Odetta Marsh, Long-time concept turned char. Enjoy!

[Odetta Marsh]

Personal Information
Nickname: Liz
Age: 21

Character Information
Name: Odetta Lynn Marsh
Age: 32
Gender: female
Race: human
Ethnicity: Caucasian

Appearance: Odetta is your standard, middle-American mutt: Her ancestors hailed from such exotic locales as Ireland, England, Germany, and Canada. As such, her looks are really nothing special by American standards. Her hair is dirty blonde, rain-straight, and falls to her shoulders when unbound—though she is in the habit of keeping it pinned up. Her eyes are grey, round as any Westerner’s and often seen behind the black frames of her reading glasses.

Her face is pleasant but not particularly striking: Heart-shaped, accented by a pug-ish nose, stubborn chin, and generous mouth. She has a small mole by the line of her jaw on the left side of her face and a faint scar on her forehead that appears when she crinkles it.

At 5’4” and 125lbs, Odetta is of a mostly average build for her size. While she is not extraordinarily curvy or particularly strong, Odetta takes regular morning jogs and practices yoga and Pilates—habits which her first Wiccan teacher ingrained in her along with the belief that a sound body promotes a sound spirit. White skin goes with the package, but unlike many of her family members, Odetta’s tans in the sun rather than simply burning.

Though she does not allow herself many vanities, Odetta maintains her professional appearance both because it is necessary for her position as an instructor and because it is not what most of her colleagues expect when they meet a diviner. As unconventional and eccentric as she can be, Odetta’s manner of dress is usually quite conservative. She prefers to wear suits and formal robes in subdued colors and is rarely seen in anything else.

Personality: Odetta has always been a fairly reserved person. Even while growing up in Montana, she had only a small group of friends outside of her family. That is not to say that she isn’t friendly, far from it. Odetta is nothing if not cordial and generally accommodating, but she keeps the details of her personal life to herself. She rarely shares her true thoughts and opinions on anything other than the subject of divination but seems to have a knack for drawing out the feelings of others. Because of this, she often ends up with many good acquaintances and casual friends who really know nothing about her.

Gaining Odetta’s confidence is a difficult matter. Her natural tendency to be socially cautious has only increased since her arrival in Japanese wizarding society. It is hard enough to gain the respect of your peers as a Squib with latent powers, but even harder when you use those powers to pick apart standard methods of divination. The responses of some have not been kind and Odetta has sadly come to the point where she expects flat-out rejection and even fear as a reaction to herself and her work.

There is also the problem of self-image. Odetta believes strongly in her theories and research and in her knowledge of her field, but beyond that she still feels like a fish out of water when it comes to interacting with other witches and wizards. Since she was not raised in a magical household, Odetta still encounters things which she has never seen or experienced before, but which others might consider common place. She has no problem with asking questions—in fact, her keen and inquisitive mind demands that they be asked—but she cannot help feeling foolish when she does. In over-all knowledge she still feels very insecure and even inferior to most of her peers though her test scores would seem to indicate otherwise.

The plain truth is that she has been somewhat off-balance since her powers first appeared thirteen years ago and has never quite regained her emotional footing. Because of this she no longer expects kindness from others—though she believes implicitly in their basic goodness—any sort of praise for her work, or any kind of help. Nevertheless, she treats people with kindness and courtesy because of the spiritual and moral principles in which she believes.

Those principles have become increasingly important to her in the last eleven years and are perhaps the reason why, despite her self-esteem issues, Odetta is a generally happy, pleasant, and optimistic person. Amongst these principles are the Wiccan “Rule of Three,” and such romantic notions as the innate value of the truth and a reverence for life. This eccentric and romantic side of Odetta is the one that most people know. It makes her appear self-confident, strong willed, and just a bit naïve though the truth of how she feels about herself is somewhat opposite.

Like some artists and theoretical scientists, this eccentric side is also the part of Odetta that allows her to think about and manipulate the basic principles of magic and divination to form her unique and somewhat radical theories. It isn’t always advantageous though. Odetta has a tendency to get so wrapped up in her work that she forgets to eat or sleep. She can become so obsessed with a problem or a new idea that everything else suddenly becomes secondary to solving or developing it. This is perhaps one reason why Odetta has not had many romantic relationships since she can be unintentionally brisk when preoccupied with an intellectual quandary.


History: Odetta’s childhood was as normal and boring as anyone could wish for. She grew up in Butte, Montana with her mother, father, and two older siblings—one brother, one sister. Her brother and sister picked on her, her parents fought on occasion; all-in-all it was a very supportive and loving environment.

At the age of fourteen, Odetta discovered the joys of the internet and through that the joys of anime. She knew from the time she was fifteen that she wanted to study Japan, its history, and culture. When she was 18 she enrolled in Oregon State University’s Asian studies program with a specialization in Japanese history and a double minor in philosophy and Japanese language.

Even though she missed her family in Montana terribly, Odetta studied hard and graduated at the age of 21 with honors. She called home regularly and sent her parents copies of her papers. But something happened during those four years that she never mentioned in the phone calls or letters home.

During the beginning of her sophomore year at OSU, Odetta accidentally turned her Japanese language primer into a tarantula. Whatever the reason for the late appearance of her powers as a witch, her roommate—who walked in the door of their dorm room two seconds later—did not appreciate it and when the head dean of the dormitory fined Odetta $50 for having an unapproved pet, neither did she.
Why Odetta was not then contacted by members of the American wizarding world remains unknown to her—though she has since heard some grumblings about the efficiency of their government. All she knew was that her world had been turned suddenly, and violently, upside-down. Afraid to tell her friends and family and still somewhat unsure of her own experience, Odetta looked for guidance in the endless resources of the internet. A few word searches later, she found a group of people who believed in the sort of thing that had happened: Wiccans.

Hungry for answers and afraid of what they might be, Odetta managed to contact a coven in the area and arranged to meet with them. She spent the next three years studying, practicing, and worshipping with them. The answers they had seemed to fit for a while, until, during a routine protection charm workshop, Odetta realized that she was the only one who could actually keep someone from walking through a door if she didn’t want them to. As graduation approached, she began to see that her peers were going through motions and performing rituals with little to no obvious result whereas she often got very physical and apparent ones.

Confused and hoping that a change of scene would clear her mind as well as her college debts, Odetta applied for a position in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme; JET for short. She was accepted and sent to one of the more remote islands in the Okinawa prefecture to teach English for three years. It was there that she met her first fellow witch.

The woman only allows Odetta to call her “obachan” so she has never learned her real name, but she was the one who finally told Odetta what she was and let her into the wizarding world. Odetta believes that she owes Obachan a debt that she can never repay and keeps in contact with the old woman through letters and the occasional fire place chat.

Since her debut in magical society, Odetta has been forced to fight for a place amongst her colleagues. As soon as she was introduced to the secret alleys and hidden corners of Japan’s wizarding world, Odetta began reading everything that she could get her hands on concerning magic and its use. At one point, she even came to Seireino Uta and asked for a list of the books required for all the classes. Now that she finally understood what she was, she wasn’t about to have her peers leave her in the dust. Over the next seven years she worked various part-time jobs, kept herself on a rigorous self-study course, and fell in love with divination. It was during this period that she first began to form some of her controversial theories.

Odetta believes that the magical community at large has not given the roll of the individual enough credit in magical processes. In short, she thinks that too much emphasis has been placed upon the tools, rituals, and recipes used rather than on the witch or wizard who is performing the magic. What she really wants to know is why magic works; why some people suddenly become witches and wizards and why others don’t. Her obsession with this question is easy to understand given her own experiences with magic. Divination appealed to her not only because of its anthropological significance, but also because it is a narrower, magical field in which to examine the same questions.

In divination, there are tools and set methods of using them, but not every witch or wizard can use them properly with positive results, unlike charms, spells, or potions. Odetta hypothesizes that, in the case of divination, the tools and methods may actually be more hindrance than help. She thinks that people may be focusing so hard on trying to see specific shapes in tea leaves or pictures in a crystal ball that they block themselves from seeing what is actually there. The important thing, she believes, is what the diviner thinks something means, not what the method says something means.

When she felt she was finally ready, Odetta arranged to take the Japanese standardized tests used in the magic schools and received surprisingly high marks for someone who did not grow up in magical society, particularly in the area of divination. Nevertheless, she was still a complete unknown and could not find anyone who would fund her to research her theories. So, Odetta continued to work in tea houses and clothing shops while she managed to perform an experiment with a small group of volunteers.

She divided the group of twenty-four volunteers into four groups of six. The control group used no divinary tools at all and was simply asked to write down whatever thoughts and impressions came to them while they sat. The second group all did a standard 10 card spread with tarot cards and used the standard card meanings to interpret them. The third group also did a 10 card tarot spread, but were told to ignore the standardized meanings and interpret the cards by using their intuition. Members of the fourth group were shown muggle Rorschach cards and asked to give impressions of what they saw there. The volunteers were all asked to write down the impressions and predictions that they saw and made during their session and then to keep a journal and see if any of those predictions came true.

The experiment was simple enough and though she only managed to find twenty-four volunteer witches and wizards, the results were very interesting.
In the control group, no accurate predictions were made. Most people wrote about their day and one lady managed to refine her recipe for vanilla cupcakes. The second group also failed to make any accurate predictions even though one of the members said later that he had used tarot cards before with moderate success. However, one member in each of the third and fourth groups made accurate predictions. The wizard in the third group unfortunately predicted and then uncovered an affair that his wife had been having with a coworker and the witch in the fourth group somehow managed to predict the final score of a China vs. India quidditch match that was held a week later.

While the research was far from complete or definitive, the results did seem to correlate with Odetta’s theories. After several months of organizing the data, she refined her hypothesis and the results of her experiment into a forty page paper and began looking for places to publish it. When she was turned down by every scholarly journal an paper on the subject of divination, she went to the newspaper where editors hacked at it until it filled about half a page of print.

Though she managed to get her paper published in the newspaper, Odetta was scorned both by diviners and other magical folk. Fellow diviners felt that she had insulted them and their time-tested methods. Everyone else just thought she was silly for attempting to treat divination like any other magical art. Even so, Odetta made a name for herself and her mangled article raised enough interest to allow for a complete publication of the paper in a scholarly divinary journal.

It has been eleven years now since Obachan helped Odetta buy her first wand. In that time, Odetta has become either infamous or famous in some academic circles because of her first paper, but it wasn’t enough to get her a job in a research facility as she hoped. Up until she received an invitation to teach her subject at Seireino Uta, Odetta was still serving tea at a shop in the magical underground of Tokyo. Teaching at a magic school is not her dream job, but a step in the right direction nonetheless. Odetta is eager to prove herself to the other professors and most especially the Head Master/Mistress.

Preferred Class: Divination

Notes: Amongst her more personally mortifying quirks are a love for all things anime (which was part of why she became involved in the JET program) and an old stuffed toy rabbit which she brought with her from the States and still sleeps with. On dark nights when she’s certain no one else is awake, Odetta locks her room door, snuggles up with Violet, pulls out a contraband TV and watches Ranma½ reruns.

[Odetta Marsh]

In anticipation of some objections which you may have, please allow me to explain my reasoning in making Odetta who and what she is.

I'm sure that at least one or two of you will be uncomfortable with the fact that she is not Japanese either in heritage or nationality. I did consider making her so, but that would have forced me to make a large deviation from the original concept for her. Odetta started out with me wondering how magical religions would fit into the HP universe. It is, as far as I know, the same as ours only with a magical subculture which normal people (muggles) do not know about, so I don't think that assuming that magic-focused religions like Wicca exist here too is taking liberties with the the HP cannon. It occured to me that in the HP universe these magic-centric religions or groups could be due to the existence of a very small and over-looked group of latent witches and wizards. Since most of them would be too old to apply to a school like Hogwarts or Seireino Uta, it figures that their presence might go unnoticed by a magical community that is searching for 10 and 11 year olds. Say you were one of these people and your first education in magic was from muggles. How would you think about magic differently? How would you react to wizard society if you even managed to encounter it? That was the basic premis for Odetta.

Wicca and other Neo Pagan religions do not enjoy the following in Japan and other parts of the world that they do in America and Europe. Even in America where Wicca enjoys its largest following it is a relatively small minority religion (from the department of redundancy department). This being so, Odetta would have a much greater likelyhood of finding Wiccans in her area if she were American rather than Japanese. Then there's her introduction to Japanese culture through anime. This strikes me as a very American way to become interested in Japanese culture and it doesn't really seem like the way someone with Japanese heritage would get interested about their ancestors' culture, although I grant that it is possible.

In closing, if you would rather that I rewrite Odetta to be Japanese, I could try to do so, but that would also mean rewriting a great deal of her personality and history. In essence, I'd just have to start all over again. I could try making her Japanese in heritage, but once again that would probably require a very large rewrite. If you think she doesn't belong here, then I completely understand. I just wanted to try scratching this particular creative itch. Just thought I should let you know that I have thought out the possibilities and chose this particular way of doing things because I thought it would produce the most interesting result.

Hmm...did that, uh, make any sense? >_<

~Liz

[Reiji Shimamura]

Nah, I rather like her. Considering anime/manga is how I got into Japanese culture, and continue to be rather obsessed, I can't blame Odetta at all. ^ ^

I am going to accept her, but I'm also going to say that she is going to be the last Caucasian teacher. She's too cool to let go, but there are getting to be too many. She's fine the way she is, though, so don't think you need to change it.

ACCEPTED.

[Ayako Fujiwara]

I'm looking forward to your Divination Class post! Don't bother waiting or anything, heh.

And it's a good thing you accepted her, Riko, because if you didn't, I was totally going to override you. BAHAHAHA, you should never have given me admin powers!