uhhhhhhhhhh. pebis?

i'm an adult now. i think

Before I... well... yap, there's something I want to say about the way I write these blogs, that you honestly may have noticed on past posts of mine, and that is that I write over a long period of time and often come back to revise or correct different sections. I don't always write sequentially, so sometimes I may backpedal something I already wrote or something that is mentioned later; I try to keep it as comprehensible as possible, but there may be some time-related weirdness. Happy reading.

So now that my research paper and finals are finished, I really have no excuse not to write. Thanksgiving break really curb-stomped and Of Mice and Men'd my work ethic but I think I can maintain it over winter break, as I will have virtually nothing to do for the two-or-so weeks I'm spending with my dad. The original goal I set for myself in the first draft of this post was to have 15 pages of Home written by the time this gets published.

It seemed like a reasonable goal, and yet when I finally reached only the fifth page, I realized just how poorly planned this entire project is. My outline document, which is barely even a page itself, is so unorganized. It even has a section called Add Somewhere, the contents of which I have not added anywhere in the past month or two it's existed. It's such a shitshow that the worldbuilding, which is arguably my favorite part of writing any story, is just--well actually, let me show you.

bruh.

Back to the coping board

So after realizing that I would be stabbing myself in the foot by trying to write like this, I went down the incredible rabbit hole of self-deprecation and found myself questioning (for the nth time this week) my career choices, my work ethic, my value as a human being, yada yada yada. 

I can be dramatic sometimes.

But after my drama-queen spiral, I wanted to figure out somewhere to go from here, some way to improve. And that desire to better myself ended up in a solid multi-hour doomscroll session, BUT where it landed me was important.

For context, my favorite director is Christopher Nolan, and the first of his movies I saw was actually Oppenheimer. I watched a LOT of interviews of him and the cast after the movie came out, and I think it's a fair claim to say that movie is a big reason for why I don't completely hate filmmaking. But that's besides the point; the point here is, after watching Interstellar in theaters a few days ago, I was in another Chris Nolan-interview binge-watching state of mind.

And through these different interviews, I made my way back to an Oppenheimer interview I watched a while ago. But there was one moment towards the end that I completely overlooked last time. Matt Damon talks about being unable to pick a favorite/best Nolan movie, that it's just impossible. 

As the little cretin of spite and malice that I am, I tried to immediately disprove that claim. And yet I couldn't.

I started thinking more about what actually does separate Nolan's films from one another. I've not seen all of them, but the ones I have were so different from each other that it seemed pointless to compare 

any together. For example, is Memento less awe-inspiring than Oppenheimer? Yeah, well, no shit. Very few movies can ever compare to that kind of gravity.

But is it any lesser than Oppenheimer? I thought about that for a while. I really enjoyed Memento and the conversation it provoked, on a level identical to that of Oppenheimer. It got me thinking about what I truly value in a film, and on a simpler level what I value in a story.

I ultimately settled on the opinion that both of these films are masterpieces that live and breathe within the parameters of the story; and what I mean by that is that Memento would never ask for the grandiose, theatrical explosions. Oppenheimer is a whirling, larger-than-life hurricane of a movie, yet it's made that way because that's what best fit the parameters of visualizing the life of the man whose creation literally changed the chemical composition of our entire planet and all carbon-based life.

Memento is meant to be human; the plot, the themes, the dynamics between characters are all pieces of a puzzle, one that just happens to be smaller than Oppenheimer. If we think of stories as puzzles, then yes, sometimes we may need more pieces and a larger canvas to fully capture the image, yet that does not mean that a smaller puzzle with less pieces is any less beautiful.

At this point, I may just be rambling a perspective you disagree with, or may have already realized, so I will try to summarize why I find this philosophy important.

I don't know what Home is. The idea started in some feedback I wrote for my friend Wade's script. After a bit of brainstorming, I believed it could make a good short film. Then I realized there were so many avenues I could explore with it that it might work best as a limited series. And then I thought it could be shortened to a feature-length film. Without making up my mind on what it could be, I just blasted past worldbuilding and fully outlining the story and started writing. The story as it is now is a small puzzle that I've lost the pieces for, and yet all the initial planning and ideas indicated that this should be a much larger puzzle. I wanted to capture a human theme with a massive plot, and I think it was disrespectful to the story for me to attempt that without genuine foresight and planning.

Ordinarily, I'd end the blog somewhere around here, but I'd like to take the time in this post to really explore the process of resetting my writing style and building back from the ground up.

but before that!

This is a blog. I'm kind of obligated to make it a mishmash of insight into my mind and just horseshit gabbing. So.

I've been dealing with brain fog for a while now. As you can tell from the title, it was sort of foundational to the idea behind this website. But boy, oh boy, has it gotten worse.

Visualization of my Prefrontal Cortex

Short-form content is really a pain in the ass. I deleted TikTok and Twitter years ago because I was genuinely addicted to them, but recently Instagram reels and YouTube shorts have been slitting my ever-scarred brain yet again. I think I may just have to delete the latter app off my phone; I really only go on it to watch RTGame, basketball clips, or check if CoryxKenshin is back (he unfortunately is not). 

Fun fact, the time between writing these two paragraphs was spent doomscrolling reels. Art truly imitates reality and whatnot.

What really frustrates the ever-living fuck out of me about Instagram is that it's such a convenient app. I have so many friends that I only talk to on there, because WOW am I bad at striking up text conversations. I'm sure that, given enough time off Instagram, I could become better at making the time to reach out to those people, but socializing is such a damn hassle.

There's really only one genuinely good solution I found, which is the Distraction Free Instagram app. Which is unfortunately only on Android. So I guess I will cope and eventually try deleting the app. Again.

this hurts me more than it hurts you. Actually it really hurts only me.

To begin improving my present writing, I will face my greatest fear. Ever.

Reading my past works.

The reason for subjecting myself to such a Herculean feat of self-torture is that, while I sometimes watch a movie, read a book, or generally consume a piece of content, and subsequently analyze/review what I liked about it and think about how I might implement that in my own work, I find myself realizing that I haven't really gotten better at writing since...ever?

You might say that that's an exaggeration, to which I would say shut the fuck up, but on a more serious note I feel like there's some validity to the hyperbole. I read a lot as a kid, and my writing style reflected the random amalgamation of words I'd read or phrases I knew. It was like throwing paint at a canvas; I knew what each word meant but there was never any collective intent behind each word choice, or in other words sentences didn't really build off their predecessors.

To begin this process of self-immolation, I'd like to start with a document I found in my old personal email that I'm 60% sure I didn't write.

This document, titled "AoA: Worldbuilding" is twelve pages long. For this reason, as I can't imagine I managed to plan that many pages of a project, I don't think I wrote this, and yet I have editing access, have no recollection of it at all, and it reads like something I'd write. So with the rather large chance of this being some random person's work I'm shitting on, I'd like to steamroll pretty much everything about this amalgamation of horseshit.

First of all, what the actual fuck is this language. The pantheon of the Gods is comprised of Jalzahar, Turnagg, Aidmora, Varao, Axdos, Merenos, and the Ur-Dragon. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS AN UR-DRAGON?!

Ignoring the names of these Gods, presumably none of them grounded in some common fictional language, the actual power delegations between them make no sense. Jalzahar, who was pretty much the catalyst of this 'Divine Ruin' that killed most of the Gods, is the God of Light, Justice, Righteousness, etc. Ok. Sure, I can see that. Then we have someone like Merenos, who's the God of Magic, Knowledge, and Hope. Okay... I can see that, too. There's not so many Gods of natural phenomena but I suppose this is a society that valued ideology and philosophical thou-- Ur-Dragon, God of Dragons.

What the fuck.

I don't want to get too much into the actual worldbuilding, because I'm not so sure if this is my own work, so I'll just leave it at this.

Yeah, I don't think I wrote this.

After deeper examination, I've found virtually nothing else on my Docs, save for a diss track against Cian. This was made as a part of Di$$ Squad, which, in case you didn't go to school at Nova Middle, or did go but were generally considered "normal", was a hip, burgeoning rap group formed by my old friend Taeshaun, a group I was somewhat part of. I say "somewhat" in the sense that it was really only "somewhat" a group, as no one wanted to be a part of it except for Taeshaun and we never actually made any music. I've lived many lives.

Anyways, here's the first verse.

Leaving the realm of Google Docs, I'd like to take a look at what little Final Draft scripts I have left. I believe the first thing I wrote on Final Draft was a mockumentary called Super Maurice. It has unfortunately been lost to the sands of time (I re-discovered it years ago and deleted it due to embarrassment). I've lost a lot of my past works to the same issue.

One of the few remaining ones is a skit I actually wrote in my Junior year called Next to Godliness. You can read it yourself, but it's a mockumentary inspired by a then-recent binge of Modern Family and the general state of affairs in the apartment I was living in at the time. It's pretty alright for a two-to-three-minute skit, I think it would really just come down to production and editing to get the punchlines to land properly. Not my best work, but also not bad.

The next script I'd like to look at is my favorite from high school; Weefle, Beefle, Shnoop! I say it's my favorite not because it's particularly well-written, but I just had the most fun writing it from the perspective of a slightly demented, omnipotent game show host. This one is inspired by the episode of Voltron: Legendary Defender called The Feud! Again, I don't really have much to say here, but mainly because the critiques of my next and final work apply to this one too. Also, Weefle, Beefle, Shnoop, unlike its predecessor, was actually made and aired on my high school TV program's YouTube channel, so you can see that in all its poorly-executed glory.

If you were to ask me what my best work is, I would say INCANDESENCE. Do I think it's objectively good? No. But it represents a lot to me, as it was the hardest video I've ever made and I refused to give up on it. In fact, this blog itself was made to document the process of making it as part of a class, and you can watch the final thing here.

So while I have a lot of previous posts showing my process making the short film, I've never really had a chance to fully dog on the script. Firstly, I'd like to say that, though the film is stylistically inspired by Interstellar, I think it's more fair to say that it's more inspired by Christopher Nolan's works as a whole. For example, the intro, both with its "cold open" and supertitle, are pretty much a direct reference to the script of Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer

INCANDESENCE

By the way, the line of prose I included is from the poem She Was a Phantom of Delight, which I had to read in AICE Literature AS. I hated that class, but there were some takeaways I gained from it. The full line was "And now I see with eye serene/The very pulse of the machine", which was in reference to the author's wife, but I thought it fit well as a metaphor for the black hole being the pulse of the story, as Noah's life and his work started bleeding together. Again, you'll have to go to my past posts (pre-April 2024) to see the full story and BTS.

But back to the script. One thing I've really had a hard time coming to terms with in screenwriting is the lack of detail included in the page; not only does this become a difficulty due to my background in writing prose, but also because I'm not a big fan of dialogue. I love writing dialogue, and I find the intricacies you convey through it interesting, but I seem to prefer having characters communicate through their actions, not subtext.

But because of this, the script is kind of... bad. It's written like a book--a very overstimulating book. The amount of underlining, italicizing, and bolding in that shit is too much. I remember there being some method behind the madness; one was for sound, one was for emphasis, yada yada yada. But trying to read this gives me a major headache, one the likes of which have never been fathomed. If Zeus read this shit there'd be two Athenas.

But for as much as I now dislike this script, I think it was a very good starting point. You may agree that this is a very detail-heavy screenplay and rather overstimulating, but the writing style of this was, for the most part, inspired by First Man. If you read even the first page of that, I think you'll agree.

At any rate, looking back at my past screenplays, I think I need to pursue a more minimalist approach to the details of a scene. One thing that stands out to me about Nolan's scripts is that it leaves a lot of room for collaboration and new ideas; if everything is written out, with every detail done to a T, it doesn't really encourage other people to help fill in the blanks, and that's a very special feature of filmmaking that just doesn't translate to something like writing a novel.

Getting off my Gargantuan Ass

"So what did we gain from that?" - my inner voice after participating in a Timothee Chalamet look-alike contest, but also, presumably, your inner voice after reading all that. Well, you probably gained nothing (yay!), but going through these pieces of horseshit helped me understand that I need to make a conscious effort to condense my script to the barest level, while still keeping every necessary detail. Basically, to say everything with as little as possible. It's very counterintuitive, but I think it'll be fun.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's time to start on:

Pretend it just says "WORLDBUILDING". I couldn't really find anything that has only the one word on it. So. Also it's not really a fantasy it's a sci-fi. So. I guess I will just commit seppuku to atone for this monstrous blunder.

Anywho.

A lot of the time with worldbuilding you center around a base idea and develop the world around it; its cultures, events, history, etc. For example, you might start with a base magic system and then slap in some nations based vaguely or tightly on real-world cultures, and from then on you work out the intricacies between these peoples and from there develop the history, political climate, and all that shit. You can also take that base idea and, instead of going through the hassle of building an entire world, just make it work within the real world. Harry Potter's a great representative of this; J.K. Rowling (had to wash my hands after typing that name out) just slapped magic into the world and reconfigured the Earth to accommodate a secret society of wizards.

The way I'm going about the worldbuilding for this project, though, is more along the lines of Dune (a thousand apologies for the amount of Frank Herbert shmeat-gobbling that has been displayed on this blog. The seppuku counter is now at two). Dune kind of takes the Harry Potter route, molding the story into the real world around the idea; except it does this at a point in time thousands of years from the present. I'm only going a few decades ahead, but like Herbert, I need to come up with a chain of events that logically lead from what the audience knows (our world as it is now) to the point where the story takes place.

This is basically a long-winded way of me saying Home is based on the real world and is a fictional alternate future. I should really add more TLDRs here.

The year is 2067. The environmental movement surged in 2046, spiking in support after Category 6 Hurricane Monty left over 20,000 dead, decimating South and Central Florida. The American government began to develop new technologies to both prevent further climate catastrophes and adapt to the new global environment, with the United Nations and global community swiftly following suit. The story takes place in a time of oceanification, or migration from land-based cities to ocean-based ones, with about 10% of the global population already living offshore.

That's about as much worldbuilding I feel like sharing right now. There's a lot more political and scientific details that I have written out that aren't fully developed, so I'm just not going to share those yet. 

One of the more important disclaimers I have to say regarding this piece of worldbuilding, as well as the rest of it as I continue to develop this project over the course of my future blogs, is that it's very important to me that I don't force these into the story. I'm giving full details here on this blog, but one of the things I hate most in media is exposition dumps.

THE ONLY good exposition dump

The full story shouldn't be handed to the audience. A good movie, TV show, or any piece of media, should give you the details--some hidden, some overt, some left out yet alluded to--and ask that you be the one to piece everything together. You don't have to make it some Dark Souls, FromSoft-level shit where nothing is given to the audience and every dot is connected by yourself (and VaatiVidya), but at the very least what you should do, and what I'm trying to do in this work, is give the audience enough to imagine the full puzzle, even if they can't find some pieces.

Placeholder

I'm staying with my dad until after Christmas. At the time of writing this, it's Monday the 23rd, and my dad still has to work today, so in an attempt to entertain myself I took a walk.

He lives in the downtown area, so I'm walking past a lot of apartment complexes, government buildings, offices, shops, restaurants, etc. until I eventually reach this quaint little lake. It's all decorated for the holidays and it's nice to walk around and just listen to music. After about halfway around the lake, I notice a Publix and decide that, while I'm already here, I should just buy the ingredients we need for the food we're bringing to our family's Christmas party.

I get in, get out, but standing right outside this exit door is a homeless woman asking for food, who I just brushed straight past after she directly asked me for something, for anything really.

I spent the whole walk back thinking about that. One thing I've been taught, like many other people, growing up is to just kinda... ignore homeless people and pretend they don't exist. Again, I know that a lot of people do this, and it's not an act of malice so much as it is a concern for safety. You never know what anyone who stops you on the street's gonna do. But it just felt kind of different this time. I had a small cake that my dad asked me to get. It's not like giving away this cake would ruin the Christmas party; it's one of those things that's just gonna get half-eaten and forgotten in the leftovers. I had a sandwich that I bought because my dad works late and I just didn't feel like eating the stuff he already had in his fridge.

Giving her something to eat wouldn't have solved the root problem; she'd still have to worry about her next meal. But it's something almost trivial that I could've done that would have at least helped someone else a little bit.

It feels kind of performative, in a way, to be writing about this. "BREAKING: Middle class guy feels bad about wealth inequality" big whoop. But this is a blog, and I don't journal, so if there's anywhere I would talk about it, I guess it'd be here?

I think my main frustration with the whole situation is that I really can't do anything to genuinely help anyone. What the fuck is my broke ass gonna do to fix the homelessness crisis?? The only thing I seem to find myself doing is sitting here, in my cozy little apartment, eating the food someone in need asked me for, typing some bullshit to make me feel better about doing nothing. What pisses me off even more is that I'll probably just mope around about it some more, maybe a couple of hours, maybe the rest of the day, until eventually I wake up and just forget about it and go back inside my bubble.

Virtually nothing I do helps anyone. I don't say that to be a pessimist or self-deprecate, but making a cool story with neat little plot twists that probably won't see the light of day won't help feed someone. But also, the only way I can ever hope to actually make an impact on people's lives is through this meaningless horseshit, to become good enough at writing that I make enough money from it, and hopefully without losing my soul from any modicum of success, so that I can maybe just help someone sleep indoors.

Again, this could just be some performative gobbledegook that I'm spewing from nowhere, but I really don't want to wake up one day at fifty years old and find the collected value of my entire life just sitting on my bookshelf. I'd love to be a successful writer, but today just reminded me that if all I ever do is sit inside and try to get my bank account to the next zero, I think I'd be in hell.

Don't know when the next blog post will be. Hopefully by then I'll have enough of the worldbuilding settled to start figuring out the plot.

Happy Holidays. (Seppuku counter: 3)

An Analysis of the Worldbuilding of Dune (1965)

Before I begin the actual content of this research article, I would like to address a few things. Firstly, to the Professor reading this, the medium I've chosen for this project is this blog, which I use to talk about my ideas for stories and media analyses. Also, to briefly defend how this topic fits within the rubric of "a particular topic...in astronomy", I believe that one of the foremost interests of most people when it comes to astronomy is how humanity will expand beyond Earth; I also believe that Dune is one of the most well-thought-out depictions of what that future may look like, hence how I ended up on this subject.

To any readers of my prior posts now reading this one, I would like to say that I still intend on turning this analysis into a video, however I just couldn't see myself doing so in a sufficient way by my assignment deadline. It may evolve into a somewhat different topic, but I do plan on completing it. I'll be working more on that over the coming weeks, potentially months. But until then:

The Good Imperialist

By the point in time where the novel begins, there are three main Imperial forces exerting influence over Arrakis: the feud between Houses Harkonnen and Atreides, the Bene Gesserit, and the Planetologists. Of these three, the first is the most one-to-one example of imperialism, drawing heavy parallels to the Arab Revolt in the Hejaz (pp. 189-221) against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Source: NZ History

To summarize greatly, the Ottoman Empire's power began to slip over the centuries preceding WWI,and in the early 20th century a rise of Turkish nationalism led in turn to a rise in Arab nationalism, and a desire for independence from Ottoman rule. The British Empire, at this point warring with the Ottomans, sought to use the newfound pan-Arabist movement to their advantage, gaining the military support of Arab tribes with the promise of independence.

The world of Dune, although not an exact recreation, is quite similar; the Harkonnens have ruled the Fremen for decades with a bloody, oppressive fist. After eighty years, the Harkonnens are made to withdraw from Arrakis, and the Atreides family assumes control over the planet. Sensing imminent retaliation from the Harkonnens, Duke Leto seeks to convince the Fremen to fight with him against their former oppressors, promising better lordship in return.

While Leto's plans ended up failing, leading to the fall of his House and his own demise, the British were ultimately successful in using the Arab Revolt to weaken the Ottoman Empire. However, unbeknownst to the Arab people, the British and French governments had formed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing up the Middle East into spheres of British and French rule, betraying their promise of full Arabian sovereignty. While this would not be the final agreement in divvying up the region, it was certainly the most influential.

Source: Britannica

At this point, you may be wondering how this correlates to Dune and what its worldbuilding seeks to convey; Duke Leto was honorable, and should he have won against the Harkonnens he might have fulfilled his promises to the Fremen. 

But while this may be the case, is there really such thing as a "good" imperialist? House Atreides is ultimately an extension of the Imperium's rule, a government the Fremen people have had virtually no desire to be a part of. The only one who benefits from Arrakis' imperial occupation is the Imperium, siphoning away the planet's spice and giving virtually nothing in return. 

There is no such thing as a good imperialist. At its best, House Atreides would rob the Fremen of their resources and sovereignty, all after coercing them into a blood feud that barely involves them.

Abandoning the route of the hypothetical, we enter the reality of the novel, wherein Duke Leto is killed and Paul flees to the desert, becoming a living messiah to the Fremen. Looking back to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, we see how Britain's use of the Arab people in their war led to the theft of land. But it is through Paul's ascension as Muad'dib that we begin to understand how imperialism not only robs peoples of their resources and sovereignty, but also of their faith.

Religion and Politics

But Paul's place in history was precipitated hundreds of years ago by another faction; the Bene Gesserit.

Source: Polygon

To prepare a contingency plan for a potential Bene Gesserit member in need, a Missionaria Protectiva was sent to Arrakis to embed a seed of legend into the Fremen culture; the Lisan al-Gaib, the off-world messiah joined by his Bene Gesserit mother. 

There's a lot to say about this myth itself, and how through it Herbert criticizes the white savior narrative, however that is another subject for another writer. For now, I believe there's much to be learned from the way the Bene Gesserit influence and control the Dune universe, and its reflection of the way our own politicians do so. 

In a 1969 interview with Frank Herbert (30:15), Herbert discusses "the Voice", a power the Bene Gesserit use to forcibly control other persons. What's particularly interesting about his discussion is his claim that the Voice is used all the time in politics; through understanding a person, he claims you can goad them into anger simply through your voice. In a similar sense, politicians understand their constituents, and thereby prod them to illicit a specific outcome.

It's very different to the instant, visceral obeisance of those the Bene Gesserit use the Voice on, however I find it to be a very interesting comparison. To go further with this metaphor, Paul and Lady Jessica's willful manipulation of the Lisan al-Gaib mythos in order to ensure their survival on Arrakis is also reminiscent of the political game; just as Paul instills himself as the religious head of the Fremen to maintain control, so too did rulers such as Henry VIII consolidate power by asserting control over their subjects' religion. 

Source: CNN

And in more modern cases, we see many politicians seeking to use religion to exert control; it can be
found as a rallying cry behind the recent calls for an abortion ban, as American politicians use Christianity to limit a woman's autonomy. The main difference between the Bene Gesserit and a politician is that, through narration, we understand the intentionality of each choice--the active manipulation of religion for the Atreides' benefit, the, albeit sparing, use of the Voice to impose a Bene Gesserit member's will upon their target, and the pulling of strings in the background to manipulate the Imperium.

Dune does not outright tell us that our leaders use religion or charisma to manipulate us; it instead shows us what this might look like, and encourages us to look for it in the real world.

The Western Man and Cultural Assimilation

The final force of the Imperium imposing itself upon the Fremen people are the Imperial Planetologists, Pardot and Liet Kynes. Out of the three, the Planetologists are the most interesting case; they, representatives of the Imperium, seek to change Arrakis--to turn the dunes into waves.

The project began with Pardot, an Imperium-born man, as he gave the Fremen the dream of terraforming Arrakis, and was later passed down to his son (in the movie adaptation, daughter) Liet; half-Fremen, half-Imperial. Pardot taught Liet everything he knew about planetology, and it is through Liet that we see the beginnings of acculturation, and what this off-worlder's dream will truly mean for the Fremen. 

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Herbert himself has much light to shed on Kynes' death and what it represents; in the aforementioned
1969 interview (10:05), Herbert points out the irony of the scene, of how Kynes, in his final moments, observes the ecological process of the spice eruption forming beneath him, an eruption that will result in his demise. It becomes an odd moment wherein Kynes is able to understand all these mechanical processes, yet cannot see that he is only one cog in the massive machine of Arrakis, that despite his infliction of himself and his father's dreams upon the planet, he is still just one man, who may live and die by the whim of Arrakis. As Herbert mentions in the interview, and later writes in Dune: Messiah, "One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier...including one's own ignorance" (p. 183).

This way of thinking goes deeply against Fremen culture. They live in harmony with the desert, fashioning tools and technologies to adapt. Where the Harkonnens had to frequently stop mining spice, as their harvesters would attract sandworms, the Fremen developed Thumpers to distract the worms, and learn to sandwalk so as to become sonically one with the desert. This juxtaposition between the Harkonnen's, ultimately the Imperium's, and Fremen's relationship with the planet can be found in Liet Kynes, raised in Fremen culture but taught the Imperial mindset, ultimately resulting in his living in disjunction with the way of Arrakis.

It is a microcosm of what the future may hold for the Fremen, following this dream given to them by the off-world planetologists. Yes, the desert is brutal, and having water on Arrakis is a dream unfathomable to most Fremen; but to take away the desert would be their demise. To bring water to the desert is to eradicate the foundation of the Fremen culture.

In Defense of the Soft Sciences in Science Fiction

Science fiction pushes the limitations of our reality. Interstellar dedicated itself to scientific accuracy in all facets of its story, and in doing so created the most scientifically accurate model of a black hole in human history. Countless works pushed forth humanity's dream to travel by way of land, air, and sea. It is through these reimaginations of the natural sciences that we achieve creative innovation, and the drive to improve our world.

And yet Dune gives us insight on the world as it exists before us. It illuminates the soft sciences: anthropology, theology, political science--the foundations of human society and culture. It reveals to us that for as much as science fiction teaches us to dream, it must also cause us to stop for a moment and think--to understand the world for what it is, so we can shape it into what it could be.

References

Bali, A. (2016). Sykes-Picot and "artificial" states. Cambridge University Press.

Anderson, A., Khalidi, R., Muslih, M., & Simon, R. S. (1991). The origins of arab nationalism. Columbia University Press. 

mengutimur. (2017, May 6). Frank Herbert on the origins of Dune (1965) [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-mLVVJkH7I 

i blog.

i lost my airpods

My astronomy project has taken a bit of a turn. It all started way back (a few days ago) when I began writing out my thoughts on Dune and came to the swift self-actualization of "holy shit, I'm yapping about nothing".

Apparently, knowing that Western society kinda sucks and has a really horrendous history isn't the same as knowing how it sucks and how it affected people and how we got here and blah blah blah blah. To make a long story short, I'm in the process of researching a lot more on American policies in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) in the mid-1900s, as well as just reading a lot more on the different themes and critiques of Dune.

And through this process, I've realized that one thing I really want to dedicate some blog space to is the absolute beauty that is Google Scholar. To my friends who are still in high school, Google Scholar is something your English teacher beats into your head as you go through your gen-eds, but over time I've found it really useful.

While a regular Google Search on how America influence the Middle East in the 20th century would give me anything a half-baked analysis on foreign policies during the time to some random ass website ranting about "what's wrong with Islam", searching for stuff on Google Scholar actually gives you so much content on a specific content. Granted, you'll still probably have to sift through a bunch of random papers, but there's a lot more information in each one, not to mention they often reference other papers you can explore too.

After receiving a call from Mateo, coincidentally him on the verge of tears begging me to download and send him a Google Scholar article, I feel obligated to mention that it's a great resource once you're already in college, as the university gives you access to most of the papers you find. Oops.

On a more personal note..

Firstly, I have some things to say about the aesthetic of this blog; sorry about all the words... I know some of you have the attention span of a dementia-riddled goldfish with ADHD, but there's not really many supplementary images and videos I can attach when I'm talking about my own thoughts. Also, about the frequency of my blog posts, I really only want to post something when I feel as though I have enough to talk about. I'd say this post is probably the last one I'm sort of forcing myself to make by a certain date, from here on out there'll be a much wider gap between posts.

And now for the personal shit.

In Loving Memory

I am not dying. Feel like the image can be misinterpreted that way, so I just wanna put that out there. Not dying. What is dying though is my hair follicles, God rest their souls. 

If you knew me in high school your first reaction to this information is probably "yeah, no shit", but post-graduation my hair actually grew back quite a bit. I feel like the biggest reason for this was that the nightmare-inducing stress that plagued the past four, or honestly the last thirteen, years of my life (the American public school system) was now gone. I've also been taking meds for years, so that probably played a part in it too.

But recently my horrendous genetics (literally every male in my bloodline is bald) have caught up to me yet again, and I'm at a point in my life where I can, albeit very reluctantly, accept that I will be and look fine without hair, despite what I may initially think or what other people might say.

It feels weird to get any kind of personal on a quasi-shitpost website called Brain Fog Central, so I'll try to be (relatively) quick. I've always had really bad self-image issues, stemming from being born with Poland Syndrome, but after a long time I eventually grew to accept that, though I still have some days where it does affect my mental health. 

When my hair started falling out early into high school, it had a pretty similar effect on me, except this time I couldn't just hide it from myself and the world by throwing on a shirt. I wouldn't say I was ever bullied in high school, but there were many people who would comment on it or use it as an insult towards me. Even if the person meant it in a joking manner, it would still really hurt and cause me to spiral into a series of self-deprecating horseshit that I won't get into. 

Hair is obviously a big part of both my and everyone's self-image; it's always there when you look in the mirror. But I think my biggest mistake was conflating my self-image with my self-worth. How I look will always change--not only my hair, but everything about my body. At this point though, it feels unfathomably moronic to think that because I'll look different I'll look less physically attractive, or even be any lesser of a person.

There will always be someone who thinks I look like I crawled out of a shit-throwing contest in the New York City sewer system, regardless of whether or not I grow my hair out. There will always be some acquaintance who teases me without realizing the weight of their words (shoutout Nova High School). But I only have who-knows-how-many years left to make as much content for Brain Fog Central as possible, so I just have to accept my losses and keep it moving.

That's really it for this post. Again, I can't really say when the next one will be; since this is a full-ass blog, I'm really asking for a lot out of you guys to read through everything, so I want to make sure that everything I post is something I feel is worth me writing and you reading. In what might be my first and last genuine moment on this shithole of a website, I am extremely grateful to all of you who take the time to read this, it means so much to me.

I'm back in town on Thursday. Prepare.

"Cogito ergo sum" - Jesus, maybe

I'm tired of philosophy

One of the most beautiful things about my local film school is that any students of said school, in the process of filming a project, are bound to one of humanity's most extraordinary concoctions: union regulations.

Through a (about half-year) period of my life, I had spent weekend after weekend working from the asscrack of dawn in some teenager I barely knew's house (through the gracious benevolence of their parents) making a 3-5 minute short film in 8 hours; and while I think that it's genuinely incredulous that I managed to walk away from that experience with the thought, "hey I want to do more of this (acting)", some part of me should have really taken that thought, and followed it up with "am I a masochist".

With the beauty of union regulations, however, I can give that answer a definitive "hopefully not"! You see, there's this concept humanity came up with millennia ago, nomenclated in English as the word "food", and after about six hours, all members of a film crew operating under union regulations are required to be given it.

I found that out yesterday. Mind. Blowing.

Me after two slices of free pizza

I don't really want to make my day on set the fulcrum of this post, a big reason being that I'm not sure how much I'm even allowed to say, but also because there's not much to say. I only acted, so I don't really have some deep connection and analysis to the project to explore on here, thus I won't.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WORK ETHIC????

Trying to motivate myself to start doing substantial work on Home has been iffy. Generally, my writing process is very slow, as I'll take a lot of time finding the right words to describe simple scene action. My style of writing (professionally, obviously not bloggingally) is rather abstract, so I also need to take the time to tone it down to a language that makes sense to anyone reading it. That's not to say that I just write on a "deeper level" or some shit like that, rather that the DSM-6 will have a substantial section filed under the name Armesto.

        NOTE: If you've got some shit to say about the image quality on this blog, I accept critiques in the             form of Photoshop subscription donations.

So needless to say I'm a bit miffed with my progress on that project. I do have a general outline for about half of the plot, but fleshing it out has been more tedious than I expected. Also, just for future reference, the novel idea I mentioned in my last post will probably not even begin conception until summertime, as the basis of the plot requires me to have a fundamental understanding of atomic physics, which I have neither the time nor effort nor patience for studying at this present moment.

You may ask, why would you ("you" being from your perspective, ergo meaning me ("me" being from my perspective)) need a fundamental understanding of atomic physics? To which I would respond, mind your ("your" being from my perspective, ergo meaning you(r)) fucking business.

I love thought experiments.

On a more serious note, though, the deadline for my astronomy video, whilst rapidly approaching, teeth rabidly heat-seeking my asscheeks, is still a few weeks out, so I do have some liberties with my approach to the project, but it's still really dependent on my ability to, como se dice, lock the fuck in. 

Just as a fun little aside between you and me, this website is unfathomably shit, and trying to put an accent mark over that first "o" made have to retype this section twice. Thanks Blogger!

One of the main limitations (following a perpetual state of lethargy) is that I don't have anywhere to film. I share a room with someone, and while I could ask for the room, I don't want him to start thinking this is a give-and-take relationship, 'cause then he'll start asking me for the room and that's just not acceptable. To anyone in high school reading this, you'll understand when you're older.

Aside from that, there's also the fat, steamy pile of a question that is equipment. I don't go to the film school, so I can't exactly borrow equipment from there, and believe it or not, I'm fucking broke, so I don't want to try and rent out video equipment from a place in the city. My friend offered to let me borrow his camera, but I'd still need to figure out audio.

My solution to both of these issues is the same: I'm going home for Thanksgiving.

My Master Plan (trademarked)

Basically, I don't have to worry about finding a place to record, because I have my own room back home (despite my sister taking it over). Also, I have two great avenues for getting equipment: the first, and honestly more fun, way is begging my friends back home who own camera equipment to lend me their shit. I don't know who has what though, so that might be a hassle.

The second path is hitting up my dear old pal Jimmy G. from BECON-TV for some equipment. I think he'd let me, as McFatter college students will occasionally borrow stuff from him, but I don't really know if I'd be able or willing to drive all the way over there after 3 months without a car. My life is so hard.

I'm holding in a massive shart as I write this

I'm not real. There is no Brain Fog Central. There is no "Armesto". There is no Queen of England. You have to let me go--it's been 14 years. I just want you to move on.

I always come back.

Merry Christmas

So it's been a hot minute since I've used this blog. To speedrun every life update since my last post, I moved off to college, got bootleg bronchitis, and am now 6'12". I think that about sums it up.

I think there's really two main reasons for my using this blog again; first and foremost, I find it entertaining, and over the course of my senior year I became trauma-bonded to this website in a way that Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us could spend eons fathoming and still never quite reach. They and the Maitreya Buddha will be the last left to ponder such a dynamic bond, and maybe only at the end of the road to Nirvana will that triad find their eyes finally opened.

Anyways the second reason is that I have problems writing consistently, so blogging might help a little. Y'know, simple shit.

TO HYPERBOREA WE MARCH!!!!!

I have a few writing-based projects I'm working on right now. For context I'm a Creative Writing and Linguistics major; debating switching from Linguistics to something else. But anyways, the first one I want to talk about is this script for a video about the relationship between science fiction and real-world science. Basically, my Astronomy professor assigned us a research article on any science-related topic we want, through virtually any medium we want. 

So. . . video.

Getting my suffering's worth

When I say "real-world science", I don't exclusively mean natural science. Yes, there's a lot of sci-fi material that either inspires the work on or develops natural science; the first thing that comes to mind is the book The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne (which my professor actually recommended to me (the book is obviously based on the movie)), through which I am currently in the process of reading.

It's incredible to think that the most scientifically-accurate model of a black hole in history was created for a few scenes of a science fiction film. At the (admittedly willing) expense of sounding like a Christopher Nolan meat-riding goon, I think the film itself is a feat, not only of theoretical physics, but of imagination and creativity.

But there are also many cases where sci-fi ends up influencing the "soft sciences", namely social sciences. For example, Dune, a franchise I have yapped far too much about on this blog, is a story rooted in the ramifications of white saviorism, though the book does a much better job of developing this plot point than the movies.

 Although I am a massive fan of the films, there is a quote in the original book that I believe Denis Villeneuve made a very poor choice of leaving out; "The worst thing that could happen to your people would be to fall in the hands of a Hero." I might talk about it more on a later post, but I believe there's a lot of comparisons that can be drawn between Paul Atreides and America's constant meddling in the Middle East, both in past decades and now.

Another book I'd really like to talk about in this video is 1984 by George Orwell--admittedly, I haven't yet read it, but it's such a famous and impactful book that you'll hear the term "Orwellian" thrown around all the time, generally in relation to authoritarianism or late-stage capitalism. Again, I've yet to read it, but I get the sense that it's an important, especially going into the next four years under President Annoying Orange.

Missileanus (or miscellaneous however the fuck you spell it) thoughts 

In my spare time I have a screenplay I've been working on called Home. It's vaguely inspired by a short film script a friend of mine wrote and showed me; it's mainly about trying to overcome nihilism and finding the strength to keeping going through community and passion, and I have it set in a very bleak, post-climate change world to challenge the hope I want characters to build up through the progression of the story. I don't want to talk about it all that much, A) because I only have about 4 pages right now and B) I have to worry about intellectual property now.

The last project I'm working on hasn't actually been started in any capacity, it's moreso just an idea for a novel that I want to develop. It's very much a hodgepodge of almost everything I've experienced in university so far, the tone and writing style of which being astronomically inspired by Good Omens, which has swiftly become one of my favorite books. I love it for the same reason I tolerate The Secret History, that being the amazing writing. However, where the two diverge in my mind is that The Secret History has a very drawn-out plot that just becomes boring after a while, and Good Omens has one of the most creative and hilarious premises you'll ever see. 

To any fans of Donna Tartt who feel passionately wronged by my thoughts on The Secret History, all I have to say to you is womp-womp. I read three hundred sixteen pages of that shit (written out for dramatic effect) before my brain started unplugging itself from my eyeballs and putting up a mental gameplay of Subway Surfers. Let's find a more entertaining hill to die on.

Oh, I also got casted in a student film here. Hopefully the first of many.

The Finale (for realsies)

Goodbye everyone.

This project is the last thing I will have done before becoming an adult (legally, not mentally). It's a really weird feeling. I don't want to say I'm very attached to it, but I've been working on it for over a month, and working on this blog for even longer. I love this shithole of a website.

My CCR itself is pretty crap; I really only cared about the opening (sorry). I only used two sources (again, oopsie).

“What Is Science Fiction Writing? Definition and Characteristics of Science Fiction Literature - 2024.” MasterClass, 1 Sept. 2021, www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-science-fiction-writing-definition-and-characteristics-of-science-fiction-literature.

Menadue, Christopher Benjamin, and Susan Jacups. Who Reads Science Fiction and Fantasy, and How Do They ..., James Cook University, 2018, researchonline.jcu.edu.au/54351/1/WhoReadsSFnF.pdf.

Regardless of how bad the CCR is, I'm so proud of how much I tried on the opening, even if I did procrastinate editing it and started like two days ago...

And finally, I made a promise in a blog post about a month or so ago regarding what I'd say for my final post. 

I have no fuckin' idea

The Finale (film finale not post finale)

INCANDESCENCE