Marina Elettra Leonardis

Marina Elettra Leonardis is a college student at Southwest University who describes herself as plant-obsessed. She is a vegetarian and currently in a relationship with Pete Stamper, a teacher's aide in his mid-twenties. She used to run an instagram account dedicated to posting aesthetic pictures of learning material, a "studygram", but has deactivated it in 2020. She loves a green plant-y aesthetic, and takes her father dog Valkyrie for walks as much as she can convince her dad to let her do it. She is also not reacting well to thunderstorms when she is alone, however doesn't know why.
==Close family==
Marina is the younger one of two children in her family. Her parents are divorced and she has a brother.
Lorenzo Arturo Leonardis (*July 27th 1993 in LDP), nicknamed Enzo, is five years older than his sister. They used to fight a lot when they were younger, but nowadays the two have a good relationship, and trust each other. Lorenzo has always cared a lot for his sister who didn't share this affection until she was halfway through high school. He went to Richland High and wasn't particularly outstanding in any field, neither social nor academic, he seemed to be very average in terms of grades. Lorenzo's calm, patient demeanour used to upset the more spontaneous and energetic Marina a lot. He attended the college in Hydroelectric City and studied Cinema and Media Studies. Enzo now lives with his father again, works a part-time job in a hardware store and is a freelance video editor. He wishes he could make a living with making his own movies but knows it's a dream he's never going to achieve should he choose to stay in Lower Duck Pond.
Guilia Capello (*1976 in Italy) is Lorenzo's and Marina's mother. She grew up in Italy, and never had a particularly good relationship to her parents, however always stayed in contact with them. She has an older brother called Arturo who took over the family vineyard and married a British woman (Pamela Anne Capello née Carlisle), and a younger sister called Camilla who married a Swiss man and - just like Guilia - moved out of Italy permanently. 
After she graduated from high school, she became an au-pair in Lower Duck Pond and immediately fell in love with the small town and Matthew Leonardis. When the young woman got pregnant shortly before her au-pair time ended, she hesitantly decided to keep the baby, moved in with Matthew and the two married shortly after in a small ceremony. Guilia felt the pressure to keep the baby and marry fast due to her traditional upbringing, while also not actually wanting children yet. This created a huge inner conflict for her that she mostly suppressed for over a decade, but the facade was clearly breaking apart the more often the couple had fights towards the end of their marriage. Guilia announced she'd divorce him one night in 2001 after a huge fight with Matthew one stormy night, moved to a city three hours north, and cut off the contact to the rest of her family back home in Italy. She didn't attempt contact with her children for a while, then was hindered at it by her ex-husband as he felt she would probably just leave the children once again, traumatizing them once more. Guilia felt defeated and helpless, and ended up merely writing letters to them on their birthdays with money, and leaving custody to Matthew.
Matthew Leonardis (*1972 in LDP) grew up in Lower Duck Pond, just like his parents, his father was an immigrant from Italy, his grandparents on the maternal side were Italian immigrants as well and had raised their daughter, Matthew's mother, in LDP. He has a brother called Richard who is two years younger than him. After graduating from Richland High, he started working in construction, later becoming a mason. 
At age 22 Matthew met Guilia and was immediately head over heels in love with her, at times even seeming overbearing to her. In 1993 they had their first child together, Lorenzo Arturo, named after Matthew's brother-in-law. The two purchased a small house on the edge of the town in 1998 when it was clear they were going to have another baby. Her leaving the family three years later left him alone with raising their children, while he was also still in debt from their house purchase and struggling with everything being on him now. After hoping Guilia would come back, his attitude towards her turned into anger and feeling like he needed to protect what he now only felt to be his kids from being hurt by her, feeling justified in making sure their mother would not be able to be in contact with Marina and Lorenzo until they could deal with it properly, as he saw the effect the event had on them first-hand. After years of allegedly not hearing anything from Guilia, 15-year-old Marina however found old letters he had written but never sent in a box in the attic. The dates on the letters begin back in the time of wishing his ex-wife would come back up to several years afterwards, letters in which he let out his pain to process it without his kids picking up on it. Marina demanded to know more as she realized her father had lied to them the entire time. This resulted in the two of them fighting a lot for a few weeks. Throughout the entire time he had withheld the birthday letters from his children and put the money in their bank accounts. Eventually he told Lorenzo and Marina the entire story one evening, which at first led to both kids not talking to him for a while, then slowly led to more honest communication and better family dynamics between them after that. 
Matthew has a dog called Valkyrie (a five year old energetic and quite social vizla) and enjoys going hiking with his friends. Whenever Marina is over and takes over the cooking, he always jokingly complains about the dish not containing meat or fish. He loves his children unconditionally and respects Marina's choice in partner, however isn't quite sure what to think of him given that Pete is a recovering alcoholic and leads a punk band that used to have a quite rowdy reputation. Matthew recognizes the effort and energy Pete seems to put into the relationship with his daughter however and respects him for choosing a teaching profession that involves working with teenagers, wanting to help them achieve the best they can, just like Matthew tried with his children.
==Biography==
Marina grew up in Lower Duck Pond. Just like her brother and father, she attended Richland High. She is very stubborn and also blows up easily when she doesn't like what someone just said or did, two traits she inherited from her father that are also reasons why they fought a lot when she was a teenager, often still nowadays. She does not remember anything about her mother, which is why she envies her brother a bit even though to the outside she never admits she would've liked to have a mother figure in her childhood and teen years. Marina began writing creatively in private during her teen years. Later she developed an interest for politics, attended a workshop for politics for older teens at the recreation center in July 2018 and through the people she met there got a job at the front desk of the town hall that she kept until she started university in August 2019.
She is now studying political science and living in her own small apartment on Gray Lane, it is also being referred to as "the most jungle apartment I've ever seen" by her friend Nadia Domitrovitch. Occasionally she helps her brother and his friends from his friends produce short films which may not be masterpieces but surely a lot of fun to create. Marina also enjoys clubbing at the Pradis, occasionally also going to clubs in Hydroelectric City for a change of scenery.
Marina is not able to perform anything live on stage as she has stage fright. Something about literally standing in the spotlight gets her to freak out which you wouldn't usually expect from such an outgoing personality. During an elementary school musical called "The Wizard of Floss" she was supposed to perform a solo. She was so stressed she threw up all over the floor and was never put in the spotlight by her teacher ever again. Otherwise she is a very extroverted person, always up for going out and unfailingly finding reasons to party as often as she can.
In July 2017, Marina took part in a workshop about political and social science for teens, a program that the town hall created in collaboration with the recreation center. Since then, the program has slowly gained more popularity and is now taking place every other month with a new topic for a weekend and open to young people aged 11-18, with three groups to work at an age-appropriate level. As one of her professors knows the organizer of this program, Marina found out about an open volunteer position in September 2020 and has since been helping out.
==Plots Marina is involved in==
During the 2020 mayoral elections, she was a supporter of Sam Sadler. Marina interviewed him after him losing the election to Jim and posted the interview on the Southwest University Times website. During the 2021 mayoral elections, Marina was a supporter of Octavia the Oak Tree.
When middle school teacher Daniel Rose reported his pastel highlighters were stolen, Marina reported that hers were stolen while she was in a cafe as well. Currently the two are using their free time to find more clues about the culprit who is most likely a student or teacher at the local middle school. They were promised support by the parent council, represented by Angela, after being refused the opportunity to watch the footage of the security camera in the staff room since highlighter theft wouldn't be important enough to investigate for the principal. They have since decided to stop looking and it has become an inside joke between them.
At Reginald Baxter's party after painting the bike lanes on December 1st, Marina met Pete Stamper, an English TA at Central High. He helped her find and take care of her drunk friends that night. Marina invited him to her party taking place the following Friday and when Pete explained he probably wouldn't be much fun due to him not drinking alcohol anymore, they made a plan to meet at her apartment a little earlier and cook together. This was the beginning of their casual dating/friends with benefits situation. Both quickly fell for each other (which the rest of the town noticed way faster than the two) and after panicking and a lot of miscommunication, they talked it out and started going on dates on December 16th. There is no set date when this developed into an actual relationship, so there is no set anniversary.
When Moon Blossom Engel organized the making of the Ladies of Lower Duck Pond nude calendar 2020, Marina immediately signed up to be one of the models and asked if she could be January. Her wish was granted, she purchased two issues of the finished product, one to keep for herself, one to give to Pete.
Marina used her free time to write a weekly column for the Southwest University Times, her university's online student newspaper, starting shortly after beginning her studies in August 2019. She stopped in October 2020 after realizing the weekly pressure was too much for her by now and she wanted to be able to focus more on her studies.
==Physical description and picture==
She has dark brown wavy hair that she usually keeps in a loose braid or open. She is usually seen running around with her favourite thrifted black leather jacket and oxblood red boots, and is seen in a clothing colour palette consisting mostly of vibrant red, green, mustard yellow and black- On parties she likes dressing up more revealing trendy styles. Next to her boyfriend Pete she looks rather small, being only 5'2 tall.
u/OhSoNotS01mportant made a drawing based on this description (used for portrait character infobox):
Category:Citizens