Mascots: Urban Fantasy

Mascots, they call us, and I guess they're sort of right. For certain sure, they don't think of us as the shamans at the ritual sacrifice sports, channeling the power of the watching millions into great works of magic for the benefit of all mankind. but let me tell you, if there wasn't a goofy gopher jumping around in the middle of the football game, global warming would have wiped out all of humanity by now. Sure, you can say what you like, but it's a damn hard field to get into. A young magician’s game, or at least a game for a magician who's mastered the Stone and can keep him (or her, but like all the physical, it's more likely to be a he) self in good enough shape for the full scene. Sure, you hear that it's usually just a team of different guys from the cheer team or whatever they call it, switching off inside the suit. That may be true sometimes, but it makes weak magic. Some of the sacrifice has to be ours, in sweat and vertigo and the exhaustion that comes after the dozenth triple-flip. Sure, we can prank the players--after all, the joker and the jester have their places in magic--and we can launch small prizes into the air for random fans who are not, after all, as random as you might think, but it comes down to the flat out exertion, the sweat and the synchronized chanting, the risk of permanent damage, and the managing to focus the will and the energy of the crowd watching as well as the tenuous links to all the home viewers.


Inspiration: Hulu screenshots from "Behind the Mask"
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: This is probably actually high potential, but not for me. I'm not enough of a sports fan to do a decent job with it as a main thing.