#off topic but this got me thinking of all my 2017 mutuals.. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xanasaurusrex · 3 years

Text

Light - B.M.

Pairing: Beverly Marsh x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 1918 words

Warnings: Love confession, mutual pining, swimming, swearing, Richie Tozier (it’s a warning within itself), kissing, tooth-rotting fluff I stg, Losers Club are aged up to 17, super crappy ending, not proofread, I think that’s it! Please let me know if I missed anything!

Summary: The other Losers know for a fact that Bev returns Y/N’s feelings, even though she’s blind to them herself. But after a set up one day, maybe she’ll see the light.

Notes: My first ever It (2017) fic! Also my first fic on Tumblr! Thank you to anyone who read this, because it’s taking a lot of courage to write this, let alone post it…. Yeah, Bev and Richie are my favorite characters in the movies, and, given my url, I figured my first fic should be a Bev fic! Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

******

“She likes you back, Y/N,”

“No she doesn’t.”

“Stop fighting it, we all see it!”

Y/N looked at Richie with a roll of her eyes, turning back forward to avoid crashing into anyone or anything with her bike. “Can you stop with that? I don’t want you giving me false hope when I know she doesn’t like me back,”

Richie was the one to roll his eyes this time.

Everyone in the Losers Club knew that Y/N had had a crush on Bev for as long as they could all remember. Since the first day she saw Bev in the pharmacy after they found Ben outside the sewers and had gone in to find the supplies to fix him up.

Bev had been the one to save the day. She had distracted the man at the counter while they took the things they needed, and had come back afterwards to make sure that Ben was okay. Of course, Y/N had realized that it was not the time to be admiring Bev, seeing as Ben had just had a pretty rough run-in with Bowers, and Eddie was freaking out enough as it was.

It didn’t take long for Y/N to fall completely in love with the red-headed Derry resident. She lived in the apartment above hers, and whenever Bev’s dad fell asleep, Bev would climb down the fire escape and climb into Y/N’s window.

Y/N would sit with her and listen to what she said, or would just sit there, and the girls would hug.

On those nights when Bev either couldn’t go down to Y/N’s apartment, or didn’t need to, Y/N would lay down, and stare up at the ceiling, knowing that Bev’s room was directly above her own. She would wonder what Bev was doing, if she was reading the secret admirer note that Ben had given her, or if she was thinking of Y/N just as much as she was thinking of Bev.

It was torture.

It took a little longer for the other members of the Losers Club to realize that Y/N was falling in love with Bev. After that, they all began encouraging her to confess to Bev, because even though at the time they hadn’t seen the light that ignited in Bev’s eyes the second they landed on Y/N, they wanted their friends to be happy, and who else to be happy with but each other?

That was all when they were twelve, nearly five years ago. In that time, they had all seen that Bev loved Y/N the same way Y/N loved Bev. It was hard to watch the two beat around the bush with each other; subtle flirting that neither one noticed (though everyone else did), and even harder to see them think that the other was in love with other people, though everyone else thought it was painfully obvious to everyone else that it was each other they were in love with.

Now, as Y/N and Richie biked home together, Richie tried his best to convince Y/N for the thousandth time that Bev liked her back, no, loved her back.

“I’m sorry Rich, I want to believe you, I really do,” Y/N said for the thousandth time. “But you’ve gotta be blind to not see that Bev and Bill are in love with each other,”

Richie quickly realized that he didn’t have enough energy to argue with her today, even though he still wanted to, instead opting for a safer topic: the test that Mr. Herrd gave them today, that Richie was fairly sure he had failed.

***

“They’re both fuckin idiots,”

Everyone nodded in agreement at Richie’s statement as the entire Losers Club watched Y/N and Bev play around and splash each other in the lake in the quarry, both of them giggling like little girls, their cheeks bright pink, and not from the sun.

“Bev!” Y/N squealed as Bev splashed her with a particularly large amount of water. After taking a second to regain herself, she retaliated by splashing an even larger amount of water at Bev.

“It’s like they’re both wearing signs saying, ‘I’m in love with the person standing in front of me, but since I’m both a pussy and an idiot, I haven’t said anything yet,”

Stan rolled his eyes at Richie’s language, but agreed nonetheless. “I wish they would just admit it to each other already. To be honest, it’s getting tiring. Should we just… lock them in a room together and not let them leave until they confess?”

“That’s an idea,” Bill smiled.

“Maybe we should say we’re meeting at the Quarry but then none of us show up,” Eddie suggested. “Chances are they’re gonna stay and hang out, and maybe if we’re lucky they’ll say something?”

Richie scoffed. “Knowing them, fat chance. I think if this plan fails, we should go with Stan’s idea,”

The others all agreed, and decided when the best date would be to set this up, and then set the date for their backup plan, and decided they would do it at Bill’s house, since his is the biggest and they would be able to hang around and check in on them regularly without having to hear them kick and scream.

“You guys coming back?” Y/N broke the boys out of their trance after her and Bev realized that they had been splashing each other for nearly fifteen minutes, when they should have been splashing the boys. “We’re getting bored!”

The boys all gave each other a sly look before immediately running back towards the water, splashing Bev and Y/N immediately, all of them laughing as they got splashed back.

***

“Are they coming?”

Bev and Y/N had been at the Quarry for nearly half an hour, both of them laying against the rocks, sunbathing, in just their bikinis. It took everything in both of them not to stare at the other and admire everything about them.

Y/N glanced at the watch that she had taken off her wrist, anticipating that they’d be swimming, and saw that it was now forty five minutes after noon, the time all the Losers had agreed to be at the Quarry.

Y/N sighed. “I don’t think so. Maybe they all forgot?”

Bev laughed. “You think Stan forgot? He’s probably at Richie’s with the others trying to get Richie out of bed. How much d’you wanna bet he stayed up all night on his Gameboy again, and now he’s sleeping the day away?”

She said the last part in a mock-dreamy way, a tone of voice that had Y/N’s heart soaring. She had always loved the sound of Bev’s voice, and there were certain times when it would just go straight to tug on Y/N’s heartstrings. It was never a particular time, just… Bev.

Everything about Bev was magical to Y/N. Somehow, all it took was one small smile, one of Bev’s smiles, and all of a sudden, Y/N was a completely different person.

Normally, she didn’t really like physical contact. It wasn’t anything in particular that had caused it, she just never was a really cuddly person. She could enjoy a short hug, or a quick high five, but anything longer than about three seconds made her uncomfortable

She wasn’t that way with Bev. Y/N would hug her for eternity, and would never want to stop. The two often held hands, and told everyone else that it was purely platonic, though Y/N secretly wished that it would be something more.

Y/N knew that Bev was still talking, but she couldn’t focus on anything more than the way that Bev’s lips were moving, as they moved quickly and perfectly to form the words that were on Bev’s brain.

The conscious, realistic part of Y/N’s brain told her that she should be focusing on what her friend was actually saying. That in just a few seconds, Bev was going to do the thing that they always did in movies where she waved her hand in front of Y/N’s face and asked if she had heard anything she said.

Sure enough, she did.

“Y/N/N, are you even listening to me?” Bev asked with a small chuckle.

The sound alone sent more heat to Y/N’s cheeks.

“S-sorry,” Y/N said quickly, shaking her head, almost as if that would clear her head of the thoughts she shouldn’t be having about her best friend. “Just uh… feeling a little out of it today, that’s all,”

Bev nodded in understanding. “Yeah. Today just… feels weird.”

Y/N nodded in agreement.

The two stayed silent for a few more minutes, before Y/N sat up again. “So, since the boys aren’t coming, we probably shouldn’t wait for them to start swimming, right?”

Bev nodded in agreement, before jumping up and running towards the water, yelling, “Last one in the water is a dancing clown!” behind her, before immediately splashing into the water, getting to a deep enough area, and diving in.

Y/N cursed herself, and then immediately launched herself into the water after Bev, inadvertently splashing her with water as she came out of the water herself at the perfect time.

“Got you!”

***

Y/N shook the water droplets out of her hair, refraining from watching as Bev dried out her own hair, slipping the loose dress that she had brought with her over the bikini that she had worn.

It was now five forty five, and Y/N was going to be expected home for dinner soon. After realizing this, she had reluctantly told Bev that she needed to head home.

Since they lived in the same apartment complex, Bev said she’d go with her.

The sunlight from the sunset bounced off the lake and onto the two girls standing on the beach next to the lake in the Quarry.

Y/N couldn’t help herself this time. She looked up to Bev, and found that she was staring at her the same way, admiring how the golden light danced across her skin, from the top of her coppery red curls to the very bottom of her feet.

Before she could even process what she was doing, Y/N quickly closed the space between her and Bev, pressing her lips against Bev’s.

It only took Bev two seconds to kiss back, relieved that Y/N had been the one to make the first move.

After a few seconds, they realized that they needed air, so the two reluctantly pulled apart, resting their foreheads together.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that?” Y/N whispered breathlessly.

“It was love at first sight, wasn’t it?” Bev asked. “I saw you with the boys and I knew that it was always going to be you. It’s always been you, Y/N,”

“It’s always been you, Bev,”

The two pulled apart, Bev’s arms still wrapped around Y/N’s neck, Y/N’s hands placed lovingly on Bev’s waist. As she looked into Bev’s eyes, she saw a glint in her eyes that she hadn’t seen before.

The light made Bev’s eyes even brighter than they already were, and the longer Y/N looked at her, the more she fell in love.

“I love you, Bev,” she confessed quietly, feeling like a weight had been lifted off her shoulder at the confession. “I always have.

#beverly marsh #beverly marsh x reader #bev marsh x reader #bev marsh #it 2017 #it chapter one #it fanfiction #losers club #richie tozier x platonic reader #not proofread #bad ending #x reader #beverly marsh x yn #bev marsh x yn #beverly marsh x y/n #bev marsh x y/n #x yn #x y/n

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steverogersnotebook · 3 years

Photo

Neighbors - Sofa Date

NEIGHBORS

Recovering TJ Hammond and Steve Rogers (between TWS/CW) who try to find comfort on sleepless nights through baking, music, and friendship. An offer to share company and their mutual talents when being alone is just too much leads to friendship.

(my inbox is open for ideas, prompts and headcanons)

NEIGHBORS fluff | gen [platonic friendships] / Steve & TJ Hammond | minor romance TJ & OMC Julian [SERIES of oneshots]

[read on ao3]

A/N: I started this for Valentine’s Day 2017 or 2018. I don’t know what the holdup was, It’s been almost complete ever since. Well, better late than never!! TYSM every one!

The heavy bag landed atop the previous three, in no better shape, all losing their fill through the ruined covers, causing Steve to wonder if he’d ever find something that could stand up to his strength and frustration instead of prematurely exploding.

Though these troubled nights were on the decline with the catharsis of baking and having friends like Sam and TJ, sometimes, baking just didn’t cut it and he was loathe to push himself into his friends’ space - again - and Steve would resort to a little controlled destruction.

Tonight wasn’t going down without a fight. He’d tried to get some rest after the call came telling him that in a few hours they were ‘wheels up’. It had been fruitless and resulted in a run. He’d amped up his speed and set a course for himself that should have done the trick, but after running fast and far, Steve’s run and subsequent shower didn’t put him any closer to a settled state.

Next try, the kitchen, resulting in cookies and fudge. Ordinarily he wouldn’t bother with something like that in the hours before a mission, knowing he’d be gone for an unknown number of days, but tomorrow was Valentine’s day, and he’d yet to figure out what to do for TJ.

Even though TJ wasn’t alone this year for the holiday, it felt like a tradition. He didn’t have many of those left, so it just felt like something he had to do.

Making fudge from his Ma’s recipe had brought both her and Bucky’s sister to mind. The memory of their childlike joys - from sampling the finished product to trying to cut the fudge into shapes with a knife, not just simple boring squares, to entertain Becca - and the rich aroma had provided all the comfort he’d expected.

Clearly, Steve thought as he unwound tape from his wrist, It just wasn’t enough to quell the agitation over the continuing uneventful search for Bucky and the stress of the impending mission.

So that was how he wound up tearing up heavy bags in a dimly lit gym. He really did need to find a new schtick. And he definitely needed a second shower.

Lying across his bed after his shower, unable to relax - still - Steve laughed at his naive expectations. He reached toward the end of his bed to drag his t-shirt to him as he sat up. Steve tugged the thin fabric over his half-dried hair. He stretched the soft, worn fabric hem over the waist of his pajama pants.

“Might as well finish the thing,” Steve’s voice echoed through the quiet space. He shuffled his stockinged feet across the smooth, clean floor. The glow from the light over the stove led him to the frosted confection. Fingers that had sported bruises when he came home, but were now perfectly pink gently tapped at the icing to see if it had set up.

Satisfied with the firm, smooth texture, Steve inspected the box made from cookies for any weak points before filling it with heart-shaped fudge pieces. Overkill? Maybe, but he could laugh it off with TJ. The thought propelled him out the door and down the stairs until he stood in front of TJ’s door, in his pajamas.

Oops.

He wondered if this was the best idea - if it was even ‘proper’. Shoving doubts aside in favor of not spending the next few hours sweating over yet another physical distraction or tossing and turning fitfully, Steve knocked on the door.

---.---

TJ was just putting the finishing touches on the last of the heart shaped cake pops that he’d decided to bravely tackle on his own, when the knock on the door startled him. Well, maybe he could salvage it, he thought as he wiped his fingers on the flour sack towel and headed for the door.

He wasn’t expecting the sight of Steve standing in the doorway wearing brightly colored socks, brown plaid pajama pants, and a stretched out, yet still too small purple t-shirt threw him. He looked -- anxious.

“Steve, you okay? Come in.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d bring this by.” Steve looked around the apartment as he handed TJ a heart-shaped box, made from layers of cookies. “I’m not interrupting?”

“Of course not. Thanks, wow. This is -” TJ lifted the top cookie that doubled as a lid, to see heart-shaped fudge inside the hollowed out cookie box. “Beautiful.”

“Ma’s old recipe.” Steve’s smile was a weak attempt.

“I can’t wait to try it. Come, sit down.”

“It’s Valentine’s day, you must be expecting Julian, I don’t want to get in the way.”

“Valentine’s Day Eve, and nope, not expecting him until tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Steve sighed. His relief was almost as palpable as whatever was troubling him. “TJ, would you mind playing something - I don’t know - mellow?”

TJ didn’t bother asking, again, what might be bothering Steve. He simply made yummy sounds as he set the box on the piano.

They both sat, Steve heavily on the sofa and TJ eased onto the piano bench. His fingers touched the keys and the first thing to come to mind was the tune Steve had requested the night they’d met. The wan smile from moments ago softened and Steve closed his eyes. Two and a half tunes later, Steve sighed before sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. “So, you do have plans for Valentine’s Day?”

“Me? Other than some iffy cake pops, no, but Julian says he has something planned for me. Miles is with his mom this week.”

“How glad are you that Miles and I broke the ice for you two?”

“Are you still trying to take credit? You know it was my legs and ass,” TJ chuckled.

Steve’s smile eased some more. “I’m glad it’s working out, TJ.” He rubbed his palms up and down the length of his thighs before sitting back against the cushions again. “I’ve got to head out in a few hours.”

“More top secret stuff?” TJ turned away from the piano keys.

“Yeah,” Steve sighed. “You know, just once I wish I could confide in someone outside of it all.”

“Yeah. Hey, have you considered talking to a therapist?”

“I did think about it. I can’t figure out how it all works now. With everything - I mean with S.H.I.E.L.D. - it had to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. approved doctor. You know, definitely not outside. Then after - who’s qualified? Who’s not a security risk? I’d rather talk to you. You, I trust.”

“That really means a lot, Steve.” TJ couldn’t begin to express how much it meant without losing all dignity. Not that Steve probably thought he had any. “If it gets to be too much, you still could. I know a thing or two about security.

Steve pulled his feet up onto the cushion, the limber bastard looked deceptively small just now.

“Hey, you wanna see what I’ve been trying to do?” TJ knew it was a lame attempt at a topic change, but it was less awkward than a pained awkward silence would be.

“Yeah, sure.” Steve looked over his knees at TJ.

“Steve, are you frightened?”

“No more than usual. Just - when will it stop? I thought it was over when I woke up in this new world. It wasn’t. I thought we were doing something by bringing S.H.I.E.L.D. down. We didn’t.”

“You did, rousting so many corrupt agents and supporters,” TJ lunged forward in his urgent attempt to mollify Steve, nearly toppling the piano bench. “I mean -”

“Thanks, TJ. I know what you mean. There are still cells out there - and it doesn’t feel like we’re ever going to find the end. So -” Steve uncurled from the compact shape and surged to his feet - feigned energy mingling with whatever the serum did to make him quick and agile. He followed TJ to the kitchen. “- What’s your project?”

“Valentine’s gifts for my best friend and my boyfriend.” TJ knew that he still flushed when he said the word, but Steve wouldn’t harass him for it.

“I’d rather be watching Miles for you two to go on your date tomorrow.”

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“Possibly a week. Hopefully just a week.”

TJ plucked away the blob of now hardened icing that had plopped over the edge of the heart “I was doing well, the knock on the door startled me. You think I can salvage it?”

“Yeah. Hey, these look great. If you can get most of that off so that it’s flush, you should be able to give it a little touch-up with the red. Then you can go back to decorating.”

“I was going to do roses, but gave up early on. Hearts are my speed right now. Maybe I can practice roses before Julian’s birthday.”

“Of course you can. Maybe we can figure it out together.” Steve spread his hands across the flat plane of the countertop, “If you’d like.”

“Of course. It’s your fault I even considered this. You should have to do the time.”

“Where are the rejects?”

“Nonexistent,” TJ said, fighting a grin. “Not as in ‘TJ didn’t make any mistakes but this one’ - but as in, ‘I ate them’.”

Steve smiled, shaking his head “I should have known.”

TJ painted red candy coating over the white spot on the damaged cake pop with a surprisingly steady hand, considering how close he was to laughing at them both. “How’s this?” He held the confection towards Steve for inspection.

“You’d have to know about the mistake to find it, but if you’re nervous about it, you could give that one to your best friend and pick out the pristine ones for Julian.”

“Says my best friend.”

“Me?” Steve’s feigned surprise was terrible.

“You don’t go undercover do you?”

“Occasionally.”

“Well, don’t get yourself caught and killed, okay? Cos that was terrible acting. How do you feel about a Valentine’s Eve pizza and movie until you have to take off? Or you’re welcome to crash on the sofa if you just want to unwind.”

“There will be no crashing for many hours,” Steve confided. “I’ve had this nervous energy for several hours, went to the gym. It helped a little. Got home and tried to unwind and now I’m here. Pizza does sound great.”

“So, did you snag yourself a Valentine this year? Anybody going to be disappointed you’re ditching them on the big day?”

“No, I haven’t been looking. If you’d like, I can have Nat give you a call and you two can plot against me?”

“No, hey, if you’re happy - that’s what matters.”

“I sent flowers to Peggy. They’ve moved her back to England. I think I’ll stop by before I come back.”

“Might be just the thing.” TJ picked up his phone to order pizza. “The usual?”

“Hm. Yeah, sounds good. Am I overthinking the dating thing?”

“Probably. It seems like you’re trying to avoid a long-term thing, and in the process you’re missing out on good company and fun things like shows, dinner, and weird but enjoyable adventure dates. I’m not the only person who likes those things, Steve.”

“You’re saying I’ve been using you as a surrogate?”

“People have asked if we’re dating. Even after I started seeing Julian. I don’t mind it, it’s good for my reputation. You’re probably suffering in that department though.”

“I’m willing to take a hit for your burgeoning reputation,” Steve teased.

“That’s why you’re my best friend. Here - bestie - Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Steve took the offered arrangement of cake pops with a warm smile. “Thank you, TJ. You’re not getting any flak from Julian about our friendship, are you?”

“Hell no. He loves that you sized him up both in and out of the Iron Man costume. He was intimidated enough to ask if there was something between us. But I let him know the only competition he has is if he messes up your pastry apprentice.”

“Damn straight,” Steve laughed.

--.--

Music filled the Audi but it might as well have been silent for as much attention Julian paid the noise. His mind was chock full of loneliness. The same thing that he experienced every time he had to drop Miles off at the ex’s.

He tried to think ahead to his Valentine’s plans for TJ. A late brunch, followed by an afternoon and evening on the town. It should be enough to sustain him through the night, but the glaring silence that he’d pretended to look forward to - the lack of childish glee and minor tantrums - made him restless.

Long fingers stroked a strong, smooth jaw before clicking the car stereo off and turning the car toward TJ’s apartment.

He recognized the pizza delivery guy as their regular from TJ’s favorite pizza joint. As they both got out of their cars at the same time, he nodded toward the guy, “223?”

At the nod of recognition, Julian smiled. “Let me take that off your hands.”

“It’s already paid for,” the kid spoke up when Julian reached for his wallet.

“Right. Then this is for you.” Julian smiled. “Thanks. Be careful out there.”

The kid took the cash and grinned. “Thank you, you too - uh - I mean - have a good evening.”

Julian saluted him as he passed, balancing the two jumbo pizza boxes on one hand. He carried them inside wondering if Steve had stopped by, TJ wasn’t expecting him and that was a lot of pizza. Julian let himself in, as he was accustomed to doing, and stopped short when it looked like Captain America might take him out without hesitation.

--.--

They both turned toward the door when it opened. TJ wasn’t surprised, but Steve - unaccustomed to this type of visit - was nearly to his feet, prepared to fight. TJ had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. “Jules, you startled us.”

“I come bearing pizza, is that enough to cover the price of admission? And buy forgiveness?”

Steve backed down instantly, knowing Julian wasn’t a threat. Still, he appeared ready to bolt without notice.

TJ met Julian with a kiss, which went a long way toward alleviating his loneliness.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. You think there’s enough for one more?”

“I see you accosted our delivery person.” TJ followed Julian around the sofa, trying to take the boxes, before giving up and letting Julian set them on the coffee table. “Did you tip well?”

“Of course.” Julian passed a large hand through his wavy hair before putting his palm on the side of TJ’s neck, “Do I look like a barbarian?”

“Jury’s out.”

“Hi Steve. I really hope you don’t mind me crashing. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Julian,” Steve nodded, the momentary shock had melted away and he smiled at the friendly greeting. “I know the feeling. The more the merrier.”

“What kept you up?” TJ asked as he opened the pizza boxes and lined them up in front of Steve and Julian.

“Too quiet.”

“Miles is with his mom,” TJ laid a hand on Julian’s wrist. “You really should be having celebratory naps when he’s with her, that little one is always going.”

“That he is.”

“Must be hard,” Steve said. Loading his plate with slices of pizza, he again considered leaving. He just couldn’t get behind facing the loneliness. He definitely understood too quiet. It might be more permanent for him than for Julian, but the feeling wasn’t easy no matter how long it prevailed.

“Just the first few days. It’s so much easier to adjust to his coming back than his being gone. He loves it there, she’s really a great mom. I just - I’m learning how to behave in both worlds.”

“Let’s eat and watch a movie, maybe that will distract both of you for a bit.” TJ moved past them both to turn the television on. “None of that I hope I’m not in the way nonsense from either of you.”

Steve sat back against the cushions, his plate piled with slices of pizza balanced on the sofa arm next to him. “You’re the boss.”

“Yeah, for now,” Julian teased, tossing napkins on top of the pizza boxes.

“I’m offended,” TJ pouted as he sat heavily on the cushion next to Julian, and sprawled half across Julian’s leg.

Steve snickered before taking a bite of one of his slices of pizza. The trio settled into the comfy sofa in hopes that the movie could distract them.

<<<>>>>

The vibrating phone in his pocket woke Steve. At some point in the movie, the sleep that had eluded him all evening had taken over. He didn’t bother looking at the phone, just slipped out of TJ’s apartment, leaving TJ and Julian snoozing on the opposite end of the sofa.

He tapped a quick reply to Sam, and took the stairs by twos and threes, silent except for one stair that creaked if you breathed on it. In his apartment, he sent TJ a thank you and another Valentine’s day wish before grabbing his gear from beside the door, deciding that he could change clothes on the way. Off to Lagos, for what he hoped would be a quick recon mission.

#✪#neighbors #sofa date #tj hammond #steve rogers #omc julian #tj and steve are neighbors and friends #julian might resemble that aquaman guy #valentine's day #valentine's day eve

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alias-levi · 3 years

Text

check in tag

thanks go out to Dru (@dru-reblogs-stuff)! I know it's been forever since this tag but it looked fun so here you go 😌

1. Why did you choose your url?

well, this used to be a writeblr and i chose the name Levi to go by online a while ago and that's pretty much where it all came together. since writers sometimes use an alias, you know 👀

2. Any sideblogs?

yes! since this is my main, i have just recently decided to post my writing on a side blog that can be found here - @i-go-by-levi (i'm very creative when it comes to naming blogs as you can see haha)

3. How long have you’ve been on tumblr?

with my current active blogs since April 2019, and before that on and off since like 2016 or 2017 but those accounts have been deleted by me since.

4. Do you have a queue tag?

i used to! it was #ps i love queue but i am too lazy to add it anymore

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

back in the day before i joined the writeblr community i had a song lyrics quote blog that actually posted up to three times a day (all queued of course) but i got tired of that so i abandoned Tumblr for a while and then came back with a changed url, template and idea

6. Why did you choose your icon?

i change my icon every few months actually and it used to be some stock photo of a typewriter but in the past months since i moved out from home and been changing personally, i decided i can go with a picrew as well. i'm ususally changing my icons between some fantasy type of way to portray myself and rather realistic ways, often adding aspects to my appearance that i do not have in real life

7. Why did you choose your header?

up until my last blog updates and re-designs like a week back i used to put great thought to the choice of my header and making it the source of my color palette for the blog - i gave that up because i didn't really feel like doing that anymore and i am also trying to work on my perfectionism so... no header for me anymore haha

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

one time i decided to share my thoughts about needing someone to listen while i ramble about a plot i am planning but i don't need them to contribute anything "hm" and "yes" and "okay" - and then i got 284 notes for that

9. How many mutuals do you have?

hard question, i haven't been active in the past six months but counting who i interacted with rather often back then i can say about four 🤷‍♀️

10. How many followers do you have?

honestly, looking at the notes my posts got, more than i thought i would have

11. How many people do you follow?

96, i recently sorted that out.

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

i don't think so. reblogged, yes. written myself, probably not.

13. How often do you use tumblr each day?

not as much as i would want to. i am currently at like two times a week, maybe three.

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

none i would know of haha

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

they do catch my attention but ultimately i decide situation and topic dependent if i really "need to reblog this".

16. Do you like tag games?

i really really love them with all my being! though sometimes, with uni and life and stuff, it's a bit hard to everything asap but i really enjoy being tagged!

17. Do you like ask games?

same as the tag games. i love them! though it might take me a bit to come back to all the asks and properly answer them.

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

that's a tough question for someone who hasn't been properly on here in six months. i think i'll pass on this one, sorry.

19. Do I have a crush on a mutual?

no i don't.

20. Tags?

i am tagging @liz-pooh (to let her know that i am waiting for her return to Tumblr), and everyone who sees this and feels like doing it. i am not confident enough yet to tag other people again 😬

#tag game

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universitykpop · 4 years

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It’s time to talk about it

I’ve decided to publish that post I talked about the other day. I’ve noticed several other writers on here are making posts about lack of feedback and interaction and that they’re leaving or no longer writing. This is a topic that I’ve tried to not post a lot about because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or annoying. But if there’s any time to talk about it, it’s now. I’ve put it below a cut because it is quite a long post with a lot of my emotions about tumblr and my blog. So buckle up, kids, ‘cause it’s a rollercoaster of feels.

My Experience as a Tumblr Fanfic Writer;

When I started this blog, I was fresh off of onedirectionfanfiction.com and 5sosfanfiction.com, where I never had many readers or any feedback. I got maybe 10 comments (they weren’t in-depth reviews, just ‘omg’ or ‘harry’s so hot’) in total from my dozens and dozens of long fanfics (some stories hitting over 100k words which I can’t even dream of now). Coming onto here, I didn’t think my writing was going to get much attention based on past experience. There was a handful of “big scenario blogs” and I liked and reblogged everything I enjoyed reading because that’s how I wanted people to interact with my content. I didn’t know how it felt to receive positive feedback but I wanted others to, even when they were already getting it from so many other readers. When I hit 500 followers, I thought that was it, I wasn’t going to get more followers/readers. I had readers requesting that I do requests and begging for more parts of stories meant to just be oneshots. I was so over the moon to be receiving that kind of love for something I enjoyed doing. I felt like I was finally good at something; I had a purpose for spending hours writing about people I admired and liked. I was getting messages almost everyday for two years and if I hadn’t posted in so long anons were in my ask box asking if I was still here. I had regular anons who went by cute little anon names for a short time. My notifications exploded so much that I had to turn off push notifications because my phone would not stop going off in classes. I cannot describe how happy I was in that time. I have been writing and reading fanfics since 2009 and I always wondered how it would feel to be one of the “popular” writers on a fic site, and during 2016/2017 I thought I achieved that based on the interactions I got.

As I continued to write, I started to notice many of the fic writers I followed started making friends with other writers I followed. As someone who is very introverted, shy, and socially anxious (especially at this point in time of my blog), I wondered if any other writers would reach out to me and befriend me. No one ever really did, and I thought something was wrong with me. They had their group chats and inside jokes they’d post and tag each other. They would inspire each other to write things and bounce ideas off one another. I haven’t ever felt like I was a part of the kpop fanfic writing community; I was just kinda there. People knew my url but didn’t know me. I had mutuals who messaged me a few times, and then a while later I go back to see what they’re doing and they’re no longer mutuals with me. It shouldn’t have bothered me but it did. Was I annoying? Did they just not like me? Did someone else talk shit about me and then that person changed their opinion about me? I’ll never know because I don’t like confrontation. I have always felt kind of left out, and it reminded me a lot of my real life. Since 2015 when I started this blog, I’ve made one friend and I still talk to her to this day. At times, she was my only friend. She knows who she is, and I cannot say how grateful I am that she reached out to me.

Around 2018, interactions just kind of stopped. I became paranoid and frantic about how I could get back to where I was, but nothing I did worked. As I approached 17k followers, only needing two more to hit it, I began to lose followers by the dozens. I couldn’t figure out why. I was still posting stories but barely got feedback. I decided to stop writing for a bit and not many readers were concerned. It got to the point that I avoided getting on here because I knew I would only get upset and feel guilty by logging on. It felt weird because I had such a large following yet no one cared. And now, I sit at 16.4k followers who barely interact with my content. I don’t get messages about my content, and sometimes I get more than 5 notes in a day. I don’t feel motivated to write because who’s going to read it? I felt like I lost my purpose; it didn’t matter if I continued to write. My stories became shorter and more scarce. I moved to other platforms to see if engagement would go up, but it didn’t. It was pointless to post here and on other sites. I had a taste of praise and I miss it. When it stopped, I couldn’t figure out if I had done something wrong. I study consumer behavior and write papers about it for my Masters degree, and I still can’t figure out why fanfic readers don’t engage with authors on here. In merchandising, people are always willing to give their opinion on products whether it’s good or bad, so why aren’t fic consumers willing? Some writers I’ve read, who I watched grow in popularity and envied their readers interactions, are now in the same boat I’m in and I hate that this is happening to us. Some of them I’m shocked they are also dealing with this. We make this content for free, spending h o u r s to create it, and we get nothing in return. I loved being able to connect with my readers and feel their emotions about my stories. It made me feel fulfilled finally as an fic author.

Now, I can’t remember the last time I opened my scenario documents. How could something that I loved doing for so long become a burden? This blog caused some of my happiest moments and my saddest. Sometimes I debate deleting my account or logging off for good. But I can’t let go after all the effort I’ve put into my blog.

Would I recommend becoming a Tumblr fanfic writer? Absolutely not. Do not make Tumblr your primary source where you post your stories. Focus on interactions and feedback from actual fiction websites, where it is meant to host those relationships.

This post isn’t meant to shame anyone or brag. I wanted to be real for a moment and tell my truth. So many writers randomly leave without a word, and I just can’t let myself do that. I want to be in the fandoms and contribute and have fun, but I feel like my time to do that has been over for a long time, like I don’t belong here anymore. I’ll still be around but I probably won’t plan to update stories, specifically on this blog. I will most likely post random oneshots on my ateez sideblog @alotofteez and my accounts on aff and ao3. I’ll still make photo edits every once in a while. I really didn’t think I’d make this sort of “goodbye” post because I had so many plans for this blog that just unfortunately never came to fruition.

#time to talk #personal

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applekitty · 4 years

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things that happened with me in the past 7 years

i feel guilty so i want to post this. it’s basically a confession post abt stuff i’ve done, stuff that’s happened to me, and general rumination on how my actions have affected people.

transparency is the thing i value most, and now that i’m comfortable to share with you guys my age, i think it’s important i share these things too.

keep in mind my memory’s a little foggy on dates so i can mostly only give approximations

content warning for MANY mentions of rape, grooming, mlp porn, and one passing mention on transphobic genderbend content. also idk if counts as it or not but just to be safe??? csa, bc it happened when i was a kid

there’s a tl;dr at the end, please at the very least read that before sending me any asks about this post

i got my iphone 4s when i was late into being 12 years old, in preparation for 7th grade. my mom thought it was time for me to get a phone so she could text me if she needed to. so, i got a way to access social media. by the time grade 7 had begun, i’d gotten this thing called ‘virtual space’. you may better know this as ‘amino’ nowadays. but back in the day, there was only one. virtual space.

virtual space (2012-2013/14?)

this was an rp media app with the ability to add posts and add pictures. i didnt know about tumblr or really anything outside of facebook at the time, so virtual space was my main social media. i only have one person who i still talk to from my times in virtual space, and i think it’s safe to say both of us do not want to remember our time there.

virtual space was a very toxic place to be, and i was one of the most toxic people on there. i was very much an elitist, a grammar nazi, and all the worst of the worst. i was very snooty and very much up my own ass. i traced art, i pretended to be a scholar.

i was nice enough to some people, but all in all, i saw myself as superior because i was ‘literate’ and others were ‘illiterate’. people who were unable to spell or write out long paragraphs like i was were seen as lesser by me, and i considered virtual space a place to assert my authority as the best writer. thanks to virtual space, i had dedicated myself to learning words, improving my writing ability, and dressing up my things with such elaborate purple prose that it’d make future me snore and die.

i did a ton of regrettable things (such as pretending i was a guy who’d gotten into a car accident purely for attention) while i was on my superiority spree.

there, on virtual space, i found out about my little pony. the first thing i ever saw from the show was the flim flam brothers song. and i loved it. so i got into mlp, starting rping in mlp things alongside the normal fandomless things.

on virtual space, people would often rip things off tumblr to put into vs. this is where i learned of tumblr. i moved off of vs and moved onto tumblr. subsequently, it’s also where i got fully into mlp.

tumblr (2013-now)

on tumblr there’s not much i can’t say that isn’t talked about in the below parts. i do want to say, though, that there was a time in my life wherein i was following and reblogging rebornica content. they reblogged some.. questionable things that i think contributed to the below stuff. just slightly, but not a bunch. btw if you do go into there you may see some of the stuff rebornica reblogged, including a thing about genderbends? know that this is my opinion on genderbends lol

mlp (2012-2015)

when i first got into mlp, it was before the season 3 premiere. during that time, i was still on vs, but i switched over to tumblr i believe after the announcements and trailers for rainbow rocks came out.

mlp ask blogs were very nice on the surface, but things like ask molestia, or ask discord whooves quickly were put into my youtube recommends. they were some of the most popular ask blogs, things that got praised; humiliation, rape, and molestation. those are the things that got you follows, those are the things that got you popular. i wanted to be popular. i was popular on vs, so i want to be here too.

if you know anything about the mlp community, there’s a reason why for that. porn is incredibly saturated in mlp, and there is a lot of rape content permeating the internet. if you need proof, just go ahead and find out what ‘fall of equestria’ is. that’s a popular au. and it’s no secret that rape is all over places like fimfiction.

~lewd mlp comic dubs~ in general were on youtube as well. they weren’t as much as a contributing factor, but their simple BEING THERE normalized the concept of ‘lewd being acceptable and beneficial for me to benefit off of’ into my mind. it was a gateway into what would further come.

mlp was my first introduction to explicit content. i was 12. it was untagged.

i opened up a multitude of ask blogs before i settled on my longest; ask shy sombra. this blog was trying to claim the fame of a inactive blog called asksissysombra. sissy sombra was an explicitly nsfw blog with rape fetishization. the blog is still up and not hidden by tumblr’s nsfw detector, nor deleted. it regularly clocked 200 notes a post.

ask shy sombra was exactly like asksissysombra, though much more tame. the rape fetishization was used in such a way where it was entirely offscreen, and fairly vague. though, with specific follower milestones, i would draw semi-lewd drawings hinting at rape, and get notes for it. thankfully, the blog didn’t get far enough into its plot (as i restarted it a total of four times) to get to the parts wherein rape was around. i made ask shy sombra when i was.. i know in eighth grade. i think a little late into eighth grade. so i’d be 14.

ask shy sombra was my most popular blog, and garnered me about 1.5k followers over a 2(?) year run. this only encouraged me to produce more content. to get more followers. naturally, this fostered in my literal child brain that this disgusting content is a good thing to make because look at all the rewards its giving me.

i would draw a lot of things purely for the edge on this ask shy sombra, and treat serious topics like things to shock people. i was surrounded by people who’d praise me and draw fanart for me. i was collecting a fanbase by making extraordinarily shitty content. wasn’t even well drawn either, lol.

i was drawing all this because i felt like i was mature and edgy for doing so, that by being dark i was better than others, that i had more substance, and that people would take me seriously.

after a while, i made myself a nsfw blog. lots of other mlp ask blogs, aka basically all of them, had nsfw blogs. so, i got myself one. i produced almost exclusively rape content, both drawings and writings. i wanted to be even more edgy, and this was a place i could do it raw, uncensored. i could unleash true horror here, on a nsfw blog. it was so shocking, so awful! isn’t that what the mlp fandom is about? being twisted and fucked up and evil on sideblogs, making awful content to go ‘ooh how edgy’ at? nothing was barred. i was 14, maybe early into 15.

i knew (aka followed, because there was a whole underground mlp nsfw community) other people, who were significantly older, for their rape content as well. and there were lots of people to choose from. one i remember (even by url) drew horrifying depictions of rape in a painterly style. there were two others i remember the style of, but not the names. these three were my introduction to guro, which thankfully i did not indulge in.

i wasn’t very active on my nsfw blog, at least. when i was, i was only there in bursts and never made anything too bad if i can remember right. most of it was just.. lewd faces or whatever. my art wasn’t good enough to get lots of reblogs in the porn sphere, thank GOD. i mass-deleted the content on that blog three times before i deleted the blog itself and never tried again. i never did like that nsfw blog.

unrelated, but i think the reason why rape as a concept in the mlp fandom is so wide spread, is because the fandom had mass produced it as a replacement for rough sex. it was just a more ‘erotic’ version of rough sex to them. a more intense version of sex, wherein tears and screams to stop were actually just lies, these creatures secretly were pleasured.

and, for people like me, it’s a good way to be the edgiest kid on the block. the more edgy you were in mlp, the more followers you were bound to get. the more attention you got. and it worked. i got so much attention.

on christmas of 2015, i stepped away from mlp for good.

in 2016, i deleted everything on ask shy sombra, (except for the follower milestones), and moved on.

psmd (2015-2017)

psmd was my new target. psmd was a lot more quiet. i hadn’t done much with psmd in comparison to mlp, as i kept most of my explicit content private. however, as some of my mutuals back in psmd would tell you, rape was not a thing i strayed from talking about here either.

leftovers from my time in mlp, sure enough, rape was in psmd as well. thankfully, it was not public, with only a select few having access to it. no one reprimanded me for it. i don’t blame them for not scolding me. what are you supposed to do to something like that? it’s nerve racking and disgusting and you just want to side-eye it and leave it alone. especially since i was most of these people’s friends.

‘private’ is a hard word to call the rape content i made for that one. because psmd’s fandom was very very, very small. there was one specific server for it with like. 15 people at most on it at one time. either way, i was making rape content for the same reason; to be the edgiest kid on the block. if you knew anything about my extraordinarily edgy psmd au, you’ll know i went all out on edge. just like with ask shy sombra, the attention-seeking for the au and the desire to get eyes on content went to the worst bottom denominator. it never went to children or whatever, though.

making rape content actually wasn’t the main thing bad i did while in that fandom, no. mostly bc it was all decently private.

i was in the pokemon ask blog community for a short while. while i was there, i was an elitist and sort of a snob. i projected my insecurity onto the bigger blogs around me, simply because i wasn’t getting the attention i thought i deserved. in mlp, it was so easy to get followers. here? not so much. i wasn’t happy about people ‘suddenly ignoring me’, so i lashed out at the community.

people who were just having fun for the sake of having fun, i didn’t like those guys! nuh uh! anyways, i sealed myself off to my small community of psmd people until i eventually decided to leave psmd for kirby in the summer of 2017. that was when i’d watched the original pilot for the kirby anime.

kirby (late 2017-now)

kirby is currently the fandom i’m in. thanks to me squishing myself into the box of ‘make this worthy of being shown on 4kids as content’, i have solidified my content. though some of it, such as my old galacta work, zero percent chill, are a little eh and show remnants of who i once was.

i’ve had a rocky transition period, however, and some individuals can attest to that, unfortunately.

i’m glad i’ve been able to try to cope with my fandom-inflicted grooming. certain events and people have gotten me to really think about morality and my actions in the past, as well as about writing and the things they may teach people.

conclusion

amino taught me that being popular and the best was the most important thing.

mlp taught me creating rape content was not only okay to produce in the most shock-factory way, but it got you popular, which is all i wanted in my 13 year old brain.

psmd taught me that people will not object to rape content— but they will pretend you and your edgy bullshit doesn’t exist. certain things are excluded from that, like one particular fic. while it’s gone now, it did exist. people knew it existed.

kirby taught me to sit down, shut the fuck up, and stop that shit. no one sat me down for it, i did it myself.

getting a few more years on me helped, lol

everyday im super duper thankful i was never groomed further past that into making incest or making pedophilic content. i’m also thankful that i got out of mlp. that my content never got truly popular in psmd. i’m thankful my grooming never got taken advantage of by any specific, older individual. i’m thankful my grooming wasn’t directly from an actual person who could’ve gotten me deeper into the mindset, wherein it’d be harder for me to get out of it.

my actions in mlp and psmd have undoubtably groomed people in the process, and for that, i’ll be eternally sorry. if you knew me during that time, with my shitty edgy-for-attention aus, sorry.

tl;dr:

when i was in the mlp fandom, i wanted to be popular and quick. i noted the most easy way to get popular, get comic dubs, get that Cool Praise, was to be edgy. and, ontop of that, one can also add in a layer of sexual assault for extra Brony Praise.

i didn’t stop to think of why things like rape or sexual assault was so massed produced in the fandom, and i don’t think i cared either. i knew rape was bad and a disgusting and terrible act and it scared me thinking about it happening to me (because im a girl lmao), so i’d write it up as a hyper-angsty thing. oohh the angst, oh how sad, look at how horrible it is, this totally isn’t stroking a huuuugeee unnecessary angstboner for a EXTRAORDINARILY delicate REAL WORLD topic at all!! totally not disrespectful to ACTUAL VICTIMS at all!!!! not that it mattered how it was written up, certain people in the fandom liked it more when things were horrible, awful, and disgustingly violent or ‘egregiously angsty’ in regards to rape. rape and its ‘angsty’ content was normalized to me when, at bare minimum, i was 13.

i ended up making rape-related extremely edgy content in the mlp fandom and i got a lot of followers. 1.5k followers. i used the shock of offscreen rape as a way to.. well, shock people. and make a horrifying story that i wanted attention towards. the praise I got for being edgy and making rape content groomed me into creating more. being groomed by no one inparticular into making this content, but by a fandom, by the sheer amount of rape content and general porn being paraded around, that really fucked me up.

when i was 15 (going on 16 in half a year), i transferred this mentality into other fandoms, trying to be the most edgy and shocking by using the actions of rape and sexual violence or even sexual trafficking as my vehicle of angst without thinking of what the writing of these subjects in such a way may say about me as a person. i didn’t care about that, i wanted to be the darkest, most edgy, most brooding. and I was, and I got mad when I didn’t get the 1.5k followers worth of attention that the mlp fandom was so willing to give me.

when i was 17, i transferred to kirby. and that’s when i realized all this edge-for-the-sake-of-edge bullshit needed to stop. i’d almost taken my extreme edge to kirby as well, but i doubled down on myself and quit that shit. thank god that i did that. i strickened myself to write g-related content with only minor, more moderate amounts of edge.

i’m now 20. i’m hypercritical of people who do the same things i did when i was younger, because hyperedge shit like the stuff i created makes me feel disgusting thinking back on it. i know i most likely groomed people into doing the exact same shit that i’d done with my presence, especially in the mlp fandom. and for everything i did, all the extremely insensitive content i made when i was younger, sorry.

i wanted to be transparent about this, and it’s important to me to be so. cards out on the table and such. if you feel uncomfortable about this new info and the things i did to get attention when i was younger, that’s completely understandable. feel free to unfollow / block me if that makes you more comfortable on this platform, even if we’re mutuals or friends.

#feels bad man #important #im probably asleep rn (this post is scheduled) so if you wanna send asks or dms about this i'll answer them in a bit lol #this is very much a confession post. i want to get all this shit off my chest #theese is. my experiences. my actions #my anxiety says i NEED to talk about this and confess all of this so thats what im doing

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years

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(REVIEW) Miscellaneous by Julia Rose Lewis

In this review, Maria Sledmere visits the verdant isle of Julia Rose Lewis’ pamphlet Miscellaneous (Sampson Low, 2019), and engages chaotically with its shape-shifting poetics of ecstasy, digression and slippery things.

> Miscellaneous: of various kinds; elements of different kinds. A little green book full of miscellany. The work of Julia Rose Lewis has been dealing in miscellany (let me say it as much I can, it’s a lovely word) for a while now. Lewis’ collection Phenomenology of the Feral (Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2017) was a veritable assemblage of household objects, clothing items, all things edible (from oranges to gummy bears), tools, chemicals and other substances. Words had a Steinian tendency to slip, where a ‘pear’ becomes ‘peer’ and sugar becomes sand. The whole book teems with a delicious excess of things and their zoomed-in, jostling, merging and almost psychedelic relation (I mean just consider the multicoloured octopus-bunny hybrids on the cover). Her recent pamphlet, Miscellaneous (2019), a slender offering from chapbook series Sampson Low, edited by fellow dealer in poetic animalia, SJ Fowler, continues this playful approach to disordering objects, experience and relation.

> Explicitly ‘inspired’ by Green Eggs and Ham, a classic children’s book by Dr. Seuss, Miscellaneous works with its foodstuffs in a fractal and kind of ecstatic way. Ecstasy meaning rapture or transport; Miscellaneous as a little island of strong emotion. I want to say island, but I could just as easily say green tomato. It’s difficult to resist the seduction of island metaphors during quarantine, and besides, Lewis herself spent time as a child in Nantucket Island. According to the publisher, Miscellaneous ‘asks if it is possible to have a mutually healthy relationship between a human and an island’. In an interview from 2016 with Katy Lewis Hood, Lewis says, ‘I use writing about the place I’m longing for as an antidote; I see islands as stories and stories as islands’. Staying with that chiasmus, might we see Miscellaneous itself as a kind of place? The scales upended sufficient to slip into our pocket, a zoomy island remainder? A dinky little 12-page island you could circle on foot and do it again and again — for this is a book that loves repetition, a veritable jaunt on the anaphora express, a 5-7 syllabic ride on the waves. But it’s difficult to know what constitutes the very land you walk or ride on:

A mane! A terrain! A mane is a terrain through and through and should you be guarding the herd inside the river valley? You hold this territory? Not harnessed! Not in a horse-less carriage!

Lewis plays deliciously with the fact of metaphor as a transport, a vehicle, while thrashing around in the joy of assonance and sound as forces of meaning and meaning’s disruption. What’s more, the repeated invocation of the ‘you’ means I’m forever hailed back to the scene; I can’t leave the island utterly behind, can’t glide drone-like over its landscapes. Besides, maybe it’s more like an archipelago? Terrain is a region of land, a system of rocks or geological formations, a standing-ground or position. Lewis teases us with the ever resolving, dissolving, negating terrains of lyric. Those exclamation marks are surely provocations to the reader, as much as the swept up proclamation of revelling in words themselves (thinking of the upward-looking heart emoji, reacting to a message). Her ‘I’ (perhaps riffing off the O’Haran tradition of I do this I do that poems, via Colin Herd’s I like this I like that variation) is quite demanding, precise, has an eye for arrangement (‘The musk ox is not in the / ocean’), identification, variation, placement (‘They disappear’). As with the effect of haiku (a kind of ‘cut’ of images), she challenges ‘nature’/object relations by similarity and contrast:

I would not like that morose woman faraway, that maiden hair tree. I am that old ginkgo tree.

What is the connection between the morose woman and the maiden hair? Does the fact of the speaker being the ‘old ginkgo’ explain her conditional dislike of the woman? And is the maiden hair tree the same as the woman? With its short, invitational lyrics, Miscellaneous gives you time to wander around the ideas of things, ideas in things. Maybe it’s telling the story of an island which is really a metaphor for Earth: its ‘holding pattern[s]’, its ‘there or anywhere’, its snowy territories, its ‘dry grasses / and mosses’ (v. Eliotic, ‘The Dry Salvages’ of Four Quartets?), its ‘skyhook’, its ‘living fossil leaf’ with ‘many millions of years’ inside it. Crudely speaking, ecopoetry often tries so hard to seem either objective (ecomimesis) or explicitly subjective (Romantic); the speaker of these poems insists on a kind of declarative, shape-shifting reality, whose run-on code requires the user command of something more than human. ‘You hold all the weeks / would you tote the boulders here?’ The labour of bringing the world to life in poetry is more than just reading; you have to really consider toting the boulders of words around. There’s a weird hospitality to this, a gesture of extending the voice: ‘So I / say try the bloom of mold!’. Maybe as a reader I’d speak better the world with the mold in my throat. It’s these kinds of special conditions Miscellaneous gets at so well. What the chapbook gives is a portable miscellany, a set of questions, a dicey and moreish feast of seeing the world anew — at all scales and dwellings, from a ‘ptarmigan nest’ to the air itself. Better eat up.

> Lewis’ smart and choppy lines remind me of the best chefs at the restaurant where I used to work, who would dice veg or make meat cuts with a certain deftness, all the while engaging in dishevelled conversation. I would ask, from which precise bay are the oysters sourced, and the chef would lecture me on the valiance of a 2Pac album. We would swerve from one topic to another by the time of the bell: language defined by the beat and demand of cooking. It was good to feel enslaved to the temporality of the microwave, the rising of bread, the petulant delay on the part of a chicken. And you might say, O maria what does this have to do with Julia Rose Lewis’ new book? And I would say, well, it’s all about iteration, digression, perversion of recipe. The poetic line as the flick of sweaty chef hair, the child’s demanding inquisition, the special way of dodging the question. But don’t let me fill you up with nonsense.

> There’s this weird piece in The Guardian that totally disses Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, which I’ll admit I haven’t read this side of puberty. The author, Emma Brockes, is pretty damning: ‘two-thirds of the words feel like filler’, ‘the rhyme scheme [...] is like something a kid would throw at a homework assignment so he could finish and run out to play’, ‘[Seuss’] books are creepy, empty, over-long, cheap, twee writing posing as whimsy’. Maybe I don’t have a striped ankle to stand on here, but I can’t help but think Brocke is missing a point somewhere. What’s wrong with poetry that wants to fly through itself quickly, all the better for the writer to go out and play? I’m thinking of something Jack Spicer writes in one of his letters to Lorca, describing how there are times in a poet’s life where ‘the objects change’ when ‘someone intrudes into the poet’s life’ so a certain balance is lost. ‘The seagulls, the greenness of the ocean, the fish—they become things to be traded for a smile or the sound of conversation—counters rather than objects’. You sort of get the feeling Brocke got tired of this (too many counters, too much supposed impeachable brilliance) and upended the board, sending everything scattering to miscellany. Maybe that was the appropriate reaction. I’d like my poetry to have that effect sometimes. And then I’d quite like to run out and play, or fall in love (if we were not in lockdown), or otherwise just write you a blowsy prosy letter.

> There’s this idea of Green Eggs and Ham as a childhood exercise in epistemological questioning. Asking you to think about how experience establishes beliefs about the world. Miscellaneous quite obviously trades in the empirical possibilities of knowing, experimenting in what happens when certain patterns or conditions are put into play (it’s worth noting that Julia Rose Lewis is also a scientist by training). I think of a child stuffing sand in its mouth, learning about size, scale, texture, taste. A child that learns a tomato is good when ripe and sweet. I also think of judging when I might cross the road, or a chemist inching just a *wee* bit more of X in the formula (is that how it works? is it like choosing to add another comma to a poem - what exactly is the risk of explosion?). Every day of our lives we are hedging, testing. ‘If you will then I will try / rain on rain on rain’; how I learn from you, a fashionable imitation in the wearable weather/whether. Things pile up, acquire elemental charge; the poems are teasingly object-oriented; the ‘I’ is an iterative effect of desires, repulsions and relations. Substances effect themselves into life and I think of Francis Ponge and the orange. Expression is something to be ‘endured’. How does an object hold itself in a poem, without being overly squeezed into miscellany, matter? Lewis uses the singsong effects of poetry (repetition, rhyme), to play with causality and intention. In the final poem, for example, is the ‘gold’ ‘old’ and what temporality is ‘golden’; is it the ‘spring /green’ or the speaker who is ‘cold’?

> Miscellaneous in general describes a kind of extra or supplementary category, that which escapes the normative set. Perhaps there is then a case for this being a kind of queer object-oriented poetics. Things are slippery and hungry and irresistibly insistent. They become the book itself, the little object in your hand, tomato green as ‘the spring / green tomatoes in sea salt’, sprinkled with salty little words. This is a case for frivolity and filler and whimsy in poetry, for appetite and affect, salty wit, the necessity of dancing around sentiment, excess, sweetness and swerve. ‘I will eat the spring / fruit upside down’; the fruit of the book you peel again.

Miscellaneous is out now and available from Sampson Low.

Text and image: Maria Sledmere

Published: 12/6/20

#poetry #review #reviews #poetry review #maria sledmere #miscellaneous #Sampson Low #Julia Rose Lewis

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hiirunakaarchive · 5 years

Text

— to act in haste

↳ wisely and slowly; they stumble that run fast. (pt 2), (pt 3), (pt 4)

◇ pairing: ethan ramsey x mc

◇ genre: angst

◇ word count: around 6000 ?? sorry lol

◇ warnings: mild-ish ??/ nsfw

◇ author’s note: hey everyone! i know today’s strictly for nightbound and acor’s comeback, but i was so excited to get back into writing since the last fic i actually finished was 3 years ago. sorry if i couldn’t wait till friday, but please give this some love, it took me two weeks to write 🤡🤙🏼 i uhh,, recommend reading this on a laptop since the phone format is wonky but happy reading! might post a second part if people actually end up liking it, so feedback is greatly appreciated !!!

prologue

Ethan Ramsey was a enigma.

For one, he never took cliche sayings to heart, and the one he found the most laughable was his own mentor’s advice.

“Ethan,” Dr. Banerji warned.

“That contemptuous smirk will one day be your own undoing.”

“I’m sorry,” the younger doctor replied, one corner of his mouth still twitching from amusement.

“I knew you were a sap, but at the very least, give me romantic advice that came from your own vocabulary.”

“Then I won’t be able to dumb it down enough for it to click in that thick skull of yours.” Banerji retorted, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he teased his junior.

Ethan threw his head back and laughed.

Appreciate what you have while it’s still there, Ethan. You never know when it might disappear.

Dr. Ethan Ramsey was a man of calculation and precision. He never believed in the concept of taking risks because acting without the basis of foretold outcomes was a dangerous and unworthy game to play; his ultimate philosophy.

He was resented for his misunderstood arrogance, but it stemmed from reasonable logic.

“You can’t afford to be scared.” He glared at the new batch of interns, his voice dripping with gravity.

“Cowardice clouds your judgement, and clouded judgement puts the life that your patient entrusted to you at risk. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Dr. Ramsey.” Came a chorus of replies.

Edenbrook’s newest doctors returned his icy gaze with their own, gleaming with vigor and determination. For a split second, Ethan felt a sense of fondness for them despite his own principle of not picking favourites, for they reminded him of himself in his first few years of practice.

In the crowd of adults, however, one woman stood out.

The way her face contorted after Dr. Ramsey spoke suggested that she took his words way more seriously than he intended for her to. She wasn’t fiddling with her badge out of nerves, or socializing with her colleagues out of excitement. She kept her eyes on him from start to finish, and he almost found it difficult to ignore.

Scanning the audience once more before sending them away, his eyes landed on her again, meeting her gaze briefly before Ethan found himself looking away first.

He didn’t realize it yet, but in a single moment, those eyes stole everything from him.

thursday, februrary 15, 2018

“Haruna Sakurai,” I read her name aloud in my office, scrutinizing her letter.

Transferred from University of Tokyo to Oxford with a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience, graduated at the top of her class in 2017, and dabbles with robotics as a pastime.

“Her pedigree is outstanding,” Harper stared at the bundle of paper, flipping through the pages with narrowed eyes.

“Sayuri Aoyama and Ryoichi Sakurai...Ethan, do you know who these people are? They-”

“Each won a Nobel Prize for discoveries in cancer treatment and immunology.” Dr. Banerji interjected, struggling to contain a smile as Harper passed the application to him, examining it himself.

“Met at the awarding ceremony, fell in love, and, together, have contributed impeccable research in the name of medicine. Arguably the most respected couple since the Okazaki’s and their discovery in regards to DNA replication.”

“Naveen…” I said, my poker face never faltering.

“How… like you, to be caught up on the gossip. The Kardashians weren’t doing the job?”

“Oh, be quiet.” The mentor chuckled as he continued to scan the application.

“I’ve met the Sakurai’s at a conference in ‘88 just before their child was born. Besides, don’t talk to me about the Kardashians when you named your dog Jenner.” Naveen placed air quotes around my pet’s name.

“I-”

“Do you know what this means?” Dr. Emery said impatiently, bringing her palms down on the table and redirecting our attention to the main topic at hand.

“To have their daughter at Edenbrook will do nothing but promote the hospital’s already sterling reputation. We have to have her.”

“I agree.” I sighed, pushing myself away from my desk and folding my arms over my chest.

“Ethan?” Dr. Banerji raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

“I never would’ve pegged you for the type.”

“The type to what?” I inquired, my tone embodying more of a demand rather than enlightenment.

“To choose someone based off lineage.”

“Excuse me? I- no. God, Naveen, never. There’s just something about this one-” I reached for the application across my desk and Naveen handed it to me eagerly, his teasing smile never leaving his face.

Flipping through the stapled copies of recommendation letters and awards of recognition, I stopped abruptly near the end, my eyes skimming over the page before opening my desk drawer and placing the application gently inside. Amongst hundreds of hopeful applicants, I pushed an alarmingly thin stack of paper towards the doctors across my desk, saying,

“These nineteen and Sakurai. Contact them and inform them of their acceptance. This one-” I tapped the wood of my drawer, referring to Haruna’s application.

“I’ll keep with me. There’s something I want to check.”

Following Banerji and Emery’s exit from my office, I opened my drawer once again and pulled out Sakurai’s application, muttering to myself in a low voice as I read the closing paragraph of her letter.

“Genealogy has already established irrefutable evidence connecting a child’s intelligence to that of their predecessors.”

“Though I certainly acknowledge my lineage as a biological factor in terms of my academic success, I refuse to accredit my own achievements as solely dependent on my pedigree.”

“Sayuri Aoyama and Ryoichi Sakurai are medical figures whom I am still light years away from perfectly emulating. However, in order to find my place in their world as even a speck of dust, I must first find myself. Rather than being addressed as Haruna Sakurai, daughter of Nobel Prize winners, to me, Haruna Sakurai, rookie doctor in the country’s number one hospital is much more gratifying.”

Reaching the end of the conclusion, I placed the corner of the first page between my thumb and index finger, bringing it back to the front. I returned the bundle of paper to the brown envelope from which it came and reached behind the back of my head to lace my fingers together.

I looked up at the ceiling, wondering audibly.

“Rookie, huh?”

wednesday, may 8, 2019

The idea of pursuing romance at my age would have sounded unfathomable to me a year ago. In fact, I was almost certain I never wanted to get into a serious relationship at all. But it isn’t until you desperately try to abide by workplace ethics despite undeniable mutual attraction and numerous instances of sexual tension that you realize you’re only human.

“I think I’m ready, Naveen.” Ethan paid a visit to his mentor’s home, sitting at his bedside as he unloaded his lovelife woes.

“I know I’m rushing headfirst into it, hell, I’m probably not even thinking straight-”

“Ethan, slow down.” Naveen reached up from his bed and rested an encouraging hand on Ramsey’s shoulder.

“I just...we’ve only known each other for a ten months but I will most probably spend the rest of my life searching in vain for someone like her. I can’t let her go, Naveen. I won’t.”

The older doctor responded with nothing but a lighthearted chuckle, his teasing nature never having left him despite being ill.

“You really ended up taking my advice to heart, didn’t you?”

Ethan couldn’t think of a better way to reply apart from raising his hands in surrender, laughing alongside him.

“Damn it, you got me.”

friday, may 17, 2019 6:15am

“Rookie.”

Strolling through the ward as I made my rounds, I recognized the familiar streaks of red and black as Haruna stormed past me, loose hair cascading down her back like dripping ink on tilted parchment. As she heard me call out to her, she immediately turned on her heel and greeted me through a plastic smile, holding her clipboard to her chest in a white-knuckled grip.

“What can I do for you, Dr. Ramsey?” She asked in a strained voice masked with professionalism.

In the midst of the bustling hallway, all interns having come from the lobby to hear who won the fellowship, mine and Haruna’s brief interaction evoked glares of suspicion and lingering, questioning gazes from the surrounding staff. Though I anticipated an overwhelmingly negative response to her achievement, I couldn’t stomach the paranoia festering in my gut.

We slept together. Repeatedly.

And no amount of constant rejection or futile attempts at fighting my impulses could undo what had already been done.

“Congratulations, and welcome to the team. I expect your contributions to fall nothing short of phenomenal.”

I crossed my arms, assuming my default nature and Haruna’s often cold and intimidatingly vacant stare softened slightly as she let out a small smile, ducking her head in acknowledgment.

“Of course, I look forward to working with you. Excuse me.”

She resumed her natural air of discipline and turned the opposite direction, beginning her rounds in confident strides as I watched her retreating form disappear as she turned the corner. Years of people-watching as a meaningless pastime and my own skills of observation as a doctor hadn’t betrayed me in the sense that I could tell Haruna was troubled.

But then again, she was never good at hiding her emotions.

4:57pm

Several hours had already passed, it being late afternoon before I encountered Haruna again. She sauntered mindlessly in my direction, not looking up from her chart as I looked both ways in the empty hallway. She released a silent gasp of surprise as I gently caught her by the elbow and used both hands to maneuver her into the ward under construction, which we mutually agreed became our spot for private conversations.

She raised an eyebrow as I looked over her shoulder, one hand still placed on her arm.

“In a rush?” I asked her, lowering my gaze slightly to meet her eyes.

She hugged her clipboard against her chest, one corner of her mouth tilting upwards in satisfaction before replying.

“Not at all, my patients this week have been nothing apart from pleasant. Treatment and the like.”

“Ah. I see.” I broke eye contact, feeling inexplicably bashful all of a sudden.

What are you doing? I thought to myself.

You’re not here to play Yahtzee, ask her if she’s free tonight.

I let my hand that rested on her arm fall limp at my side. Looking over Haruna’s shoulder a second time under the pretense of appearing mindful of our surroundings, she cleared her throat with avoidant eyes before holding her hands behind her back, rocking lightly on her heels. A painfully awkward moment passed before she broke the silence.

“Were you hoping to steal a moment with me, Ethan?” She teased, a playful smirk hinting at her lips as I choked on my own breath and looked at her with wide eyes.

“We are in a professional setting, Haruna. I would never-“ I began before I registered the childish expression she wore, obviously amused by my reaction.

A muscle in my jaw twitched as I kept myself from smiling as well, adamant on refusing to entertain her antics.

“No, that’s exactly it. In a sense.” I conceded, and the mischief in her eyes disappeared, replaced with her usual stern visage and...was that a grimace?

“After our shift is over, I’ll meet you here and we can go back to my condo together, is that alright?” I asked her hopefully and she returned my question with nothing but a look of repulsion.

“I don’t have any ulterior motives-” I initiated my panicked explanation before she sighed in defeat at my lack of humour.

“Calm down, I’m teasing. I’ll see you later then, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you as well.”

The mystery behind her proposition made my heart skip a beat, and my imagination dared to deviate between the actual practicality of the situation and my own lewd fantasy. Of her lips racing to move hungrily against mine as soon as I shut the door behind her upon entering my home. Of me cupping her face in my hands as I slip my tongue past her lips. Of her moaning against my mouth as my hands move from her face, to her neck, and down to her chest, roving her body and ultimately dipping into her jeans as her own fingers fumble with my tie and the buttons of my shirt-

Ethan Ramsey, you fucking animal, focus.

Haruna touched my cheek in my momentary loss of self and was unable to mask her pleasant surprise as I reached upwards and placed my hand on top of hers, turning my head slightly and pressing my lips to her palm. She looked away and bit her lip in embarrassment, releasing her fingers from my grasp and beginning to make her way back to the main ward.

“Oh, and Rookie?” I called to her before she made a complete exit.

She whipped around, her eyes beaming with anticipation as if hoping for something more.

“Be sure to pop by Mrs. Reitman’s room today. She’s getting discharged this evening and insisted upon saying goodbye to you especially.”

I smirked in satisfaction at my own success in lightly teasing her and Sakurai rolled her eyes, but the smile that formed on her lips betrayed the air of vexation which she tried to exude.

“With pleasure, Dr. Ramsey.”

7:26pm

The ride together was unsettlingly quiet.

We met at the incomplete wing as promised, but she came in slow, exhausted paces. A disturbing sight in contrast to her usual march; one of which the nurses on the unit described as similar to a catwalk. Dr. Sakurai was poised and somewhat aloof, yet her natural character brimming with charisma made her intimidating aura seem almost insignificant.

But there was none of that today. Her confidence, which everyone thought to be a well that never ran dry, appeared almost nonexistent as she trudged towards me looking distant and oozing fatigue; not from the work, but seemingly from everything else.

“You look bothered, Rookie.” I voiced my observation as she approached me.

She didn’t greet me with her usual smile, or shoot back a snarky response.

“I’m fine. Let’s go?”

“If you’re too tired, then this can wait until another day-”

“I can manage.” She interrupted, beginning to make her way to the elevators and to the basement parking lot.

Since then, neither of us had spoken a word. Between the brief moments I found to catch a glimpse of her, Haruna faced away from me and instead, looked out the window of my car, admiring the city that came to her in bright flashing lights. With the window rolled down just enough to welcome fresh air, she leaned her elbow against the armrest and closed her eyes.

My eyes darted to her resting figure as I caught the stoplight illuminated red, and the second I intended to be fleeting became more as I found myself unable to look away.

She shifted in her hollow dormant state, and her features previously hidden from my sight came into view as she turned her head towards me.

On the empty road tainted black, I mistakenly interpreted the casual eeriness of the night as serene. Haruna’s lips parted slightly as she slept and her hair, hauntingly jet black, fell across her face in poker straight strands. In that moment beneath lamp-lit streets, she was beautiful, and frighteningly so.

“You, Haruna Sakurai, are an enigma.” I sighed, leaning my head back against the headrest as I stared vacantly at the ceiling of my car.

Admit it, you useless coward. You love her.

8:02pm

As we pulled into my residence, I handed my keys to the valet, an eccentric old man who was a little too friendly for my liking, and undeniably nosy. Yet he held feelings of sentimentality for the doctors of Edenbrook because one saved his life seven years ago. I was that doctor.

“Dr. Ramsey! When’s the last time I saw you? Come home a little more often, you workaholic!” He guffawed and landed a solid clap to my back.

“Charlie…” I grimaced.

“You are the reason I don’t come home, you rotten old prune-”

“And you brought Dr. Sakurai along too! Always a pleasure, my dear.” He flashed me a wink and Haruna masked her fatigue with a gentle smile, nodding her head at him once.

“Mr. Panelo. Likewise.”

Maneuvering our way around Charlie’s attempts at small talk, we somehow made it inside the building and into the elevator, although a little short of breath. Haruna, a born people-pleaser, usually took the time to entertain the elderly man and his efforts at setting her up with his son, but after today’s brief meet and greet, she followed me wordlessly through the doors and pressed the button to my floor.

The ascent seemed to be longer this time, or maybe it was the ongoing silence between us that made time appear to go more slowly. She stood alarmingly close to me, our shoulders slightly touching and her hand hanging out of the sleeve of her jacket, begging to be held. As I spotted her beginning to lean her head into the crook of my neck, I reached out to take her hand, but the sudden ding of the elevator made us both jump.

Despite the both of us being aware of the moment we let escape, we left it unacknowledged as the doors slid open. I allowed Haruna to exit the elevator first, and I slowed my pace to match with hers as we walked to my unit. Reaching the door, I stepped aside and softly tilted my head in the direction of the keypad.

“Hah!” Haruna couldn’t help but laugh.

“You know me too well.”

Six familiar beeps and the click of the automated door into my flat made my heart race with anticipation, and I could see that it had the same effect on Haruna. As I opened the door and gestured for her to enter first, I saw her chest rise once with a suck of her breath before she stepped inside.

Her eyes wandered every inch of the room, familiarizing herself once again with her surroundings as I closed the door behind me. The last time she was here was last month, and I’ve been craving her since.

“Jenner, baby, are you here?” She abandoned her temporary facade to coo after my dog as I slipped off my shoes and hung my coat.

Haruna whistled a low tune as she continued to call for him, walking backwards into the living room like she was afraid to miss the sight of the pup bounding towards her in excitement. She lived for moments like that.

“Jenner, my good boy, come out. Mommy’s-”

She stopped in an abrupt mid-sentence as she felt her foot slip on what I recognized as one of Jenner’s toys, letting out a yelp of surprise.

I instinctively reached out, catching her and celebrating my inner relief as I felt her weight against my arms. Wounding them further around her, I looked down only to see that she, too, was looking up at me. Expectantly, and with our faces mere inches apart.

“—Oh.” Haruna breathed, registering the situation and looking to the side in order to avoid my gaze.

I placed my fingers under her chin, gently turning her head to face me again. She didn’t try to look away a second time.

“Dr. Ramsey-” She said under her breath, her eyes darting quickly to my mouth.

“Ethan when we’re alone, remember?” I muttered, beginning to lean in. Our lips were achingly close before she brought a finger up against mine.

“Ah, ah. No ulterior motives, I believe was what you said, Dr. Ramsey?” She challenged, and I withdrew.

“Yes, I- my apologies. Take a seat. Care to dine with me?” I gestured to the sofa and she indulged as I made my way to the kitchen, albeit slightly humiliated at this first instance of rejection.

From the kitchen counter I called to her,

“Do you like your steak medium or well done?”

9:14pm

I ended up finding out that she liked her steak strictly medium well.

Ensconced in the dining room and seated across from each other, I silently admired my handiwork as Haruna rose her fork to her mouth and beamed at my homemade cooking. She brought her hand to mouth to cover the subtle smile that formed on her lips.

“This is...delicious, Ethan. You’ve outdone yourself.” She said coolly, patting the napkin to the corners of her mouth.

“You don’t have steak often?” I asked her as I took a sip from my glass of red wine.

“No, my parents didn’t indulge much in luxury.”

“And your friends at your penthouse? Rumour amongst the other interns is that you five, the scalpel jockey, and occasionally the paramedic go out for fancy dinner every weekend.”

She scoffed at the discovery of strangers in her personal business, but fondly at the memory I seem to have triggered. But as if a switch had been flipped, the smile on her face faded as she bit her lip and returned to her meal, a solemn look in her eyes.

“We did. But some of us are...not on speaking terms as of today.”

My own guilt began to form knots in my stomach as I saw her expression grow more weary.

“Is this because of the fellowship?”

She laughed bitterly.

“When is it not?”

I eyed her silently as she picked at the small hill of carrots that formed at the side of her plate, pressing her tongue to the inside of her cheek in contemplation.

“I’m happy about this, make no mistake. Reaching such a milestone so early into my career makes me proud. It’ll make my parents proud. I know I didn’t come to Edenbrook just to play patty-cake with my own competition, but I-“

She stopped herself, and her lip quivered momentarily as she silently exhaled.

“I didn’t think I would be so unprepared for the consequences.”

I reached for her hand across the table, taking it in mine as she continued to look down at her feet. She tensed slightly at the sensation but didn’t pull away.

“Rookie. Listen to me.”

“You’re no idiot, and I’m not saying this to make you laugh because you know I don’t joke.” I told her.

“I’ve admittedly said things in the beginning to shake your confidence, and you yourself can recall all my moments of harsh critique. You were so easy to doubt yourself, and for a while I was concerned about whether or not you really belonged here. You’re sensitive. Appallingly sensitive, brash, and naive.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“Let me finish.”

I looked at her and for the first time today she returned my gaze willingly, a piercing and penetrative stare that almost compels you to break eye contact.

“But in all those times, your wit, your inextinguishable resolve towards doing what’s right, and your near reckless selflessness proved yourself superior to your self-doubt. You deserve to be on the diagnostics teams for an infinite number of reasons and more, Rookie, and I would be extremely pissed to find that petty backlash made you question that. You’re noble. Almost to a fault. And your dedication, your natural character dripping with charisma, and your untouched innocence despite it all is exactly why I-“

I love you.

Yet the words caught in my throat.

I hesitated, and the three words I anticipated to declare to her all day disappeared from the tip of my tongue. It felt like sandpaper, and I brought a hand up to my neck instinctively as I cleared my throat, loosening my tie and taking a panicked sip of my wine.

“Ethan?” Haruna asked me worriedly and I reached my other hand across the table to grasp her fingers.

“Dr. Sakurai- no, Haruna. You have to know that I-”

I stopped myself again, and I recognized my reluctance to confess as nerves. Who knew that even after guest-speaking in numerous medical conventions and reciting speeches for just as many prestigious awards that telling one woman you loved her was all it took to stutter.

“It’s a blessing and a curse. Being number one, that is.” I bluffed.

Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of excuse is that?

But Haruna seemed to have taken comfort in my words, quite obviously pleased at me having sung her praises for longer than two seconds. She smiled, genuinely this time and I felt myself relax.

“You’re absolutely correct.” She agreed.

“Except I wasn’t.”

I froze.

My fingers still wrapped around Haruna’s hand in an almost childlike grip, she pried them off before taking her utensils and finishing her dinner.

“So why?” She asked me, not bothering to look up from her dish as she continued to eat. The nonchalance in her query was alarming and the fact that I immediately knew what she was referring to invoked internal panic.

I stayed silent, choosing to remain oblivious to the context of her question. Despite my failure to respond, Haruna continued to keep her eyes trained on the food fixed in front of her, as if allowing me time to conjure up an excuse. I kept my gaze fixated on her as her fork pierced her steak, and a painfully long and uncomfortable silence passed before she decided to repeat herself.

“The fellowship. Why did I win?”

friday, may 10, 2019

“I won’t let you do this, Ethan. It’s not fair for the other interns!” Harper’s voice boomed across her office as her nostrils flared in pure anger.

“And why the hell not?” I argued, pacing the room in equal frustration.

“She’s an outstanding doctor. She’s driven and passionate- no one deserves this more than Dr. Sakurai-”

“Except for the person who came first in the rankings!” The female doctor scoffed in disbelief, ripping the list from the corkboard behind her desk and aggressively pointing to the name at the top of the sheet.

“In case it wasn’t clear, ‘Aurora Emery,’ Ethan. She came first in the rankings, therefore, earning her place on the diagnostics team. That was the condition on which we agreed upon. No exceptions.”

“This was the condition which you and Naveen agreed upon.” I corrected her, the lingering betrayal tinged in my voice.

“Sakurai is fourth, still one of our best, so what difference does it make?”

“Only everything!” Harper roared.

I quickly looked at the updated rankings with a side eye, and indeed, Dr. Sakurai’s name was fourth from the top. After Aurora, Varma, then Olsen.

Following her sudden outburst, Dr. Emery attempted to recollect herself, releasing a deep sigh before pinching the bridge of her nose.

“You know what, fine.” She hissed, still displeased.

“The fellowship will go to Dr. Sakurai but the updated list is still going up, and whatever chaos arises as a result, you will be dealing with the reparations.”

Harper shoved the single sheet of paper roughly against my chest before storming out of her office, slamming the door shut behind her.

present

“Ethan, answer me.” Haruna repeated, a little more firmly this time.

“I did it for you.” I said bluntly, failing to convey even the slightest notion of regret at my actions.

I heard her sharp intake of breath, and looking up from my plate I saw that her utensils, still dug deep into her meal, were frozen in place. Her lip quivered once and all I could do was pretend I didn’t notice, knowing full well the shallow breaths she took to steady herself were a failed attempt to keep from crying. And they were not tears of joy.

“Did you think it would make me happy?” She asked quietly, accusingly.

“Just consider it as...recompense” I answered, attempting to avoid her question, but the following silence, contrarily deafening, suggested that I only made things worse.

“Recompense.” She echoed, barely above a whisper as if she wanted to hear the word in her own voice. As if she was afraid to say it wrong.

“No,” I interjected, immediately realizing my mistake, “not like that. I’m sorry.”

I reached for her hand across the table but she recoiled from my touch and rose abruptly from her seat.

“What are you compensating me for, Ethan? Pray tell.”

She continued to glare, and I found myself unable to speak. Unable to breathe.

“That’s not how I meant for it to sound.” I tried to assure her, but to no avail.

“That’s how you made it sound.”

wednesday, november 21, 2018

I appeared at Haruna Sakurai’s penthouse in the pouring rain, half past midnight. She voiced her surprise as I paged her in the lobby, addressing her through the intercom.

“Dr. Ramsey?”

“Rookie.”

“It’s late. What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

A brief silence passed between us before I heard the unlocking click of the entrance door. Stepping inside and unable to idle in anticipation for the elevator, I took the stairs to the sixth level.

Reaching the entrance to her penthouse, and Haruna whipped the door open after a single knock, as if waiting for me to show up.

“Dr. Ramsey, I-“

I took one large step forward, cupping her face in my hands and capturing her lips hungrily against my own as she stumbled backwards into her unit. I kicked the door shut and my clothes and hair, drenched from the rain, dripped onto her marble floor as the adrenaline from running up six flights of stairs resulted into me groaning in heavy breaths against her mouth.

A lustful disarray of lips and tongue, we persisted in our heated kiss as we tripped over ourselves in a backwards mess, hitting walls and furniture until her back lay flat against the glass of her living room window, the blinds up and allowing pedestrians below an inappropriate spectacle.

“Your roommates?” I muttered against her mouth and she smiled, grabbing the lapels of my jacket and pulling me in for a deeper kiss.

“Donahue’s. Now shut up and continue where you left off in Miami.”

I obliged. Grabbing both of her wrists in the single palm of my hand, I pinned them above her head as I removed my lips from hers and placed them on her neck. Haruna sighed in content.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about this. About you.” I admitted.

I released her wrists from my grip and trailed my hands down from her arms to her chest, cupping her breasts as I kissed her jawline.

“That kiss in Miami left me wanting more and I have a feeling you knew exactly what you were doing to me the moment you let me put my hands on you, Haruna Sakurai.”

She found herself speechless as my fingers wandered over the silk of her blouse and reached under to feel bare skin, hot against my touch.

“Doctor-“ She began, only to bite her lip and suppress a moan as I reached a hand into her underwear.

Haruna buried her head in the crook of my neck as my fingers continued to work against her, breathing raggedly until she still found the energy to respond.

“Your perverted thoughts just couldn’t satisfy you anymore, could they, Dr. Ramsey?” She looked up at me mischievously and I pulled her chin to me in a rough kiss.

“And that mouth.” I breathed against her lips as she came up for air.

“The things I’ve imagined doing to that smart, pretty mouth-“ And it was her turn to silence me.

Reaching a hand to the back of my head and tangling her fingers into my hair, she pulled my face towards her again in a kiss fueled with fervor. At that point, we both knew I was wrapped around her finger.

“Enough talk, Ramsey. Show me.” Haruna demanded in a threateningly quiet voice, and I could do nothing but follow.

“Are you sure about this?” I clarified one last time, taut arms pressed on either side of her head as Haruna laid beneath me, both of us in the nude.

“I know how you feel about me, Dr. Sakurai, and I-”

Haruna reached up, her hands wandering from my lower abdomen and up my chest before cupping my stubbled jaw between her fingers. She silenced me by pressing a kiss to the corner of my mouth, then firmly against the parting of my lips, slipping her tongue in the brief opening she found as I gasped. Reaching around my neck and grasping my curls, I was pulled closer towards the woman beneath me until my head rested on her bare chest.

“I love you.” Haruna whispered against my hair.

“And I don’t care about whatever answer you have, whenever, just as long as you give me this. At the hospital, during the day, we can just be Dr. Ramsey and Dr. Sakurai. But at times like these, at ungodly hours of the morning when it’s just you and me, we can just be a man and a woman.”

“Pretend that you love me, even just for these nights, Dr. Ramsey. That’s all I ask. ”

I said nothing as I rose from her chest and propped myself back up. I felt Haruna’s eyes following my movements, anticipating whatever step next I was going to take, and I found myself drawing my face closer to her features. I kissed her forehead, her nose, then her lips before bringing my own to her ear, murmuring against her skin,

“Ethan, for tonight.”

I felt her smile against my cheek and in response, brought a hand to the opposite side of my face, turning me towards her just close enough for the woman to reply.

“Haruna, then.”

present

“Is it because I let you sleep with me?” She goaded, her brows raised and her eyes ablaze with spite.

“Because while I insisted on confronting whatever—”

Haruna gestured around her.

“—this is, you evaded me like a coward until you decided it was convenient?”

I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

She reminisced bitterly at that rainy night six months ago, scoffing resentfully as she shook her head at herself. She regretted it, and it hurt that she wanted me to know.

“Is that it, Ethan? Do you pity me?” She spat.

“No!” My head shot up from its downward gaze to answer her sincerely.

And the way she looked at me broke me.

She was inexplicably angry. Hurt, and the contempt in her voice was something I couldn’t stomach. Her eyes glazed with tears threatening to fall, but she wiped at her eyes furiously before breaking eye contact, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of me.

“Haruna, no. Those nights we spent together were something completely apart, I would never-”

“Then why!” She fumed, her voice seething with disgust.

For once in my thirty eight years of living, I didn’t have an answer.

Her breathing came in short, jagged huffs and she pushed her hair out of her face, calming herself.

“You know what they’ve said? The others?” She laughed, despite herself.

“That I slept with you to land that spot on your diagnostics team.”

I couldn’t find words. Dozens of thoughts raced through my head, fueled with guilt and apology, yet for some reason, my mind failed to formulate proper English. I didn’t have the courage to respond to her, Christ, I couldn’t even look at her.

When did I become so weak?

“People know about us, Ethan.” Haruna continued.

“And if it’s not Haruna Sakurai, daughter of Nobel Prize winners, it’s Haruna, Ethan Ramsey’s gold-digging whore. I’m sick of it. So, so sick of it.”

She couldn’t keep up her facade. Her expression, once contorted in pure rage, softened as she let her tears fall freely.

“I’m sorry.” I said. It was all I could muster.

“Sorry isn’t good enough.” She made sure to place emphasis on the last two words, and began to make her way out of the living room and to the entrance.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. I can’t stay here for a second longer.”

“At least let me drive you home-”

“Just tell me this at least.” Haruna spun to face me, unyielding to anymore favours I tried to offer her.

She didn’t trust me anymore.

“That night you showed up at my penthouse-” She began, swallowing hard.

“You touched me like you loved me. Why?”

We both knew the answer to that, yet she insisted to hear it from my own mouth and in my own voice. Suddenly, what I’ve been trying to tell her all day became impossibly difficult to contain. I never imagined that I would have to tell her like this.

But she deserved to know. I owed it her.

“Because I did-” I answered, before hesitating. I looked away, and Haruna’s gaze was still insistent upon me.

You owe her this.

I took one deep breath, before looking at her again. I stated in correction,

“I do.”

She smiled to herself in reassurance.

“I thought so.”

She shut the door behind her, her departure accompanied with a soft click. Once again, I was left alone in the resonating stillness of my vacant apartment.

I never thought I’d resent the silence this much.

#choices #pixelberry choices #ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #open heart #pixelberry #ethan ramsey fanfiction #choices fanfiction #open heart fanfiction

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clickabletale · 4 years

Text

Guess who’s back? Back again-

I thought I was done with this but alas I found out @wolfwarrior142 who apparently unhid her profile after mines came back and got some anon hate over this.

I hadn’t touched her Tumblr after my reblog since I did mine’s publicly on my blog which I thought was enough to illustrate how bizarre her response was and after her posts disappeared, and I thought that was that so there was no need to talk about the matter.

Until now where I checked her account from my reblog and saw it was up to see this new text post. The reblog feature was disabled so I will have to reenact it here.

I only ask, whoever is sending her messages, please stop. That doesn’t solve anything and from how insane her posts and logic are, it’s not worth the issue and it isn’t your place to tangled with it.

This will be (hopefully) my last message. I say hopefully since I don’t know what will happen after so I keep in mind what could change if something new comes out.

The post went like this

Anonymous asked:

don’t you feel stupid now for attacking someone over their opinion publicly, now you’re gonna hide? hypocrisy, hypocrisy~

wolfwarrior: I’m assuming you’re the dumb bitch who made that post (or their friend). Just gonna say that you shouldn’t post your dumbass ship hate in the ship tag. For one, it wasn’t even valid hate. You made it sound like you never watched the fuckin show. Also, just to make things clear, I’m not mad that plance didn’t become canon. I was sad, but I figured, oh well. It ain’t my show, it’s not the end of the world, they’re just fictional characters, and there’s no point in getting worked up over it. And then this dumb bitch drops by, tags the goddamn ship tag (even tho its common knowledge for anyone with a brain to be a decent fucking person and not do that, regardless of whether or not they like the ship), and makes a dumbass post while whining that oh boo hoo, poor me, I’m gonna get attacked. Yes you will, you dumbass, because you’re being a moron and an asshole for no reason while literally begging to get shit on. I know you probably get your rocks off to people calling out the dumb shit that you do, but I still wanted to call you out for being antagonistic. Legit, tagging any tags for a ship and then shitting on the ship opens you up to being shit on for needlessly being a bitch, and we have all the right to for you coming into the tag and acting that way. And you or someone else said in another anon message that I’m being “toxic,” but nah, I’m not. I’m just calling you out for being an antagonistic asshole who has no regards for decent tagging, and then I left. I said what I wanted to say, and then I left. I could have picked apart your post, because you made piss-poor “points,” but that was pointless because I knew you wouldn’t have cared if a plance fan had debated with you. I at least wanted to point out your poor decision to tag the goddamn ship names, you dumb fuck. Sorry that I didn’t roll over to you being an asshole and be nice. I’m not gonna do that, and I shouldn’t have to when you were being an antagonistic bitch while crying that “I’m afraid of getting attacked for this.” And I wasn’t attacking you, or at least not extremely. I’m just calling you out for making dumbass choices, and you didn’t like that. Oops, not fucking sorry. Also, I love how you say I’m being a hypocrite for “running.” I blocked you and that other fuck because I didn’t want anymore comments from you popping up in my notes. I said what I wanted to say and was done, because if I hadn’t I knew it was gonna further the argument. Also cuz I was about to go into class for 4 hours and didn’t want to be distracted by your dumbasses. But no matter what, at least I had the decency to actually say my opinions in public where my name was visible. I wasn’t afraid of doing that, cuz I meant what I said and wanted to be publicly honest. Apparently you can’t tho, and neither can the person who sent that other message if it wasn’t you, cuz both are anonymous. You’re too much of a little bitch to show your actual name or use an alternate account to send a message, so you send it anonymously instead. Its never looks good for you when you send anon hate. I try my best to never send anon messages unless it’s not antagonistic, because if I’m gonna say it, I need to make sure I’m confident enough to say it with my url showing. Otherwise, I’m just being immature by sending anonymous hate. But obviously you don’t care about being an immature little bitch who is too much of a wimp to send hate directly to someone with your name showing. That let’s me to know that I’m not the immature one here. Also, if you decide to continue to be immature and send anon hate, I’m not gonna respond further. This is the last response you’ll get from me, because antagonistic babies like you aren’t worth more of my time. Have fun hiding behind disguises and crying about being shit on even tho you 100% asked for it.

First off: I’m assuming you’re the dumb bitch who made that post (or their friend). Just gonna say that you shouldn’t post your dumbass ship hate in the ship tag. For one, it wasn’t even valid hate. You made it sound like you never watched the fuckin show.

So just gonna say, I didn’t send these. When you went dark, I left it at my reblog. Simple as that. I also don’t know a “friend” you’re talking about. I talked about this to my mutuals but I didn’t see them involved in this at all after the topic went dead. The only one I know who was involved with the post was princessbuttershitz I think? (I can’t with the name, I’m sorry XD) I had not known this user until I saw they joined in and reblogged my post on some stuff I hadn’t talked about, but for transparency that is it. They don’t follow me from what I can see or talked to me further than that so it’s just whatever.

And second, how was my post ship hate? Flat out tell me? Did I call Pidge a horrible person for Lance? No. Did I demonize the age gap? No. Where did you see hate in that post when all I talked about was doubting Plance being canon, talked about the “development” in comparison to Lance’s romance with Allura and rivalry to friendship with Keith? Please tell me with highlights, I’d like to know.

You also say you don’t care Plance wasn’t canon (good for you, I hope you still enjoy it regardless.) and that it wasn’t something to get worked up over. I completely agree, however, if you did believe that why did you bother to respond so hostile like you did? That doesn’t sound right, you said you shouldn’t get worked up over those things right? Especially my post was only a few sentences talking about doubting Plance was going to be endgame, not as the ship as a whole. (Catch me repeating that here.)

Also I have seen the show since 2017-2018. I got into it and it got me through a hard time, I was there for a lot of the seasons. You can see it on my archive. So a big statement you make there.

Moving on-

“And then this dumb bitch drops by, tags the goddamn ship tag (even tho its common knowledge for anyone with a brain to be a decent fucking person and not do that, regardless of whether or not they like the ship), and makes a dumbass post while whining that oh boo hoo, poor me, I’m gonna get attacked. Yes you will, you dumbass, because you’re being a moron and an asshole for no reason while literally begging to get shit on. I know you probably get your rocks off to people calling out the dumb shit that you do, but I still wanted to call you out for being antagonistic.”

Guys. I implore you to read my first post. It is the lightest thing I have made. I made it to just be upfront about my opinions in a respectful manner in words than how many other fans would recycle argument to make the ship or characters look bad.

Also with the parentheses, what if it was a Plance shipper who actively made content whether it be theories/fanfics/art/etc. and made my post, you would attack them the same? I sure fucking hope not. Jesus.

I didn’t want that to happen since I genuinely wanted to treat it like a discussion instead of another poorly made ship insult like people on Twitter did back then. I could’ve gone harder and made it pettier than I did but that would delegitimize my argument.

Once again, besides your tag claim, how was I antagonistic in my post? It’s on you to prove it since you’re making the claim. Shouldn’t be hard to prove if you insist it this much.

My blog is open for people to see and the only person who has made this an issue is you, no one else in the notes. Only person who I can think of is Swindle94 but they were at least more mature than you.

Legit, tagging any tags for a ship and then shitting on the ship opens you up to being shit on for needlessly being a bitch, and we have all the right to for you coming into the tag and acting that way. And you or someone else said in another anon message that I’m being “toxic,” but nah, I’m not. I’m just calling you out for being an antagonistic asshole who has no regards for decent tagging, and then I left.

Once again focusing on the tags. Okay, upfront. So? If I was attacking Plancers with that tag on, that would be valid. All I did was say “hey plance being canon? i disagree, here’s why.”

I’m sorry but if a few sentence post gets you riled up like that, I don’t believe you don’t care. You obviously do. Especially when you replied publicly to this anon. That is your fault.

Also, yes, you are being toxic for responding like this. I had no insults to the Plance community or the ship in my first post. You charged head-on with no regard and decided to belittle me instead of either ignoring or talking it out like the others. Which is a toxic mindset, using insults to defend your fictional couple. So don’t try to have both, it’s not gonna work.

I could have picked apart your post, because you made piss-poor “points,” but that was pointless because I knew you wouldn’t have cared if a plance fan had debated with you.

Link to my replies to two others who reblogged my post: https://clickabletale.tumblr.com/post/190254499687/swindle94-thats-not-what-i-meant-i-shouldve

https://clickabletale.tumblr.com/post/190254645477/i-shouldve-used-another-word-for-it-while-they

Honestly, if you did pick apart my points instead that would be fine and I welcome it. Would’ve been better than your first response. I’m just gonna say you aren’t going to because you know you can’t.

I at least wanted to point out your poor decision to tag the goddamn ship names, you dumb fuck. Sorry that I didn’t roll over to you being an asshole and be nice. I’m not gonna do that, and I shouldn’t have to when you were being an antagonistic bitch while crying that “I’m afraid of getting attacked for this.” And I wasn’t attacking you, or at least not extremely. I’m just calling you out for making dumbass choices, and you didn’t like that. Oops, not fucking sorry. Also, I love how you say I’m being a hypocrite for “running.” I blocked you and that other fuck because I didn’t want anymore comments from you popping up in my notes. I said what I wanted to say and was done, because if I hadn’t I knew it was gonna further the argument.

Once again, to anyone who wants the original post it is here: https://clickabletale.tumblr.com/post/190247521977/i-remember-i-was-scared-to-say-this-back-when-the

If I’m being antagonizing in my words, let me know where please and thank you.

And you only worded your post in an attacking manner (you did, throwing insults fast. Don’t tip toe around it, you fired at the most minial shit.)

Also not sure about the running comment? I don’t recall calling you a hypocrite on that, I don’t know what you mean by that.

Also cuz I was about to go into class for 4 hours and didn’t want to be distracted by your dumbasses. But no matter what, at least I had the decency to actually say my opinions in public where my name was visible. I wasn’t afraid of doing that, cuz I meant what I said and wanted to be publicly honest. Apparently you can’t tho, and neither can the person who sent that other message if it wasn’t you, cuz both are anonymous.

I did, my original post. I did so in a way that explained my thoughts in a non-insulting manner.

You just came in unloaded and wrong, you should just step back to think before replying so people will actually listen and reason with you and no think you are insane.

At least your honest I guess? But that kind of backfired if you hid your profile after. My post is still up, with your words for anyone who wants to see it. Even linking right here.

And once again, I don’t care to message you since you did block me and dipped. I left it at my reblog with responding to you and talked about the isssue on how dumb it was to get angry over since the only one who seems to be this angry over it, is you.

I don’t want anyone coming for you, and I will say again if anyone intends to: don’t. That doesn’t solve anything so don’t come to belittle her.

You’re too much of a little bitch to show your actual name or use an alternate account to send a message, so you send it anonymously instead. Its never looks good for you when you send anon hate. I try my best to never send anon messages unless it’s not antagonistic, because if I’m gonna say it, I need to make sure I’m confident enough to say it with my url showing. Otherwise, I’m just being immature by sending anonymous hate. But obviously you don’t care about being an immature little bitch who is too much of a wimp to send hate directly to someone with your name showing. That let’s me to know that I’m not the immature one here. Also, if you decide to continue to be immature and send anon hate, I’m not gonna respond further. This is the last response you’ll get from me, because antagonistic babies like you aren’t worth more of my time. Have fun hiding behind disguises and crying about being shit on even tho you 100% asked for it.

Once again, wolfwarrior142. I don’t care to see you or send things like this. I don’t advocate those messages or hate to you, I want it to stop if it keeps happening but you don’t have a smoking gun in this.

You obviously have some issues and you aren’t arguing them rationally, and you are advocating for attacks over the smallest shit being a tag about disagreeing two fictional characters were gonna bone. How do you justify something so ridiculous?

So no matter how much you try to say you’re not a toxic fan if you go out to insult people over their opinion or the tags or whatever when it’s not inciting hate against the ship or you don’t bother to show how it’s hate or debate it.

That is toxic. You can’t spin it around.

So that is it. I hope this is the last. I’m still in disbelief at how insanely she reacts and justifies her behavior. This is not okay, nothing about her response is okay. It’s a shitty thing to do and I hope you don’t do this to anyone else, that’s all I gotta say.

#holy shit #voltron fandom #toxic fans #hope i can be done with this #this is a fucking ride god #gonna be off now

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harvestgatenetwork-blog · 4 years

Text

The Harvest Gate Podcast - Episode 1

Below is a written transcript of Episode 1 of The Harvest Gate Podcast.

Now available on harvestgate.org/podcast , Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app or service.

New episodes every Sunday at 6AM.

Episode 1: What is Harvest Gate?

*Intro Music*

Greg: Hey this is Greg

Zack: And Zack

Greg: Welcome to the very first Harvest Gate Podcast. We are delighted to be talking to you about this project. And we’re excited to welcome you to our very first podcast, we’re going to be talking about Harvest Gate, tracking our growth and development, keeping you up to date on events and news that’s going on. But for this very first episode, we want to take some time to introduce ourselves, Harvest Gate and everything about this project. So Zack why don’t you start, tell us a little about yourself.

Zack: Yea, my name is Zack Morgan. I am a pastor here in Newark, Ohio. I’ve lived in this area for pretty much my entire life. I spent 6 years away in the air force and I came back to the church that I grew up in as a pastor which was an interesting dynamic. I’ve had some great leaders that have guided me along the way and have helped shape a lot of my thinking, a lot of my behaviors. It has led to this really cool…what I believe is the vision of Harvest Gate that I’m excited to talk about with you Greg.

Greg: I’m excited too! We’ll dig deeper into exactly what Harvest Gate is and where that idea came from. But first, do you want to tell everyone a bit about how we met and our relationship, how we got here?

Zack: Yea. That is a fun story. About a year and a half ago I was playing on a church softball team and Greg and his wife Emily came to the game and that was an interesting dynamic about how you came in the first place.

Greg: Yea, I mean, it is a funny story as well. We didn't really know you guys, we didn't have any connection to your church, even though its less than a mile from our house. We had a mutual friend that Emily knows from a group of ladies that she meets with, that her husband played some game that I played and said, "Hey, we should get together and hang out!". They invited us to play softball and I think at some point we discovered a mutual affection for tennis, which sort of led into, how can we get some exercise outside of softball, let's meet up on Fridays for tennis.

Zack: And what Greg didn't tell me is that he's a really good tennis player and I kind of just played for just for fun. So Greg and I started playing tennis, and that was really fun, but then the weather got cold so we started getting coffee and so we started getting coffee. We've been getting coffee for about a year.

Greg: Yea, over a year.

Zack: One of the fun dynamics between our relationship, I'm a pastor obviously, but Greg is not a follower of the Christian way. He believes what I would call the Christian ethic but does not identify as a Christian himself. Greg, would you talk about that a little bit?

Greg: You know, I think everyone has their, sort of journey or path that they've been on. I grew up going to church and while I think I didn't totally buy-in to everything about it, I really picked up on Christian values and how you treat other people. Treating people with kindness and loving people even if you have differences with them. It's been certainly a topic of conversation and discussion in my marriage where my wife is a very strong believer and I'm less so, but we agree on wanting to pass on those values to our son, in a way that is impactful and meaningful for him in his life. The thing that meant a lot to me about our relationship, and getting coffee, and talking and all the conversations that we had is that I never felt this pressure, that I was any less than anyone else because I didn't believe in it. We could have honest conversations about what we thought about or how we felt about things and there wasn't any judgement or pressure like, "We'd be better friends if you were a believer" or something like that.

Zack: And I just love you authenticity, you don't pretend to be something you aren't. In honesty, apart from Tennis and Coffee, there's not a whole lot that we share in common, but we've developed a really good friendship, I would consider you one of my best friends.

Greg: Yea, absolutely.

Zack: Can you tell me a little bit about why, as a non-believer, why you would want to join a church plant? I love it. I'm also really intrigued by it.

Greg: When you outline it that way it doesn't make a ton of sense. I think it's a combination of several things. My wife's passion for the project is really exciting and that gets me really excited about it. But also, I look at not just the church side of it but all the positive impact you're trying to have in and around central Ohio and the long term vision of how that can grow. It appeals to me because there are too many things in our world these days that are negative, that divide people when we would really come together to do good things, regardless of what we believe or how we feel about certain things. Why not try and make a positive impact.

Zack: You and I have had this conversation before. I believe that this is what the Kingdom is all about. Whether you are a believer or not a believer, coming together to bring about God's redemptive work to the world. You can do that whether you are a believer in Jesus and his ways or not. Greg, does this seem like a good time to talk about what's going on with Harvest Gate, how we got to this point?

Greg: Yea, let's dig in a little deeper on what Harvest Gate is, what exactly it is that we're talking about our involvement in then we can maybe we can get into our related experience and what we're bringing to the project.

Zack: I'll try to be brief about this but my story with church planting goes back to 2009. In 2009, my wife and I, Liz, were in a church in Florida while I was in the military and our church was wanting to start small groups and at the time I had just fallen in love with everything church. I wanted everything to do with the church. I heard they were doing small groups and I said, "OH! Can I lead one?" They said sure, and I said, what is a small group? So they kind of laid it out. I said, "Is there a curriculum or anything like that, that I need to go by?" No. Being the naive, young man I was, I thought, well I only have the bible to go off of so that's a good start.

So I remember in Acts, chapter 2, there is a part where it says, "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the breaking of bread, to fellowship and to receiving of the lord's supper." And in verse 47 it says, "and the lord added daily, to their numbers, those who are being saved."

So I was like, alright, well I guess we'll just go with this. Our small group started out with 8 people and like every church in America in the 2000's our slogan was, "Love God, Love People and Server your world."

I went through that passage and I said, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, that would be 'Love God'."

And to fellowship, that's 'Love People' and broke it down that way. Our group started out with 8 people and within about 3 months we were averaging 35 people or so.

Greg: Wow!

Zack: That group became church for people. We did communion, we did worship, we did teaching, we ate a lot, we laughed a lot, we cried a lot and it just became beautiful. It was at that point where I felt, looking back in hindsight, I had no idea what church planting was, I was like, "Oh we should just start a church!"

Greg: Yea

Zack: And by god's grace we didn't because I was an idiot back then...I'm still an idiot, but less so.

Greg: And humble.

Zack: Yes. I lacked humility back then and it was a piece of pride for me. So that's where my heart for church planting began and then we'll fast forward. In 2014, I got out of the military, I became a pastor at the church where I'm currently serving here in Newark.

In 2016, at the behest of my lead pastor, who is a multiplication guru, he encouraged me to do a church planters assessment and so, Liz and I went through a 2 or 3 day thing.

Greg: Liz, your wife, of course.

Zack: Yes, Liz is my wife. So its a 3 day journey where, basically, you're being...interrogated is not the right word...interviewed about your life and your life experience for probably 8 hours a day. Ultimately what they said, they give you 3 options, they say, "Yes, you possess the qualities to be a lead church planter right now."

"Yes, you do possess these things but you need some significant training or coaching."

or "No".

Liz and I received a no, sorry, we received a yes! We were ecstatic! That was in 2016. We left there thinking, "Yea, this is awesome, still feeling called to church planting but we don't feel released from where it is we're currently serving."

So in 2017, I went to a church planters conference in Florida, called Exponential, which I feel now is a great time to plug Exponential. If you are interested in church planting or multiplication or discipleship, Exponential is a fantastic conference that I highly recommend, it is the largest gathering of church planters and multipliers around the world. Something like 5000 people come out to that.

It was there at Exponential that I met a fellow church planter, who was actually doing it, I felt like an imposter because I hadn't actually planted a church. But I met him, his name is Cory Dorian, he is out in Washington or Oregon area. He got permission from his district to buy a house in a neighborhood. Basically, they just did a house church and their ministry, their vision, was to do everything in their neighborhood for the neighborhood.

They met in their house but they did all their shopping, all their haircutting, everything happened in their neighborhood.

So i asked Cory, "This is fantastic! But what are you doing, how are you finding that you can support yourself apart from being paid by the district."

Greg: Financially.

Zack: Financially, right. And he said, "Uhh, I haven't figured that out yet."

I loved that vision but it felt like all the wind was let out of the sails because it's like, well, I'm not going to be able to find a district or a place...I'm not going to be able to find a sugar daddy essentially...

Greg: And that's important for you because you have a wife, you have 3 kids...

Zack: Yea!

Greg: You've got to support that whole household as well.

Zack: And if I had a really rich Uncle or something like that who, what was that movie, Baxter's Millions? Brewster's Millions? Richard Prior? It was a great movie, anyways!.

But that was not the case for me. I started dreaming, "How could we do this?" And I was reminded, I feel like God reminded me of this, that I had a dream to open a coffeehouse before I was called into ministry, but once I was called into ministry I thought, "Well, that dream is just going to have to die."

And so I let that go and hopped into ministry.

But here in 2017 at Exponential I feel like God gave me a dream to marry both the marketplace and the church together. God gave me this vision, I called home, I called Liz, and I said, "Liz. God gave me this vision, here's the vision."

And she said, "Well its great that he gave you that vision, but he did not give that to me."

Greg: Uh oh.

Zack: Liz continued, "If he wants us to do this, he's going to have to talk to me about that."

Again, all the wind out of my sails.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: At that point, I put church planting in my back pocket and I thought, "Well, maybe one day down the road, 10 or 20, 30 years from now, God will let us plant a church."

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So in 2018, Liz and I began the process of becoming missionaries, to go to Vienna, Austria. It was a great process, it was about a 9 month process where we went through that application process. Through that we were getting lots of affirmations from the people who would have essentially benefited from it, the people who would be sending us. But what we were missing were affirmations from people who were close to us, like our family and our spiritual mentors, who were surrounding us.

For the last 4 years, I've been working on my Master's of Divinity with a specialization in church planting and multiplication through Wesley Seminary. One of the classes I had to take for my specialization was a class called "Launch"

By this point in the story, we're in 2019, January of 2019.

Greg: About a year ago.

Zack: About a year ago. Almost to the day. One of the first assignments was, give an autobiography of your experience or your involvement with church planting and multiplication. I essentially was typing out everything that I just shared, "Oh I felt called to plant a church 10 years ago...here it is...10 years later...haven't planted...woe is me."

As I am writing that paper, I get a text message from my pastor, Chris Dyer, and he says, "Zack, do you still feel called to plant a church?"

And I was like, "........Yes."

And he said, "Because I have been talking with Ed Love, who is the director of multiplication for the Wesleyan church, and he thinks that I just need to push you out of the nest and let you fly."

Greg: Mmhmm...works for birds.

Zack: Works for birds! I remember I screen-shotted it and sent it to Liz and remember, we're still going through the process of trying to become missionaries at this point. I sent it to Liz and I said, "So things might be changing."

And little did we know, that moment set us on a course to birth what we are now talking about, Harvest Gate. So that's what kind of led us to this moment. That class was an amazing class, it helped us put essentially to paper, everything that had been in my head and had been ethereal, had now become a reality.

Greg: It's been a long journey, there's been a lot of things that have sort of led you to that point. Now that we're here, define Harvest Gate. What is Harvest Gate? You talked about the coffeehouse, the house churches, package those together for us, for the listener and explain what that is.

Zack: Yea, so it's interesting. I grew up in what I would call a traditional kind of church. And I'm not talking about the music necessarily. It's a place where you go on a given day of the week and that's what we called church. But as I've studied the scriptures and as I've studied church history and things like that, what I have found is that the movement of God's people often happens in homes.

What we say at Harvest Gate, what would be our mission statement essentially is, "Connecting faith to families, communities and marketplaces."

I heard some statistics a few years ago, and these numbers aren't exactly correct but they are close enough. Again, I believe I was at Exponential. And I heard a pastor say this, he said, "83% of pastors, in the last 12 months, do not have any friends who are non-church goers." And that broke my heart.

Another thing he said is, "Something like 63% of pastors, in the last 12 months, have not personally led someone to Jesus."

I remember thinking, "We have to do something that is different!" If we're trying to tell our people that they need to be loving their neighbor and caring for their neighbor and loving those who are different than them and loving those who have different ideologies, how are we going to teach them these things if we ourselves aren't doing these things.

Greg: Yea!

Zack: Which again is another reason why I love our relationship because we don't agree on everything.

Greg: It really is a relationship that, in my head, wouldn't make sense. Because I have often felt uncomfortable at church. I've had a handful of interactions where somebody comes up to you and says, "Oh, are you saved?!" and it sort of feels aggressive and an invasion of...Well, I can choose to believe what I want to believe. I don't necessarily want to share that with everyone, though I obviously am now...

It is an interesting dynamic about how we got here and how it just works. And there is no...I don't ever feel that uncomfortable pressure or bias towards believes versus non-believes or something like that. I can just be whoever I am. Thanks for that!

Zack: And that doesn't mean that we don't talk about spiritual matters.

Greg: Yea!

Zack: I've told you before, if I didn't want you to believe what I believe, then what I believe is not actually worth it. Or I'm just a jerk for not wanting you to believe that.

Actually, Greg, the reason that we are doing our church is exactly for people like you, who have been hurt by the church, burned by the church, who don't want to associate. I'm not saying you don't necessarily want to associate with church.

Greg: Sure.

Zack: People who just feel disenfranchised. There have been some studies, some more anecdotal, some more legitimate, that have said, "If the church as it stands now, as it is traditionally configured, were to operate at a 100%, we would only reach about 40% of the population."

When I say traditional church, I'm talking about brick and mortar church, where you go to a certain place on a certain day of the week and if you're really spiritual, one other time throughout the week. Maybe you're part of a small group or something like that.

So we have roughly 95% of churches in America, who are going after 40% (of the population), while maybe 5% are going after the other 60% of people. Harvest Gate, I believe, is a church that wants to go after the 60%. Those people who will never step foot into a traditional type of church.

We want to engage people in what we would call the third place of life. I remember reading a book called, "The Story of Christianity" by Husto Gonzalez, who is a really famous church historian. There is a passage in there that really just struck me. He said this, he said, "In truth, most missionary work was not carried out by the apostles but rather by the countless and nameless Christians, who for different reasons, persecution, business or missionary calling, traveled from place to place taking the news of the gospel with them."

As I was thinking about that and pondering that, I couldn't help but to think, Paul became a tent maker, he used his tent making to build relationships with people and used that to share the gospel.

His partners in ministry, Pricilla and Aquila, were tent makers. You have Lydia, who was the first one, the first person baptized in Europe and there is a church that met in her home. She was a seller of fine, purple linen. The writer of the book Luke and Acts, Luke, was a physician. Each of these people used their vocation in order to pastor people, essentially. And that is where the idea of Harvest Gate came from.

What we want to do is open a coffeehouse where we can engage people in the third place of life. There was a book written called "The Great Good Place" and it identifies 3 different places of life. You have the first place which is home, the second place which is work and the third place which is, kind of defined by neutral ground, it is a place where everyone feels welcome, it is a level place. Conversation is the main activity. It is easily accessible and there is accommodation for everybody. It has regulars. You think of Cheers.

Greg: Right, right.

Zack: Low profile, the mood is playful. You refer to it as a home away from home. I have a local coffeehouse that I attend, that I frequent pretty regularly.

Greg: Well and we go there together, and whenever we're there, there are maybe a dozen people or so, over the hour or hour and a half that we're talking, that know you, have seen you at church, have you seen you around town.

They certainly remember you by name, some are just "Hello!" and some are "Oh how's the family, how's the kids" and they certainly really do know you.

Zack: And it's not just me, it's the case for you to.

Greg: That's true. I have, maybe by accident, come to meet and know lots of people through my relationships with people at both your church and another church here in town. All of a sudden...I should clarify, I'm not originally from Newark, I moved here from Columbus. My wife Emily is from Newark. And there were a lot of times, maybe even a lot of years, soon after I moved out here where I felt very isolated, didn't know anybody.

I've spent almost the last 8 years working from home and working from home is great but you don't meet anyone working from home, just your dogs and your family. How I feel now emotionally and mentally is so much better. Having these relationships with people, where I live and having met you and us being able to get together regularly to talk and share what's going on in our lives has made a huge difference.

Zack: I think that community aspect is really important.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: This is not the case entirely, across the Christian realm but a lot of times in the church, community or relationships are kind of sterile. We might have a few close-knit relationships but there's not a general sense of community.

Greg: Right.

Zack: We might say that we have a community of people, but we really only see each other once a week.

Greg: Yea..

Zack: Maybe twice a week. And so what I love about our relationship, maybe not daily, but pretty close to that.

Greg: You are a master of the gif by the way.

Zack: Thank you! It is a skill that I...

*laughter*

Zack: We communicate pretty frequently. I would say that our...I could be mistaken...This is honest moments here with Zack and Greg. I feel like our relationship when it first started was kind of awkward.

Greg: Maybe. I think we were both figuring it out. It's a believe and a non-believer at probably extreme ends of that spectrum. I'm not an active non-believer, I'm not dissuading people, I'm comfortable where I am.

Zack: Yea.

Greg: And I think we were both trying to figure out, are we going to offend each other? Are we going to be uncomfortable with these types of conversations? We figured out pretty quickly, no, we're fine having honest discussions about it. We can come and go from that topic without it feeling forced or uncomfortable, like oh, we have to talk about that big cross-shaped elephant in the room.

Zack: Exactly, yea and it kind of sounds like an intro to a bad joke. A pastor and an agnostic walk into a coffeehouse.

We're hoping that through the coffeehouse we're able to engage with people in a relationship. I have a family member who was asked about this, and they said, "So is this like a Christian coffeehouse that's like, here's your coffee now if you want prayer step over to this line and we'll have someone sent over to pray for you."

No, that would just be weird and uncomfortable.

Greg: I can verify that. That I would also feel weird and uncomfortable about that.

Zack: I would feel weird and uncomfortable about that and I'm a pastor.

Greg: Well there ya go.

Zack: This is a for-profit coffeehouse that I'll be the owner of.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: The idea is that we want to engage the world in a really good, quality service, quality product. Here's the thing, I believe that our worship and our work are intimately tied together.

Greg: Yea. Everybody on the Harvest Gate team is reading a book about this.

Zack: Yea.

Greg: About how your work and how what you do should be fulfilling and tied to what you love to do.

Zack: The Hebrew word for the word "work" in the old testament, Genesis 2, says that, "God put Adam in the garden to work the field and take care of it." That word, work, is the Hebrew word "aved" and it literally is used throughout the old testament to mean, service or service to god. That word is often used synonymously with the word worship.

I believe that one of the best ways that I can share the gospel with people, is through doing really really good work.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: And treating people really well and there is a saying, I don't know if you're aware of this saying Greg but St Francis of Asisi said, "Preach often and when necessary use words."

I think it is a great sentiment but I think what has happened in the church is we just go, "Well I don't need to say anything because I'm doing it with my life."

I think that words are important and that we need to have those conversations which is why, I think, you and I have these conversations.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: But...so we want to use the coffeehouse to engage people into relationships so we can invite them into discipleship and then into our house church. Which is what we're going to be, it's not going to be a building, it's going to be wherever people live and work.

It doesn't matter if you live in an 8,000 foot mansion, which if you do, please invite me over, I want to see that.

Greg: Right, yea! Absolutely!

Zack: Or if you live in a studio apartment, it doesn't matter. You can have church right there. Engaging in those things that the early church engaged in. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the breaking of bread, to communion and to fellowship. You can do those things all from your home.

So we want to engage people in the first, the second and the third place of life.

Greg: So I think the coffeehouse ties back into the example you gave earlier, and I apologize I forget who you were specifically referring to but, when they were talking about starting this house church and they felt called to do that, it was great and they felt very passionately about that but how do you support your family. The coffeehouse is really going to do that, its going to support your family to enable you to do the stuff in that community.

We should clarify, we're in Newark, Ohio right now, Harvest Gate is going to be in Columbus, you're not opening a coffeehouse and going to sometimes be there, you're going to move there, to live within short distance of the coffeehouse, or at least that's the plan.

Zack: Yes and thank you for bringing that up. Our big dream is that we want to have a transforming presence in every zip code in Columbus. In Columbus, there are 49 zip codes.

Greg: That's a lot of zip codes.

Zack: That's a lot of zip codes. So that means we want to have either a business, and it doesn't have to be a coffeehouse. A business and/or a house church in every zip code in Columbus. You're absolutely correct, Greg, that will be my vocation, that will be the way that I sustain our life and our family.

Here's one of the things I love about what we're doing, through the coffeehouse, 10% of all of our profits are going to go towards starting other businesses or other churches, or other faith communities. Greg, let’s say that, in this hypothetical situation you become a believer and you've always wanted to start Greg's yoga studio.

Greg: *laughs* I can think of a couple other businesses I might start first, but lets go with Yoga, I can aspire to something...

Zack: We would then launch you out, through the pool of money essentially that is coming in through Harvest Gate Coffeehouse to help start Greg's Yoga Studio. We want to be a place that is a blessing to other individuals, yes, but also to the community as well.

Which informs our name. The name Harvest Gate comes from 3 things, Jesus says, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so ask the lord of the harvest for more workers."

We want to be a part of the harvest. In Columbus, as of 2010, there are 693,127 people who have no religious affiliation at all. We want to see that number changed.

We want to be a part of the harvest, that is where we get Harvest from. Gate kind of seems a little strange and I'm going to address the elephant in the room. It seems like when you put Gate at the end of something, like Watergate, it seems to not go well.

Greg: Harvest Gate is not a harvest related scandal.

Zack: No. It is not. It is rooted in biblical ideologies. Jesus says that, "I am the gate. None come to the father except through me." We want to be very very very very Jesus centered. I had this revelation a couple of years ago, where I felt God spoke to me and he said, "Zack, you've become so institutionalized that you've been trying to win people to church and not to Jesus."

That began me on a journey that I really just want to be so Jesus-centered that its...

Greg: Thinking about taking up carpentry as well?

Zack: My dad's a carpenter so that works!

Greg: There ya go!

Zack: That's where we kind of get the idea of Harvest Gate, but it goes a little further than that. In the new testament, Paul used the word "ecclesia" to talk about the church, it is the greek word, "ecclesia". In America, what we generally tend to do is we define that word pretty narrowly and we say, it is a gathering of people or the gathering of the saints. To be sure, it is that, it is a gathering of people but Paul actually took that word from the secular community, so every village, town or city would have a group of elders who would meet at the city gate.

That group of elders, their responsibility was to bring wisdom and council and clarity and value to the cities, towns or villages in which they lived. If there is an engagement, they would affirm the engagement. If there was a dispute between land owners, they would make a judgement based off of the information that came in. Different things like that.

So that gathering of people at the city gate was called an ecclesia. And so Paul, I believe knew this, when he used the word ecclesia to describe the church.

I believe that Paul wanted the church to know that we exist for our communities, we exist for the cities, towns or villages that we live in. As a business, we want to bring value to our community, we want to hire people, we want to create jobs, we want to give back to our community. We want to be a gathering space for people! Whether you are a Christian or not or whatever the case is. So that's kind of what we're wanting to do with our business.

Greg: I think its a really...one of the things that drew me to the project is that it is such a...seems like an unconventional idea, that it can be a business that can do good. So often these days, capitalism in America is fueled by this uncontrollable greed for more, for more, for more. And companies seem to only want to do good things if it makes them appealing to customers, if it makes them lead to more sales. It sort of takes business away from any type of morality and starts to only think about what good can we do to positively influence our bottom line.

I don't like that sort of greed, really turns me off of businesses.

It is hard to describe exactly how I feel about it in a professional way. Nevertheless, I think I really like that Harvest Gate is taking a business and saying, "Okay, this is not just about making as much money as possible and that the only people that are going to be positively impacted by that are the tiny handful of people at the top or those that have invested the most money, or something like that."

We're not going around looking for investors to share in what we're doing in some way, we're looking for, and this is probably a good time to talk about it, that we're going to be looking for people to donate to help support this project and we're going to be talking about, fairly transparently, on this podcast about our progress with that. How we're doing and how we're reaching our goals, setting our goals and how all of that is going to enable this project to happen.

Zack: And I think it is important that we say that, we view this as a missionary endeavor.

That a lot of times missionaries will go to a foreign country and they will start a business in order to engage people in the community. We're wanting to do the exact same thing here in Columbus.

The business and the house church are in a symbiotic relationship with one another.

Greg: Yea

Zack: I tell people this, If we have just a business and no house church, we are just a business. We don't want to be just a business.

If we have just a house church and no business, I'm going to be living in a box and I won't be taking care of my family and I don't want them to resent me.

And we also won't have a way to engage people into the house church because we won't have a way of knowing people.

Greg: You can't have a house church without a house.

Zack: Exactly! We've kind of wrestled with this, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. In this situation, it is the business. For us to move to Columbus, the housing market there is about $100,000 more than where we currently live.

Greg: No doubt about that.

Zack: I truly believe that this is of God because I don't know if...I might be able to plant a church and do okay with it just because I'm familiar with it but I've never started a business though and I don't really know much about business. Fortunately, we have a team of people who have been surrounding us, like your wife, Emily.

Greg: Your wife, Liz.

Zack: Yea. And some others on the team, who have great skill and great knowledge and we also have outside counselors, I don't know if counselor is the right word, outside sources who are speaking into our lives and speaking into the business itself.

Greg: Yea, and I think it is worth mentioning now that we are going to be taking some time over the coming weeks. We're hoping to do this podcast weekly, and meet some of the people on this team and how they are going to be contributing and I think that goes to also we'll be talking more about your history and background, experience.

We'll be talking a little bit about myself, my wife, your wife and other team members and how everybody is connected to this, how serendipitous it is about how we all got connected with this. It is a really, sort of, weirdly shaped grapevine that has connected everybody to bring them here.

Zack: Yea and to speak to that point, a lot of times when we plant churches or we start businesses or things like that, what we tend to do is say, "I have these positions that need filled so I'm going to find people that fit these roles."

I feel like we have done this a little differently. God has laid people on my heart and I have sought them out and we found their unique gifts and skills and have plugged them into the places where they will thrive the most. And I believe that is what we are called to do in the church, is to release people so that they can live an abundant life in who God has made them to be.

Greg: I think that is a really fine point to end on for our first podcast for Harvest Gate.

Zack: Yea.

Greg: It has been great sharing this project and this idea with everybody and we hope that everyone is excited to keep tabs on what we're doing and the development of it. We'll be getting into more detail on our goals and our timeline and lots and lots more in upcoming episodes. For now, people can check us out and track what's going on at harvestgate.org

Zack: That's correct.

Greg: And we're currently on what social media?

Zack: We are on Facebook and Instagram for the time being.

Greg: And definitely more to come in the future.

Zack: Yea.

Greg: Alright, thanks very much for listening.

Zack: Had fun!

Greg: Follow us on social media @HarvestGateNetwork

Zack: There are several ways you can engage with us and support Harvest Gate at harvestgate.org

Greg: You can subscribe to the Harvest Gate podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. If you are as excited as we are about this project, please consider sharing it with the people in your life.

Zack: Thanks for listening to the Harvest Gate podcast. Connecting faith to families, communities and marketplaces.

#Columbus #HarvestGate #ConnectingFaith #Episode1

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mellenwood · 5 years

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Deprivation in Writing: Extended Edition

In class we watched an interview with William Maxwell, who wrote So Long, See You Tomorrow and many other works. The interviewer asked him what he thinks makes a good writer. His response is what struck me. “Deprivation or some loss makes a good writer.”

As a young boy William lost his mother and he drew from that in writing So Long, See You Tomorrow. He writes about a young boy who loses his mother and the pain that came with it. He explains how the shine goes out of everything (Maxwell, 1996, pg. 7). The boy’s father remarries, which also parallels with Maxwell’s life. The book turns to a different family and their story and takes on the point of view of many other characters. In his interview, Maxwell went on to explain that he couldn’t put his life back together or the way it was before, so he put it together in the pages of a book.

There is a lot of inspiration to be drawn from with deprivation or loss. As an amateur writer, I often think of writing about what I have lost to make sense of it. On one hand, I know there is a goldmine of information in my head about it, but on the other, I am terrified of all the feelings that I have buried will come back up. It is seldom that it gets brought up and I don’t cry or at least feel like I am about to. It took me a long time to even acknowledge that it was a part of my story, and I still do not like to bring it up or talk about it. In fact, not many of my college friends know about it, but here it goes.

When I was in the 7th grade my aunt was diagnosed with Stage III-C ovarian cancer, it was absolutely devastating. She had surgery and they got most of it. That kind of cancer is hard to get all of it, so the doctors did the best they could. It created a layer on the organs but doesn’t show up on MRI’s until there was a lot. She would have about a year without chemo, but then something would pop up on the scans. About two months after that my grandma was diagnosed with Stage III-C breast cancer. She also underwent surgery which was labeled as successful. My grandma was about 3 months short of being in remission when it came back in her bones. More surgeries and more rounds of chemo later, they were doing as okay as possible. Then came the five-year mark from the fateful diagnosis day, and cancer reared its ugly head and came back with vengeance.

It was my senior year of high school when it attacked my grandma’s brain and took her from reality to some alternate world. I was the only one who could comfort her when she became afraid or unsure of what was happening. Many nights were spent at her house helping my grandpa and staying up with her till she fell asleep. She fought though, until the very end. I will never deny that fact, but on September 30, 2016 the cancer won. The cancer attacked my aunt’s organs and stomach lining. She was tired all the time and didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. She was the most gracious, servant’s hearted person I have ever known. She was in the hospital at the very end because she couldn’t eat or swallow. She fought too, however, on November 14, 2016, it beat her too.

I unfortunately, do not remember most of my senior year because I was just trying to get through it and make my grandma as comfortable as possible. I just wanted to graduate, finish my senior year, and be done with it all. My brother was the only one who truly understood what I was going through, yet we never talked about anything. We just had a mutual understanding of being there for one another. My friends and teachers tried to help with their words of comfort, but when grieving those words fall flat. Reading books really helped me, I specifically remember reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green at least 5 times during my senior year. It was the only book that touched on the topic that was realistic, which helped me work through some feelings. Another thing I also remember is going to the gym a lot with my volleyball coach and just hitting balls over the net on repeat and shooting hoops with my brother. No talking just leaving it all on the court. The adrenaline helped me have bursts of happiness and it got out all of my stress and anger.

Not everything about my senior year was totally crappy. I started dating my now husband in 2017, who came into my life at the perfect time. I also got accepted to Bethel and was able to tell my grandma and aunt, had the first winning season in girls’ basketball in the history of the school, and most importantly, started healing. Looking back now it is still really hard, but I am in a much happier place. As my mom says, I got my laugh back. Sure, things still come up that make me think of them like coconut or pina colada scented lotions or hand sanitizers, or the smell of a wood-burning heater, but it is mostly happy memories of them.

Another the reason I connected with So Long, See You Tomorrow was when Maxwell was describing how the boy felt when his mother died. “The worst that could happen had happened, the shine went out of everything” (Maxwell, 1996, pg. 7). This described how I felt when I lost my grandma and aunt perfectly. They were some of the most influential women in my life and I did not know how to go on without them by my side. The world seemed to stop turning and everything came crashing down. The shine going out is the best description that I have come across to describe how it truly feels to lose someone close to you.

When the boy’s father tells him he is going to remarry, he was as gentle as possible (Maxwell, 1996, pg. 15). This is how my grandfather was with me when he told me he was going to remarry. I was coming home from a blueberry festival in Marshall, Michigan when I got the phone call. He asked me to come over whenever I got back. I did not know what to expect when I arrived. My grandpa was nervous when he was telling me, unsure of how I would react when he told me the news. I took the news as best as can be expected. I was happy for him, but also sad. I understood that he wanted to be happy and move on, but it seemed fast. In October of 2017, he got married. The wedding was really hard. I could see how happy he was, but I couldn’t help but remember my grandma. It was hard for Sharon’s kids too. They lost their dad and seeing her remarry was difficult for them also. Sharon did not force herself onto us as our grandma. She understood that she was not replacing our grandma. She actually makes sure that we are invited to family events and makes sure that we are doing well. She was just there for us if we needed much like the boy’s stepmother (Maxwell, 1996, pg. 16).

Now that I put most of what I went through on paper, I do feel a lot better like it is off of my chest. It is hard to get started when writing about these experiences, but once I started the words just kept flowing out of me. Writing this has helped me put my life back together in some ways similar to how Maxwell described his reason for writing. I have all of the facts out there so now it is just the emotions which are a lot harder to write. Not only because it’s a lot of description but also because I have not processed all of them yet. I have to agree with William Maxwell, if writers didn’t have any loss at some point in their lives, their books would fall flat. They wouldn’t connect with the readers because it would seem fake. Readers can tell when an author is trying too hard to make something meaningful. They want authenticity.

Everyone experiences some sort of deprivation at least some point in their lives. It is a human thing to experience. Writers feel grief deeper and use it to draw inspiration rather than wallow in self-pity and let it consume them. Although happiness is generally the preferred emotion, grief or loss is what fuels us to write something meaningful.

#deprivation #writing

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maren-reads-books · 5 years

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Pulp by Robin Talley

In 1955 Janet Jones lives a normal life. She works at the soda shoppe a couple blocks from home, spends time with her grandmother and plans to go off to college when summer ends. But Janet is keeping part of her life a secret. Janet is in love with her best friend Marie and the feelings are mutual. But living as a gay person in Washington DC is a dangerous life, forcing their love to be kept hidden at all costs. When Janet discovers a genre of books that contains women just like her, she longs to be one of the strong independent women from her stories and live her life the way she wants, away from all the hiding. As her feelings for Marie only grow, Janet longs to publish her own story but in a world where she could ruin lives by being found out, Janet and Marie must be extra careful to avoid the dangers of exposing their love.

In 2017 Abby Zimet fits the mold of your typical high school student. Helping out her schools GSA, going to political protests with friends and crushing hard on her ex-girlfriend. Although her friends all have college in their sights all Abby can think about is how much she wants to get back with Lihn and how her parents never seem to be in the house together anymore. When Abby is forced to choose a topic for her senior project, it seems a no brainer. 1950’s lesbian pulp fiction. After reading through many books she discovers “The Women of the Twilight Realm” by a woman named Marian Love. Abby finds herself absorbed in the book as it calls out to her as she identifies splinters of her own life within the pages. As Abby’s time gets more absorbed by her mission to meet the author of her favorite book, her life outside the fictional world seems to be falling apart. Her parents are never home, her little brother is getting into fights, her grades are falling behind and her tensions with Lihn only seems to be growing. Will Abby be able to crack the secrets of this book and its author? Or will her real life pull her away from the story?

—SPOILERS—

Honestly, let me tell you. I liked this book. A lot. I did have some issues with it as you do with any book, even the ones you love, but overall this was a beautiful story, and honestly, who does love lesbians? Y'all know I'm weak for time changes and flashbacks so this book made me hella happy. Janet was an amazing character and the relevance of current events during that time period was really well incorporated into her perspective and they served as real-life obstacles in a mostly fictional story. And then there is Abby. Oh Abby, my dear sweet girl. I felt her pining for Linh deep in my heart, a full mood right there. I love Abby’s character, her perspective especially while she's reading, is hilarious because those are some of the exact same thoughts that I have while I'm reading, especially when it’s a romance. And oh, when she found out that Janet Jones had died, my heart sank, I was so looking forward to the meeting and having it out as writers of queer stories and as kindred spirits. I was so disappointed too because I wanted to learn more about her life. And initially, I had some suspicions that she wasn't really dead, she just faked her death in order to run away with Marie and live their lives together in peace. Which I later found out was mostly accurate (yay me) except for the part about Marie which I felt extra bad about because I can’t imagine having to live my entire life in the closet. It’s a scary thought. But Abby’s character was so important to me, especially when Abby had that moment with her brother. When they were talking about what was happening with her parents, that moment was really really important, especially because it’s true. You always feel like it's your fault, like if you did something different, if you were better, then things wouldn't have turned out the way they did. I think that's huge after we had just seen Janet blaming herself for her grandmother having a heart attack. These parallels are so important to the storyline and how these two characters connect. But on another topic, I agree with Janet. It was, is, and will be so unfair for so many people. Doesn't matter where you live. There will always be that little voice in the back of your head wishing you to be normal. To fit into the perfect societal mold but it's not going to happen and this book really brings their situation to light and I think that it’s really important that people recognize the struggles that people went through. When she was talking to Marie about faking her death, it just made the whole situation so much more serious and really addressed how scared these women were of the consequences of living their lives. The scene was truly heartbreaking because what she feared the most was coming true. She was leaving everything and everyone she loved behind, a thing she only thought happened in the books she loved so dearly. It was truly heart-wrenching. But in the end when Abby got to meet Janet I was so happy. Although I felt more could have been done with the scene I thought the book ended really well, and when Abby found her inspiration and her character I really felt that as an aspiring author, it’s a wonderful feeling. Overall I loved this book, it was a wonderful weaving of issues from the past and present and has wonderfully written characters that are definitely going to make you fall in love with the story.

-maren

#pulp #robin talley #booklover #book review #books #bookworm #maren reads #ya book review #ya books #ya novels #ya #booknerd #ya lgbt #lgbtyouth #lgbt romance #lgbtq books #ya romance

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fratboyfaith · 5 years

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coming out!

okay, so, maybe i should start at the beginning?

yeah, okay. here we go.

history

as far back as I can remember, i’ve had crushes. like, almost an abnormal amount for such a young kid ahahah. want proof? every year of school I had a crush on at least one person, holy fuck. good god, i would have so many crushes on these random boys i never even talked to and i’d be in a constant dreamy state due to it.

i would watch movies and dream of experiencing the same things those women (who are literally faking love) portray on television.

i had my real first kiss at 5, with a girl

actually, she was the furthest I ever went with anyone, later on.

my “first kiss”, you know, the one that’s ‘the first’ as a pre-teen where it’s all awkward and shit, i had behind a library at 14

but when he kissed me, or rather, when I grabbed his face and kissed him because he was too hesitant to make the first move…

i felt nothing.

you know in movies, books, for god’s sake even songs, that thing…that tingle? apparently there’s this tingle you’re supposed to get? or that feeling you get when you’re with someone you ‘like-like’ -since we’re talking about 14 year olds

I didn’t feel that attraction, I didn’t feel anything. when we dated for a short period of time — the way grade nines do, you know — i felt nothing.

I mean, I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with him, we hadn’t known each other that long, but when I say nothing happened, like I didn’t feel a single thing. before, during, and after.

we broke up a few days later due to my lack of affection, and of course the fact that he wanted someone else.

when we broke up, I didn’t get mad, didn’t get upset, didn’t feel anything.

I was just trying to follow the ‘normal teenager’ thing to do.

being 14, i just wanted to be as normal as possible.

experience

so then, i kept trying.

because to a 14 year old a boyfriend was such a big priority.

i made friends with a nice boy, we’re still friends to this day

what a great guy he is, and i’m honestly so glad he found someone he can spend his life with

we hit it off back the same year, 2014, everything was great

but then something shut off.

that was the start of me thinking there was something legitimately wrong with me for 6 years

right before we were about to date,

my whole opinion of him changed in literally in a blink.

like, it all shut off, that feeling… like, the attraction?

so, since all those feelings just *disappeared*, so did I out of his life.

this was a continuous thing from grade 9 to present day, ever since I started dating.

every single time I would go out with a guy, within days I would lose all feelings

and the weird part was that it never bothered me.

I never felt sad for losing feelings.

they just switched off as soon as we got close.

and the whole time, I thought there was always something wrong with me

like, there was nothing wrong with these people, most of my ex’s are quality* people!

*although there was one guy I dated who threatened me and told me to “drop dead” bc i broke up with him due to this ‘problem’ I thought I had. so that wasn’t really cool tbh

I kept trying so hard to find someone who I didn’t instantly lose feelings for as soon as we got close

i went through 27 people, in those 6 years, and every single one I lost feelings for instantly either right before being asked to be their girlfriend, or days after we started dating.

i always thought there was something wrong about me, and i hated myself for it.

i resorted to ghosting to every person who tried to get to my heart because the feelings were never mutual in my case,

for 6 years i ghosted so many people — even before it was called ghosting

and looking back now I can acknowledge that it was so wrong to do that…if I had the mind i did when i was 14 and started experiencing this, i wouldn’t of resorted to ghosting.

but the idea of spending one more single day with a person i had lost all feelings for... to the point where it would make me uncomfortable to even be near them, was too much for me to handle.

so i broke up with the past partners, and ghosted the could-have-beens, so i wasn’t feeling this horrible discomfort, and i didn’t want to lie to them and fake my feelings for their happiness... because in my eyes that’s worse.

2018 me would have totally given an explanation bc ghosting is not cool at all.

i just shut out their feelings, because mine were already gone prior.

being i didn’t know what was ‘wrong’ with me, this was the only option in my eyes.

fast forward to last year (2017)

i met someone, we really clicked well, everything was going great, he showed me the classiness of dating that no one had shown me before

but it still happened (gosh darn)

I lost every feeling that i was trying so hard to hold onto

but no matter how hard my grip was, it always slipped out of my fingers.

obviously now i see that ghosting is such a dick move lol

so i actually gave him an explanation! he became the first guy I came out to! (further on the coming out part in like 5 or 6 sentences i know this is so long)

realization

in october 2017 i started digging deep into how i function as a person and trying to learn more about who i am..

i started to research a little, but gave up quickly.

like how do you try and explain in the google search bar that every time anyone tries to get close with you, you lose all feelings and shut them out instantly?

then it hit me

my voice in my head literally said to me ‘oh shit what if i’m asexual’

i spent the next 72 hours in my room researching everything about asexuality.

i found out there’s nothing wrong with me, and holy fuck was that a weight of my shoulders.

i discovered so much information and found out there are so many different kinds of asexuality.

the way ash hardell explained it in such depth... it’s like everything made sense. it’s like when she gave the definition for lithromantic/sexual it was about me.

i was so relieved, man you have no idea how relieved i was.

all of a sudden this ‘problem’ i had wasn’t a problem.

november 3rd 2017 to my mom, dad, and my best friend of 7 years, I came out as asexual.

i was so scared. like, usually i never get nervous. tests? exams? psh, if anything i’m too laidback and unworried.

my mom said to me “life can be just as fulfilling without having to get married or date, you can have amazing friends and support without a significant other” she was so accepting and supportive.

my Conservative Christian father told me “well, maybe you haven’t met the right boy yet that’s all”

lol what the fuck

it’s like… if a man comes out as gay, and someone were to say “maybe you haven’t met the right girl yet that’s all”

funny enough, even when I told my close friend —at the time— who was coincidentally homosexual, he said the same thing to me, which baffles me because I would have thought him all people would understand the difficulty of coming out and having everyone judge you because you’re different.

and furthermore, for the next month, that "you just haven’t met the right guy” quote was all I heard from everyone.

i went silent for a year.

every person i told, granted it was only a few of close friends and my parents, told me the same thing.

pretty sure only one person didn’t use that line on me, so thanks anGeLiNa ilysm <3

lesson: if someone is coming out don’t say shit like

“maybe you just haven’t met the perfect guy yet”

bc if they’ve gone through the difficulty of this, they’re probably PRETTY SURE that’s not gonna be the ‘cure-all’ remedy.

for a year I held my tongue even though I knew the truth about myself, I was afraid of being stigmatized or told the same thing everyone else did.

until a few days ago, i was in this state of holding it all in for 13 months.

i was unsure if i should tell my new college friends, i was worried no one would like me. i feared stigmatization, i feared guys would think i was a prude

i didn’t want to spend all my time trying to explain a sexual orientation i didn’t even 100% understand myself

I always liked the concept of falling in love, it used to be all I’d think about when I was younger

I see young couples holding hands walking in stores or down the street and i sigh because i wish i had that.

the concept of love really got me.

I would still have these crushes too, but I would never pursue them just because I never had an interest to.. and when I would, I would lose feelings instantly because deep within I never wanted intimacy.

so in my sociology class last week, asexuality was the topic we were learning, and with that it brought everything back

like a year hadn’t even passed.

but this time i was determined for some answers.

when I came out to my family and keona (to me, she is also family) I was still hesitant… for god’s sake I was hesitant until yesterday.

I didn’t like the feeling of this label making me *doomed to never love* as I still like the concept of love

but I needed to be honest with what i really want

when I’m in a relationship, i’m not happy.

romantic reciprocation towards me makes me uncomfortable, it’s just who I am.

so why force it if it’s something i truly do not want?

it doesn’t make me sad anymore, it used to. I always liked the idea of dating having an S/O, but in reality, deep within, for me.. I do not want that. I simply like the idea. I can’t change me, as soon as I discovered asexuality, i no longer saw it as problem anymore — if anything it takes soooooooo much pressure off.

so yeah,

I still get attracted to guys. (and girls oooo fun additional tidbit)

still get crushes.

still walk by people and look them up and down bc damn hello *wink*

yeah i get horny i’m not a nun

yeah, i have a great personal sexual life

i’m not a fucking robot lol

yeah i’ll still flirt with you for fun

simply put: I just don’t want to be romantically or sexually close with someone else.

I have no desire to, and I’m okay with that

I’m still learning all of this as I go along,

i have wonderful friends who support and love me and that is all I could ever ask for <3

i don’t see the high point of my life to be having kids or getting married tbh, i don’t actually even see that ever happening.

no, life isn’t lonely, I love my solitude and I gain so much positivity and love from my family, friends, and the people around me.

yesterday (dec 10th) i finally accepted myself — after countless years of trying to do something i’m not programmed to do.

i’m asexual/aromantic

literally am the same person as i was yesterday, last week, and last year

all this is, is a label and an event of acceptance of myself

not changing anything about myself

I am simple acknowledging who i am, and letting it be known, so I can further accept it myself and grow ♡

with doing this, I feel SOOOOO good oh my GOD

this was such a happy thing for me to write! this is a day of freaking celebration!

like, i don’t have to keep trying be something i’m not and it feels wonderful

i can finally start focusing on my version of happiness instead of trying to accomplish the traditional happiness…which ironically never made me happy.

my #1 girl is named faith and i’m focusing on her happiness, and this was a big acceptance chapter I needed to get through in order for her to flourish further.

thank you for reading!

tbh i’m not even going to proofread this so if there’s spelling mistakes my uPmOsT aPoLogiEs~

#asexual #lithromantic #lithsexual #lith #akoisexual #akoiromantic #ace #comingout

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