Marissa Stephenson
January 22, 2012 12:41 PM
Spectator Thread. (nm) by Marissa Stephenson
Subthreads: Teppenpaw Side. (nm) by Marissa Stephenson with Jethro Smythe, Jethro
Pecari Side. (nm) by Marissa Stephenson
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Marissa Stephenson
Spectator Thread. (nm)
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Marissa Stephenson
January 22, 2012 12:42 PM
Teppenpaw Side. (nm) by Marissa Stephenson
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Teppenpaw Side. (nm)
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Marissa Stephenson
January 22, 2012 12:44 PM
Pecari Side. (nm) by Marissa Stephenson
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Marissa Stephenson
Pecari Side. (nm)
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Marissa Stephenson
January 22, 2012 12:47 PM
Spectating from a new perspective. by Marissa Stephenson
It did get cold in Georgia sometimes. In winter, Marissa’s family ran up a heating bill right along with everyone else, and that was with everyone inside still wearing sweatshirts and frequently making strategic use of fuzzy slippers and fuzzy blankets. Sometimes, it even snowed – usually so little that an inch was enough to get school cancelled, but it was icy stuff that came out of the sky and stuck on the ground, and there was usually more actual ice than just that, too. On a few occasions, Marissa’s old private school had insisted they come in despite the roads being like sheets of glass, as long as nothing was actually coming out of the sky. So she was familiar with being cold.She was not, though, used to being cold like this, and was shivering even inside her coat and scarf and even a warming charm on all that, and on the wrapper tucked firmly around her legs. All those things kept her from being cold, exactly, but they couldn’t quite take away her awareness of the cold. It probably didn’t help that her nose kept running, despite her best efforts with a tissue in her gloved (she loved the gloves she’d gotten last year while school shopping; she supposed they were charmed and it would wear off in so many years, but they kept her hands insulated while not depriving her of the use of her hands, which was her major complaint of the ones she’d had all her life) hand; she expected she’d be on to the hospital wing after the Quidditch players got patched up for a good swallow of preemptory Pepperup Potion, because she was willing to bet she’d feel pretty lousy tomorrow if this game went on longer than a Care of Magical Creatures lesson.
Better, though, to think about it as little as possible, but the main other thing her mind kept drifting to was how weird it was to be over here, in the stands, purely as a player’s girlfriend (and maybe a little as Head Girl, but not so much as the other) rather than as at least a little a player herself, maybe there to support a friend or support someone else against an enemy, but also there to take mental notes. That time in her life was over, though, and most of the Quidditch program was so young that she didn’t really know any of them outside of her own team, just two people, one of whom she was dating. So here she was, a Quidditch girlfriend, out in the cold with her red coat charmed yellow so she could sit on the Teppenpaw side, with no other connection to the whole thing whatsoever.
She glanced down at her wrapper, which, like her pants, was black. Wearing maroon with yellow was just something she did not feel like she could do, but she was going to have to be careful that her parents never saw any pictures of this event. The colors would be seen as treacherous, nearly as bad as wearing orange in public on a Friday or Saturday.
One of the many complications of her life, she guessed, of the divide between this world and the other, the one she’d come from. Different colors, different teams, different ways of being – at home, she was at least upper middle if not the low end of just upper class, for goodness’ sake, whereas here, there was a good portion of the society which would see her as a second-class citizen for life.
But that was another thing it wasn’t really the time or place to think about. The game was starting to get interesting. She clapped as Teppenpaw got the ball…wondered what on Earth was going on between Andrew and his cousin….
“Oh!” she exclaimed when one of the little Teppenpaw Chasers, a girl whose name she wasn’t sure of, suddenly took off with the Quaffle and went on a really long time with it. She had seen it a few times from above, in games against Aladren, but never like this that she could recall. It was kind of interesting. “Oh, wow, do you think she’s even planning to pass that?” she remarked to the person sitting beside her, hands clenching in excitement as she watched.
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Marissa Stephenson
Spectating from a new perspective.
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Jethro Smythe
January 27, 2012 2:12 AM
Same position; different perspective by Jethro Smythe
Although he had never had an inclination to play Quidditch (Jethro was clumsy enough on the ground to warrant him not ever placing himself in the air, if he could help it), the seventh year had nonetheless wacthed every game that Sonora had ever held. He wasn't sure what had brought him to the first game - a homework assignment from the Coach, possibly, or maybe just to be supportive of his House - but now it was just habit. He had been there to cheer on Crotalus as they won the heats and then subsequently lost the finals the past two years, but he'd witnessed the other games, too. Inevitably one of few the people whom he could claim as a friend (or close acquaintance at any rate) was playing; Jose, Andrew and Edmond were all on Quidditch teams.Today, as Teppenpaw were due to play Pecari, Jethro was inclined to sit outside in the cold along with most of the rest of the school to witness the proceedings. He didn't have a personal preference of who would win this game, which sometimes made the play less exciting, as the outcome was not so important. If pressed, he would claim to support Teppenpaw, because that was Jane's House, and now that his sister and all his cousins had graduated, Jane was about the closest thing to a relative Jethro had left at Sonora. Regardless, the games were often enjoyable to watch, and usually discussed by students afterwards, so it was helpful to have seen them.
As the Coach released the Quaffle, Jethro discovered he had seated himself next to Marissa Stephenson, whom he had always liked, despite the fact that she played Quidditch and so there was obviously something wrong with her (though his cousin Dana had signed up for reserve a couple of times, too, and Jethro didn't quite know what to think about that). "She's running out of time to pass," Jethro replied to Marissa's comment as the Teppenpaw player of their commentary closed the gap between herself and the goalposts.
"You look incredibly cold," he commented to Marissa, who seemed to be shivering beside him. Personally, Jethro had never been particularly bothered by the weather; he seemed to feel extremes of temperatures less keenly than others. It was only sensible to try to keep one's body at an optimum temperature, however, so he was wearing a sweater and scarf both of levitating lamsbwool (which was both incredibly warm and unbelievably lightweight, not to mention ridiculously expensive) underneath his tailor-fitted moleskin outer-robes (which might have been imbibed with a heating charm, considering his legs felt warm in it, too, but Jethro wasn't really sure, as he'd never made decisions about purchasing his own clothes). "Would you like to borrow my robe?"
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Same position; different perspective
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Marissa
January 27, 2012 10:16 PM
Do you find your perspective agreeable? by Marissa
“And now she’s out,” Marissa observed as the little Teppenpaw Chaser took a shot at the goals, which was promptly blocked by the Pecari Keeper. She was definitely glad she had notShe didn’t mean that literally – as violent as Quidditch was, no one had ever actually been seriously, medic-couldn’t-fix-it-quickly (since what constituted a serious injury in the Muggle world was, she’d always felt, a little different) injured since she was at school, and since Edmond was playing and occasionally being kind of…Social Darwinist Mr. Hyde, or something, about it, she thought that was noteworthy – but she didn’t doubt that anyone who attempted such a thing in the Final would soon find themselves providing some relief for whichever poor girl had to play Seeker against Arnold, if they didn’t find the run itself abruptly interrupted by that relief. What was good for the Seeker often was the opposite of what was good for the rest of the team, at least when it came to Bludgers.
“I’m fine,” she said with a smile about being cold, though she was oddly touched by the offer. Senior-year sentimentality, she guessed; she would spend all kinds of time having warm feelings toward everyone and thinking about how much she was going to miss them all next year. She’d never formed the kind of tight relationships here that she had at home, somehow, but she had still fallen into very comfortable routines at Sonora, getting along with people and just taking her environment as a given, and no longer being here, or even having any connection to the place, in a few months was going to be strange and unsettling. “I don’t feel cold, I’ve got warming charms on all this, I just…know I ought to be cold.” She shrugged, realizing this probably sounded weird. “I’m pretty sure it’s literally never been this cold where I come from,” she explained. “At least not since I’ve been alive. I’ve never seen anything under nineteen degrees, and that’s really early in the morning.”
They kept blankets in the car for mornings like that. When they were little, Paige and Marissa had huddled together in the back seat of their mother’s Toyota, their winter coats zipped up to the chin over sweaters and them still huddled together and wrapped up in at least one big, soft blanket until they stopped shivering. Sometimes, if they were running late and Mama didn’t have time to let the car run to warm it up before they got in, Marissa had shivered so much she thought her back started to hurt from it….
Yeah, the Wizarding World definitely had its perks, and warming charms were among them. Otherwise, she was pretty sure her legs would have frozen off already.
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Do you find your perspective agreeable?
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Jethro
January 28, 2012 4:37 PM
It seems to conflict with popular opinion by Jethro
Jethro assumed that the comment about Edmond killing the opposition was meant as lightly as any comment about Beaters commiting homicide. Admittedly the Aladren Captain was potentially the most effective at his position out of all the current Sonora players, but Jethro liked Edmond, and didn't believe that he would intentionally hurt anyone. Either way, one of the teams currently playing would be facing Aladren before the end of the year. Popular opinion seemed to be that only Crotalus had represented a real competition for the reinging champions, and that power battle had already been solved this term. There was the potential for the championship this year to be a comparitively sedate affair.Marissa claimed that she didn't really feel cold, but it was more an expectation that she ought to be. Jethro understood the concept, even though the reality baffled him, so he simply nodded. "I spend winters in Northern Illinois," he replied, "but I've never really felt the cold." Possibly because he'd always spent his winters in Northern Illinois, or possibly because he had always been provided with clothes and charms that prevented its permeating his body the way it did other, less prepared people.
Watching the Quaffle pass from one pair of hands to another, it occured again to Jethro that Marissa had not only been on the Crotalus game as long as he cared to remember, but was also the current team's captain. Seeing as Aladren had beaten Crotalus in the first game, Marissa's last game at Sonora had already been played. "Will you miss playing Quidditch after Sonora?" Jethro asked her. It didn't occur to him that she might have plans to continue playing after school. It was just about acceptable for girls to play in school, apparently (again, he thought maybe Dana fell into this category. She was his favorite cousin and he'd hate to think that there was something wrong with her), but never afterwards. He knew that Marissa had some sort of Muggle background, and therefore she might follow slightly different rules, but these little snippets of logic rarely made themselves available to him in relaxed conversations.
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It seems to conflict with popular opinion
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Marissa
January 28, 2012 10:42 PM
Live and let live, I tend to say. by Marissa
“Oh, wow,” Marissa said, thinking of northern Illinois. That wasn’t a place she’d ever visited before in her life, nor intended to, but she’d seen it on soap operas, and she knew it was up north. Both of those things led her to believe it was really, really cold there, at least compared to what she accustomed to. “That might explain it.”That made sense, she thought, people being used to what they were in. A granddaughter of a friend of her grandmother’s had moved to Alaska after she got married, and said that even though it was always snowing and cold and stuff, it still didn’t always feel as bad as winters at home did, because it was a dry cold. She didn’t know if Illinois was wet or dry, but she imagined it could well be different – or the natives could simply be used to it anyway. It made as much sense to Marissa as any other explanation did, anyway, without her doing an in-depth study of the subject, which she really didn’t have time for.
She closed her eyes, feeling momentarily overwhelmed again with the enormity of the remainder of her year, and its implications for all the great length of time stretching out beyond that, time she’d have to fill up with something, day after day after….
Marissa shook her head slightly. Clearly, she’d been spending too much time in her books lately. That was way too dramatic, and anyway, she did have less to do than she might have, as Jethro reminded her.
“A little, I think,” she said, with a slightly wistful smile as she thought back across her time as the Crotalus Seeker. “Not the Bludgers at all, but I’ve been on some kind of team for as long as I can remember – I seriously think my parents put me in soccer before I could read – but now I’m not good enough at anything to play in college, so it’ll be kind of weird to not have that in my life at all.” Maybe the Wizarding World had been a blessing in one way related to that, though, because if she felt a little overwhelmed sometimes with just what she had to do here, there was no way she would have survived the life she would have had if she’d stayed at home. Still, it was kind of a pity. Being a sports star would have given her another option for a place here. “I’ll find something to do, though, I’m sure.”
She looked at him for a moment. She had learned, over the years, that there was definitely something of a Good Old Boys' network in the Wizarding World, and had enough of an idea of who was who to think that Jethro's family wasn't at the bottom of the heap, so he was probably set for life, but....
“What about you? Going to miss…well, anything here, after we leave?” she asked, genuinely curious. It was practically a cliché, the person who just couldn’t wait to leave high school and never look back, but it wasn’t one she’d ever really had a chance to test, ask around about. How could someone not feel something at the prospect of leaving the place they’d been in for more of several years than they had been in their own homes? It just seemed weird to her, and pretty close to totally incomprehensible.
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Live and let live, I tend to say.
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