In, and tagging potential recruits on Pecari Commons

Cap'n Sammy Meeks

August 26, 2017 6:17 PM

Quidditch sign ups!!!!!!!!! by Cap'n Sammy Meeks

As much as Sammy was sure to miss Joella’s leadership and friendship, she was extremely proud and excited to wear the badge of the Quidditch Captain on her robes. It shined more brightly than the Head Girl one, or maybe that was her imagination since she felt like she’d worked harder to get to this point for one than the other.

She had made the signup last year to make Joella’s life a little easier, so by this year, Sammy considered herself a seasoned professional. She even remembered the spell to make the colors on the letters flash between gold and brown and didn’t have to bug Isis to do it. And if she had been extra last year - talking about reclaiming the championship that was rightfully theirs - it paled in comparison to this year’s dramatics.

ATTENTION; PECARIS!

Are you looking for an outlet for all of that Pecari energy? Are you longing for something to be a part of, something greater than even the likes of Cartoon Network and the United Nations? Then by all means, come join the Pecari Quidditch Team! Tryouts will be held at noon on Saturday on the Pitch. Please write your name, year, and the position you’re after, and be sure to show up in a timely fashion this Saturday! We cannot wait to accept you into our familial ranks!

Beneath, she signed her own name, remembering again that this was, in fact, her final year of schooling when she saw that number next to her name.

Sammy Meeks, 7th year, Beater.

Subthreads:

Geez, Sammy, you're getting old by Ben Pierce

Not sure what the positions are but... by Parker Fitzgerald

Always in! by Lily Spencer

In, and tagging potential recruits by Ingrid Wolseithcrafte with Tatiana Vorontsova

12 Cap'n Sammy Meeks Quidditch sign ups!!!!!!!!! 310 Cap'n Sammy Meeks 1 5

Ben Pierce

August 27, 2017 2:44 PM

Geez, Sammy, you're getting old by Ben Pierce

Ben watched the Pecari bulletin board eagerly for the Quidditch Sign-Up Sheet. It didn't take long for Sammy to get it up, so he grinned cheerfully when he spotted it and hurried to add his name to the list.

Ben Pierce, 5th Year, Beater

He stood back, double checked that he'd gotten his year correct (writing '4th year' was still a habit he was in the process of breaking) then noticed the year next to Sammy's. Whoa. She was a seventh year now. Well, obviously, she was a seventh year, he chided himself, she got Head Girl this year. But somehow it was different, seeing it in writing. He felt a momentary pang of loss, knowing that this time next year, his Senior Beater Partner would no longer be in the school.

Then he reminded himself that he had a whole school year ahead of him to practice with her, and there would be plenty of time to worry about her leaving once it was closer to when that was actually going to happen. He pushed away the melancholy feeling and forced back an optimistic cheer that maybe this year they’d be able to have a full season of Quidditch again.

1 Ben Pierce Geez, Sammy, you're getting old 339 Ben Pierce 0 5

Parker Fitzgerald

August 28, 2017 10:53 AM

Not sure what the positions are but... by Parker Fitzgerald

Parker walked into the commons still unsure of where he was going, or really what was expected of him. It seemed that everyone knew what was expected of them, even if they were first years. This didn't worry Parker too much, he kind of went were others went and he assumed at some point someone would tell him he wasn't were he was supposed to be, if he was indeed somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.
As he walked the halls though, Parker felt that he was probably going to be exploring a lot more in the near future, and hoped someone else might join him. As he walked around the common room examining things he noticed a very nice flashing poster.
He walked up amazed by the changing colors. As he read, he believed he would always be amazed by this. He assumed there was a spell that made the colors changed, but it still was amazing.
Reading the first question on the form Parker actually said, "Yes I am" outloud.
He continued to read. Quidditch, Sullivan had talked a lot about it. It reminded Parker of the way his father talked about Football or his mom about Soccer. He still had no idea how the game was played or what the positions were, but if it was anything like either of those he was 100% on board with playing. After all, the only way he had found to actually sit still in classes was to be a bit physically tired so his body didn't want to go outside again.
Parker wrote down

Parker, 1st Year, wherever you can use me.

He checked to see the other names. Sammy Meeks. Was that the girl who went up and got a badge while everyone clapped? She was also on the team? This sounded like it was going to be a good place to be.

41 Parker Fitzgerald Not sure what the positions are but... 1402 Parker Fitzgerald 0 5

Lily Spencer

August 30, 2017 9:30 PM

Always in! by Lily Spencer

Upon hearing the news of her brother's appointment, she had congratulated him heartily, then followed with a half-joking threat to beat his team to the ground. They didn't play the same position, luckily, so Lily didn't bother saying anything more. She had learnt to lose gracefully after missing the Snitch last year - or was it two years ago now? - and not hearing the end of it from her annoying older brother for the entire winter season. Though she was happy for Jack, she also had a grudge.

Pecari had to win this year.

Lily felt more prepared for this new school year. Last year had been difficult, transitioning into an unfamiliar position and intermediate classes on top of that. Jack had tutored her a bit over the summer, though Lily hadn't been the best pupil, and the rest of her time she'd spent watching films and improving her hand-eye coordination and training her eyes to spot small objects from far away. She couldn't wait to get back on the pitch with real teams.

When the signup sheet went up, she quickly signed her name. It was good to see a first year showing interest. Pecari needed to win this year and that was not going to happen without a full team.

Lily Spencer, 4th year, Seeker

40 Lily Spencer Always in! 357 Lily Spencer 0 5

Ingrid Wolseithcrafte

September 05, 2017 5:59 AM

In, and tagging potential recruits by Ingrid Wolseithcrafte

It was hard to miss Sammy's notice, which Ingrid felt meant it was doing its job. She didn't understand all the comparisons their captain was making but it seemed to have already drawn in one first year. Parker. She would guess that was the boy. There were only two new Pecaris this year, and whilst the name sounded completely androgynous to her, she'd learnt that when people used surnames as first names it usually was for boys. She would have to keep an eye out for the girl, and try to persuade her, though she had seemed quite a girly girl from what Ingrid had seen at the feast.

She wasted no time in signing her own name and position.

Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, 6th year, Chaser.

With that done, she lurked by the notice board, keeping an eye out for younger years. It wasn't just the other first year - she figured that most of the younger years were fair game. Some must have been new to flying, and might have been sitting on the fence, waiting for that gentle nudge in the right direction. She really wanted new recruits for all the houses so that they could have a proper season. If Pecari filled up, she thought she might even broaden her campaign to recruiting to all the house teams. But she wanted to make sure they had a full team first. It would be so embarrassing if they were the ones who couldn't put forward a side. When she saw someone glancing in the direction of the notice board, she pounced.

"Hi there. Thinking of joining Quidditch?" she asked.

13 Ingrid Wolseithcrafte In, and tagging potential recruits 322 Ingrid Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova

September 05, 2017 8:06 PM

Being tagged. by Tatiana Vorontsova

She knew she was supposed to feel at home in the Pecari common room, but Tatiana could not quite make herself feel that way about the place. It was comfortable enough, she supposed, but it did not seem beautiful to her at all and it did not have anything else to make it feel...homeish. It was full of strangers, the jabber of noise around her was all alien, she was all alone in her room with no Katya sharing and Anya and Sonia just on the other side of a door in the adjacent room, and the common room did not even have a samovar. It would, she thought, have been easy to get to know people and make friends if there had been a samovar, but without such a gathering place, it felt awkward to just approach others and start talking at them in English when said others were possibly with friends or waiting for friends or just minding their own business….

This left her to sit around and try to study (difficult with all the background English; she rarely got much done outside her room or the library) and people watch while trying not to be obvious that she was doing so and hoping that one of them would initiate conversation and speak slowly.

This strategy was not working particularly well right now, but she did hope that it would eventually bear fruit. If nothing else, maybe she could pick up vocabulary and figure out how American girls behaved so she could blend in better.

Sometimes, though, she wasn’t sure all of them were behaving in ways she’d want to emulate. One, for instance, appeared to be lurking, just standing by the bulletin board. Tatiana looked at her quizzically and apparently did so a moment too long, because suddenly the girl - much older, maybe Sonia’s age - spoke to her.

Hi there. That was…a greeting in a place? Where was ‘there’? Tatiana wondered for a moment if the girl was speaking to someone behind her, but a quick glance over her shoulder revealed no obvious other person. Plus the girl was looking straight at her. Thinking…Quidditch? continued the girl, and Tatiana brightened at an understood message.

“Yes,” said Tatiana. “I think of that. I like flying.” She said all this relatively smoothly, though she hated that it was still slow and all short, simple sentences. She knew another construction for the last sentence - the 'to verb' construction - but it always felt so awkward to her because it did not really translate into Russian. “You are….” She searched for a word that would express what she was trying to ask. “Quidditch Directoritsa?” she tried, knowing the suffix was all wrong for English but hoping the message would get across.

16 Tatiana Vorontsova Being tagged. 1396 Tatiana Vorontsova 0 5

Ingrid

September 06, 2017 10:26 AM

Guess that makes you it by Ingrid

She'd drawn in the girl. And, more interestingly, she had said yes. Well, she had said 'yes,' to thinking about it, but it was surely just a few short steps from there to putting her name down.

The girl also wanted to know whether Ingrid was the 'directorista,' which sounded... Spanish, maybe, to her ears, although the girl's accent was distinctly Not Spanish. The meaning was clear enough, even if the word was wrong - although she liked the sound of 'directorista.'

"No. I'm the assistant 'directorista.' We say 'captain,' and 'assistant captain,'" she explained, automatically making her voice slower and a little louder, although not so much as to be caricatured or patronising.

A quick visual sweep of the girl's jewellery, alongside her status-driven question, made Ingrid suspect she was talking to someone from a well-to-do family. At least, assuming the gems were real. Ingrid’s only real means of telling good jewellery from bad was whether or not it was in one of the stores they shopped in or not.

"I'm Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, of the Wolseithcrafte family in Chicago," she added, giving a small curtsey-like bob. Presumably, given that they were sending her to an American school, the girl would have been taught how society introduced itself here, and might even have told her which families to befriend. Whether the Wolseithcraftes featured on that list was another question. They weren't one of the biggest families, and we're not prominent in the traditional sense. However, they did have a habit of making themselves known about - whether for the right reasons or the wrong ones depended, as is so often the case with such things, on who you asked. Her parents were very prominent in Chicago politics, with a strong leaning towards most conservative Pureblood policies, but had not got swept up in the mild hysteria of the previous generation over girls playing Quidditch. Given that this girl was clearly foreign, perhaps all that silliness had passed her by. If not, and her parents had come down on the side of Quidditch, there was a chance they would know of Ingrid’s family from that. Even if the politics of Quidditch was a non-issue to her, knowing that someone from The Right Sort Of Family played was usually a good incentive for other Purebloods, as it provided that much valued 'connection,' which was what school was all about.

"Do you have an interest in a particular position? Do you know their names in English?" she asked.

13 Ingrid Guess that makes you it 322 Ingrid 0 5

Tatiana

September 06, 2017 3:44 PM

Yes, but what is 'it'? by Tatiana

Cap-tan. That was it. Tatiana knew that word but hadn’t been able to think of it in a timely manner. She nodded to let Assistant Captain know she understood and would try to remember the right word now.

She really hoped she was not expected to spell her new friend’s name any time soon, because it was full of syllables Tatiana did not much use. She bowed slightly in return. “My name is Tatiana Andreyevna Vorontsova,” said Tatiana, her accent thickening as she said her name. “From Alaska,” she added, as this was apparently very important to people here. At home there could be multiple factions of families, too, but these were usually referred to by the patronymic from the first uncommon ancestor - Tatiana’s family were the Konstantinovichi, there were also the Vladimirovichi and the Mikhaelovichi. This made much more sense to her, but this was not her society.

‘Chicago’ was a thing Tatiana had heard of, but she connected it vaguely with some geography lessons she had not found very interesting. She liked looking at the maps of Asia and Africa and Russia and South America, imagining going on great expeditions and breaking curses on ancient tombs. In Mexico, she’d read they’d had cannibals fairly historically recently, so Tatiana was sure there must still be some tombs to break curses on there, and of course there were always the territories around Russia, the things that had been part of Russia before what people like Pradeduska still called ‘the unpleasantness’ and which Pradeduska blamed on the stariki, the ones younger people called Maglkrovi, who had overplayed their role. Tatiana had often played ‘adventurer in Azerbaijan' or ‘detective in Crimea’ and made Katya be the damsel in distress in the stories when she was younger. She had never played anything in Chicago and therefore could only hope it was a good thing that Ingrid Wolseithcrafte was from there.

“Eh…tak sebe,” said Tatiana, pretty sure her tone conveyed the meaning of the equivocation even if the girl didn’t understand the words.”I learn them, but sometimes I forget - I never play a game with all the peoples in it anyway. Not enough peoples,” she explained. “Only two sisters play, and one brother.” Anya’s chest was too weak to take much exercise anyway, and she lost her breath altogether if she went in the air at all, while Lyoshka was just a baby still. Sometimes Tatiana and her remaining siblings had cousins, usually Anastasiya and Elena and Rurik, to play with, but even then they could not make up the numbers for a full game, especially since Katya and Elena took the least excuse not to join in. This was far too much to explain, though, so Tatiana omitted it. “I catch a ball - sometimes big one, sometimes the little one. But I do not play...what we call ‘hunter’. Hits two balls with wood. You need anyone who catches other balls?”

16 Tatiana Yes, but what is 'it'? 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Ingrid

September 15, 2017 1:15 AM

Looks like Chaser or Keeper could be good options? by Ingrid

Tatyana Somethingy Somethingova. Ingrid seriously hoped the girl didn't mind first name basis, or that she wrote that exceedingly long collection of very foreign-sounding syllables onto the sign up sheet so that Ingrid could study it before the need to address her by name came up again. She added where she was from, but not that she was of that place, which was usually an important distinction. However, between the different language and presumably different customs, Ingrid wasn't willing to count that too strongly against the idea of the other girl being Pureblood. The jewellery still spoke for itself, and the knowledge of Quidditch said that she came from a magical family of some kind.

"Alaska? Are you from the Wizard Village there?" she asked. She forgot the local name for it, but she certainly knew of it from her geography lessons. Whilst Ingrid wasn't always the most serious student of dry and factual subjects, geography had always appealed to her, fuelling her imagination of places she would one day explore. The Wizard Village, trapped in near perpetual snow and ice (at least, in her imagination) had sounded like a great place to go on an adventure, and she and Jemima had played out several dramatic polar expeditions to the town in their youth.

"We don't play full games at home either," she nodded, when Tatyana talked about her family. "I have two brothers and two sisters, but one of my sisters doesn't like playing much. In some ways it helps, because having an odd number of people isn't very useful - we can just play two against two then, and throw the ball around."

Tatyana's explanations were clear, even if she lacked the vocabulary for the positions - which was lucky, as 'Hunter' was a much closer linguistic match to 'Seeker,' without the context given. Calling the Beaters 'Hunters' made it sound so much more predatory...

"Chasers play with the big ball - the Quaffle. Seekers look for the small ball - the Snitch. 'Seek' is a kind of old-fashioned word for searching or looking," she explained, "We call Hunters 'Beaters.' 'Beat' means 'to hit.' We already have a Seeker, but we need a new Chaser. Oh, and a Keeper," she added. She almost forgot about Keeper sometimes, because it was - in her opinion - so boring. "Keeper is the one who stops the big ball. Well, tries to."

13 Ingrid Looks like Chaser or Keeper could be good options? 322 Ingrid 0 5

Tatiana

September 15, 2017 2:06 PM

Yes, one of those could work. by Tatiana

Tatiana blinked when Ingrid mentioned the village, then smiled in delight. “Yes, yes,” she said excitedly, putting her hands together and beaming at the older girl. “We say – Volshebnaya Derevnya. Means same thing. Anton Petrovich says, anyway. You know my village?”

Tatiana knew that her papa sometimes talked to English-speakers; that was why he spoke English and why Grisha and Alyosha had to learn English, though Alyosha presently only knew words Tatiana had taught him because he was three and too young for real lessons. Sometimes the English speakers were from this government, sometimes they were money-people, business things. Perhaps Ingrid’s papa was one of those wizards. If so, that would be lovely – Tatiana could tell Papa she knew the daughter of his friend, and perhaps they could visit each other, so Ingrid could see the Village (the nicest place in the world, in Tatiana’s opinion, if not the most interesting) and Tatiana could see more of the south….

That, however, was not the current business. The current business was figuring out how to describe words she didn’t know using the ones she did. This was easier than she thought she had feared it would be from time to time, but it wasn’t an exercise she could call ‘easy’ with a straight face, either. Tatiana nodded at the description of the Wolseithcrafte family. Her family was one sister larger, but that didn’t matter much – or enough to figure out how to explain, anyway – in the present context. “Brothers, sisters are good,” opined Tatiana.

Her regard for Ingrid increased when the girl explained what the words she was using meant. Beat – to hit. Beat-er, hit-ter. Tatiana filed this one away, but paused over Seek. Her mind automatically rendered it as сик, sih-ii-kh, the combination of English sounds she thought she was supposed to make at the medic if she became ill. “Is so?” she said. “I thought sik meant go to medic. I guess you look for medic, too, though,” she added musingly. “Still – I do that sometimes,” she agreed. “With the little ball. But I use the big ball, too.” She knew she had already said this. She really, she thought ruefully, was going to have to tell Anton Petrovich that she had never anticipated just how difficult this language barrier was going to be when she couldn’t slip into Russian as needed to explain that of course she did not look for her own medical professionals, Mama or Papa or someone did that for her, so Anton Petrovich could be even more merciless to Katya so Katya didn’t have the same problem. Then she would also have to apologize to Katya…. “I can be – Chai-ser, ke-per. I will write it down.” She bit her lip, then asked a potentially delicate question. “You, um, look, see if it is right enough?” she asked hesitantly.

Her reason for asking this became clear when she made her way to the board and began to write. She started out in Cyrillic by default, writing her name properly, before remembering that she was supposed to write English and crossing it all out to start over. Then she started sounding out the words Ingrid had used for positions, ending up with the entry ~~Воронцова Татьяна Андреевна~~ Tatiyana Varantsova – Chaeiser-keiper.

16 Tatiana Yes, one of those could work. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Ingrid

September 24, 2017 3:42 AM

Good by Ingrid

"We learned about it I'm geography lessons growing up. I always thought it sounded interesting. I'd really like to travel more after I graduate," she explained when Tatiana asked whether she knew the village. "What's it like there?" she asked.

"Sometimes," she nodded when Tatiana suggested that siblings were good. She tried to think of a way to explain simply. She held her hand out sideways. "This is me," she said, wiggling the little finger. "Favourite sister," she wiggled her ring finger, "Favourite brother," she wiggled the thumb. "We play as a team," she indicated her little finger and her thumb. "These two..." she wiggled her middle and index fingers. "The other team. I like them less," she explained, although she said it all with a smile. Francesca and Theodore could be pretty annoying but she loved them really. And it was definitely getting better the older they all got.

It took her a minute to work out what Tatiana meant about the medic, especially as she then rationalised her mishearing.

"They're different words. Seek, and sick," she added, trying to emphasise the difference. "Seek... Same sound as 'see,'" she added. "But 'sick'..." she couldn't think of a good comparison, as 'si' wasn't a word, "Like sit?" she could kind of hear how they sounded similar and having a sound on the end of the word seemed to make the difference less clear. "One is 'ee' in the middle, one is 'i,'" she added, making the sounds rather than naming the letters in the spelling.

"It's ok," she nodded, when Tatiana asked her about the words she'd written. She had asked whether they were right enough, which sounded like she was satisfied so long as they could be understood, even if they weren't right. Ingrid hesitated. She came from a family of people who liked things to be just right, and thought pointing out errors was doing someone a favour, so long as it was done nicely. But she'd already corrected Tatiana once in the last five minutes and didn't want to overload or embarrass her. "I'd know what positions you mean," she confirmed, hoping that Tatiana could infer from that that she had spelt intelligibly if not correctly, and that if she wanted further help she would ask for it.

13 Ingrid Good 322 Ingrid 0 5

Tatiana

September 25, 2017 11:17 AM

I agree. by Tatiana

It struck Tatiana as slightly strange to consider her village as part of someone’s geography lesson. Of course, it was a notable location, with what she had been taught was an unusually high concentration of wizards for the amount of space involved, but...well, it wasn’t exactly Moscow, or even her vague idea of Chicago, much less Nadezhda’s stories (surely just fancies for the most part, but still - they were based on a real thing) about New York. She decided not to mention this to Ingrid, though.

“Is beautiful,” she said when asked what it was like. “More than here. Here - everything so plain,” she complained. “Even - people in the village, work-people, even they are not so plain. My home - even our park has more color than these gardens.” She pointed to the door to indicate where she meant. “And dark here! How can it be so warm and so early dark? The first day I think that it is already winter here,” laughed Tatiana. “In summer, sometimes they breakfast before go to bed at home! The one old enough to go parties.”

She followed Ingrid’s diagram of her family well enough and held up her own hands. “Six of us,” she said. “Anna - Sofiya - Grigori - me - Katerina - Alexei. Alexei is baby, though, and Katya and Anya stay on the ground.”

Tatiana grimaced apologetically at Ingrid’s attempt to clarify the sounds in the two words, which were evidently not the same word. “Ee - iii - ih - not good sounds,” she said. “I confuse them.”

She grimaced again at the indication that it was at least possible to discern what she meant with her scribblings. “I want to say tak mnogo bukvy,” she remarked. “But we have more than you - we 33, you 26. Is ‘eye before ee except after see,’ yes?” Which was so confusing, because it made the same sound as ‘k’ and the pointless letter ‘s’, which could just as easily be accounted for by c or z! Or, for that matter, half the time - like in one of the words Ingrid had just taught her - Ч! English was strange.

16 Tatiana I agree. 1396 Tatiana 0 5