Orwell 1984 - Blog Posts
OH MMY GOD, THERE IS A MANGA FOR 1984??!??!??
i’ve been SEARCHING for the 1984 manga for quite some time, and finally acquired it as a christmas gift :3
i don’t see many ppl talk abt it, even though most of the panels are so funny 💀 i need more appreciation for this stupid ass manga i love it sm
I read 1984 and if Winston and O'Brien isnt doomed old man yaoi, i don't know what they are
if chiikawa did a 1984 collab, my input is julia would have to be rakko, no debate TRUST 🙏
here’s my artist rendition of julia rakko, i have a list of 1984 characters paired to their chiikawa counterpart so hopefully ill get around to drawing the rest 🫶
posted this for tiktok a while ago, but might as well post this edit here too :-) (that’s why the user is different in the edit)
thought the song fit her very well lol
i’ve been SEARCHING for the 1984 manga for quite some time, and finally acquired it as a christmas gift :3
i don’t see many ppl talk abt it, even though most of the panels are so funny 💀 i need more appreciation for this stupid ass manga i love it sm
— 9:34 PM || THURSDAY
OMGOMGOMGOMG I JUST BOUGHT 1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL FOR 99 PESOS ONLY AHHHH IM SO HAPPY
nineteen eighty-four / twin peaks, "the path to the black lodge"
God he’s such a bastard (affectionate)
…Also this drawing is giving massive tumble sexyman vibes
"They got me a long time ago." - O'Brien
Quote and character from the book "1984" by George Orwell
read Orwell’s 1984 over the summer and now we’re doing it in school so I kinda had to draw this..
brilliant book!
and yes I accidentally spent the last few hours doing this instead of homework whoops
OP i agree with all of this, but I’d also like to add that the “survival” theme Newman was going for goes against the entire point of the original novel. THE WHOLE POINT of 1984 originally was that through loving each other, Winston and Julia were able to do more than survive, they were able to find scraps of joy and meaning outside of the Party. In fact, that’s a major reason why the Party suppresses interpersonal relationships, because it exists by monopolizing the energies and activities and feelings of it’s citizens, and to do this, it keeps them in a state of mind where there sole focus is survival (via war, economic insecurity, repression, etc). By loving each other, Winston and Julia are able to transcend the survival mindset, until they are captured and tortured, which works because a total focus on survival, and the all-consuming fear that accompanies it, crowds out one’s mental space, leaving no energy for interpersonal love.
by reducing Julia’s motives to survival, Newman is denying what makes the Winston/Julia romance a meaningful form of resistance.
Julia by Sandra Newman is a terrible book and here’s why
“Julia never actually liked Winston Smith, she actually thought he was pretentious and annoying.”
So why does she repeatedly tell him she loves him
“She’s lying.”
But why
“She was a honeytrap by the Thought Police.”
But she acts surprised when the Thought Police come to arrest her
“She’s been told to act surprised.”
So she’s just doing as she’s told for the entire novel and never makes any decisions for herself
“Yes! It’s what she has to do to survive! That’s the point of the book!”
Really because she never once says that when she’s being used as a whore for the Thought Police, if anything it seems like she’s motivated by the prospect of getting a new flat, plus she seems to put actual effort into adopting the party’s ideology, so clearly it’s not just about survival…
“Okay so Julia’s motivations are a little confused, but this book adds so much that Orwell didn’t consider in the original!”
Like what
“The Holodomor.”
Jesus Christ…
“No, but it’s the survival theme again, she sells her mother out in order to escape the famine!”
Okay, and how does she feel about that?
“She doesn’t, she was only a kid, she can’t hold herself responsible.”
Really? Because Winston held himself responsible for the deaths of his mother and sister, and he was only a kid, it’s part of what makes him so complex…
“Well that wouldn’t work here anyway.”
Why not?
“Julia’s mother makes her do it.”
Are you serious? Does Julia make a single decision in the entire story?
“Of course! She runs away at the end.”
What, when she’s seven months pregnant and has been tortured and starved for months? I thought this was supposed to be about providing a woman’s perspective on the original; what woman would choose to go for a cross country run in that physical state?
“Julia’s built different. She doesn’t even get scared when the rats jump onto her face.”
Why would she? It’s never established that she was scared of them in the first place!
“She bites one of their heads off.”
Cringe, then what
“Oh, then they just let her go.”
You cannot be serious
“Of course! They’ve got to use Room 101 at least a hundred times a day, so she just runs out the clock.”
And how does she figure that out
“She doesn’t, someone…”
…tells her to do it, quel surprise
“No but this character is a super cool badass female OC who O’Brien plagiarises because he has no ideas of his own.”
Are you aware of the irony of writing that in a book that wouldn’t exist without Orwell’s original
“Yeah but Orwell’s protagonist is so whiny!”
He’s a victim of a totalitarian regime, what do you expect
“Yeah but he’s so self-important!”
And that’s his downfall, in his hubris he falls into the most obvious trap in the world, O’Brien lures him in with the masculine power fantasy of being a resistance fighter and Smith pays the price by being carted off to the Ministry of Love to be tortured to death.
“The Ministry of Love isn’t that bad, Julia makes it out okay.”
Yes, that’s the problem, Julia survives everything
“She does get a nasty scratch off one of those rats…”
In the original it’s implied she got lobotomised
“That wouldn’t work in this version.”
I shudder to ask, but why not
“Because she needs to live long enough to see the regime fall.”
And how long does that take
“About six hours after the end of the original.”
Are you fucking serious
“And then she meets Big Brother face to face!”
Big Brother isn’t fucking real
“In this version he is.”
So you have a protagonist who survives the horrors of a brutal famine, the Ministry of Love and Room 101 with barely any emotional or physical damage, then after a heavily pregnant hike she gets to meet the final boss of totalitarianism face to face, and you think Winston is self-important?
“Did I mention that she’s queer in this version?”
Is that supported by the text of the original in any way at all
“No.”
Then why. Why to any of this. If you hate Winston so much and you have to change every single aspect of Julia to shoehorn her into your batshit headcanons, why write a book about them, why write a book about 1984, why did this get published, why is this getting good reviews. Why. Why. Why to any of this
I’m going to be so honest, my ideal date would consist of sharing illegally obtained chocolate and tea, cuddling, and reading dense political theory in an antique store in a run-down, sketchy part of town.
so, I’ve been getting a lot of trump x Biden (triden????) content recommended to me across socials recently. It’s been absolutely wild, and I know many of you have been eating it up (ironically or unironically? Who cares, irony is dead anyway)
however, I would like to give credit where credit is due to the 1984 fandom for being the first people to latch onto the trope of Frail Sickly Old Man x Compulsive Liar. We were truly Ahead of Our Time.
My thoughts exactly.
I swear, this feels straight out of a hurt/comfort/angst/whump fic.
why is Winston torture scene so oddly intimate?
"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
- George Orwell, 1984
i’m also there as well and it’s definitely disgusting and disappointing the shit that is going in there
"When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct."
-George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia, 1970)
JULIA by SANDRA NEWMAN (A REVIEW)
quickly: a woman’s daring sex life in a totalitarian regime leads to confinement and freedom (this is a man’s world / cameras and monitors everywhere / facetime before Facetime™ / overalls and soot / a boot in the face / thought control / see nothing, say nothing / “no touching” / people disappear / yes means no / hate means love / Big Brother becoming Big Father / cheese like rubber, bread like leather / child spies / handsome airmen in handsome uniforms / dark windowless underground prisons / government-sponsored torture / nightmares turned reality / all regimes are the same).
This is a retelling of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, from the perspective of the character Julia. Though the landscape was familiar it felt like there were so many new elements to explore, thanks to Newman’s refocusing of the story’s lens. The gray days, civil self-censoring, and grand governmental illusions are still there, but what Newman highlights is a world that is not just anti-women, but anti-Feminine. The daily assault on women and the collective feminine (those faculties we need dearly for introspection, intuition, reception, caretaking, community, and creativity) is relayed to us through Julia’s own story of growing up watched (and touched and used and forgotten). No women’s rights, but no poetry, thinking, feeling, remembering, loving, or caring either, says Big Brother, always watching.
With this new view of the story, the smell of blood is sharper (on the street after a bomb tears off a child’s arm, or in the dungeons where they torture pregnant women and the elderly). The design of Big Brother’s Love (Hate) is clearer (double, triple, and quadruplethink… every relationship is a set-up). The heartbreakers are the moments when the wizard’s curtain is pulled back and the evil isn’t anything special… just a man. Made of flesh and feelings just like any other living thing. Subject to thirst, hunger, pain, aging, and death. How despairingly bleak it is to realize that the causes of your and the world’s tragedies are men who make decisions like kids fighting over toys on the playground.
★★★★
Well illustrated! CAIR which is an Islamic group was influential in removing our Southern History in Virginia.
