And that's actually one of the great weaknesses of 1984 It DOESN'T depict the transitional period, at all It's actually a major plot point that NO ONE CAN REMEMBER IT (except maybe O'Brien dropping tantalizing hints) Winston keeps trying to remember but he can't
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And honestly I think that's because he couldn't show the transition because he wasn't sure what the story would be There's a lot of shit you'd have to figure out for how this exaggerated nightmare scenario might occur
1 reply 3 retweets 41 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
It's easier not to explain it, let the Party appear all-powerful and eternal, make the story be about the fact that no one can actually know anything about the reality of the world I get that, but it remains a cop out
4 replies 3 retweets 39 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
It means dickhead conservatives get to fill in their own version of the history, which they have done, to the point where "creeping Orwellianism" fanfiction giving an origin story to the Party is basically better known than the actual plot of the actual book
3 replies 2 retweets 47 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And even though Orwell actually believed the Party was an end result of the inevitable collapse of capitalism under its own contradictions, they get to say stupid shit about how America was working fine and was the prosperous land of the free etc
1 reply 2 retweets 22 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And then, one day, the pronouns attacked
1 reply 1 retweet 26 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
I'm sure the party would want to abolish gendered pronouns altogether in the name of uniformity in a newer Dictionary
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Replying to @LizardOrman @arthur_affect and
(spoiler alert?) Junior Anti-Sex League reminded me more of purity culture and abstinence-only education and the like. Perhaps it was instead a dig at anti-sex-essentialists such as myself.
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Replying to @peced @LizardOrman and
The stuff about sex and gender is some of the stuff that aged worst in 1984 and is most clearly about Orwell's hangups and particularly his aversion to feminism It is a really big stretch of a hot take to say "totalitarians will automatically ban sex"
1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @peced and
Like there is real stuff he is referring to, sure The fundie abstinence culture in the US absolutely fuels right-wing extremism by channeling typing people's horniness in weird ways, it is a thing But "Someday the Party will ban sexuality altogether" is a weird strawman
2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
In the case of actual real life Stalinism it doesn't apply, at all The social values of the USSR under Stalin were pretty damn normcore Telling kids they should get married and be good little husbands and wives and pump out babies
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Replying to @arthur_affect @peced and
the endless similarities between the US and the USSR never fail to really put a special something in my sigh when the McCarthy et al successors start ranting
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Replying to @de_la_Nae @peced and
Comrade Detective is a really really good TV series that not enough people watched and the unironic tankie and unironic McCarthyist reactions to it both prove its point
1 reply 3 retweets 10 likes - Show replies
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