#☆ orwell washington // thread

[horrorbxby]

open  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington.

location  ;  shrike  county  hospital.

@shrikestart​

it  had  already  been  several  days  since  orwell  had  arrived  in  hospital  -  and  they  knew  it  would  be  several  more  before  they  would  be  discharged.  the  first  blood  transfusion  had  given  them  a  terrible  reaction,  so  from  then  on  they  were  being  closely  monitored  in  case  there  were  any  delayed  side  effects.  the  fever  didn’t  seem  to  want  to  go  away,  and  it  took  everything  in  her  not  to  scratch  her  arms  until  they  bled,  but  the  medication  they  gave  her  helped  a  little.  as  someone  who  could  barely  nick  themselves  with  a  razor  without  getting  an  infection,  their  weak  immune  system  was  a  cause  for  concern.

“ please,  i’m  going  insane, ”  they  said.  their  day  to  day  life,  especially  as  of  late,  was  full  of  their  favourite  activities  -  desperate  to  distract  themself  from  the  overwhelming  thoughts  of  impending  doom.  “ you  must  entertain  me.  find  a  way !  even  if  it  involves  releasing  a  wild  animal  in  this  room.  i’m  not  above  disturbing  the  entire  ward. ” 

[ianfm]

IanFM: Out of Context pt. 2

A collection of references from threads. Pt. 1

Featuring (in order): Dustin Waerea ( @takemecn ), Patrick Webb ( @bitcme ), Arne Berman ( @highfears ), Viola Lancaster, ( @viola--lancaster ), Orwell Washington ( @horrorbxby ), Leaf Wozniak ( @urdamage )/ Kit Sombun ( @shrieks ), Romy Davis ( @fearsless ), Dolly Jensen ( @finaldarlings ), & PJ Bolton ( @rufficns ). 

Part 6 of 13 Days of Halloween Part 5

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/putin-won-time-magazine/

Putin Won – Time Magazine Annoyed That He Does More Than Superman

by Angelina Proskurina

Translated and captioned by Leo.

Hello friends, with you is Angelina Proskurina, and today I would like to talk about latest issue of the popular American magazine “Time”, on the cover where we can unexpectedly see President Vladimir Putin.

Almost the entire publication is dedicated to the Russian leader. But not even opening the journal can we notice that the Americans were able to make a truly serious opening. Russia in their opinion presents itself as a new type of empire, which spread its tentacles to literally all 7 continents. And special attention was given to Washington, which could not resist this encroachment.

In all honesty, this cover reminds me of a poster for some new fantasy Marvel movie. But not for something as serious as the “Time” magazine. A bloody red background, a large amount of the Kremlin’s stars all over the planet, and in the center is the silhouette of the Russian leader which reminds me more of Slenderman hanging over the whole planet. Is that enough drama for you?

Importantly, the article is written by journalist Simon Schuster. He gives the same opinion as given by many American “experts”. Thanks to America’s favorite Russian conspiracy of how they helped Trump “Make America Great Again”, there is now a new different allegation. American experts think that for Putin, he doesn’t have enough influence on just the West. For a while now, he has spread his politics all over the world, hoping to cobble up the whole planet.

There is more growing confidence that this material was written by George Orwell or Aldous Huxley, but not by a journalist of one of the world’s most prestigious publishers. If we throw aside all of the delirium by this fantasy writer, then we can notice the parallel red thread of this act: the rise of Russia’s influence in the world.

There is a critical discussion about “Putin’s empire.” Yes, yes. You can take a look at the cover one more time and have a closer view at the sub-headline. Which verbatim translates to from English to Russian like this: “How Putin built improvised empire of tyrants and rogue states.” The author sweeps dust to dust spreading word of the empire scheme which Vladimir Vladimirovich is building.

Critically I emphasize the inconsistency for the full absence of such a system. But even here they show contradictions, since later the journalist admits that there is a system. It’s just that for the Americans, it doesn’t suit their taste. When the West offers the world only investigations and money, Russia provides freedom, safety and a readiness to go into compromise. The main one here is freedom, which it views as the most important value.

This is exactly why Russia’s influence in the world continues to grow. The governments of many countries want to cooperate with us into making contracts for the delivery of military weapons, like Turkish President Erdoğan did. And no matter how the US angrily threatened them with sanctions over their offer of supplying Patriot surface-to-air missiles (SAM) instead of our Russian S-400s, Ankara firmly was confident in their decision and continues their talks with us

This is why until the American elite understand that you can’t take exceptional methods of whipping right and left through the use of sanctions, the more their authority will begin to fall in the political arena. Nobody cancelled diplomacy. Until that point, Russia remains and will remain in the winning position instead of Washington. We already have a handful of advantages.

And for today that is all. My friends, leave your comments and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel. And until next time!

[viralhottopics]

Speed-reading apps: can you really read a novel in your lunch hour?

Apps such as Spreeder and Spritz are bringing speed reading back into fashion. But what gets lost in this race for the last page?

This article contains 1,993 words. If you were to read it to the end, without being distracted by your email or your dog or your children or the contents of the fridge or the bills you have to pay, it would take you, on average, a little over six minutes. But what if you were able to imbibe all of its (undoubted) nuance and richness in half of that time? Or a quarter? What if you could glance at the text and know everything it said just by running your eyes down the page?

The idea of speed reading was invented by an American schoolteacher named Evelyn Wood, whose search for a way to improve the lives of troubled teenagers in Salt Lake County, Utah, by teaching them to read effortlessly, led her to the belief that she herself could read at the rate of 2,700 words a minute, 10 times faster than the average educated reader. And further, that the techniques that allowed her to do so could be taught and sold.

With Doug, her husband, Wood opened her Reading Dynamics institutes across the US and beyond in the 1950s and 60s, and her methods became a self-help craze. The way in which we read, she professed, in the managerial spirit of the moment, was inefficient in terms of time and motion. We had to stop subvocalising saying words out loud in our heads as our eyes moved across the page as well as learning to outlaw the pauses and detours that led to us reread phrases when our minds drifted or our understanding snagged. Print should be consumed in blocks rather than words and sentences. To achieve this, Wood promoted a technique of running a finger down the middle of a page to activate peripheral vision. By the end of a course in Reading Dynamics, breathless students were reading Orwells Animal Farm at the rate of 1,400 words a minute, and telling tales of revolution.

President Kennedy, who believed himself to be a gifted speed reader (and who colleagues observed reading the New York Times and the Washington Post each morning in 10 minutes flat, scanning and turning the pages), sent a dozen of his staff tothe Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute in Washington. Presidents Nixon and Carter, under mountains of briefings, followed suit. The science of Woods method was never remotely proven, however, and by the time of her death in 1995, her ideas had fallen out of fashion.

Recently, the attractions of speed reading have been revived and promoted, for a couple of reasons. The first is the persuasive perception that we are living in times of information overload, that we are daily presented with more words than we can possibly cope with, and that new tactics are called for to enable us to make sense of it all. The second factor is the belief that since text can now be presented more dynamically on screens we are not restricted by the rigidity of printed sentences on a page: surely there is a better way?

These twin perceptions have led to a wave of businesses and apps that once again aim to revolutionise your reading speed (at the cost of $4.99, or whatever, a month). For the past couple of weeks Ive been experimenting with a few of the best known, mostly on my smartphone. The apps generally use a technology called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), in which individual words, or blocks of two or three words, appear one after the other in the centre of your screen. The rate at which they do so can be set to 300 or 500 or 1,000 words a minute, enabling you to feed in text and books to be read faster and faster.

Two of the more popular platforms offer a slightly different approach. The Spreeder app allows you to choose the number of words you see at each moment, and to vary the rate at which these words come at you. I found that I could just about take in three-word chunks of Animal Farm for sense at 800wpm, but that in doing so I not only had a slight feeling of panic in trying to keep up, I lost any sense of the rhythm of language, and with it any of the tone of what was being said.

Spritz technology, meanwhile, developed by a company in Boston, is based on the idea that much of the time wasted in reading is spent in the fractions of seconds as the eyes focus moves between words and across the page. Spritz which drives the app ReadMe! offers successive individual words in which one letter, just before the midpoint of each word, is highlighted in red, keeping your focus on that precise point on the screen (the Optimum Recognition Point). With this technology I found I could just about read simple passages for sense at 700wpm, an ability I imagine would become more natural, if not necessarily more comfortable, the longer you practised it.

Both of the apps and there are dozens of others to choose from come with tutorials and exercises to help you master the system. In most cases you start, as Evelyn Wood used to, with an assessment of your current (bad) reading habits. Its the nature of my job as a journalist to often assimilate a lot of information under time pressure, so I like to think no doubt along with pretty much everyone else that I have developed quite fast comprehension skills. An app called Acceleread was mildly impressed with my ability to read a passage about deep sea creatures and then answer a series of questions about it.

The assessment began positively enough: 385wpm Fantastic! You already demonstrate some advanced techniques such as reading words in groups rather than individually. But the assessment had caveats: You may still find that you often say words silently and get easily distracted. (Youre not kidding.) Your program will focus on reducing subvocalisation, strengthening your eye muscles and increasing your capacity to absorb more information at once. You should see rapid and dramatic results

Before embarking on this body-building course for my eyes and brain, I read through some of the quite complex science of reading (generally at no more than 200wpm, and with plenty of distractions). There have been many studies of the claims made by speed reading courses, going back to the early promises of Evelyn Wood. As well as arguing that it was possible to utilise peripheral vision, she claimed that our eyes were lazy, unless yoked into rigorous training. The studies most definitively a large-scale research project, So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?, led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego and published last year concluded that in general such training is neither biologically nor psychologically possible.

The mechanics of reading have only recently been fully understood. They depend on a brief fixation of the focal point of the eye, which lasts about 0.25 of a second on each word. The transition of that focus to the next word is allowed by saccades fine, ballistic eye movements, which last for about 0.1 of a second. The eye then either keeps moving forward or momentarily and subconsciously flicks back to confirm the sense of what has been read so far. All the experiments suggested that short-circuiting any part of this process led to a loss of comprehension and retention. The genius of normal reading is that it can minutely vary those fractions of seconds depending on how much of the sense of what is being read has been grasped. In a dense sentence, with sub-clauses and unfamiliar language, fixations and saccades are adjusted accordingly, so there is no break in reading flow. In easier passages the eye dances along swiftly. About 30% of the time it automatically shrinks the saccade over a familiar run of words, skipping past those it can predict.

How does this understanding bear on the apps such as Spreeder and Spritz? The acceleration they promise tends to depend on three issues: sub-vocalisation, looping backwards, and the time lag between words. The So Little Time study examined each of these in turn. When scientists tried to get people to eliminate sounding words subliminally in their heads by having them constantly hum while reading, for example comprehension dropped precipitously. The evidence suggested that when people saw words, they instantaneously accessed the sounds of those words to help understand them. The two processes worked seamlessly; speed dislocated them.

The problem with the second promise is perhaps more obvious you dont have to use the apps on fast speed for very long to realise that without the ability to go back and reread a phrase or a sentence, you can quickly lose the thread of what is being said. (Some of the apps have recognised this and added a rewind button.) The issue with the third claim has to do with rhythm. While it is true that you dont receive any fresh information in the spaces between words, the research suggests that the millisecond pauses are crucial for cognition: they are our brains tiny spaces for reflection.

In the fast lane: the speed-reading innovator Tim Ferris. Photograph: Amy E Price/Getty Images for SXSW

One of the things the studies dont dwell too much on is the nature of what is being read. I cant imagine ever wanting to read a novel at more than the normal 300wpm (by comparison, a speaking voice is roughly 150wpm and even cattle auctioneers can only rattle at 250wpm), but the virtue of reading short articles or emails on RSVP at double that speed seems more plausible. Chances are, however, that most of us already use various intuitive skimming techniques to extract information from such documents when time is short.

You dont really need studies to prove (though they do) that the more familiar we are with a subject, the more likely we are to be able to extract important information from it at pace. It is for this reason that JFK was able to read the New York Times so quickly presumably he knew most of the stories first hand, anyhow, and was just letting his eye flick across headlines and first sentences for a sense of argument. Most of us do something like this with material with which we are familiar although we are all probably less adept at it than we imagine.

Ronald Carver, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Missouri, proved in a landmark study of brainiacsin 1985 that, even for very practised speed readers, attempting to read above 600 words a minute meant that comprehension of any text fell below 75%, and went down dramatically as the reading speed increased beyond that. There is some evidence to show that we can, however, develop the ability to fillet a book quite quickly if we use adaptive techniques. In another study of the various techniques of skimming, two researchers at the University of Bath showed that skimmers who were most successful at extracting and retaining meaning were able to focus on critical sections of an argument and to jump forward as soon as the rate at which they are gaining new information drops below a threshold. They were particularly alive to bullshit or repetition.

Much of the buzz of our so-called digital overload comes from those latter growth industries. It has been argued that the subconscious mind can process 20,000,000 bits of information per second; but of those, the conscious mind holds on to only about 40 bits at any moment. Rather than trying to read more quickly we might be better advised to read more selectively. A lot of our lives can be scanned and scrolled and skipped, but reading remains a more immersive kind of act, dependent on detail. As Woody Allen observed: I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in 20 minutes. Its about Russia.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2nXm1QK

from Speed-reading apps: can you really read a novel in your lunch hour?

[babblism]

Ur-ANMURICAN IDIOT

YOSH

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

LET’S   GET   FUCKIN   IDIOTER

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe.

YOSH

In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president, it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.

YOSH

Reality seems to have weakened as a constraint in politics. Where the whole idea that there are common facts that everyone has to accept just because they’re facts—and we can disagree disagree violently about them, about the cause and what to do—that idea that there are factual truths that don’t depend on opinion has—for some reason which I don’t think we understand—taken a hit in the West.

YOSH

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism." 

VERDICT STILL OUT ON HOW LONG IT TAKES TO MAKE AN EARTH: COULD BE SIX DAYS, COULD BE A WEEK MINUS ONE DAY, NO ONE KNOWS SHIT.

(Get back to the dark ages is the statement I’m making here)

Without knowledge, you are in the DARK AGES

YOSH

To Hofstadter, intellectualism is not at all the same as intelligence. It is a distinctive habit of mind and thought that actually forbids the kind of complete self-assurance we often associate with very smart people.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE BLUE BLAZES ON THE ANTI-INTELLIGENTSIA’S kkk HEELS

EXTRA extra EXTRA extra

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  jayden  lightwood.

location  ;  tracks.

@shrikejayden​

orwell  leans  right  onto  the  counter,  not  taking  into  account  whether  or  not  jayden  is  ready  to  serve  them  yet.  “ please,  please  tell  me  that  my  order  has  come  in.  kate  bush’s  hounds  of  love ?  i’m  not  exaggerating  when  i  say  i  can’t  survive  another  day  without  it, ”  of  course,  being  one  of  their  favourite  records,  orwell  did  already  own  it.  however,  an  incident  had  lead  to  a  scratch  in  the  vinyl,  causing  a  skip  in  the  record  that  was  absolutely  unbearable.  “ if  i  have  to  hear  the  record  skip  during  and  dream  of  sheep  one  more  time,  i’m  gonna  loose  it. ”

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;   ft.  orwell  washington  +  ian  vogt.

location  ;  showtime.

@ianfm​

“ i  am  technically  not  supposed  to  have  a  chair  back  here, ”  orwell  slapped  the  back  of  the  chair  that  they’d  pulled  behind  the  showtime  counter,  “ but  if  i  faint  and  hit  my  head  and  die  here,  i’m  sure  that  would  be  much  worse  for  business  than  having  an  employee  sit  down  for  a  minute,  right ? ”  they  asked  ian  as  they  sat  themself  down.  it  was  difficult  being  back  at  work.  but  orwell’s  apartment  had  started  to  look  just  as  messy  as  their  mind  –  which  meant  they  wanted  to  spend  as  little  time  there  as  possible.  she’d  started  to  think  it  was  a  bad  decision,  however.  when  there  were  little  to  no  customers  and  things  were  quiet,  she  found  herself  staring  off  to  the  aisle  where  the  attack  had  happened.  she  could  feel  the  searing  pain  in  her  abdomen  like  it  was  happening  all  over  again,  and  she  felt  her  throat  closing  as  though  someone  nearly  inhuman  were  gripping  it.  it  usually  took  someone  asking  a  question  to  jolt  them  out  of  it.  “ what  do  you  think  is  the  best  movie  that  came  out  this  year  so  far ?  i’m  thinking  beetlejuice.  it’s  gonna  be  a  cult  classic  for  sure.  i  can  imagine  all  the  little  baby  goths  watching  and  falling  in  love  with  lydia.  but  am  i  the  only  one  who  thought  that  delia  was  kinda  hot ? ”  

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  hector  reyes.

location  ;  showtime.

@hector-reyes​

" you  know  i  can  see  everything  you  rent,  right ? ”  orwell  asks  him,  looking  up  from  the  computer  screen,  “ your  rental  history  is  looking  awfully  suspicious  right  now. ”

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  juliet  eisley.

location  ;  orwell’s  apartment.

@sublimethrills​

the  two  of  them  were  sat  comfortably  in  orwell’s  lounge  -  juliet  being  sat  on  the  near  brand  new  sofa,  and  orwell  on  the  ground  at  her  feet,  a  pile  of  books  in  front  of  them  that  they  were  sorting.  despite  the  books  in  front  of  them,  their  apartment  was  unusually  tidy.  they  were  in  a  habit  of  making  things  presentable  for  juliet,  which  was  more  than  they  often  did  for  their  other  friends  -  though  they  weren’t  quite  sure  why.  “ when  i  get  better  at  french,  i  want  to  read  some  french  novels.  maybe  even  ones  that  haven’t  been  translated  into  english  yet.  doesn’t  it  amaze  you  that’s  there’s  a  whole  other  world  of  stories  that  can’t  be  accessed  if  you  only  speak  one  language ? ”  she  was  rambling  a  little,  but  she  was  simultaneously  wondering  if  she  should  sort  the  books  alphabetically  by  author,  or  if  she  should  organize  them  even  further  into  genres  and  subgenres.  she  doubted  she  had  enough  books  for  it  to  be  efficient,  but  she  liked  the  idea.  orwell  tilted  her  head  back,  messy  curls  falling  away  from  her  face,  “ by  the  way,  i  have  no  idea  how  you  sound  so  beautiful  when  you  speak.  i  was  practising  last  night  -  listening  to  my  language  tapes,  and  i  can’t  help  but  feel  that  i’m  doing  it  wrong  because  i  don’t  sound  like  you. ”  

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  malakai  kings.

location  ;  a  new  chapter.

@malakaism​

orwell  was  awkward  and  anxious  at  the  best  of  times.  but  the  worst  thing  to  ever  happen  to  them  was  their  foster  brother  getting  a  job  at  their  favourite  store.  the  two  of  them  were  never  really close.  perhaps  that  made  it  worse.  every  interaction  had  her  insides  tearing  themselves  apart  as  her  anxious  mind  begged  for  malakai  to  not  mention  anything  of  their  past.  “ whenever  i’m  in  a  library  or  a  bookstore,  i’m  always  incredibly  conflicted.  i  know  that  there’s  a  system  of  organisation.  but  without  a  computer  or  a  guide,  it’s  not  really  practical.  part  of  me  longs  for  the  entire  thing  to  be  organized  alphabetically  by  author.  but  then,  there’d  be  the  issue  of  genre.  it’d  be  chaos  to  include  fiction  and  non-fiction  alongside  one  another.  not  to  mention  all  of  the  oddly  specific  sub-genres  i  would  like  to  have  access  to.  horror  is  fine.  but  what  if  i’m  looking  for  a  very  specific  vibe  of  gothic-ghost-mansion  with  extreme  lesbian  subtext ? ”  they  were  speaking  much  too  fast,  evidence  of  their  nerves.  orwell  placed  the  haunting  of  hill  house  on  the  counter,  needing  it  to  replace  the  well-read  copy  she  had  had  to  throw  away  due  to  the  binding  being  beyond  repair.  “ there  is  no  perfect  organisational  system  and  i  think  that  might  just  kill  me. ”  

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  ian  vogt.

location  ;  boan’s apartment.

@ianfm​

it  had  been  far  too  long  since  orwell  had  stepped  foot  in  their  apartment.  during  ian’s  recovery,  orwell  did  their  best  to  comfort  their  friends.  but  once  she  felt  that  they  could  stand  on  their  own,  she  returned  to  being  somewhat  of  a  hermit.  even  now,  as  she  stood  outside  of  the  apartment,  rapping  on  the  door,  she  didn’t  seem  quite  herself.  dark  circles  under  her  eyes,  hair  a  mess.  illness,  both  physical  and  mental  had  taken  its  toll  on  her.  regardless  of  how  she  felt,  she  greeted  ian  with  a  smile.  “ hey.  is  bo  here ?  we  had  plans  today. ”

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  leaf  wozniak.

location  ;  the commune.

@urdamage​

orwell  paced  the  greenhouse,  carefully  checking  the  plants  for  anything  that  may  cause  concern,  whether  it  be  parasites,  too  much  moisture,  not  enough  heat,  etc.  they  were  impressed  with  the  current  growth,  but  at  the  same  time  disappointed  that  there  were  no  problems  to  solve.  everything  had  seemed  to  be  going  wrong  for  them  lately,  outside  of  work  at  showtime  and  with  leafwell.  they  felt  that  it  was  only  a  matter  of  time  before  it  was  them  in  the  hands  of  the  killers  of  shrike  heights.  and  they  also  felt  that  they’d  never  get  the  chance  to  experience  the  world,  or  even  something  as  simple  as  real  romantic  love  before  it  happened.  they  felt  rather  sorry  for  themself  –  and  leaf  was  the  only  person  they  felt  safe  confiding  in,  knowing  that  bo  and  ian  had  their  own  issues  to  deal  with.  the  last  thing  they  wanted  to  do  was  make  it  about  themself  when  they  were  concerned.  “ i  keep  trying  to  throw  myself  into  work  so  that  i  can  keep  my  mind  busy.  i  think  i’m  a  lot  sadder  than  i  want  to  admit.  i  don’t  know  if  i’m  ready  to  feel  it  all,  you  know ?  i  get  scared  about  that.  it  makes  me  think  about  all  the  emotions  i  felt  when  i  was  bouncing  around  from  place  to  place,  not  knowing  how  to  deal  with  any  of  it.  does  that  make  any  sense ? ”  she  asked,  turning  to  face  him,  “ like,  i’m  not  sure  if  i  would  know  how  to  deal  with  any  of  it  now.  no-one  really  taught  me  how.  i  don’t  even  really  know  how  to  process  my  emotions  surrounding  her  leaving,  before i  even  really  had  the  chance to…  i  don’t  know.  confess  my  feelings  or  whatever.  how  on  earth  do  you  do  it ? ”

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;   ft.  orwell  washington  +  dolly  jensen.

location  ;  orwell’s  apartment.

@finaldarlings​

“ sorry  i’ve  been…  absent, ”  orwell  said  quietly,  fiddling  with  a  small  horse  minifigure  that  they’d  recently  painted  for  ian  and  bo,  yet  hadn’t  gotten  around  to  giving  them.  something  had  gone  wrong  with  the  sealant  –  making  the  final  coat  slightly  sticky.  they  hadn’t  played  dungeons  and  dragons  themself  in  quite  some  time.  they  wondered  when  they’d  be  able  to  enjoy  such  things  again.  dolly  was  one  of  the  few  people  allowed  inside  of  orwell’s  apartment.  despite  it  being  a  little  messier  than  usual,  the  blonde  was  desperate  for  company.  with  dolly  having  a  little  free  time,  they  extended  an  invitation.  “ i’m  still  not  really  okay  after  everything.  of  course  mentally,  but  physically  too.  migraines,  vertigo,  nausea,  all  that.  sometimes  i  think  i’ll  never  have  fun  ever  again, ”  they  said  a  little  dramatically,  rolling  their  eyes.  they  had  to  be  light-hearted  about  it  or  else  it  might  have  eaten  them  alive.  it  was  a  mix  of  their  terrible  physical  health  and  intense  anxiety  that  had  brought  on  these  consistent  issues.  but  as  usual,  they  didn’t  have  much  of  an  idea  of  how  to  deal  with  it.  “ i  feel  bad  that  you  had  to  see  me  like  that.  how  are  you  holding up ?  shit  –  you  know,  i’m  sorry,  you  don’t  have  to  answer,  i’m  sorry, ”  they  felt  guilty  –  was  it  really  fair  to  be  bringing  up  such  a  traumatic  moment  without  warning ?  what  if  dolly  wasn’t  ready  to  speak  about  it  at  all ?  “ i  didn’t  mean  to  invite  you  around  just  to  talk  about  all  that  sad  stuff.  do  you  wanna  watch  a  movie ? ”    

[horrorbxby]

closed  starter  ;  ft.  orwell  washington  +  jane  howard.

location  ;  orwell’s apartment.

@bitcme​ ​

it  wasn’t  often  that  orwell  invited  anyone  to  stay  at  their  apartment.  it  wasn’t  that  it  was  messy,  because  it  wasn’t,  really.  more  like  organized  chaos  of  books  and  records  and  comic  books,  creative  things  that  kept  their  mind  busy.  jane  was  one  of  the  very  few  people  that  orwell  felt  comfortable  having  around.  and  feeling  disconnected  from  most  of  their  friends  and  the  small  town  they’d  spent  their  entire  life  in,  they  needed  some  time  with  jane  more  than  anything.  jane  was  the  first  person  to  have  been  to  their  apartment  in  months.  “ i  think  i  envy  you, ”  she  told  her.  the  two  of  them  were  sat  at  either  end  of  orwell’s  sofa.  “ i  always  wanted  to  just...  up  and  leave.  sometimes  i  wonder  if  it’s  too  late.  i  wonder  what  would  happen  if  i  just  left,  without  telling  a  soul.  i  could  go  and  be  someone new. ”  orwell  laughed  half-heartedly.  “ sorry.  that’s  a  little  dramatic.  there’s  just  been  a  lot  to  think  about  lately.  but  i  think  you’re  one  of  the  bravest  people  i  know. ”