fandomhigh | Good Omens...And Bad: Prophecy in Theory and Practice, Class Eight

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prophecy

Good Omens...And Bad: Prophecy in Theory and Practice, Class Eight

Monday, October 23, First Period

The classroom doesn't look much different than it did during Parents Weekend, except for the addition of a large tropical fish aquarium against one wall. In it are swimming five very content looking fish. If it doesn't seem to have any significance to the topic of Prophecy, that's because...well, it doesn't. Aziraphale just likes the fish.

"Today we're going to cover several somewhat lesser utilized methods of divination. Specifically, we'll be talking about elemental methods and handful of what you could call the most common of the less common -- including my personal favorite, the reading of tea leaves. There's even a form of divination using specially designed computer programs, although that one is somewhat under dispute."

LECTURE:
Geomancy (earth)
Pyromancy (fire)
Hydromancy (water)
Aeromancy (atmopheric conditions)
Tasseography/Tasseomancy (tea)
Numerology (numbers)
Bibliomancy (books)
Cybermancy (computer programs)

Class Participation:
"In honor of our recent Parents Weekend experience, I'd like each of you to share one thing about the past three days that you wish you'd read a prophecy about beforehand."

Homework:
"To prepare for next week's class, I want you to write briefly about a historical personage associated with prophecy, telling whether you'd like to change places with that person, and why or why not."

Syllabus
Class Roster
Classes Linkdrop

[ooc: ~~As always, please wait for~~ OCD is up! Go!.]

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Ask questions about the lecture, get permission to feed the fish, etc.

"Mr. Phale? I, kinda don't know what year I was born... So I did a chart for Old Man, my horse."

"That's quite all right, Miss Longstocking. As long as you did the chart for, er, someone. Then you've completed the assignment."

"Yay! Thank you!"

"Hi!" Blair smiled at Aziraphale. "I'm just checking to make sure I'm still enrolled in your class and everything."

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. "Of course you are, Mr Sandburg. I take it you managed to talk your mother out of pulling you from school?"

"I'm still here!" Blair nodded enthusiastically. "Not till yesterday and after she had already talked to the principal. So I was just making sure."

"I see." Aziraphale nodded, looking serious. "Well, I'm terribly sorry I helped put you into that situation. I'm afraid I didn't make a very good impression on your mother."

"Probably because you didn't flirt with her." Blair rolled his eyes. "She really flipped her lid when I let it slip about the demon thing and then River tried to help by saying she could protect me and promised not to break my arm again."

"Er...no, I'm afraid I'm not terribly good at flirting. But, really, one's teacher oughtn't flirt with one's parent anyway." Aziraphale smiled sympathetically. "I am sorry she was upset by her experience here. But she must at least have realized that you're happy enough to want to stay."

"One's parent really shouldn't sleep with one's bald guardian with an attitude either." Blair muttered. "It took her a while but yeah, the fact that I'm happy really swayed her."

Aziraphale's eyebrow went up at that statement, but as he listened to the radio just like the rest of the island, he merely patted Blair's arm. "I'm glad as well. We'd miss you around here, my dear."

"I'd miss you guys too!" Blair gave Phale a very quick hug and bounced off to talk to Bel.

Anders headed up to talk to Aziraphale after class, still occasionally checking his arms and hands for evidence of line art. "I'm, um, really sorry about missing class last week, sir, but I was kind of two-dimensional and colorless at the time."

The colorless part wasn't so surprising after the experience of Homecoming Weekend, but two-dimensional was a new one. "Er...well, I can certainly see why that make it difficult for you to attend class. Your absence is excused, Mr Anders. And you can get the homework assignment from one of your classmates and turn it in next week."

Well, no, the colorless part was kind of old hat to Anders by now, what with Becky and Miho, and the monochrome Sex Ed workshops. It had been the whole whitespace thing that had freaked him out. "Yeah, I'll do that. I'm really, really sorry, and I am never going to say 'Wow, this comic book really sucks you in' in front of the comic book again."

Aziraphale couldn't entirely hold back a little laugh at that. "It's quite all right, Mr Anders. Do you know...I really had never thought much about the dangers of talking in front of one's reading material before. I suppose you never know what you're going to learn here. Perhaps the administrators ought to consider offering a class on Fandom itself."

"Aw, but the mystery's half the adventure," Anders said. "I mean, these'll make great party stories for the rest of our lives. 'sides, I don't know if anybody has been able to figure most of these things out."

"True, I suppose it wouldn't be nearly as much fun if we knew ahead of time what to expect," Aziraphale chuckled. "What was it like, then...being part of a comic?"

"Emotionally exhausting," Anders said, the roll of his eyes saying far more than the words did. "I could have at least been reading a superhero comic or something, you know, then it would've been all running around and saving the world, but no, I had to be reading Unknowns in Eden instead, and all we did was argue and angst for days, and occasionally break furniture. Except for those two panels where we got the threatening phone call from Marcy Driver's organized crime syndicate . . ."

Actually, Aziraphale thought it sounded rather fascinating, but he could see where the superhero gig would have been much more attractive to Anders. Then again, days of arguing and angsting wasn't really all that unusual an occurance around Fandom.

"Well...that sounds as though it had promise, at least. Never actually got around to interacting with the organized crime syndicate?"

"They weren't really in this volume," Anders said wistfully. "It would've been a nice break from the emo, though, I mean, I do that enough."

"That is a shame," he agreed. "I suppose you could always consider it a learning experience. Normally I wouldn't imagine a person might want to know how to react to being suddenly made a character in a comic book story. But around here...who knows? Too bad it isn't something you can learn to control, though, isn't it? Might be interesting to go back and try out the next volume."

"That is not the superpower I'd like to have, if I had one," Anders grinned. "Not that I'm much of a reader, but I used to think I would've loved to jump into some of the stuff I did read --" he was pointedly avoiding the fact that this material was probably posted on the Internet -- "and be part of the story. I think I've changed my mind."

"Rather like that warning about getting what you wish for?" Aziraphale replied, chuckling. "Yes, I expect that the world is just perverse enough to not actually give you the story you want to be in, but something similar and yet not at all what you were hoping for. Just to teach you a lesson."

He thought about some of his favorite reading, and decided that while the 'historical novels' might not be so bad, he was fairly certain he'd just as soon avoid getting stuck in most of the prophetic works. They tended to be far too much about burning things up and raining unpleasant things from the sky.

Good Omens...And Bad: Prophecy in Theory and Practice, Class Eight

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