julystorms

[julystorms]

FINAL POST

All right, it’s been 5 or so months since I last posted here. 

The long and short of it is that SnK wasn’t the only reason I left this blog. Real life/work stress was a big part of it on top of SnK’s clumsy handling of delicate subject matter and the SnK fandom’s overwhelming insistence that the author of SnK was a genius (and I was the dumbass who just Wasn’t Looking Closely Enough to Realize It). 

It was just too much to deal with all at once. 

Y’all know my stance on how fiction can and does affect reality, so let’s not go there. The issue I have was that all of these negative things wadded themselves up into a giant hateful ball in my mind. This blog, and the fact that its very foundation was almost entirely based on being an SnK blog...made me feel gross and ugly. Look, I don’t think it’s silly to be disappointed or put off by something you’ve been thinking about and dissecting and having fun with for literal years of your life. It’s been something like 4.5 years I’ve been following this series! I’m upset that something I thought might do a 180 and be great...ended up feeling bad to me. It’s hard to see something with potential lambaste itself like this, especially when I’ve spent four and a half years following it and defending it.

You are free to disagree. I totally understand that some of you adore the series for the good parts, or you ignore the hateful things; maybe you’re just here to see how it ends. I can respect that.

But I literally can’t exist without being critical. I know a lot of my followers resented my posts because it makes them feel stupid or weird for liking the things that I criticized. I tried to stop being negative (because constant negativity is a downer), but it was hard to exist in a fandom space where I felt I couldn’t say my piece any longer without putting off people who followed me.

But hey, after a break... I feel a lot better! I think I’ve come to terms with wanting to like a series/a world/characters/whatever, but struggling to because of fandom opinion and my personal discomfort, not to mention the frustration and uncertainty of the series itself.

SnK isn’t any different than Harry Potter or RK or Twilight or any other series where the author turned out to be shitty or misinformed or just generally an idiot. 

If my salt makes you uncomfortable or uneasy, this is goodbye. I had fun here! I enjoyed interacting with you guys, talking characters and meta with you. It was lovely. But if reading my meta and posts makes you feel bad about yourself or uneasy or just awful? It’s okay to break ties. Sometimes it’s necessary and I want you to take care of you; have a good one!

For those of you who would like to follow my new blog, the url is @mannatea. 

Please view this blog as an archive. I hope some of you will still find it useful. :)

[julystorms]

I don't even know if you're going to get this but I just wanted to say thank you. I asked some pretty dorky questions and you were always patient and explained things to me. You made me a better thank and I will always be grateful for that. God bless and take care brilliant you.

i wasn’t going to publish this bUT i think i need to because everyone seems to be getting the wrong idea about why this blog is in defunct status. it’s not because of an anon! what i meant by ‘made me think twice about deleting’ was that a certain anon sent me a message asking me to please nOT delete (my tags had a comment in them about possibly deleting this blog), and because of that i gave it a second thought and decided it wouldn’t be fair to delete all of the meta and everything.

that said, if i do end up stealing this url for my new blog in the future, i’ll change this one. it would make everything here more difficult to find (typing in a different url and everything) but at least the material would still be here. i’m undecided on this at this particular time, though.

also, @ anon, i enjoy getting those dorky questions, so thank you for sending them. ♥

sorry for the spam of the defunct post, i think it’ll be posting twice more before it stops.

[julystorms]

THIS BLOG IS NOW DEFUNCT

1.) Thanks to one anon I received I thought twice about deleting. Please consider this blog as an archive.

2.) If you want to follow my new blog, send me a message here or on Discord. I won’t be publishing the name publicly.

[julystorms]

Hello I am sorry to hear that you lost interest on snk, but after reading yout post, I can understand and before that I dindt even consider the possibility that there are ones who got offended by this jew~eldian paralell, but now I think i get it. I am sorry that things turned out like this, but pleas dont delete your blog and your older metas and analisises because they are gold, and I dont think that I am the only one who thinks so. Thank you Have a nice day

you are the only reason this blog won’t be deleted.

[julystorms]

Truffle wrapped herself in my skirt while I piece a quilt

[julystorms]

attack on titan is not worth caring about and i am deeply disturbed by its existence. not because of the vore. not because of the gore. but because i am caught up with the manga and know where it goes.

and here is my personal advice: if attack on titan is your big thing and you are not caught up on the manga, just…start looking at other series. try. you might not be completely crushed by the things that end up happening but

not worth it. it is not worth it to care deeply about or defend, there is not really any defending the horrible things it does…do not feel the need to defend it because you love it. please examine it critically if you are caught up and just accept that horrible awful terrible fucking decisions were made. i will not be a ball of anger at anyone who still is entertained but

do not defend it. there is no way to defend writing a story about shocking horrible violent vore for the sake of shock and horror and having it be about what it is

season 2 is coming out and if you watch it please…do not keep your hopes up for the rest of the series even if the season is well-made. i have no idea how far it will animate this time but i have reason to doubt that the entire manga will be animated or that it will be animated faithfully.

and i sure fucking hope it does not, or that at least it does and it gets enough backlash to open up conversation…

[julystorms]

And I’m done with people trying to tell me I’m “looking too deeply” into it or like, “not looking deeply enough.”

So hey, for a lit analysis major, which the fuck is it? It can’t be both! 

Sorry but this series isn’t inventive and shit. It’s not. It literally just took history, mashed it up in a giant spitwad, and slapped it down on paper and y’all think I’m gonna sit here and be like, “WOW ISAYAMA IS A GENIUS THIS IS SO SMART.” This isn’t even subtle? It’s in your face. 

These aren’t even PARALLELS to Jewish people: they ARE Jewish people. So cut it with the ‘Isayama is so clever’ bullshit. Or, ‘It’s not antisemitic because it’s painted in a bad light in the series!’ Uh huh. I loved the added angle that these fictional Jews are being oppressed by other nations because they were historically the oppressors. Which was, y’know, something pulled straight out of the Bible and not something people were actively saying during the Holocaust. What a great additional angle for Isayama to use!!! WOW!! GENIUS! Fuck off with that nonsense.

Like I said, these aren’t even parallels. Eldians are straight up Jewish. They’re drawn like Jewish caricatures in the background frames, they wear the armbands. You can praise his “historical accuracy” all you like but his storytelling skills have so far been terrible and SnK is a fantasy world where there’s no such thing as historical accuracy.

Shall we go back and talk about how he wrote about Zackly forcing a man to eat his own shit through a tube connected from his ass to his mouth? Shall we? Yeah, he’s such a genius!! You know that plot isn’t going to go anywhere, isn’t going to mean anything. You know it and I know it and let’s stop pretending that SnK has to be a brilliant series to keep our flickering attention spans focused. Bullshit. It’s trash, it’s always been trash, and like, sorry that all those years we spent hoping it’d be better ended up feeling fuckin’ wasted.

Again, don’t fuckin’ tell me I’m too stupid to look deeply enough while also telling me I’m looking too much into it. It isn’t both. It’s not even deep. It’s RIGht theRe. The fuckin’ author copied history word for word re: Jewish people. THIS SHIT AIN’T A FUCKIN PARALLEL. IT JUST IS. IT IS WHAT IT IS. Eldians are Jewish! And this is like, “the Holocaust, but if the Jews were capable of fighting back.” “But also they have to fight each other in really bold literal ways.”

Nah, fuck it. I’m out. I’ve spent literal years of my life waiting for this series to prove it was actually interesting and worth following even when other people said, “Hey, that series is kind of bad.” No, I don’t think it’s fair to take a quote Isayama said like five years ago and use it as current “evidence” but there’s plenty of weird shit in the manga that skeeves me out and makes me feel like he’s been here from the start for horror and gore and shock value to exist LITERALLY just for those reasons. There’s nothing deeper there and there never will be. This isn’t an enlightened series with an incredibly talented author at the helm.

I’m tired of trying to convince myself that this series is worth my time or anyone else’s. Like look, y’all kNOW ME. I’ve been in this fandom FOR LITERAL YEARS. I’m not some hater jumping on the ‘fuck SnK’ bandwagon. Stop trying to tell me I’m ‘missing the point’ lmao WHAT FUCKING POINT? There is no point.

[julystorms]

okay so...this is what i have always meant by saying, “hey, you should be critical of the things you consume!” ‘cause from its onset this has made me deeply uncomfortable and the fact that it has not changed, or gotten better, or even given me an ending that might be happy...has made me lose interest.

look, in the hands of a powerful storyteller, this could be an amazing story. this could be an overarching commentary on the holocaust---one that is positive, not vile.

but like, it’s hard to imagine that’s coming. i've been hoping for a long time that the narrating characters would be proven as unreliable so that we might learn that the “history” of the titans was skewed in favor of the “winners”--marley--and not actual, factual truth. i’ve believed this to be an ideal story twist, circumstances considered.

but what i’m seeing is “hey these people are oppressed, they’re clearly jewish people, and actually there’s a legitimate reason to fear them...cause you know...they turn into monsters.”

yeah okay marley turns them into monsters. maybe marley’s lying about being immune to it. maybe marley’s immunity will become a plot point later--as in, maybe we’ll find out that it was a lie all along, and that these people can become the ‘same kind of monster’ as the eldians.

but i doubt it. i doubt it, and i fear this series is going to end on a note that i find distasteful or insulting. i can’t say it will or won’t. i don’t know. but i fear it. i don’t think this series is amazing. i think it started off pretty intriguing and is now the Fictional Holocaust Show, with no end in sight. i’m not sayin you can’t write about the holocaust; but i question its use here in a shounen manga. one about ‘grey morality’ and so much wwi and wwii imagery that it’s clearly a fictional holocaust??? like...c’mon. it’s creepy because too much of it is real and used here for...what????? why? 

i’m not saying that...i won’t read this series anymore. but it’s on thin fuckin’ ice as far as i’m concerned. isayama took a series that started out kind of interesting and had to take from real life horrors to make this terrifying? had to draw OBVIOUS parallels between jewish people and monSTERS?? what the fuck. what the fuck?

this has been bothering me for months. years maybe. i don’t know.  in the last few months i think it’s driven me away from this series. i mean ffs i can’t get over the fact that isayama has all this biblical shit in here and like...it feels like he’s using it to be antisemitic. is this commentary about how actual real-life jews oppressed nations by conquering them in the OT? or what? what is it. why give us a narrative where these obviously jewish characters are oppressed by the entire world with a perceived reason. like a legitimate reason to be afraid of someone, of a people. they turn into 50ft tall fucking man eating monsters!! i just???? fuck it. i’m pretty much here stRICTLY to see if he does anything to surprise me in a pleasant way. but let me tell you something: i’m not going to be even a little surprised if nothing good comes of it. if this series ends and it’s still about haha...jewish people oppressed...haha...no light at the end of the tunnel. despair for them. most dead. or, as many have speculated from the start, they all die. to you, two-thousand years from now: hey we were a nation, until we were wiped out.

aNYWAY this has been bothering me for a long time. i’m sorry my thoughts are scattered. i’m still upset about it. this is why i’ve been deleting most asks about snk or brushing them off.

attack on titan is not worth caring about and i am deeply disturbed by its existence. not because of the vore. not because of the gore. but because i am caught up with the manga and know where it goes.

and here is my personal advice: if attack on titan is your big thing and you are not caught up on the manga, just…start looking at other series. try. you might not be completely crushed by the things that end up happening but

not worth it. it is not worth it to care deeply about or defend, there is not really any defending the horrible things it does…do not feel the need to defend it because you love it. please examine it critically if you are caught up and just accept that horrible awful terrible fucking decisions were made. i will not be a ball of anger at anyone who still is entertained but

do not defend it. there is no way to defend writing a story about shocking horrible violent vore for the sake of shock and horror and having it be about what it is

season 2 is coming out and if you watch it please…do not keep your hopes up for the rest of the series even if the season is well-made. i have no idea how far it will animate this time but i have reason to doubt that the entire manga will be animated or that it will be animated faithfully.

and i sure fucking hope it does not, or that at least it does and it gets enough backlash to open up conversation…

[julystorms]

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot give. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes and in that part of your chest that gets empty and hollow feeling. The happiness of love turns to sadness when unspent. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

— As the lights wink out…   (via pigmenting)

[julystorms]

If you’re the mood for a feelgood movie but doesn’t quite know what to watch, please consider watching Furlough (2018).

It tells the story of a rookie correction officer who has the opportunity to become a full-time employee if she agrees to take an inmate to visit her dying mother.

I kept expecting some gut-wrenching drama or something Bad™ to happen, but it never came. It’s just a pretty easygoing movie with moments that will make you laugh.

(Plus, you’ll get to see Tessa Thompson in adorable kitty pajamas!)

I’d recommend watching the movie without checking out the trailer so no moment of it will be spoiled for you, but if you’re the kind of person who has to watch trailers to decide if it’ll be worth your time (no judgement!), here it is:

[julystorms]

[julystorms]

Ojisama to Neko: “Fukumaru-chan” [Original comic can be found on Twitter HERE]

I don’t know if my heart could take working in a pet store, taking care of animals and seeing them go like that… ah, I’m too sentimental. Maybe that’s why I prefer a profession where I can work with animals that have already been dead for millions of years. As a side note, I actually laughed while translating this- I translated it as “gentleman” because that seemed most appropriate in-context, but the word that the clerk actually used for Ojisama is “ikemen,” which refers to a “ladies’ man” or a generally handsome/charming guy. I love that even in-universe, everyone loves Ojisama.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE ORIGINAL ARTIST ON TWITTER AND PIXIV. VOLUME ONE OF THE OFFICIAL MANGA CAN BE PURCHASED ON AMAZON HERE.

[julystorms]

Officer Jenny and her police dog Granbull

[julystorms]

me: wow i have some free time i could get some writing done!

my shit brain: or you could rewatch some crappy tv show you love for the 100th time instead ??

me: oh damn cant argue with that

[julystorms]

T a k e n

[julystorms]

When u feel a new special interest coming on

When u get to the point where it’s all u think about

[julystorms]

Sooo I’m pretty much in love with my new machine…

I’m just going to embroider my next 17 costumes. The walls. The couch. Everything. Embroidery has NEVER been this satisfying.