#Blurred Culture

[orgyupdates]

orgyofficial: Special thanks to Blurred Culture for doing a great review and sharing some great footage and video clips from 1/13/24 the sold out Bar Sinister show!! [x]

Blurred Culture [x]

If you went to this concert and have pictures, feel free to submit them to us, if you want us to share them with Orgy just tell us. :)

[rachelannc]

Jungle's memorable house-soul sound and striking visuals set the Hollywood Bowl ablaze

LOS ANGELES, CA — You may have heard Jungle’s feel good dance song “Back on 74” throughout the past year when their infamous one-shot dance video went viral last summer for its stellar choreography, videography, and engaging musicality. The band, formed by founding members and childhood friends Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland back in 2013, have come a long way and is now reaching the…

[cenvast]

Laios, Monsters, & Toshiro: On Racialized Desire and Identification with the Other

Arguably, the most significant part of Laios' character is the societal ostracization he faces because of his non-normative interests and behavior. For the majority of his life, Laios struggles socially, and other humans mistreat him. When he rescues Marcille from the Nightmares, his nightmare dredges up his inability to fit into school and the army. During his early dungeoneering days, he's lied to and exploited by his fellow party members.

One of his earliest and most formative negative experiences with people is his village's abuse of Falin as a magic user. He shares that after the villagers discovered that she can use magic, "adults who were just kind yesterday, all began to bully [her]." Instead of protecting Falin, his parent tell her to leave the village. The prejudice Falin faces and his parents' response to it upsets Laios to the point that he leaves home.

While Laios cares about his friends, the Demon points out that Laios understandably does not care for people in general. Laios doesn't disagree with the Demon's assessment and suspects that the Demon "can sense all [his] thoughts." The Demon goes on to say that Laios actually "despise[s] all humans." Laios denies this assessment, but given the Demon's uncanny ability to sniff out people's desires and Laios' ashamed expression, at least part of Laios likely agrees with the Demon. It's not a stretch to assume that he's held onto some hurt and resentment towards humans due to their mistreatment of him and Falin in their youth.

In response to how human society has othered him, Laios distances himself from humans and invests his time and energy into monsters and demi-humans instead. In the DunMeshi world, monsters and demi-humans are the ultimate societal Other. People fear them, exploit them, and even hunt and kill them. As someone who's similarly been mistreated by human society, Laios resonates deeply with monsters.

His desire to become a monster and/or beastman reflects his desire to reclaim agency over how society has ostracized him. If he chooses to become a monster, he gets to place value on what society has deemed despicable. He gets to choose why society hates him and be different on his own terms.

Both textually and thematically, Laios' identification with the Other bleeds into the erotic. More blatantly, he says that he'd have sex with orc women, and his succubus is a monstrous version of Marcille.

The entire story is also steeped in the theme of consumption as carnality. Laios and his party spend the entire manga eating monsters — a taboo physical act which they reap pleasure from; the underlying eroticism isn't difficult to see.

The story also presents consumption as a form of extreme identification. Eating a monster makes the monster part of you through digestion. The line between consuming the monster and becoming the monster — between erotic desire for the monster, demonstrated by eating their flesh, and identifying with the monster — is very blurred. Note that digesting a monster is an act of absorption; it destroys the original creature. Senshi states that consuming a monster erases "its individual identity," and major manga spoilers, but Laios defeats and pacifies the Demon by consuming its desire to eat. We'll come back to this concept later.

As previously mentioned, Laios is disinterested in most humans. The notable exception to this rule is Toshiro and by extension, the Eastern Archipelago. Laios doesn't seem to know much about the Archipelago before speaking to Toshiro, so he isn't drawn to Toshiro because he's an Easterner. Instead, he's drawn to his "odd appearance."

Just like Laios views monsters and demi-humans as a visible Other, Laios views Toshiro as another visible Other. On the Island, Toshiro stands out as a foreigner at first glance. While Laios as a white tallman doesn't appear visibly strange to other people, he's drawn again and again to people and creatures who are immediately visibly "odd." He sees them as understanding what it's like to be different and be mistreated for it, and since he relates to that experience, he wants to learn about them and be closer to them.

Essentially, Laios behaves towards Toshiro and his culture the same way he behaves towards monsters; he wants to know everything about Toshiro's foreign culture — the thing which makes him different. Unintentionally, Laios unintentionally reduces Toshiro to being Japanese; if he wasn't Japanese, Laios would never have approached him.

While Laios doesn't have bad intentions, as Toshiro himself acknowledges during their fight, his behavior towards Toshiro still has negative consequences. Laios' harmless interest in monsters translates to fetishization in the context of Japanese culture. He enacts multiple microaggressions against Toshiro and crossing his boundaries.

Laios goes beyond merely learning about Japanese culture. He takes parts of it for himself when he names his sword a Japanese name. Akin to his consumption of monsters, Laios attempts to participate in Toshiro's culture while failing to respect Toshiro himself. Just as eating monsters destroys them, Laios consuming Toshiro's culture while enacting racism against him causes real harm.

Many people have already written about Laios' microaggressions towards Toshiro, but a couple include Laios telling Toshiro that he looks "odd" and asking where he's from, mispronouncing his name as "Shuro," and assuming his favorite food is rice. Laios' treatment and fetishization of Toshiro is racist and harmful. However, I'd like to dive beyond the surface of Laios' micro-aggressive remarks and examine how his obsession with Toshiro becomes a racialized mode of desire, paralleling real world phenomena.

Though no concrete canonical evidence of Laios' feelings towards Toshiro being romantic and/or sexual exists, his interactions with Toshiro have erotic undertones. Their fight dialogue, in particular, revolves around eating, an act the story consistently shows as carnal. During this fight, Laios places his thumb in Toshiro's mouth and asks him, "What's the point of even having a mouth?" Laios' penetration of Toshiro's body via his mouth and his question's potential as an innuendo lend themselves to an erotic reading of the scene's more obvious conflict. Considering the overlap between consumption and carnality throughout the story, it's not a large jump to read eroticism into Laios demanding Toshiro meet his body's physical needs.

Furthermore, Laios is more enthusiastic about Toshiro than any other human in the series. While he cares deeply about his sister and his friends, Laios repeatedly expresses how much he admires Toshiro. He retains and brings up things like Toshiro's (perceived) favorite food. He wants to go to the East in Falin's place after she rejects Toshiro's marriage proposal, and in the "What-If" extra material, he's adamant about setting up a scenario where Toshiro travels with him through the Dungeon.

Undoubtedly, Laios is drawn to Toshiro. Since he sees non-white-ness and monstrosity as equivalent markers of societal othering, Toshiro's identity as a foreigner is what cultivates and maintains Laios' interest in him. Even if Laios learns to care for Toshiro as a person, his desire for Toshiro, platonically or otherwise, is still filtered heavily through race within the narrative.

Laios' relationship with his masculinity is also fraught. He broke off his engagement with a girl from his village and doesn't express normative interest in female tallmen. Seeing how the nightmare versions of his parents ask him when he's going to give them grandchildren, Laios experiences societal pressure to conform to a normative performance of masculinity through being attracted to and marrying a tallman woman and creating a family with her.

Laios frequently talks about how cool and admirable Toshiro is when he performs masculinity through combat, etc. He might find Toshiro's Asian masculinity more appealing and more accessible to him than the masculinity that's been forced onto him, precisely because Toshiro's Asian masculinity appears non-normative in a Western lens. But co-opting the masculinities of men of color as a white man would only further feed into the white consumption of cultures of color.

Overall, Laios' entitlement to and consumption of Toshiro's culture mirrors the real-life way white people co-opt and fetishize non-white cultures. Laios' fetishistic treatment of Japanese culture, because of his attraction (platonic or otherwise) to Toshiro, parallels white people's treatment of Asian people in the Western diaspora. I can only speak on the Asian American experience, but Laios immediately being drawn to Toshiro's "odd appearance," obsessing over his culture, and primarily treating Toshiro as a conduit for his said culture feels eerily close to how some white anime and/or K-pop fans act towards Japanese and Korean people.

Similarly to Laios, real queer, neurodivergent, and/or otherwise non-normative white people are marginalized by white Western society. They relate to how society others non-white cultures and/or people of color and latch onto them. While forming human connections based on curiosity and shared experiences is wonderful, white people are often unaware of the racial dynamics at play when they engage with non-white cultures and people of color and unintentionally, end up consuming and fetishizing non-white cultures in detrimental ways.

None of this negates the reality that Laios and Toshiro canonically care for each other. For instance, Toshiro's willingness to hug Laios reveals his genuine familiarity with and affection for him. The racial dynamics of their friendship complicate their relationship in fascinating ways and open up a potential path for Laios' growth. With time and effort, Laios could absolutely unlearn his racism and become a much better friend to Toshiro.

In conclusion, Laios' behavior towards Toshiro is a study in a marginalized white person's identification with and racialized desire for a non-white Other and how even a well-intentioned attempt at connection can replicate harmful racist dynamics. Toshiro's experience with Laios closely parallels real Asian people's struggles with racism and fetishization in our world today.

[aeolianblues]

The weirdly life affirming thing about fandom and some of the adoration that comes with it, particularly as pertains to real people, is that fans will love all the parts of you. That what is deemed ‘marketable’ by the press release and everything else they left out. If you come from something, fans will keep it alive. A Sam Fender fan away in Nebraska, USA will learn the Geordie dialect to accurately write Sam Fender x reader fanfic. They will keep alive a dialect declining even in Newcastle. As long as someone knows it, it lives on. The more people into it, the more beloved it becomes; it has a resurgence, it carries on. A Kneecap fan in Indonesia whose third language is English decides Irish Gaeilge can be their fourth. The Eurovision fans decided they can learn all of Finnish after being drawn to one song about piña coladas (and the super endearing Käärijä!)

Fandom is so much more than some base lowly shit to be embarrassed about that people like to reduce it to. It’s a powerful mode of culture. It’s so much more than about writing ‘your silly little stories about your pathetic men’; fandom is the reason American Blur fans flew thousands of miles overseas to be at Wembley last summer. Fandom is checking your IG stories after that gig and seeing that other well-loved musicians also have the same story as you because they were at that gig too. It is months later hearing Grian Chatten from Fontaines D.C. say that part of their new song was inspired by going to that Wembley show, and knowing exactly what he meant by that.

It is about shared cultural moments, it’s about the realisation that nothing is ever strictly in the past, and that we are sharing and creating culture in the now. I don’t know where I’m going with this, I was just struck by the connection between culture and pop culture. Don’t let people tell you they’re different worlds, I suppose

[enbysiriusblack]

wolfstar will always be that old couple that thinks all 70's pop culture is superior to anything new. they get so judged by hari who's decked out in a blur tshirt and baggy jeans and chunky cardigans and wears tracksuits when he's not exercising and has a growing cd collection. remus, to him, is so old and uncool other than his smoking habit and cardigans, and although sirius will always be the pinnacle of cool to him, he can't believe his godfather still wears flares and solely uses records and thinks some band called 't.rex' are better than nirvana.

[serenpedac]

Similar observations have probably been made before about A & N, but I wanted to write this down anyway.

To start off this year, I'm reading The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen. The book has a section on historical same-sex friendships that reminded me very much of A & N. These quotes in particular:

Men in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries had same-sex friendships that---in one historian's words---"verged on romance."

And:

Not only were forms of affection out in the open; the emotional intensity and physicality that we now associate almost exclusively with romantic relationships was then a hallmark of friendship.

There's also a part about how students at women's colleges would basically woo each other if someone caught their eye, sending notes and gifts, "until [...] the two become inseparable."*

Thinking about A and N, who have lived through these periods, it's easy to see the signs of this kind of relationship in the way they interact with each other: all those touches between them, how they know each other so well they can hold entire conversations by exchanging a single look, how comfortable they are with challenging each other when they disagree (there's a lot of trust involved in being able to disagree like they do at times, I think) etc.

Their relationship blurs the lines between different forms of relationships (platonic, romantic), because their existence spans across centuries, all with their own views on and customs regarding those various relationships.

*Considering the history of erasing queer relationships, I think it's important to note that some of these relationships were sexual, but, as mentioned in the book, we shouldn't overcompensate and assume that all of them were.

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

I see the puritans and gatekeepers and found the blog.

Remember!

Gross does not mean immoral! Morality is not tied to fiction! If you dont like it? Leave! Hit da bricks! You're the only one who can curate your experience here in the internet!

If you attack someone because of what they like to ship, or what they write, you're a jerk! You are not the law, you cannot dictate what others do!

Exactly. A big part of fanfiction is that people can write whatever they want. It is a fun little pastime. It is not a reflection on someone's "morality." What you write or read or watch does not define you. Fiction is just that: Fiction. And fictional characters are not real people, they are toys for us to tear apart like five year old Stacy ripping the legs off her Barbie if we want. A lot of us that are into stories about blood and guts and serial killers would be horrified by that stuff in real life. But god forbid anyone ever enjoy anything that isn't completely pure and good.

[justvisitingthisplanet]

Here he is all skinned out. Felt much better than last time so I got pretty much all the skin off. Though I did still leave the atlas bone and the lower jaw on, rigor mortis was calling no joy. He was buried with a tote on top and I’ll pull him out in the spring. He’s another personal buck, I got the time to wait.

[borderline-culture-is]

bpd culture is:

its been months. I just had a terrible dream about you. why. why did you leave me. why do I keep thinking about you.

-blurred♠

.

[figgsandciggs]

london local

[reinafish]

Crystal The Hybrid Demon, Angel, Wolf, Cat, Dog, Fairy Godparent, Dolphin, etc etc Lost Princess!!

*slaps you w 2018 gacha*

Alt without black thingies cus i spent too much time on this:

[icewindandboringhorror]

thinking about orange juice

[lights-at-night]

if i was coherent i would write so many essays dude you should see the shit i have in my brain

[djevelbl]

So uh

Why does Branzy look like Luisito Comunica but like. with a boost??? Luisito Comunica but (assumedly) from the us??????? Luisito Comunica but expensive???????? Gucci Luisito Comunica??????????

[mortimer]

if youre wondering what criteria i use to decide to tag/categorize something as either painting or illustration, the answer is that it's almost completely arbitrary

[sothasil]

Warrior of Hirschlanden