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.