It feels like it was just yesterday that I walked across the stage at the Patriot Center to get my TJ diploma. Just yesterday that I stepped foot on the campus of the University of Southern California for the first time at freshman orientation. Just yesterday that I began what has been the most transformative period of my life.

So needless to say, it’s really weird knowing that just last week, I finished my third year at USC – I’m a senior now. Jesus. It’s been one helluva ride, and I’ve had the honor of meeting and befriending some of the most brilliant and talented people I will ever encounter. It’s extra-double weird knowing that somewhere along the line while I was on this incredible ride meeting incredible new people, something I never thought would happen happened.

I got old.** (more…)

I’ve posted this on Facebook as a note before… but as I was working on my “Notes on an Existential Crisis” piece, I figured it’s about time this essay got a proper unveiling to the world on my blog. Frankly, I think 17 year old Danny did a really good job with it. Definitely one of the more openly emotional pieces I’ve ever written. Sure, looking at it now, I could clean it up a bit, but here it is in its raw, original form – exactly the way college admissions officers read it. 

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For a while, my dad has said, “Danny, ‘Viva La Vida’ will be your Forrest Gump.” At first, that probably doesn’t make sense. How related could a 2008 song by a British band and an early 90s movie by an American film studio be? Well, in the context of my life… quite a bit. (more…)

I’ve noticed a lot of my friends love How I Met Your Mother. I came across it myself through one of my co-workers last year, and it quickly became an obsession. I spent all of Spring Break 2012 sick, wrapped in my comforter, running through the first 6 seasons of the show. As I did so, I laughed, I sighed, and I damn-near-cried like I’m sure many others have. For a comedy, How I Met Your Mother has a lot of heart and emotion; for each witty quip and ridiculous Stinson pick-up line, it has a heartstring-pulling moment to match. You know the kind I’m talking about – scenes that can’t help but extract a sigh out of you and make you reflect on… life, as you feel a wave of the subtlest goosebumps wash over your skin and you’re reminded why you love the show so much.

I’ve been meaning to write about this sigh-inducing, heartstring-plucking quality, about what exactly it is that keeps us coming back to HIMYM. I’ve been trying at it for a while, too, as evidenced by my countless draft articles with “HIMYM” in the title. But as difficult as this “X-factor” is to distill into words… I think I’ve finally nailed it: (more…)

When I tutor kids in writing over the summer, I make sure they make outlines for everything they write. It’s what I was taught to do in high school, and it’s not a bad way to go about most basic writing. I’m being a complete hypocrite when I do this, though – I haven’t made outlines for anything in a while. My gripe with outlines is that they emphasize structure and order instead of content. People always obsess over how to fit what they want to say into some sort of predetermined form – intro-body-conclusion, AABA, three-act structure – rather than focusing on creating the best content and letting the form naturally take shape. The question should never be, How can I fit what I want to say into this? but instead, What do I really want to say, and how do I connect all of my points together smoothly? (more…)

During my time at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology – a selective STEM magnet school in northern Virginia and the #1 public high school in the US from 2006-2011, colloquially referred to as “TJ” -, one of the terms I frequently heard used to describe its student body was “elitist”. Just look at the comments attached to any of The Washington Post‘s articles on the school online; sometimes, it seems like the word is used to describe the institution just as much as “prestigious” or “rigorous”. And beyond the realm of TJ, the E-word seems to be used far too frequently in reference to the intelligent and educated, to those who possess knowledge that others do not.

But why? Why are smart people so often referred to as elitist? Yeah, sure, there’s the occasional arrogant prick who legitimately deserves the title, but as for the rest of them… what did they do? What did they do to deserve to be called elitists besides 1) be born into existence, in the case of those society likes to refer to as “gifted”; or 2) work their asses off to increase their intellect? (more…)

This piece was written to be my final analytical paper for SLL330: Russian Thought and Civilization at the University of Southern California. 

Every story needs a hero and a villain, and stories in video games are no different. For every good guy, there must be a bad guy; and for every evil-doer, there must be a do-gooder to save the day. This can be an issue for stories grounded in reality, as each character or faction must have a believable backstory, an important part of which is often nationality – while everyone loves a cool character of their nationality, problems pop up when writing in less favorable characters. A lot of it is unfortunately political – for example, although nobody has a problem with Nazis or zombies being depicted as the enemy in video games, depicting the Chinese, Cubans, North Koreans, or any Middle Easterners as the antagonists has proven to be a sensitive issue, with the respective nations crying foul about such portrayals or, in the case of Middle Eastern states, developers avoiding the issue altogether by omitting specific country references, á la 24. 

Russia seems less sensitive about the way it is portrayed in video games than most countries, with little to no real feedback to be seen about either the positive depictions or the less favorable ones; and this callousness is wonderful given the wide variety of ways Russians are portrayed in games. Although every game provides a different take on Russia and its people, upon analysis, it becomes clear that of all these depictions can ultimately be broken down into some combination of the following basic types: (more…)