jazzypizzaz

[jazzypizzaz]

I am honestly deeply curious about people's preferences from this list. Mostly as I just made one of these and brought it to a potluck and it is gone. Leave your distaste for Midwest cuisine at the door please. Yes, all of it will fluff you up for winter, that's like 63% of the point.

But for real? Which one do you just... almost hate yourself for loving the most?

#garden veg!!!!! #something cheesy and zucchini hell yeah #or bean salad I'm chowing down #most deviled eggs suck though y'all are wrong #food

[jazzypizzaz]

I have, to be fair, a personal philosophical disagreement with Felix Faust that makes me unable to side with him in the end—where his argument to JEDD is that, if immortality is to upload souls into the network then it defeats distance by default. But it's not a kind of immortality I find appealing. I don't think the ultimate goal of humanity should be to defeat death by defeating the concept of being organic. Now, it's not the kind of immortality Terra Ignota suggests is the most likely to happen in the world it depicts, because that's not how Bridger's potions work at all. But it did get me to think, because in some ways... well, I wouldn't say Terra Ignota sides with me on that, not quite, but.

There is do much space given to the physical expression of people; their stature, their form, their expressions too. Mycroft will wax poetics about a smile or a face, emotions are always so intense and dramatic and overwhelming for those who feel them. There is so much emphasis put on food; whether Mycroft has eaten lately (and, well, what he eats), or A9 feeling grateful everytime someone shares food they like. There is so much emphasis put on sex—the series is so relentlessly horny, even when there is no room left in the plot for full insane sex scenes there is room for having babies off screen, or for admiring a cop's biceps as they stretch next to you. There is so much emphasis put on sadness and tears; a whole plot twist is centered around Dominic being unable to see JEDD cry.

And thrice in the story, four if you count the fake account of Lorelei Cook, the worst thing that happens to characters is being imprisoned into their own skin, with no access to their own senses. When A9 comes out of it they almost cry because Carlyle brought soup. They're holding hands during that whole next scene. JEDD, to make Faust yield, also imposes something similar on themselves: to stop acting, to close themselves off, forcing Faust to reach out.

The one thing that ever goes in a slightly different direction is the conversation Eureka has with Carlyle about their childhood and set-set training—where Eureka defends themselves again the idea that they lost something by not spending afternoons in the sun as a kid. But they also in the same conversation insist on the sensory aspect of their existence, on the fact that their nerves have been reworked to feel new things, that others can't even imagine. And it's interesting because Faust is against the concept of set-sets, when they are in fact the closest thing that exists in that world to the kind of immortality they suggest as a goal: bodies modified to perfectly fit into a virtual environment.

And the fun part is that I think Terra Ignota does that to make me feel the conflict at the core of the Utopian position: distance is excruciating to experience, and it is excruciating because holding hands or sharing food on the couch with your friend feels so good that it warrants the narrator to stop the wartime chronicles to talk about it for a moment. I wouldn't say the books side with me on the fact that Faust's idea of connection is a terrible perspective; I think I'm supposed to empathize with how he sees things. But at the same time, the books are never pretending not to be biased; it's even part of the point that it isn't, that you're not reading an exhaustive historical manual but a madman's emotional rambling about things happening to him and around him. So in fact, this is a celebration of our physicality: yes, we are limited things, little contained universes of our own, and distance settles, inevitably, even between our held hands. And it's good that we have hands—and eyes, ears, voices, tongues—to reach out at everything that's outside ourselves. And to blindly go, etc.

#yes!!!! #there is no appeal to me about Faust's goals #terra ignota

[jazzypizzaz]

#1 leaning 0 #I've had good weed experiences but #idk 95% it just doesn't seem worth it #like the whole next day i feel exhausted & dumb. for what

[jazzypizzaz]

actually an interesting contradiction in jadzia dax's character is that she's very much one of those characters who you could imagine plopping down in the middle of an alien world and having a whale of a time Looking and Touching and Observing and Whatnot but, with the story that she's in, she's pretty stationary as a character. and a smidge of this contradiction is related to my whining that they didn't give her enough weird sciency-stuff to do in the show, but most of this Thing about her is that it's a bit of an explanation of her character in summary: she is a multiplicity, she is many lived and personed, she is curious and adventurous, but when she commits to something she commits. she plants her feet and says i will.

#ds9

[jazzypizzaz]

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

#lotr #yes yes yes

[jazzypizzaz]

the deep satisfaction of checking things off lists. the serenity of a coherently organized folder structure with standard file names. the earned smugness of forwarding the exact email relevant from three months ago

#most of my job doesn't seem like it'd be that hard #then I experience how other other are conducting business..... #personal

[jazzypizzaz]

If you are watching a TV show, it can be live action or animated.

But not when you're reading a book. Much to think about.

#varies wildly #but on average vague amorphous image supporting mostly words #my brain is mainly conceptual and not super visual

[jazzypizzaz]

hey hey hey

Assigning you a song that makes white people go nuts (from experience)

#panic at the disco! #nice

[jazzypizzaz]

ok im really curious do you guys have books you consider your "white whale"? as in books you keep telling yourself oh yeah i really want to read that, but you keep not reading it?

#the last two hundred pages of Les Mis......

[jazzypizzaz]

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

#i juggle my library holds like some sort of literary don juan #all too easy to see if the library has a book & put it on hold #even if i can't commit to reading it anytime soon #honestly it motivates me to read more too #'gotta finish this book so I can pick up the next hold that came through!' #jazzy reads books

[jazzypizzaz]

trying to find the exact type of fic I want to read when all I have to go on is "good, actually" and nebulous vibes

#i have a nice long rec list to navigate #unfortunately less helpful than I thought #game of fandom

[jazzypizzaz]

I've stated openly that I don't think The Merchant of Venice can be salvaged as a play...but The Culture'd Bumpkin's tiktok of "Redneck Shylock" has kind of knocked me over.

#god it really seems like there should be productions in full local accents around here #i love these clips #*of Shakespeare in general I mean

[jazzypizzaz]

biblical angels but their true form looks like the patterns in 90s arcade carpets

#makes u think

[jazzypizzaz]

#whales

[jazzypizzaz]

Did you guys know that the most recent version of sharks have fins that are kinda leg like and they like to walk up onto land?

#ocean blogging #👀👀

[jazzypizzaz]

being a fan of a friend's ocs is actually so humiliating....... like yes my favourite character rn is tragically doomed and a pillar of humanity who i think is relevant to the current world. you can find information about them on discord dot com and sometimes in late-night conversations with this guy i know. what the fuck

#that romance book i beta read #where the characters were based off quodo #but interesting in their own right #😭😭😭 #not even published/public for me to talk to more people about it

[jazzypizzaz]

They’ll crucify me for saying this. I think if Janeway, through some sort of time shenanigan, met specifically s3 era Archer they would have some crazy sex. It’s about the isolation of being a part of your crew but also separate by the nature of your position. It’s about the tremendous weight that they both carry as they isolate themselves. It’s about the martyrdom complex. Also we have seen Janeway wanting to bone historical figures before this is the logical extension

#god...... #Star Trek