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halcyonstorm · 3 years

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The Girl at the Library Chapter 1

Short Fic - Levihan

Themes: College AU, Library, Fluff, Slow Burn, Falling in Love, Female Hange Zoe, Student!Levi

Word Count: 5730

Chapter: 1/3

Warning: Mild Language

Read on Ao3 - The Girl at the Library

Summary: Levi is a college student who needs help on his research paper. Luckily, Hange is a book worm and works at the library.

Levi was stressed and annoyed, mainly because he was in college. Of course with college comes infinite amounts of homework assignments, 100-question exams with astronomical amounts of topics on them, unnecessary research papers, and staying in a dorm room with a kid that happens to have no problem inviting his friends over every night to hang out and party with no regards to his sullen roommate.

Levi had a paper coming up. He had to come up with a topic, find sources, and finish his paper by the end of the semester. With three weeks left to go, he decided he’d rather get it over with. He began his brainstorming in the study lounge at the center of his dormitory floor. He was starting to stress. He sat on the big yellow leather couch in the way-too-bright study lounge with his laptop in his lap. He tapped his pen against his head as he tried to think of an idea.

“You have to write about a topic related to your major,” The professor explained. “This is the one and only paper you will have assigned this semester. I suggest you get it done as early as possible.”

If only it were that easy. He had the rubric pulled up in one tab, and a ton of “How to pick a research topic” websites in others. His major was pharmaceuticals, a field he was inspired to take on because of his mother. She was very ill when he was very young, so they were in and out of hospitals. He was sitting on the edge of his mother’s hospital bed when a nurse came in the room to administer her medications.

“This is…” His memory was blurry. “This medication will help… and make you feel better.” And it did. 9 year old Levi was fascinated. This one little pill or bag of what looked like water helped his mother feel better. Within hours, his mother’s skin went from pallor to beige. Her hands were warmer. She looked more awake, more alive. She didn’t wince at Levi’s touch. She was in less pain. She got better, like the nurse predicted.

Since then, Levi always asked questions whenever they visited the hospitals again and again. “What kind of drug is that?” “What does it do?” “How long does it take to take effect?”

Levi recalled the memory with a deep sigh. He missed his mother. She was at home, not too far away. Levi never had the time to travel the hour through the big city to visit her. When he did have free time, he spent it studying or sleeping. He felt his heart twinge at this. She had sacrificed everything to help him attend college and to give him a good life.

Now with his head cloudy, he went to reach his water bottle in his backpack. He opened the lid and took a sip. At that moment, he could hear some obnoxiously loud students throwing tennis balls back and forth to each other. He recognized these kids too, they were some (of many) of the lovely visitors his roommate had over most nights. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, Levi’s water bottle spilled all over his laptop, a tennis ball on the floor next to him, and some worried voices approaching him. Within seconds, the laptop started to steam and the screen went black.

His laptop was fried, he determined. He felt heat start to rise inside of him.

“Oh my god, man. I am so sorry,” One of the kids said, trying to hold back a laugh.

“Yeah, man. We didn’t mean to.”

Levi took a deep breath and stood up. These kids… were gonna pay.

He closed his broken laptop and stood up. These kids were much taller than him, but looked to be easily intimidated by Levi’s presence.

“Do you have the money to pay for this?” He sneered, getting very close to their faces.

“Eh… no, but we have jobs! We can pay you back over time,” One of the kids trailed off. They seemed to be intimidated by the short man. “You live in 112 right?”

Levi nodded, his face heating up with anger. “This laptop cost me a lot of money.”

“We get it, man! We said we’re sorry,” the other kid explained. “We’ll pay you back or whatever.”

“Tch,” Levi clicked. He was extremely pissed. These kids should not be throwing balls at each other in the hallway. Also, they spilled his water which made a mess. “Which room are you both in?” They responded with 118. The one kid explained they get paid on the 15th and 30th of each month. Luckily, their pay day was 4 days away.

“I’ll stop by Tuesday, the 16th,” Levi decided, before gathering his things and heading to the stairs. He began to walk through the campus. Fuck, now where was he gonna go? How was he gonna find his topics? His computer was fucked. Putting it in rice wouldn’t have helped. He was so occupied having a debate with himself about where to research, he almost missed it. If he looked the other way or even blinked in that moment, he wouldn’t have seen it. It was the campus library. No, not the campus library, but a campus library. It blended into the surroundings, hidden from the passerbyers. There was a sign in the window “We’re Open!”.

The library was small, to say the least. It was old fashioned, which contrasted the modern aesthetic of the university. It was a small, dark brown, wooden building with four-pane windows. The door was a lighter shade of brown. He decided it was easier to check out this little library instead of walking another 10 minutes to get to the main library. He didn’t have time to waste. He had to get started with his paper right away. He walked up to the door and opened it. When he did, a little bell rang at the doorway.

“Just a minute!” A woman’s voice called from the back. Levi decided to wander around. There were many books crammed on the shelves. There were two computers on each side when he walked in. They looked out of place, considering they were very modern compared to the architecture of the library itself. The books were all shades of bright, vibrant colors. It was strange. From the outside, it seemed creepy and gloomy. Once he walked in, it was very cozy. The dark walls of the library contrasted the beautiful colors of the books.

Then, he saw the woman come out. She came up to the desk. He expected an elderly lady with her glasses on a chain, but he assumed this woman was a student. She was a young woman who wore thin oval glasses and her brown hair thrown up in a messy half-up-half-down ponytail.

“Hi!” The woman said. “How can I help you?”

“I want to use a computer, please,” He announced. He glanced at her nametag which hung like a necklace around her neck. “Hange” was the name on the tag. It was strange and unordinary, but it had a nice ring to it. The name seemed to suit her.

“Sure! You are allowed up to two hours a day,” Hange explains. “You can choose whichever computer you’d like.”

The computers were unoccupied. In fact, the entire library seemed vacant except for him and the employee.

“Does anyone actually come here?” Levi asked, setting his stuff down next to a desk, and looking her way. She looked like someone who would work at a library.

The brunette chuckled. “You are my third visitor today!” She exclaimed proudly. It was already about 3pm. He remembered the sign in the front says “12pm-6pm weekdays”.

Levi chuckled silently, air huffed out his nose. “How do you stay in business?”

“Well, the university thinks it’s good to have a small library in the outskirts of the campus so students have access to books and computers because the main campus library is in the center of the plaza. Sometimes we get about ten people a day, and sometimes they don’t even take anything out. Sometimes I wonder how…” She began to ramble now. She definitely has not had anyone else visit her today.

She was starting to get on his nerves. It’s been 20 minutes since he arrived, and she was still talking. He zoned out until she caught his attention.

“Hey,” She said. “What’s your name? I have to track whoever comes in to use the computers.”

Why? No one else comes in. He noticed her clipboard with the sign-ins was blank.

“Levi Ackerman,” He announced. She scribbled his name down. “Okay, it’s 3:30 now, so you have till 5:30 if needed.” She pointed to the clock with her pen as she explained. He nodded and proceeded to walk towards the table with the computer he claimed. He sat down and began working.

He was an hour into his research when he finally threw his hands up in the air in frustration. He still couldn’t think of a topic. He groaned aloud.

Hange was leaning against the main desk, her nose stuck in a book. “How Trees Communicate” was the title. When she heard the young man groan, she looked up.

“Is everything okay?” She asked, peering over her book at him.

“Yeah, yeah,” He mumbled. “Fine…”

Hange raised an eyebrow. She placed her bookmark at her spot, then strolled around the desk and walked over to him.

“What are you working on?” She asked, sitting in the seat next to him and put her hands on her knees, looking at him curiously. He scoffs. It was none of her business, he thought to himself. And it’s an invasion of privacy.

He was frustrated and desperate. Hoping for a miracle, he managed to tell her anyways.

“I need a topic for my paper and I can’t think of any…” Levi began. “It needs to be based on pharmaceuticals, my major. It also needs scientific evidence to back up my research…”

She was fully absorbed in what he had to say. She was bored, so helping Levi would’ve been something to do at least. Besides, Levi was in luck. She was an avid reader, always reading about anything and everything. She was studying plants and botanicals, but she found herself frequently taking out books about cooking; religion; war; animals; and medical topics including surgery, pathophysiology, anatomy, and pharmaceuticals.

“What about how diuretics affect blood pressure?” Hange suggested. Levi was taken aback. His eyebrows furrowed, and he shook his head in confusion. “Or if anti-alzheimer drugs actually help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s? Why do you take different medications during certain stages of Alzheimer’s disease? Or how do anti-seizure medications work? That is something I ask myself all the time. You take this little pill and BOOM! You’ll be fine, no seizure! Oh, oh, oh! Or, how certain medications cause certain adverse effects? How come so many medications cause anxiety?” Her eyes started to light up as she talked. They were a dark brown, but when she started to talk, they seemed to morph to a captivating hazel. He felt he could see every color in her eyes. He saw brown and green and the little lines of her iris. Hange’s hands would move as she talked, and her smile grew wide. She couldn’t keep still. She was getting excited by coming up with all these ideas. She seemed so passionate and so willing to help; he was overwhelmed by her.

Levi was in shock. His day started off horrible. Now, he was almost glad his laptop was fucked. This woman was making his mind race with ideas.

“Are you okay?” Hange asked for the second time within his visit there. Levi nodded slowly. “I am just… How do you know all that? Are you a med student?”

Hange chuckled and waved her hand at him. “No… I am a bookworm! Also, my mom is a nurse, so she used to teach me about nursing stuff all the time. Oh! You could write about the pathophysiology of anticholinergics! Or beta blockers! Or how the body reacts to the use of long-term steroids?”

Levi took a deep breath. He felt euphoric. He had been casually trying to think of topics since last week. All of a sudden, this woman can just ramble off hundreds of ideas? Levi smiled visibly.

“Actually… I really like the final topic you suggested. About steroids.” Levi admitted.

Hange smiled back at him. “Great! I can try to help you find some sources or books.” She directed him to open a new tab and to go to a certain database. “This is where you can find reliable sources. Over here,” She pointed to his screen at the left side. “You can add filters. You can change how old or new you’d like the sources to be, filter out certain words or phrases, et cetera.” She had been closer to him now; she scooted her chair closer so she could explain the database to him. It was hard not to look at her as she explained. She was captivating.

Levi began to type in words for his topic.

“Steroids”, “Long-term use”, “Cushing’s Disease”, “Addison’s Disease”, “Addisonian Crisis”, “Pathophysiology”.

He felt like he was finally getting somewhere. He was finally making progress.

As Levi was walking home, he couldn’t get his mind off that girl. He decided to brainstorm about his topic in his room once he got there. The thing was, though, he couldn’t think of any more ideas. He found it funny. Of course he was full of ideas and inspiration when he visited that library, but now he’s void of any.

Levi’s weekends were no different than the weekdays. He made it appoint to visit the library again the next day, Saturday. It was a sunny, cool Saturday morning. Levi had inspiration to write. He needed a computer and Hange’s ideas. When he arrived, it seemed busy. There were three other patrons at the library. He recognized Hange right away, helping a tall blonde man with a big nose. He wondered if she was the only employee there. The man she was helping was taller than her, so she had to reach up on her toes to point to items. She was an average height, but this action made her seem shorter than she actually was.

Hange looked his way and greeted him with a toothy smile. Levi waved at her and started to head down one of the aisles of books. He was in the nonfiction section, but was lost. For now, he just casually browsed the section, but quickly got impatient. He needed Hange’s help to find books for this paper. He heard her laugh with the patron. Maybe he’s a friend, he thought to himself. Her laugh was airy and full of heart. It seemed genuine and passionate. Levi felt an urge to make her laugh, too.

She finally made her way over to him. Levi was looking down at a book when she caught his eye. “Hey, stranger!” She greeted him with a wave. “Whatcha looking for?” She placed her hands on her hips.

“I’m trying to find some sources for my paper. Steroids is the topic,” Levi explained.

“Oh, right. I remember! After you left last night, I tried to look for some books for your topic,” She said. She was trying to help me? Levi thought to himself.

She curled her finger in a “follow me” gesture and he did. She brought him to another aisle or two over from where they were. “These are the 600’s, where you’ll most likely find what you’re looking for. I found a book or two about Addison’s disease, but it’s more of a memoir. You can look around though if you’d like. Anything in the 610’s should be right up your alley.” She explained as if she was going to leave, but she didn’t. Hange looked for books with him.

After a moment, she made a noise. “Look at this!” She exclaimed. She reached next to him to reach for a book. She was on her toes again. “Mmmm,” She moaned as she tried to reach. “Actually, I’m gonna get the step stool. I don’t think I can reach it.” Quickly, she left and came back with the stool. It looked unreliable, but Levi was sure he’d be able to prevent any accident from occurring. Hange placed it on the ground and stepped up on it, grabbing the book with ease. She stepped down with the book in her hand. This book had a white cover with a blue label and was titled “Coping with Prednisone”. Levi was surprised she even knew what prednisone was.

“Here!” She reached it out for him to grab. He took it and looked at her face. She had that same look in her eyes. “Did you want to use the computer?” He nodded and she led him towards the front of the library. The library was small from the outside, but very deep inside. It reminded him of a forest.

“I got your name, don’t worry,” She said, clicking her pen and writing his name down on the sheet.

“Oops!” Hange made a quick grimace. “I added an ‘e’ at the end. I’ll just cross it out.” The statement sounded like it was addressed to herself rather than to anyone else. She crossed out the extra letter.

“Ackermane”. Levi was gonna attempt to make her laugh.

“If you thought I looked like a horse you could’ve just said so.”

Mane, horse mane. Get it?

It felt like forever before Hange responded. She looked up at him, starting to laugh. It was a short but audible laugh. Her head nodded back and she smiled. Her cheeks turned pink and her eyes lit up for a moment. It made his heart skip a beat. It was a bad joke yet she still laughed. She chuckled. Giggled? No. Laughed lightly. Chortled? Maybe that’s the right word. Whatever it was, he wanted to do it more, maybe even more than that.

He followed her to the computers. The blonde guy she was helping earlier was on one computer. She led him to the two computers across from the other ones and sat down in the chair next to him.

“What are you doing?” Levi asked, placing the book she found for him on the table.

Her eyebrows raised, and after a moment she reacted. She waved her hands in front of her.

“I’m sorry! I thought you may have needed help. I should get back to work anyway. I gotta go through a new box of books that just came in.”

Levi looked up at her. Is she blushing? he asked himself.

“I’ll let you know if I need help.” Levi responded. She smiled at him before quickly walking away.

He started to find some evidence-based practice articles about how steroids can cause long-term side effects, especially if stopped abruptly. He made sure to keep the tabs available. He’d have to cite them later. Levi’s mind was racing with words and sentences and ideas. He had to get them down on paper. He opened Documents on the computer and started typing away.

The clicking of the keyboard soothed him. He was a pretty fast typer, he didn’t make many mistakes either. The library around him began to become quiet as his typing got louder and he got deeper in thought. Before he knew it, his two hours were up. He felt someone approach him from his right.

“Hey,” Hange said, gently tapping the table next to him. “It’s 2pm. I gotta close up.”

Levi snapped out of his focused trance with a quick head shake. “Right. Sorry.” He pulled out a flash drive from his backpack and plugged it into the computer. He transferred his document. “I got the first page done.”

Levi asked himself for a brief moment why he was sharing this information with someone he just met. Maybe since she helped him, he felt she should know.

“That’s great! It seemed like you were really focused,” Hange said, walking away to shut off some lights. Only then did he notice the white noise of the overhead lights quickly dissipate. The room buzzed with silence now. Levi and Hange were alone in the library. Suddenly, Levi felt nervous. He watched Hange walk around the room frantically, making sure to shut off all the lights and computers. She grabbed a bag. The bag was a fabric material with a patchwork design that had a long strap that hung on on her shoulder. Maybe she made it herself. She grabbed her big mess of keys and walked towards him.

“Ready?” She said. He nodded and walked outside, holding the door for her. She thanked him, locking the door behind her. They began to walk down the street slowly.

“Want to grab lunch?” Hange asked, looking at him. Levi looked back at her. She looked pretty.

“Sure, I can eat.” Hange chuckled at that. He didn’t try, but it made her happy for a brief moment. He seemed nervous but she was too.

They decided to eat at a cute restaurant on campus called “Life in Paradis”. It was a small, dainty place with a green and yellow checkered awning. The building was made of yellow brick, and the door was bright green. There were flower pots outside on the windowsill. Again, this place seemed totally out of place in the modern aesthetic of the university.

“This place is adorable!” Hange exclaimed. “I love the food here. You’ll love it too. They have all kinds of food here.” Levi felt a smile grow on his face. The way she talked made his heart flutter. She was always so passionate. They entered and got a table for two. This is not a date, Levi kept telling himself. Then why were his cheeks red?

They sat down and looked through a menu. Levi wasn’t extremely hungry even though he hadn’t had anything but tea this morning. He peered over his menu to look at the girl. Her hair was different today, he determined. Today all her hair was in a ponytail, and it was higher on her head. She wore a light yellow button-down with a long, light blue cardigan. Hange caught him staring at her and blushed.

“What would you two like to order?” The waitress asked him first.

“I’m gonna get a sandwich, I think,” He said, crossing his arms across his chest. “Turkey sub.” “I think I’m gonna get a chicken caesar salad,” Hange said. He nodded, grabbed the menus, and walked away.

Hange began to talk about how beautiful the flowers outside the restaurant were. They were all variants of pink, purple, yellow, and red. She described the petals and the leaves, the flowers’ origins, and all the meanings of the flowers. Levi wasn’t annoyed by her tangent this time. He actively listened to this girl talk about what fascinated her so much. He found it soothing. It made him wonder how her brain can contain all the information she was spewing at him. He enjoyed watching the way her eyes lit up when she talked. The beautiful green that blossomed at the bottom of her irises when the light hit her eyes at the right angle. The way her lips curled into a big smile when she talked to him. Her cheeks flush to a light pink when she describes the petals of the flowers or how flowers were used to express feelings when words cannot. It made his heart race.

“Levi,” Hange said. Her affect was the opposite of earlier when she was rambling. She wore a frown on her face, feeling guilty.“I’ve been rambling… sorry. It’s such a bad habit of mine. I can talk for hours and hours.”

“Don’t apologize, four-eyes,” Levi replied, leaning his elbows and forearms on the table in a crossed position. Hange smiled at him. Levi meant it. She shouldn’t apologize for talking, especially if it’s about something she loves. The food had arrived at the table. They ate. Levi felt the need to open up to her about something. He already learned so much about her, and her presence made him feel like he can open up.

“I like to run,” Levi said abruptly. Hange looked at him intently, chewing on a forkful of salad. “I don’t do it competitively or anything, but I enjoy running. I try to run once or twice a day.” Hange’s eyebrows raised and she nodded in agreement.

“That’s awesome!” She smiled again at him. “I like to run too. I’m really slow and get tired easily, but I enjoy feeling the wind in my hair and feeling my heart pound.” She took a bite of her meal again. Levi nodded and began to eat too. This sandwich was really good.

After talking some more about hobbies and school, they both finished their meal. The waiter brought over the check. Hange reached into her pocket for her wallet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Levi asked. Hange furrowed her brows.

“I invited you out to lunch. I will pay,” Hange determined, her wallet now in her hands.

“No,” Levi said too quickly. “I will pay. It’s the least I can do. You helped me with my paper after all.”

The bickering lasted a very long minute. Before she got to think of the idea, Levi grabbed the checkbook and shoved his card inside before handing it to the waiter. Hange looked surprised. She sighed, putting her wallet away.

“Thank you, Levi. But you really didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to.”

In all honesty, Hange didn’t have much money. She worked at that library four times a week, but the money she made went towards paying off her tuition. She really wanted to treat this man, her new friend. She wasn’t sure if he thought the same way about her. Did he consider her his friend? She felt slightly embarrassed. She did most of the talking and felt like she was annoying him. Maybe he just wanted to pay so she would lay off.

But the truth is, Levi felt the opposite way of how she was thinking. He was interested to hear more from her. He was addicted to the way his heart raced when he saw her.

Over the next couple of days, Levi would go to that library whenever he was available. He knew it was closed on Sunday, so he went Monday and Tuesday to the library. Fortunately, he got his first batch of money from the brats that fried his computer. He received $100. Of course it was not enough, but it was a start. Wednesday the 17th came around. This specific day was a wild card. The weather was unpredictable. Levi entered the library just in time; it had started to downpour. The little bell rang as he entered the library. To his surprise, Hange was not working that day. There was a boy behind the counter who was tall and had a brown bowl cut hairstyle. He almost thought about turning around and leaving when he realized she wasn’t there. The rain charged towards the earth viciously, so he decided to seek shelter in the small library. It almost looked like a hurricane. He felt his mood change into a bad one. He didn’t remember to ask how often she worked.

“Hi there!” The man said. His name tag read “Moblit”. That’s a dumb name.

“I wanna use a computer,” Levi muttered, walking up to the main desk.

“Okay. Name?” Moblit grabbed the clipboard and a pen.

“Levi Ackerman.”

“Oh, I see you’ve been here before. A lot, actually.” Levi scoffed and rolled his eyes at his comment. He turned around, picked a computer, and sat down. He felt really stupid to not ask her about her schedule.

The two hours he spent working on his paper was incredibly slow. He didn’t get much done that day. He had writer’s block. He was almost done, so he didn’t worry about it too much. He didn’t know Hange’s schedule. He knew she worked Friday, the day they met; Saturday; Monday, and Tuesday. Maybe she only worked four times a week? Before he knew it, he asked Moblit aloud. It was almost an accident.

“Uh, she’ll be in on Friday,” Moblit replied. He probably couldn’t give out that information to some creep who began visiting daily with an attitude. He muttered a “thanks” before finishing up and heading out. The weather was holding up for now, so he decided to make a run for it. He didn’t say goodbye to Moblit.

He didn’t have an umbrella. The sun was trying to shine through the dark, eerie clouds. It wasn’t trying hard enough. He heard thunder rumbling in the distance.

Levi realized that this girl was all he thought about the past few days. Something about her enticed him. Something about her eyes and her presence drew him towards her. His heart skipped a beat whenever she’d graze his hand on accident, or even when she just talked to him. She made him happy. He hadn’t had too many friends in college. Although they just met last week, he felt a deep connection with her.

Suddenly, the sun poked through the clouds for a brief moment. The world lit up. It was at that moment he recognized a familiar face. Hange. She was walking towards him. She grinned when she saw him. She wore a fitted black t-shirt and baggy, light blue jeans.

“Levi!” She exclaimed. “I forgot my jacket in the library, so I came down to get it.”

“You didn’t tell me you weren’t working today.” Is all Levi said. Once he said it, he realized how creepy it must’ve sounded. A man she just met happens to go to this library to work on his project every day, who happens to come up with multiple reasons to interact with her. Maybe she thought he was a perv.

“Ehh!” She sighed. “I’m sorry! I thought I told you I was off today.” Levi shook his head. The comment itself may have sounded rude, but it wasn’t. She genuinely felt bad. “Walk with me.” Levi followed. Guess not.

“I don’t work Wednesday’s and Thursday’s. Well I’m not supposed to be,” Hange explained. “Mobilt, one of my co-workers, is always calling out sick. So I basically run the place.” They walked towards the library again and entered.

“Hey, Moblit. How’s it going?” Hange said in a normal tone, heading towards the back of the library. Moblit responded briefly, following Hange. Levi decided to hang back, he figured it was a secure area. He looked around awkwardly.

“Hange, you didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend,” Moblit said, following her towards the back.

Hange chuckled nervously. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said bluntly. “He’s just a friend.” Moblit scoffed, rolling his eyes. “If he’s not your boyfriend, how come his mood entirely changed once he saw you?”

Hange found her jacket, folding it over her forearm. “Huh?”

“He was, like, in a bad mood when he came in. He used the computer but he seemed to be pissed or something. Now that he’s with you, he seems… tolerable.”

Hange laughed, feeling her cheeks blush. “It’s nothing like that. People have bad days, you know.”

Hange rolled her eyes and smirked, then headed towards the front of the library. “Ready?” Levi nodded and turned around.

“See you Friday,” Moblit called out. “See ya.” Hange replied.

The two started walking down the street. The air smelt of rain, and the ground was wet from the rain earlier. “Which building is your dorm in?” Hange asked. He was a bit surprised she asked him that, and she was so direct about it.

“Saint Maria,” He replied. She smiled. “Me too! I can’t believe I haven’t seen you around!” The wind picked up and the sky turned darker than before. They both looked up. “If you can’t make it to the library, you can use my desktop in my dorm room,” Hange offered. Levi’s cheeks turned bright red.

“Thanks, maybe tomorrow I can stop by,” Levi said. It was more of him thinking aloud than a statement. It was too late though, Hange already heard him. He could’ve sworn he didn’t say it aloud.

“That’s fine! I only have a class early tomorrow morning. Come by around 11, okay? My room number is 506.” Levi nodded. Thunder rolled and sounded closer now. They were almost at the dormitory building when it started to downpour. The rain was forcefully coming down on the two. Levi groaned in annoyance. He hated being in the rain. He hated being wet; he hated the wet socks and how gross he felt when it rained. He would’ve started to run to the building to seek cover, but he was taken aback by his new friend.

She was soaked and embracing it. She lifted her head up to face the sky and she laughed. It was loud, happy, genuine, and it took Levi’s breath away. Hange reached her hands out wide and spun around. He saw a strike of lightning light up the sky. He stared at her in awe. His heart swelled. Levi smiled big. After laughing, Hange looked at Levi and shared the look that he wore just a few moments ago. She loved his smile. She wished to make him smile more. She was also determined to make him laugh, too.

She grabbed his hand. “Let’s take cover!” And she pulled him into the dormitory hall. Saint Maria’s hall was beautiful. It had ceiling-to-floor glass pane windows that were always crystal clear. There was a big black modern chandelier that hung from the ceiling. It contained visible light bulbs. Hange secretly loved it. There were the same big, yellow, leather couches in the living room as there were in the study area on his floor. They both wiped their feet off on the big rug in the entryway.

“I love the rain,” Hange deduced, turning her head to look at him. As if Levi couldn’t tell. Her hand was still holding his. Levi looked up at her. “I like it, too.”

#levihan #levi x hange #levi x hanji #levihan fic #aot #snk #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk fic #aot fic #rivahan

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samwellmarinesociety · 3 years

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Be Still, and Know That I am Near

[I’ve also posted this on my AO3!]

As a freshman at Samwell University, Connor figured that he'd be leaving his home life behind in Arizona. However, an early morning encounter in the locker room provides him with the opportunity to grapple with his faith as well as find some sense of closure.

(A special thanks goes out to Emiliana [ @lifeofthetryhard on Tumblr] for her help with translating the Spanish. Although Connor is Mexican-American and she’s Venezuelan, her grasp of Spanish is much better than my own.)

“¿Estás seguro de sabes dónde está la pista?”

Connor pinched the bridge of his nose as he glanced up at the clock above his dorm door. “Sí, Mamá,” he answered, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice lest he be called out for using a tone. “Tengo el mapa que me dio.”

“Solo pregunto porque me preocupo de ti, mijito,” his mother reminded, still using the sickly sweet tone that she used when he was a baby. “Trajiste el-”

“Me tengo que ir, Mamá. Te quiero.”

“Te quiero, Connor.”

Putting his phone away, Connor picked his gear bag off the floor and quickly made his way out the door and down the lobby stairs. The fading summer sun was already halfway to its throne at the top of the sky, bathing Lake Quad in its brilliant golden light. Since the semester had not officially started, he could walk along the cobblestones without fear of crashing into someone.

As clichéd as it was, the photos on the official Samwell website could not compare to the beauty of the real campus. Given how the weather along the Eastern coast had been much warmer this past year, the trees were still lush with their leaves. It wasn’t nearly as warm as it would have been back in Arizona, but the feeling of the sun on his back was like a hug from an old friend.

Faber Memorial Rink was a decidedly modern building, especially in comparison to the more colonially-inspired architecture of most of the campus. It was almost intimidating in the way it loomed over the trees and shrubs that dotted its exterior. To some, sports were akin to a religion, so Connor supposed that Faber would be a cathedral. The giant windows that captured the morning light only more strongly enforced the metaphor.

“Mamá would probably have my head for talking about religion like that,” he grimaced as he entered the main hall of the rink. Still, Connor couldn’t help but compare the giant crimson banners that adorned the walls to the purple flags that his home parish would put up during Lent. Signs and symbols of what each institution held dear were woven into both. Even the Latin motto of “Penitus Potes de Fonte Sapientiae” was a reminder of the life he’d left behind at home.

Or rather, the life he was trying to leave behind.

The lights already being on in the locker room was strange, but Connor brushed it off as one of the custodians passing through earlier. The expanse of rooms that he’d toured through after officially accepting his admission offer was by no means the most extravagant he’d seen. In fact, it disgusted Connor just how much money some schools put into their sports teams while letting their libraries and lecture halls fall into squalor. It was, however, nice that he didn’t have to worry about tripping over ripped carpeting.

He paused for a moment before the trophy case. In the aforementioned light, the wood finish of the cabinet appeared to be the same shade of crimson as the Samwell crest. Connor wondered if that was an intentional choice on the commissioner’s part. Beyond the glass panes were the various trophies, plaques, and medallions that had been awarded to Samwell players of yesteryear, though the majority of them were more recently dated. The name Jack Zimmermann seemed to be part of ninety percent of all the awards- he even had one all to himself for being voted team captain three years in a row.

“I guess he really was well liked, both on and off the ice.”

Another award that caught his eye was the John Carlisle Award. “For exemplification of team spirit through enthusiasm and devotion to the game,” Connor read aloud, his eyes falling on the only recipient of the award. “Eric Bittle, 2013.”

News about Eric Bittle had spread through the college hockey channels even before Connor had decided to accept his offer to Samwell. He was just rather different compared to almost every other up and coming forward- a background in figure skating, a fondness for baking, his… general demeanour, to put it lightly. Connor supposed it was noble in its own way for Eric to stick to his ways rather than try to change his personality for the sake of a sport. As long as Eric was good on the ice, he didn’t really care about what the guy did in his spare time.

Hockey wasn’t what Connor pictured himself doing after graduating- part of it was the lack of privacy associated with professional sports. Even if he didn’t do post-game interviews or speak to reporters, his whole identity would be up for the world to speculate about. That was the sort of perpetual attention that he couldn’t stand.

As he came out of his labyrinth of thoughts, he became aware of a repetitive sort of sound that couldn’t be attributed to the sound of the water pipes up above. Grabbing his bag, Connor tried to move towards the locker room as quietly as he could. Fear wasn’t something that ran in his blood- not fear of noises anyways.

Connor stopped just by the doorway. His grip tightened around the handle of his bag, as though he could swing it in self-defense. Most days, he paid more attention to his legs than his upper body. One of the upperclassmen- Chowder, he thinks their name was- had mentioned something about Coaches Murray and Hall being strict about workout regimens. That was the kind of infringement that Connor didn’t quite appreciate, though he understood why it’d be important. With bated breath, he whirled around and nearly stumbled into the locker room.

“Hello, Connor!”

“Tony?” he replied in surprise before quickly correcting himself. “I mean, Tango?” The nickname culture was still something he was trying to get used to. Prior to coming to Samwell, he had simply gone by Connor or, more rarely, ‘Con.’ The others on the team, however, were insistent on giving him a new nickname; he’d be damned if it was something silly like ‘Whiskers’ or even ‘Whiskey.’

“I don’t even like the taste of whiskey.”

“You’re on the floor.”

Tango’s eyebrows shot up as though he were surprised by this observation. “I was pretty much done anyways!” he answered as he got back on his feet. “Did you want some privacy? My stall’s over there anyways; I just like the airflow from the vent here and-”

“Hold on.” Connor sliced his hand through the air, his lips tight as he tried to keep his expression neutral. “Done with what, exactly?” It was only then he noticed that Tango had something in his hand that was also looped around his wrist.

With that, Tango simply opened up his fisted hand to reveal a rosary, its glassy blue beads refracting the overhead light. “Praying- I try to get a decade or two in before practices.” When Connor didn’t immediately respond, he started to explain. “Oh, it’s a rosary- Catholics use it to pray and we count along the beads, but we start here with the crucifix-”

“I know what a rosary is, Tango,” Connor quickly interjected before he got a Sunday school crash course. “I was just, I don’t know, surprised, I guess. To see you, you know…” He gestured at the part of the locker room floor where the other man was just kneeling.

To his surprise, Tango didn’t seem quite upset by his rather abrupt response. Instead, he simply ran his fingers over the beads before looking back up at Connor. “I didn’t scare you, did I? I’m just used to being the first one in a locker room since my dad was responsible for maintaining the rink back home.”

“No… Look, can I ask you something that’s probably a bit personal?”

“Of course! What is it?”

Connor sighed as he looked up at the vent Tango had mentioned earlier. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he began, a sentence starter that was rarely, if ever, followed by an easy question. “Why here, why now? You could always go into Boston on Sunday.”

As the words left Connor’s lips, there was an aching at the back of his mind. He knew exactly why Tango would be praying the rosary. It was as if he couldn’t believe himself- the truth sounded like an utter lie when he said it.

Doubt, he had been told all his life, could not coexist with faith. In fact, it was the absence of faith. Connor wondered if the priests back home just had a script to follow when it came to quelling uncertainties about the hows and whys of Catholicism.

“You know in your heart that the teaching is clear.

Faith in the Father has led your soul here.

Bear up the cross, let the Church be your spine.

Don’t question too much,

And you’ll get along fine.”

Eighteen years of being told to follow, obey, and believe had caused Connor to falter in all three aspects. Actually, scratch that- it was easy to follow. Perhaps too easy at times. He went to Mass every Sunday because his whole family went- one had to be on their deathbed to miss out. Knowing his family, they’d even wheel him in and park said bed in the aisle during the Mass.

Obeying was similar in most respects. Connor knew the rules and why his family insisted they follow them. That was the difference, really- to obey was to intentionally follow, to be mindful of why the rules are what they are. Funnily enough, he had to look into the history of the Church’s customs to understand their context. The priest at his home parish always glossed over those in favour of condemning the ways of the world in his homilies.

To believe… that was the hardest part of his faith. Catholicism, like so much of life, was full of self-contradictions. Having existed for over two millennia, such was inevitable. Yet rather than try to reconcile the conflicting doctrines, the faithful were expected to accept it all as God’s will.

“What good is it to blindly accept it and believe? Do you really have faith if you don’t know who or what you’re putting your faith in? Not that I could ever ask that out loud- those would be grounds for excommunication. Or worse, rejection from my family.”

It seemed that Tango was also deep in thought because it was only now that he gave an answer. “I know I could pray at church, but why not make use of my free time right now?” He gestured to the still, empty locker room. “Everyone’s got their pregame rituals, their ways to clear their minds. Mine just happens to be prayer.”

“How can you believe in something that doesn’t make sense, in something that condemns people for things they can’t control?” Connor could feel a hauntingly familiar tightening in his chest and his throat. To keep his hands from shaking, he balled them up into fists, his nails digging into his palms. The thoughts bouncing around his head were no longer under his tight mental control- it was as if Connor was now feeling everything he’d been bottling up for so long all at once. “It doesn’t fucking make sense!”

Tango, by virtue of him being, well, Tango, was probably preparing to ask a question. So Connor steeled himself in preparation so that he wouldn’t end up lashing out at his teammate. His own questions about their apparent shared faith were already volatile enough, so he wouldn’t be surprised if Tango was offended by his language and gave him the cold shoulder from now on.

Yet, instead, Tango took Connor’s hand and just gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know it doesn’t make sense- if the Church couldn’t figure it out after two thousand years, they probably never will.” He looked up to meet Connor’s eyes. “There’s not a lot I’m sure about, Connor. But I know that praying helps calm me down. That and going to Mass are just things my family has always done- so I guess it’s like bringing a part of home with me?”

“Part of home,” Connor echoed as he reached into his bag and pulled out the rosary his Mamá had packed into his belongings before he left Arizona. The dark green glass of the beads were almost black in the shadow of his fingers, but the medal of St. Sebastian at its center seemed to sparkle nonetheless. “Jesus, I- wait, no, shouldn’t have said that. I just- I haven’t really prayed this in so long. Most of the time, I just followed my family when they moved their fingers.”

Tango’s eyes went wide as he looked at the rosary in Connor’s hand. “Woah, did you get that for your first communion too?”

“Uh… probably?

“Me too! Unless this was my confirmation rosary… or maybe it was my graduation rosary? What is it with relatives and giving rosaries as presents?”

Connor shrugged, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You’re telling me- my abuela gets everyone in the family a rosary every Christmas, Easter, and September 8th. Somehow, she hasn’t bought any duplicates so far.”

“My aunt makes them with string and those plastic beads little kids use to make art- like this!” Tango gestured to a bead lizard that was hanging off the side of his own hockey bag. “I can’t even imagine how long it takes her to make them for all of my cousins…”

Instead of using the extra time on their hands to get changed, Connor and Tango ended up sitting together in the former’s stall, just talking about their families and lives before Samwell. For Tango, it seemed that praying the rosary was less about delving into his connection with God, but rather, about keeping his connection with his family.

If Connor were a philosophy or theology major, he’d be tempted to say that those things were one and the same.

As Bitty called everyone out to the ice to begin practice, Connor took one last look at his rosary, now hanging from a hook in his stall. Even if he wasn’t any closer to understanding the faith he’d been raised in, he at least had a friend to take this journey with.

⁂

Sundays, according to Bitty, were generally free days for the Samwell Men’s Hockey team unless they made it to the playoffs. So the following week, Connor met Tango in the South Quad early in the morning before heading into the suburbs around the university. He was thankful for the rows of trees that lined the campus sidewalks- it was always gross to sweat through his dress shirt.

Mass at the parish of Our Lady of the Incarnation didn’t start until 11:00 AM, so after they sat in one of the pews, Tango pulled down the kneeler. With a nod from his new friend, Connor fished into his pocket and took out the beads his mother had packed in his belongings.

“Go for it, Whiskey.”

His rosary, once a foreign, almost unnerving memento, now felt intimately familiar in his hand. He pulled out a small paper from his other pocket and began to read it, the pewter crucifix held reverently between his thumb and pointer finger.

“En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo. Amén. Creo en Dios, Padre todopoderoso, creador del cielo y de la tierra…”

#omg check please #connor whisk #Tony tangredi #whiskey x tango #my writing

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booksandeverything-in-between · 4 years

Text

My journalism journey

... has only just begun!

This is my post for the “Life Narrative” assignment for JTC 326. I’ve added a “keep reading” tab because I hate putting extremely long posts on my dashboard! Keep in mind too, I’ve formatted this to fit the platform, so it’s not strictly professional.

Also — this is the first time I’ve shared my Tumblr with anyone who is not my sister, but it’s the perfect platform for this.

** All pictures were taken by me unless otherwise specified, some taken from my old blog posts on here.

A note before I start: When I first thought about this assignment, I had so many things I thought I could share, a lot of them deeply personal, somewhat dark and just not the right fit. I had a bit of a crisis; I cried a little. There is so much in my past that makes me, me, that I’ve only ever really shared with my therapist, but have generally wanted to write about. But it’s hard, and I don’t know how. And a whole lot of other stuff. BUT THEN

I realized I could share a story that I have always wanted to share! It perfectly relates to our class too and basically everything anyone would ever need to know about me! It’s amazing! I’m so excited! I hope you like it!

(line break)

It’s the summer before sixth grade. That’s how I define, or sort, my life, in my memories. It’s the year of school, or it’s the summer before/after. It’s not my age, or the calendar year; it’s school. For a long time my whole identity revolved around school, so it fits.

Anyway, I’m bored. My older sister and I can only do so much Netflix-watching (because we didn’t have cable) on the Wii (because this was 2011), and I need something to stimulate my active mind. Here comes books!

I’ve always, always been an avid reader. I was the first person in my first grade class to start reading chapter books — something I liked to brag about a lot back then. But I’m about to be a middle schooler, so I need to find something a little more mature. My parents decide that I’m at an appropriate age to start reading some of my sister’s old books, which were originally marked for garage sale.

One of these books has a long, juicy title, with a teen girl posed on the cover in a preppy school uniform, hand on her hip. I don’t have to look this up to remember; it is forever in my mind. The book is I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter. Juicy, right? AND I LOVE IT. Seriously. Love. It.

Photo: I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter.

... And I guess I move on. That part is a little fuzzy. Enter: Back to School Night, sixth grade. I always would go with my mom, because I loved school, and nights like those I thought were super cool. So, I’m hanging out with my best friend Sydney by the stairs, and she has this book from the school library with her.

Do you believe in fate? Was it kismet? I do not know; I will not guess. But I do know, I freaked the f*ck out. Because it was the book, by Ally Carter!! I loved that book! When I asked Sydney where she got it, she said in the library, and there were a bunch of other books like it.

That made me pause. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. Because, what do you know, it was a series!! There were three other books to be read! How, oh how, did I not know this? It had to be fate.

I can still picture exactly where the books are, in the Preston library. The smaller shelf, up against the wall, right by the opening into the conference/meeting room space (I don’t know what we called that room???). Bottom shelf.

Who knew a series about teenage girls going to a spy school would set me on this path?

Suddenly it’s the summer after sixth grade, and once again, I’m bored. But, I have access to a netbook, that my grandpa gave us. Something entices me to start Googling these books. I find Ally Carter’s website. I found out that there are going to be two more books in the series. And I stumble upon this Google search suggestion, with the word fanfiction.

And wow.

Stories, countless stories, about my favorite books. Eventually, I make my own account on fanfiction.net, I try my hand at some of my own stories, I get a smartphone and make this very tumblr account when I turn 13, I find a place where I can express all my nerdiness in peace and all-caps, without any sort of ridicule fear.

But that’s not the end, nor the point, of this story.

Photo: The first four books in the Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter.

(line break)

So here I am, spending all my free time secretly reading fanfic and trying to write it, and hating my life sometimes and thinking about what I want to study in college because that’s my best chance at escape from this life that I feel I’m stuck in.

But I can’t think of anything to write! I love to read; I enjoy writing; I am learning more about grammar because my dad has me grading his grammar quizzes he gave his JTC 300 students; but still, something isn’t right. I viscerally hate English class.

But! There’s a way I CAN write, without it being creative! My dad is going to school for photojournalism, my sister took a high school journalism class, and now it’s my turn to register for classes in high school. I sign up for Journalism 1, the precursor to Journalism 2, which is the class that houses the student newspaper. It’s a great plan. It was a good class.

I was looking through my old journal the other day, and I came across this line dated from September 23, 2014, just into the beginning of my freshman year of high school. “I want to be a journalist.”

Photo: A journal entry that reads, “I want to be a journalist.”

My sophomore year of high school, I take Journalism 2 and join the paper. I’m kind of terrified because there are a bunch of people I don’t know and now I’ll actually have to go out and report and talk to people ... but we do some really fun team-building, and people seem to like me, and I relax. I feel, just a little, like a really belong.

And I had felt that way before, during band, and with some of my friends, but this thing, this journalism thing, I’m actually good at it. And there’s this one moment that sticks out to me still.

It’s probably 7:20 a.m. I’m trudging up the steps to Spanish class, and I do not want to be there. It’s not that I don’t like school, or I don’t like my classes, because I do. But I’m tired, and it’s not what I want to be doing. I think, if I could spend the entirety of my day in my journalism class, I would be happy.

To this day, as a college student, I am jealous of the people who get to spend their whole days doing journalism.

I’ve found more than a home. I’ve found a place where, for what feels like the first time, I can speak my mind. I can be sarcastic, I can make a pun and I can also point out when there’s a bad typo somewhere and have that be appreciated.

Halfway through my first year writing for the paper, I’m given extra responsibilities and get to start copy editing articles from the students in the J1 class, and I start to learn how to redesign/maintain our Wordpress site. I go on a class trip to Los Angeles, an amazing feat of independence for me, and I feel valued. And then, I’m award the position of Copy Editor for the next school year! It’s amazing.

I learn my junior year that the freshmen whose articles I edited were afraid of me. Afraid, of me! (For reference, I am five feet tall). But once they met me, they were like ‘Woah, Serena’s not scary!” and now we’re good friends. I’ve since learned to be less harsh/blunt in my editing.

My senior year, I was Editor-in-Chief. That was something I dreamed about as a freshman, but wouldn’t let myself actually fathom. And even though I felt like I could have done a much better job, and I had a lot of personal sh*t to do with too, by the end of the year, I knew that I was leaving behind a strong legacy.

It’s really something special when people you love give you a speech, crying, telling you how much you welcomed them, how much you made them feel like they had a place to grow, to be, and how much you’ve inspired them.

Because journalism, especially student journalism, is about so much more than the news. It’s about a community. It’s community with your fellow reporters and editors, it’s comradery while kicking ass, it’s creating a community with your readers and your peers, it’s learning about the community you live in and sharing the ups and downs of life.

Photo: A screenshot from my Instagram account of my high school journalism family, taken at our end of the year picture my junior year of high school. We had this running joke that I was going to be a world-dominator type person (because I’m so tiny and quiet) and my teacher said, “Okay, Serena now push Katie over” because I was taking over as EIC. Photo credit goes to my teacher (not going to post his name here).

(line break)

I have a lot of setbacks, too. I have anxiety. Like, a lot. Of anxiety. I haven’t been formally diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder, but I think I should be.

I used to think I was just shy. And that was partially the case. But I grew from it, in large part because of journalism. I went from not sitting in my designated seat at the beginning of class because there were older kids in the way my freshman year, to leading the entire class three days a week my senior year. I liked high school journalism because I could get away with asking my friends for quotes, or just not really quoting anyone at all.

I spent one quarter at the University of Denver last year, and it was somewhat the same thing. They didn’t have any strict standards on a number of sources, and I wrote articles that didn’t require speaking to a lot of people. But then, I took over nine months off from school in what should have been my freshman year of college, and thus took nine months off from journalism and reporting. So starting at The Collegian was a challenge.

I am still damn proud of myself for getting up the courage, on the second day of classes at CSU, to go down to the newsroom and ask about reporting. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t, and I love where I am today.

To think that wasn’t even a year ago ...

Photo: Here I am, remote copy editing for The Collegian, the week after Spring Break. Photo cred to my dad.

When I started at CSU, I felt good. I was nervous, but transferring was a really good decision, and I’m from Fort Collins, so I felt more comfortable. And at first, my reporting felt really good.

But then I got too stressed with school and work, and that stress led over to increases social anxiety when I was reporting. I went to this community meeting and tried to talk to people there, but I felt helpless and quiet and I left and cried to myself. I then conducted my interviews over the phone.

I even had to take a break for a few months last semester, because I had a panic attack with the mere thought of approaching people I didn’t know.

But I worked through it. Aided by Xanax and peer support, I interviewed a bunch of people at the Eva Schloss event and felt really good about it. I also saw my high school journalism advisor, because his wife works at CSU Hillel, and talking to someone who knew my struggle felt good.

For a long time I’ve doubted if journalism, if news reporting, is something I’ll actually be able to do. It’s the only real thing that makes me feel like I have a purpose, the only thing that makes me not feel depressed about life, but I am still so worried I’ll hold myself back in some way.

That hasn’t happened yet.

(line break)

It’s the summer before my junior year of high school, and I am about to go meet up with the other members of the new leadership team, Katie and Kathleen, at Starbucks. I’ve recently got my license and it feels really good to be driving myself around.

I go to Target and buy a fancy looking notebook with the last $15 I have to my name, because I don’t have a job yet. I go to Starbucks and discover I like drinking tea. I talk with Katie and Kathleen and we brainstorm what we want the journalism class to look like next year. What we want to change, how we’re going to get students to know that we exist.

It’s the summer before my senior year, and I bring this same notebook to a meeting at Dazbog that I have with our leadership team to get ready for the school year. I’m in charge. It’s weird, but in a good way. There are a lot more people there, and I fill pages upon pages of ideas, and agendas I want to start the first weeks with.

So much had changed in a year. My parents got divorced, I started working a lot, I was looking more seriously into college. But so much was the same. The same people, the same work, the same purpose. It was good.

It’s the second semester of my first year at CSU, my sophomore year of college. I’m at home, cleaning my room, procrastinating because I don’t want to write my final essay. I get a text from Laura, asking if I’ve heard back about the editorial board yet. I had shut my phone off because I was checking my email so obsessively.

And there it is. I am going to be the 2020-2021 News Editor for The Rocky Mountain Collegian. I still don’t fully feel like I know what I’m doing, even though I have all this experience. News is happening, but it’s summer. Do I write about it? Do I ask other people to write about it? Can I express the authority and knowledge I know I have, to people who have more experience at the paper than I do? It’s still early.

The day I get the news, I pull out an old, blue notebook that’s barely filled. It’s the perfect place to start brainstorming the things I want to change on the desk and the things I think are super important for Laura and me to talk about.

I forgot that I had notes from my Editor-in-Chief days in there.

Photo: The notebook!

It feels like I’ve completed a circle. Like all the highs and lows of my last few years have led me to here, right back to where I’m supposed to be. Where I’ve always known I would be.

I know who I am; I know where I belong; I know my place and my purpose in this world.

Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series brought me to writing, and writing brought me to journalism. In my obsession with those books, the unofficial motto of the CIA really resonated with me. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Community and truth, that’s journalism.

I want to be a journalist.

I am a student journalist.

I am a journalist.

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suzanneshannon · 4 years

Text

Chapter 3: The Website

Previously in web history…

Berners-Lee, motivated by his own curiosity, creates the World Wide Web at CERN. He releases its technologies to the public domain, which enables the development of several new browsers for every operating system. Mosaic proves to the most popular, and its introduction of color images directly inline in content changes fundamentally the way people think about the web.

The very first website was about the web. That kind of thing is not all that unusual. The first email sent to another person was about email As technology progresses, we may have lost a bit of theatrics. The first telegraph, for instance, read “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT.” However, in most cases, telecommunication firsts follow this meta template.

Anyway, the first website was instructive for a reason. If you were a brand new web user, it is the first thing you would see. If that page didn’t manage to convince you the web was worth sinking a bit of time into, then that was the end of the story. You’d go and check out Gopher instead. So, as a starting point for new web users, the first website was critical.

The URL was info.cern.ch. Its existence on the CERN server should be of no surprise. The first website was created by the web’s inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, while he was still working there.

It was a simple page. A list of headers and links — to download web browser code, find out more info about the web, and get all of the technical details — was divided only by short descriptions o f each section. One link brought you to a list of websites. Berners-Lee collected a list of links that were sent to him, or plucked them from mailing lists whenever he found them. Every time he found a link he added it to the CERN website, loosely organized by category. It was a short list. In July of 1993, there were still only about 130 websites in the world.

(A few years back, some enterprising folks took it upon themselves to re-create the first website at CERN. So you can go and browse it now, just as it was then.)

As far as websites go, it was noting spectacular. The language was plain enough, though a bit technical. The instructions were clear, as long as you had some background in programming or computers. The web before the web was difficult to explain. The primary goal of the website was to prompt a bit of exploration from those who visited it. By that measure, it was successful.

But Berners-Lee never meant for the CERN website to be the most important page on the web. It was just there to serve as an example for others to recreate in their own image.

Tim Berners-Lee also created the first browser. It gave users the ability to both read — and crucially to publish — websites. In his conception, each consumer of the web would have their own personal homepage. The homepage could be anything. For most people, he thought, it would likely be a private place to store personal bookmarks or jot down notes. Others might chose to publish their site for the public, using it as an opportunity to introduce themselves, or explore some passion (similar to what services like Geocities would offer later). Berners-Lee imagined that when you opened your browser, any browser, your own homepage would be the first thing that you saw.

By the time other browsers hit the market, the publishing capabilities faded away. People were left to simply surf, and not to author, the web. For the earliest of web users, the CERN website remained a popular destination. With usage still growing, it was the best place to find a concise list of websites. But if the web was going to succeed — truly succeed — it was going to have to be more than links. The web was going to need to find its utility.

Fortunately Berners-Lee had created the URL. Anyone could create a website. Heck, he’d even post a link to it.

“Louise saw the web as a godsend,” Berners-Lee wrote in his personal retelling of the web’s history. The Louise in question is Louise Addis, librarian at SLAC for over 40 years before she retired in the mid-90s. Along with Paul Kunz, Tony Johnson, and several others, she helped create the first web server in the United States and one of the most influential websites of the early web. She would later put it a bit differently. “The Web was a revolution!” That may be true, but it wouldn’t have been a revolution if not for what she helped create.

As we found in the first chapter, Berners-Lee’s curiosity led him on a path to set information free. Louise Addis was also curious. Her curiosity led her to try to connect people to that information. She studied International Relations at Stanford University only to bounce around at a few jobs and land herself back at her alma mater working for a secret research lab known simply as Project M in 1960. Though she had no experience in the field, she worked there as a librarian, eventually moving up to head librarian. After a couple of years, the lab would go public and become formally known as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC.

SLAC’s primary mission was to advance the research of American scientists in the wake of World War II. It houses a two-mile long linear accelerator, the longest in the world. SLAC recruits scientists across a broad set of fields, but its primary focus is particle physics. It has produced a number of Nobel prizes and has shared groundbreaking new discoveries across the world.

Research is at the center of the work done at SLAC. While she was there, Addis was relentless in her quest to connect her peers with research. When she learned that there wasn’t a good system for keeping track of the multitude of authors attributed to particle physics papers (some had over 1,000 authors on a single paper), she picked up a bit of programming with no formal training. “If I needed to know something, I asked someone to show me how to do a particular task. Then I went back to the Library and tried it on my own.”

A couple of years after she discovered the web, Addis would start the first unofficial tech support group for web newcomers known as the WWW Wizards. The Wizards worked — mostly in their spare time — to help new web users come online. They were a profoundly important resource for the early web. Addis continually made it her mission to help people find the information they needed.

She used her ad-hoc programming experience in the late 1960’s to create the SPIRES-HEP database, a digital library with hundreds of thousands of bibliographic records for particle physics papers. It is still in use today, though it’s newest iteration is called INSPIRE-HEP. The SPIRES-HEP database was a foundational resource. If you were a particle physics researcher anywhere in the world, you would be accessing it frequently. It ran on an IBM mainframe that looked like this:

The mainframe used a very specific programming language also developed by IBM, which has since gone into disuse. Locked inside was a very well organized bibliography of research papers. Accessing it was another thing entirely. There were a few ways to do that.

The first required a bit of programming knowledge. If you were savvy enough, you could log directly into the SPIRES-HEP database remotely and, using the database-specific SPIRES query language, pull the records you needed directly from the mainframe. This was the quickest option, but required the most technical know-how and a healthy dose of tenacity. Let’s consider this method the high bar.

The middle bar was an interface built by SLAC researcher Paul Kunz that let you email the server to pull out the records you needed. You still needed to know the SPIRES query language, but it solved the remote access part of the equation.

The low bar was to email or message a librarian at SLAC so they could pull the record for you and send it back. The easiest bar to clear, this was the method that most people used. Which meant that the most widely accessed particle physics database in the world was beset by a bottleneck of librarians at SLAC who needed to ferry bibliographic records back and forth from researchers.

The SPIRES-HEP database was invaluable, but widespread access remained its largest obstacle.

For a second time in the web’s history, the NeXT computer played an important role in its fate. For a computer that was short-lived, and largely unheard of, it is a key piece of the web’s history.

Like Tim Berners-Lee, SLAC physicist Paul Kunz, creator of the SPIRES-HEP instant messaging and email service, used a NeXT computer. When Berners-Lee called him into his office on one of his visits, Berners-Lee invited him into his office. The only reason Kunz agreed to go was to see how somebody else was using a NeXT computer. While he was there, Berners-Lee showed Kunz the web. And then Kunz went back to SLAC and showed the web to Addis.

Kunz and Addis were both enthusiastic purveyors of research at SLAC. They each played their part in advancing information discovery. When Kunz told Addis about the web, they both had the same idea about what to do with it. SLAC was going to need a website. Kunz built a web server at Stanford — the first in the United States. Addis, meanwhile, wrangled a few colleagues to help her build the SLAC website. The site launched on December 12, 1991, a year after Berners-Lee first published his own website at CERN.

Most of the programmers and researchers that began tinkering on the web in the early days were drawn by a nerdy fascination. They liked to play around with browsers, mess around with some code. The website was, in some cases, the mere after-effect of a technological experiment. That wasn’t the case for Addis. The draw of the web wasn’t its technology. It was what it enabled her to do.

The SLAC website started out with two links. The first one let you search through a list of phone numbers at SLAC. That link wasn’t all that interesting. (But it was a nice nod to the web’s origin. The most practical early use of the web was as an Internet-enabled phonebook at CERN.) The second link was far more interesting. It was labeled “HEP.” Clicking on it brought you to a simple page with a single text field. Type a query into that field, click Enter and you got live results of records directly from the SPIRES-HEP database. And that was the SLAC website. Its primary purpose was to act as an interface in front of the SPIRES-HEP database and pull down queried results.

When Berners-Lee demoed the SLAC website a couple of months later at a conference, it was met with wild applause, practically a standing ovation.

The importance was obviously not lost on that audience. No longer would researchers be forced to wrestle with complicated programming languages, or emails to SLAC librarians. The SLAC website took the low bar of access for the SPIRES-HEP database and dropped it all the way to the floor. It made searching the database easy (and within a couple of years, it would even add links to downloadable PDFs).

The SLAC website, nothing more than a searchable bibliography, was the beginning of something on the web. Physicists began using it, and it rebounded from one research lab to the next. The web’s first micro-explosion happened the day Berners-Lee demoed the site. It began reverberating around the physics community, and then outside of it.

SLAC was the website that showed what the would could do. GNN was going to be the first that made the web look good doing it.

Global Network Navigator was going to be exciting. A bold experiment on and with the web. The web was a wall of research notes and scientific diagrams; plain black text on stark white backgrounds as far as the eye could see. GNN would change that. It would be fun. Lively. Interactive.

That was the pitch made to designer Jennifer Robbins by O’Reilly co-founder Dale Dougherty in 1993. Robbins’ mind immediately jumped to the possibilities of this incredible, new, digital medium.

She met with another O’Reilly employee, Rob Raisch. A couple of years after that pitch, Raisch would propose one of the first examples of a stylesheet. At the time, he was just the person at the company who happened to know the most about the web, which had only recently cracked a hundred total sites. When Robbins walked into his office, the first thing he said to her was: “You know, you probably can’t do what you want.” He had a point. The language of the web was limiting. But the GNN team was going to find a way around that.

GNN was the brainchild of Dale Dougherty. By the early 90s, Dougherty had become a minor celebrity for experiments just like this one. From the early days of O’Reilly media, the book publisher he co-founded, he was always cooking up some project or another.

Wherever technology is going, Dougherty has a knack for being there first. At one conference early on in O’Reilly’s history, he sold self-printed copies of a Unix manual for $5 apiece just before Unix exploded on the scene. After spending decades in book publishing, he’s recently turned his attention to the maker culture. He has been called a godfather of the Maker movement.

That was no less true for the web. He became one of the web’s earliest adopters and its most prolific early champion. He brought together Tim Beners-Lee and the developers of NCSA Mosaic, including Marc Andreessen, for the first time in a meeting in Cambridge. That meeting would eventually lead to the creation of the W3C. He’d be responsible for early experiments with web advertising, basically on the first day advertising was allowed. He would later coin the term Web 2.0, in the wake of transformation after the dot-com boom. Dougherty loved the web.

But staring at the web for the first time in the early 90s, he didn’t exactly know what to do with it. His first thought was to put a book on the web. After all, O’Reilly had a gigantic back catalog, and the web was mostly text. But Dougherty knew that the web’s greatest asset was the hyperlink. He needed a book that could act as a springboard to bring people to different parts of the web. He found it in the newly-published bestseller by author Ed Krol, The Whole Internet User’s Guide and Catalog. The book was a guided tour through the technologies of the Internet. It had a paragraph on the web. Not exactly a lot, but enough for Dougherty to make the connection.

Dougherty had recruited Pei-Yuan Wei, creator of the popular ViolaWWW browser to make an earlier version of an interactive Internet guide. But he pulled a together a production team — led by managing editor Gina Blaber — of writers, designers, programmers, and sales staff. They launched GNN, the web’s first true commercial website, in early 1993.

GNN was created before any other commercial websites, before blogs, and online magazines. Digital publishing was something new altogether. As a result, GNN didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. It operated somewhere between a portal and a magazine. Navigating the site was an exercise in tumbling down one rabbit hole after another.

In one section, the site included the Whole Internet Catalog repurposed and ported to the web. Contained within were pages upon pages of best-of lists; collections of popular websites sorted into categories like finance, literature and cooking.

Another section, labeled GNN Magazine, jumped to a different group of sortable webpages known as metacenters. These were, in the website’s own description, “special-interest magazines that gather together the best Internet resources on topics such as travel, music, education, and computers. Each metacenter contains articles, columns, reference guides, and discussion groups.” Though conceptually similar to modern day media portals, the nickname “metacenter” never truly caught on. The site’s content and design was produced and maintained by the GNN staff. Not to be outdone by their print predecessors, GNN magazine contained interviews, features, biographies, and explainers. One hyperlink after another.

Over time, GNN would expand to affiliated publications. When the Mosaic team got too busy working on the web’s most popular browser, they handed off their browser homepage to the GNN team. The page was called What’s New, and it featured the most interesting links around the web for the day. The GNN seized the opportunity to expand their platform even further.

Explaining what GNN was to someone who had never heard of the web, let alone a website, was an onerous task. Blaber explained GNN as giving “users a way to navigate through the information highway by providing insightful editorial content, easy point-and-click commands, and direct electronic links to information resources.” That’s a meaningful description of the site. It was a way into the web, one that wasn’t as fractured or unorganized as jumping in blind. It was also, however, the kind of thing you needed to see to understand.

And it was something to see. Years before stylesheets and armed with nothing but a handful of HTML tags, the GNN team set about creating the most ambitious project with the web medium yet. Browsers had only just begun allowing inline graphics, and GNN took full advantage. The homepage in particular featured big colorful graphics, including the hot air balloon that would endure for years as the GNN logo. They laid out their pages meticulously — most pages had a unique design. They used images as headers to break up the page. Most pages featured large graphics, and colored text and backgrounds. Wherever the envelope was, they’d push it a little further.

The result: a brand new kind of interactive experience. The web was a sea of plain websites with no design mostly coming from research institutions and colleges. Before Mosaic, bold graphics and colors weren’t even possible. And even after Mosaic’s release, the web was mostly filled with dense websites of scrolling text with nothing more than scientific diagrams to break it up, or sparse websites with a link, an email and a phone number. Most sites had nothing in the way of hierarchy or interactivity. Content was difficult to follow unless it was exactly what you were looking for. There was a ton of information on the web, but no one had thought to organize it to any meaningful degree. Imagine seeing all of that, day after day, and then one day you click a link and come to this:

It looks dated now, but a splash page with bold colors and big graphics, organized into sections and layered with interesting content… that was something to see.

The GNN team was creating the rules of web design, a field that had yet to be invented. In the first few years of the web, there were some experiments. The Vatican had scanned a number of materials from its archives and put them on a website. The Exploratorium took that one step further, creating the first online museum, with downloadable sounds and pictures. But they were still very much constrained by the simplicity of the web experience. Click this link, download this file, and that was it. GNN began to take things further. Dale Dougherty recalls that their goal was to “shift from the Internet as command line retrieval to the internet as this more digital interface… like a book.” A perfectly reasonable goal for a book publisher but a tall order for the web.

To accomplish their goal, GNN’s staff used the rules of graphic design as a roadmap (as philosopher Marshall McLuhan once said, “the content of any medium is always another medium”). But the team was also writing a brand new rulebook, on the fly, as they went. There were open questions about how to handle web graphics, new patterns for designing user interfaces, and best practices for writing HTML. Once the team closed one loop, they moved on to the next one. It was as if they writing the manual for flying a rocketship — while strapped to the wings and hurtling towards space.

As browsers got better, GNN evolved to take advantage of the latest design possibilities. They began to use image maps to make more complex navigation. They added font tags and frames. GNN was also the first site on the web with a sponsored link, and even that was careful and considered. Before the popup would plague our browsing experience, GNN created simple, unobtrusive, informational adverts inserted in between their other listings.

GNN provided a template for the commercial web. As soon as they launched, dozens of copycats quickly followed. Many adopted a similar style and tone. Within a few years, web portals and online magazines would become so common they were considered trite and uninteresting. But very few sites that followed it had the lasting impact GNN did on a new generation of digital designers.

Ranjit Bhatnagar has an offbeat sort of humor. He’s a philosopher and a musician. He’s smart. He’s a fan of the weird and the banal. He’s anti-consumerist, or at the very least, opposed to consumerist culture. I won’t go as far as to say he’s pedantic, but he certainly revels in the most minute of details. He enjoys lively debates and engaged discourse. He’s fascinated by dreams, and once had a dream where he was flying through the air with his mother taking in the sights.

I’ve never met Bhatnagar. I know all of this because I read it on his website. Anyone can. And his website started with lunch.

Bhatnagar’s website was called Ranjit’s HTTP Playground. Playground describes it rather well; hyperlinks are scattered across the homepage like so many children’s toys. One link takes you to a half-finished web experiment. Another takes you to a list of his favorite bookmarks arranged by category. Yet another might contain a rant about the web, or a long-winded tribute to Kinder eggs. If you’re in the mood for a debate you can post your own thoughts to a page devoted to the single question: Are nuts wood? There’s still no consensus on that one.

Browsing Ranjit’s HTTP Playgroundis like peeling back the layers of Bhatnagar’s brain. He added new entries to his site pretty regularly, never more than a sentence or two, arranged in a series of dated bullet points. Pages were laid out on garish backgrounds, scalding bright green on jet black, or surrounded by a dizzying dance of animated GIFs. Each page was littered with links to more pages, seemingly at random. Every time you think you’ve reached the end of a thread, there’s another link to click. And every once in a while, you’ll find yourself back on the homepage wondering how you got there and how much time had passed in the meantime. This was the magic of the early web.

Bhatnagar first published his website in late 1993, just a few months after the GNN website went up. The very first thing Bhatnagar posted to his website was what he ordered for lunch every day. It was arranged in reverse chronological order, his most recent lunch order right at the top.

SLAC captured the utility of the web. GNN realized its popular appeal. Bhatnagar, and others like him, made the web personal.

Claudio Pinhanez began adding daily entries to the MIT Media Lab website in 1994. He posted movie and book reviews, personal musings, and shared his favorite links. He followed the same format as Bhatnagar’s Lunch Server. Entries were arranged on the page in reverse chronological order. Each entry was short and to the point — no longer than a sentence or two. This movie was good. This meal was bad. Isn’t it interesting that… and so on.

In early 1995, Carolyn Burke began posting daily entries to her website in one of the earliest examples of an online diary. Each one was a small slice from her life. The posts were longer than the short-burst of Pinhanez and Bhatnagar. Burke took her time with narrative anecdotes and meandering asides. She was loquacious and insightful. Her writing was conversational, and she promised readers that she would be honest. “I notice now that I have held back in being frank. My academic analysis skills come out, and I write with them things that I’ve known for a long time,” she wrote in an entry from the first few months, “But this is therapy for me… honesty and freedom therapy. Wow, that’s a loaded word. freedom.“

Perhaps no site was more honest, or more free as Burke puts it, than Links from the Underground. Its creator, Swarthmore undergraduate Justin Hall, had transformed inviting others into his life into an art form. What began as a simple link dump quickly transformed into a network of short stories and poems, diary entries, and personal details from his own life. The layout of the site matched that of Bhatnagar, scattered and unorganized. But his tone was closer to Burke’s, long and deeply, deeply personal. Just about every day, Hall would post to his website. It was his daily inner monologue made public.

Sometimes, he would cross a line. If you were a friend of Justin’s, he might share a secret that you told him in confidence, or disparage you on a fully public post. But he also shared the most intimate details from his own life, from dorm room drama to his greatest fears and inadequacies. He told stories from his troubled past, and publicly tried to come to terms with an alcoholic father. His good humor was often tinged with tragedy. He was clearly working through something emotional and personally profound, and he was using the web to do it out in the open.

But for Hall, this was all in the service of something far greater than himself. Describing the web to newcomers in a documentary about his experience on the web, Hall’s primary message was about its ability to create — not to tear down — connections.

What’s so great about the web is I was able to go out there and talk about what I care about, what I feel strongly about and people responded to it. Because every high school’s got a poet, whether it’s a rich high school or a poor high school, you know, they got somebody that’s in to writing, that’s in to getting people to tell their stories. You give them access to this technology and all of a sudden they’re telling stories to people in Israel, to people in Japan, to people in their own town that they never would have been able to talk to. And that’s, you know, that’s a revolution.

There’s that word again. Revolution. Though coming at the web from very different places, Addis and Hall agreed on at least one thing. I would venture to guess that they agreed on a whole lot more.

Justin Hall became a presence on the web not soon forgotten by those that came across him. He’s had two documentaries made about him (one of which he made himself). He’s appeared on talk shows. He’s toured the country. He’s had very public mental breakdowns. But he believed deeply that the web meant nothing at all unless it was a place for people to share their own stories.

When Tim Berners-Lee first imagined the web, he believed that everybody would have their own homepage. He designed his first browser with authoring capabilities for just that reason. That dream never came true. But Hall and Burke and Bhatnagar channeled a similar idea when they decided to make the web personal. They created their own homepages, even if it meant having to spend a few hours, or a few weeks, learning HTML.

Within a couple of years, the web filled up with these homepages. There were some notable breakthrough websites, like when David Farley began posting daily webcomics to Doctor Fun or VJ Adam Curry co-opted the MTV website to post his own personal brand of music entertainment. There were extreme examples. In 1996, Jennifer Ringley stuck a webcam in her room and beamed images every few seconds, so anyone could watch her entire life in real time. She called it Jennicam, a name that would ultimately lead to the moniker cam girl. Ringley appeared on talk shows and became an overnight sensation for her strange website that let others peer directly into her world.

But mostly, homepages acted as a creative outlet — short biographies, photo albums of families and pets, short stories, status updates. There were a lot of diaries. People posted their art, their “hot takes” and their deepest secrets and greatest passions. There were fan pages dedicated to discontinued television shows and boy bands. A dizzying array of style and personality with no purpose other than to simply exist.

Then came the links. At the bottom of a homepage: a list of links to other homepages. Scattered in diary posts, links to other websites. In one entry, Hall might post a link to Bhatnagar’s site, musing about the influence it had on his own website. Bhatnagar’s own site had his own chaotic list of his favorites. Eventually, so did Burke’s. Half the fun of a homepage was obsessing over which others to share.

As the web turned on a moment of connection, the process of discovery became its greatest asset. The fantastic intrigue of clicking on a link and being transported into the world and mind of another person was — in the end — the defining feature of the web. There would be plenty of opportunities to use the web to find something you want or need. The lesson of the homepage is that what people really wanted to find was each other. The web does that better than any technology that has come before it.

At the end of 1993, there were just over 600 websites. One year later, at the end of 1994, there were over 10,000. They no longer fit on a single page on the CERN website maintained by the web’s creator.

The personal website would become the cornerstone of the web. The web would be filled with more applications, like SLAC. And more businesses, like GNN. But it would mostly be filled with people. When the web’s next wave came crashing down, it would become truly social.

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