

As they were told to get started, he turned to his neighbor and said, "I'm going to research Norse mythology, specifically Loki and his shape changing abilities. What are you thinking of doing?" He'd already read some Norse myths for fun, mostly because of Marvel's Loki and Thor, just to see how badly Marvel changed things from the original mythology (a lot, in fact), so he felt he had a good handle on the scope of what he was getting into with this. He was curious to see if wizard kind had better record keeping of the original myths, or if he was going to get Neil Gaiman's book as one of his more comprehensive source materials.

1 Phil Carson Oh! Lore! I'm trained in this! 1536 0 5

Christopher Brockert

March 27, 2024 3:05 PM

There are different types though by Christopher Brockert

Ever since Grandfather had announced the passion projects for the Fair, Christopher had been debating with himself whether or not he wanted to do something for it. On the one hand, he definitely had a passion for architecture, as he’d only wanted to be an architect for as long as he could remember so designing and building a model of a building was an obvious choice. It was even something that he could do with Alma, where she did the interior decorating for him, like they had done as children. It had always been one of their favorite games.

On the other hand, Christopher was exceedingly paranoid about putting himself out there that way. He did not think there was anyone here who was an alpha male that was oozing toxic masculinity like Uncle Eustace. At least none of the people around his own age were and even if the younger students were , it was probably silly to be paranoid, as a sixth year, about first and second years. At least those were the logical voices in his head. The pervasive anxious (and in this case, rather irrational) voices that came from years of dealing with his uncle’s harassment told him to protect himself.

However, Christopher didn’t really want to hide who he was. His dad had told him many times not to listen to Uncle Eustace-which was advice that Dad personally needed to take for himself, honestly, starting with banning the man from their home, like Uncle Elmer and Aunt Madeleine had, a thing that the sixth year had been fantasizing about and hoping for since his aunt and uncle had done it-and that being an architect was a respectable and necessary profession. Buildings didn’t design themselves, or at least they didn't initially. An architect could put that feature in, but it did sound like it would be sort of a pain in the backside to have the rooms of your home shifting and changing. How did you hide from toxic relatives if you couldn’t get to any of your hiding places?

Unless you built a hiding place and put spells on it to prevent toxic relatives from getting to it! Which would be a feature Christopher put on his own house, but was unsure that he would want to include in any model that he would display at the Fair since he was pretty sure that not everyone had toxic relatives-or they weren’t closely related to their toxic relatives, like Uncle Eustace and Topaz were technically Gwendolyn’s toxic relatives but she did not know them or the toxic relatives were no longer in their lives like Piper’s aunt and cousin that nobody talked about-and putting that feature in his model would alert people to his own situation. Which was another of those logic vs reality things. Logically, all the shame should belong to Uncle Eustace-who certainly didn’t have any-but in reality, Christopher was the one feeling it.

He wished that he didn’t. He wished he could listen to the logical voices or his dad or whomever. He wished he could just be who he was without worry like Lenny did. Chris had to admit that he sort of admired that about the Teppenpaw. Especially given the presence of people like Uncle Eustace in the world who wanted to stuff people like the fifth year into dirty toilets. He also admired Liesl for the same thing, being herself and letting others see it, for having the courage to do it despite how her mother was. He honestly didn’t know how they did it and wished that he, at the very least, could summon the courage to do a passion project for the Fair where nobody like his uncle would be and that his uncle never had to know about.

A project that Christopher really wanted to do.

But maybe he’d just…start working on it, researching the various spells and techniques and styles he could potentially use. So it would be ready if he decided he wanted to be part of the Fair. Maybe he’d talk to Grandfather about this, making sure there was a space if Chris wanted it. His grandfather might not be warm and fuzzy but he would most definitely understand.

Or he could talk to Verdillia, Cole, and his sister and cousins and see what they thought. Perhaps he just needed a little encouragement.

For now though, he would have to put it aside as it was time for Transfiguration. Christopher listened to Professor Skies’ instructions. A myth or story about human transfiguration? That actually sounded like a pretty fun assignment. He usually didn’t really mind theory assignments honestly, but he rarely thought the material sounded especially fun . Occasionally interesting perhaps but usually things only the most hardcore of the Aladrens, like Desmond and his friends would think of as fun .

Today, Christopher was sitting next to Phil, a person he considered himself on fairly good terms with. Maybe they weren’t exactly friends -through no fault of Phil’s, the Crotalus, for obvious reasons, was a person who had trouble letting others in, and the fact that he was friends with Verdillia and Cole was nothing short of amazing-but Chris had hung around Phil (and Eben) when they went to the museum a few years ago, so he felt fairly safe around the Aladren. Maybe not to the point where he’d confide in him, but at least to the point where he was sure the other sixth year would make fun of him.

The Aladren spoke to him and Christopher replied. “I’m not entirely sure. I was thinking about Greek mythology, but that might be because that’s usually what people think first when they think of myths.”

11 Christopher Brockert There are different types though 1539 0 5

Phil Carson

April 18, 2024 10:10 PM

I have Lore (Comic Books) and this is tangentially related mythology, so I get to roll with advantage by Phil Carson

Phil nodded readily as Christopher admitted to only a vague leaning toward Greek Mythology. "Greeks are pretty good. I mean, they're awful." There were very few good moral fibers in Greek mythology. Disney needed to change everything about Zeus and Hera to make Hercules a family friendly movie. Not that the Norse were a whole lot better. He guessed fathering most of the other gods was what made Zeus and Odin the undisputed patriarchs of their respective pantheons. "But you can definitely get something to work with out of them for this project." He wasn't as familiar with those myths, but he was pretty sure Zeus was changing into mortal form all the time to knock up all those women.

"Or if you want to pair up, and you're interested in the Norse, I don't mind working with you as a partner." The Crotalus struck him as a responsible and hard-working student, with good grades, so he was sure it wouldn't hurt to pair up with him, and it might be good to have a second head along if they were tackling Loki, so the one alone didn't overheat and explode.

"Fair warning, there is horse form reproduction in this myth." That seemed like something that should be disclosed early before they got too far into it.

1 Phil Carson I have Lore (Comic Books) and this is tangentially related mythology, so I get to roll with advantage 1536 0 5

Christopher Brockert

April 20, 2024 1:19 PM

That's cool by Christopher Brockert

OOC: CW-Some Eustace being homophobic BIC:

Christopher nodded. Maybe he shouldn’t do the Greeks if they were awful. After all, though it might not be the first type of person he thought of when he thought of the types of people he should avoid-a topic that the Crotalus actually, honestly really did spend time thinking about-but he knew that there were people who would assume that if the Greeks were awful and he did his project on the Greeks so he must be awful too. Which was about as logical as the way Uncle Eustace thought but since there was nobody that Chris was more afraid of than his uncle,it did not make a difference.

Wait, was Phil thinking that about him?That he was terrible simply for bringing them up. Oh no, how could the Crotalus have figured out that would have offended someone? It seemed so random that someone would have a problem with someone for something so ridiculous, but he knew all too well that it happened.

He nearly sighed with relief when Phil offered to pair up on Norse mythology. “Sure, I’d like that.” It wasn’t as if Christopher had a strong opinion on what type of mythology that he used since, as he’d said, he only mentioned Greek mythology because that was what people tended to think of. Which was actually, now that he thought of it, probably something that prevented Phil from thinking he was awful, since he wasn’t like endorsing anything that happened in them-though Chris was apparently not familiar enough with Greek mythology for him to even realize they were that awful-and even if he’d been fond of the stories, just because someone was interested in material that talked about some awful things did not mean they agreed with the awful things or were awful people themselves.Like, Gwendolyn being into criminal psychology did not mean she was okay with what dark wizards and serial killers did.

Of course, though, that did not mean Christopher was not completely used to people making irrational judgements of him based on illogical or downright random connections, like Uncle Eustace implying untrue things about his sexual orientation because he was artistic and not at all athletic and otherwise hypermasculine. And it was easy to say, for example, that it was ridiculous to think Gwendolyn was okay with serial killers and that it was perfectly okay that Liesl was into horror and her mother was wrong for trying to suppress her. It was quite another thing to not be worried about people making irrational judgements about him, when it was something he’d been putting up with as far back as he could remember. It was a worry that was ingrained in Christopher and he didn’t know if he’d ever truly overcome it.

Clearly though, Phil did not have a problem with him, even after bringing up Greek mythology or he wouldn’t have asked the Crotalus to work with him. And for right now, that made Chris happy, because, well, it was nice to know that his classmate liked him well enough to be willing to partner up, that Phil didn’t think poorly of him. Deep down all he wanted was to be liked and accepted and while he’d known the Aladren was most definitely not like Uncle Eustace, who would be more likely to beat people like the other sixth year up than anything, that didn’t mean he might not find something else about Christopher questionable. Although he’d never, fortunately, seemed like the person who’d be offended by someone bringing up stories where awful things happened, especially given the reasoning that the Crotalus had given for why he thought of Greek mythology in the first place

“Horse form reproduction? I’m going to assume it’s not going to be between two horse forms?” Maybe the Norse weren’t any better than the Greeks, and mythology was just so old, from so long ago, that one could not apply today’s morals to it and back then, people cared more about telling a good story. Either way, Phil did not hate him and was not judging him for something he’d done or said wrong and that, for Christopher, was a win.

11 Christopher Brockert That's cool 1539 0 5

Lydia Priory

April 24, 2024 4:59 PM

The Rat Princess by Lydia Priory

It was the second half of Lydia’s seventh year and all she could think about were RATS. Like, to the point where a valid answer to Professor Skies asking about human to animal transfiguration stories would be in her nightmares since the Teppenpaw was constantly having dreams where all the test examiners turned into actual rats. Or ones where they turned her into one. Like, every time she got an answer wrong, she became more rat-like. If she passed the exams she would get to be a completely human girl again but if she failed, she’d remain a rat forever.

In some of these nightmares, if she made it that far without waking up screaming, she even got fed to Hans’ snake by either his owner or Liesl because they didn’t know it was really Lydia. Occasionally someone offered to keep her as a pet, but either Hans or Liesl or the snake wouldn’t know and then the snake would eat her. Had this been a fairytale, she would have been rescued by someone who either kept her as a pet themselves because they knew she was actually Lydia and didn’t want to see her get eaten by a snake-not that Hans or Liesl wanted to feed her to a snake, they were usually ignorant of her true identity-or gave her back to her family who kept her safe until a handsome prince who was not afraid of catching a disease from a rat kissed her, turned her back into a person and married her.

However, as these were nightmares, that usually did not happen. Though there were other variations on who fed her to the snake.Occasionally it was Liesl’s uncle Cory-presumably because she and the other failures were taken home by Mr. Barba to be dealt with and he and Liesl were both somehow at Cory’s house with Hans and his snake and therefore someone fed her to the snake- or Hans’ uncle or her own sister Sophia, who Lydia supposed was visiting Hans’ sister Hilda. Because in these nightmares, the fate of those who failed their RATS-and therefore turned into rats-got fed to the snakes on places like Hans’ uncle’s ranch. Therefore she got both the terror of being fed to a snake-a recurring theme her entire seven years at Sonora-and the terror of actually being a rat .

Not that these were the human to animal transfigurations that Lydia wanted to focus on! Honestly, that might just make the nightmares worse or spring entirely new nightmares on her to decode. As awful as these were, those might be even worse! No, no. There was a nice children’s book about a girl who was born a unicorn shifter that Lydia had read when she was pre-Sonora age, but old enough to read on her own. Or there was one about a girl who was granted special unicorn powers when she helped save the unicorn princess from the evil dragon overlord.

Of course, Lydia was also not sure she wanted her classmates to see her reading a book meant for a seven year old. However, anything else seemed possibly terrifying. Maybe she should stall. “So, um, what story were you thinking of doing yours on?” Lydia asked her neighbor.

11 Lydia Priory The Rat Princess 1533 0 5