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fe-semi-decent-scenarios · 3 years

Note

Hey! I wasnt the one who requested it, but I loved your how would the Blue Lions react to killing their SO! May I ask the same but for the Golden Deer if its alright?

{That was actually one of my favorite requests to write! It’s been a long time so I might be a bit rusty, but let’s give this a shot :)}

Claude:

He had accounted for the possibility of you betraying him. Your disappearance had not been something he took with ease, yet the lack of contact or declaration of death for so long had him thinking

Emotions are fleeting...the human mind was complex. Your loyalty was never something he wanted to question but he could never put his complete faith in you

Even when you stood at his side protecting the crests, befriended his people, treated him as a true partner...he just couldn’t completely put his faith in you. Not with so much on the line

He wonders if that’s where he went wrong. Heavy rain clouded his sight but the sound of your voice rang dominant across the field. As you stand at Gronder with your weapon focused on his friends- your friends; Claude could not help but momentarily reminisce over the times you instead showed him your smile. The one that temporarily alleviated the weight of his dreams and expectations from his shoulders

He would be the one to get it back. The professor had already converted other students to their side so there was a chance

One you didn’t want, as you aimed at their head with tears pricking your eyes. He dismounted his wyvern instantly

“Was it all a lie? Tell me...is this what you want for your home (Y/N)? Come fight with us” He slowly begins his approach, but the words die out as you attack him this time

A shrill battle cry is all he hears before he watches an axe lodge into your side. He’ll never hear the answer, but he didn’t need to. It finally clicked

White hair

You planned to die

His brows pressed in further as Lysithea gasped at your fallen form. Before he would have killed to know more about the hidden experiments going on in the empire, but not like this. They’ll come to collect the body before Hanneman can conduct any research, but he’ll give them more. Much more

Raphael:

Raphael doesn’t like to think on the battlefield. It’s not that he enjoys pummeling people without a glance, but if he looks back then he won’t look foreword. He’s confided in Ignatz many times after being scolded for running ahead, but when thinking can cost you your life he prefers not to waste the effort

Especially because he takes longer to process complex emotions and thoughts compared to the others. He trusts them to be tactical while he uses his muscles to save the day

Back in the day he had a perfectly reliable head to think for him. He cleared their path and they took care of all the important business. The classic ‘brains and brawn’ duo that no one would expect to ever find genuine interest in one another. Aren’t they stereotypically supposed to fight and be at each other’s throats? Not in this case

“Haha! THAT WAS GREAT! Nice Job (Y/N), I hope today’s menu has meat because you need brain food and I need to feed my muscles!”

You knew Raphael and how to predict his movements, and he had complete faith in your judgements. Even at the monastery you both made the most efficient team to do chores

Instead of trying to change him, you worked to match his pace and became his partner. On the field and in life. Raphael knew he didn’t have to second guess with you at his side, and he felt what he wanted to feel.

He loved you. Your brains, your laugh, your heart, your cooking no matter good or bad...you. It was an emotion that came easy to him.

Though sometimes he berated himself for not thinking. Sometimes you’d get in trouble if he broke equipment or did something else out of line. Yet you remained patient and calmed him down at the same time.

It was difficult to adjust to fighting without his partner. He essentially had to relearn everything through experience, but he had full hope that you’d come back

That hope clouded his judgement when he saw you conversing with the professor at Aillel. He was so overcome with joy that he mindlessly pushed aside enemies to get to you without actually examining the scene

His fury took over when the professor’s sword went straight through your stomach. He tackled them to the ground and it took both Lorenz AND Hilda to pry him away.

“You idiot! They’re the enemy!” Hilda shouted at him as he settled down. He couldn’t process it. They wouldn’t hurt their family, him.

Yet, they wore red. Red that grew darker as their blood seeped in

Ignatz:

“Can you paint my portrait?” You asked him one evening long ago. After a particularly grueling training session with the rest of class he had snuck off to sketch the trees by the market. The year was young and he still wasn’t too familiar with all his classmates

You were new and he had took to your appearance instantly. He could replay your introduction mentally over and over. Your smooth words, slight bow, and the way your feet glided effortlessly to the closest seat you could get to the window. He was of course too shy to approach a new student since he wasn’t the social sort, but luckily he did not have to do much.

You took the liberty of following him to his painting spot. He was flustered at being found, but you merely plopped at his side and began to eat your lunch. Where you had it stashed beforehand? He still doesn’t know

He had never been more aware of another’s presence, and his art showed it as the paper crinkled in his grasp. Yet somehow you seemed enamored at the picture forming on the page, so much that you asked to model

He grew anxious instantly and decided to head back for his own meal. With no given answer you had left the topic behind, and from then on he began to find you nearby often. From acquaintances to friends, and from friends to ‘lovers without definition’. No confession was ever spoken but he knew you made decisions easier, life joyful, and the rest of his peers agreed as much as he.

He drew that portrait. He drew it over, and over, and over, and over because he refused to forget your face. He would remember you and fight twice as hard to make up for what you couldn’t give. He swore that to Claude and everyone else when you were pronounced missing in action.

and now? His eyes glisten as a body fitted under a white tarp lays yards away. You hadn’t tried to harm him but you were healing the enemy. It was decided that you were not with the Empire, but instead travelling through and became swept in the battle. Perhaps you didn’t know? Perhaps you simply decided to help whoever needed it no matter their side?

He clutches his bow to his chest. One arrow, and you were down. He didn’t know

He didn’t know but the pictures would never let him forget. The pages never felt the same from then on

Lorenz:

Relationships should never be formed unless you have something to gain

It is a nobleman’s duty to protect the weak, the poor, the sick; yet, there must always be distance.

A nobleman must always carry themselves with a sense of professionalism. They must not display weakness, and a true leader is born of being able to separate their personal affairs from that of those they govern.

One day Lorenz will be the head of the Glouscer territory, and soon the Alliance as a whole if he has his way. Death must not phase him and he must be willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of his people

He follows the laws of a noble. He knows them on paper, but not in practice.

Only as he grew during an age of dispute and fighting did he begin to learn that actions differ from voice. All that he pledged as a young man held no meaning, because gradually he began to realize that he is not the most fit to govern Fodlan. He was incapable of completely tossing aside his personal desires or making the best decisions with certainty. Yes, he was well educated and would make a great right hand

Yet the title of leader would never be his. Why? Because he is a noble by definition

The professor was a noble by heart. A true leader who let actions speak for them and selflessly protected the entirety of Fodlan instead of one singular portion.

Lorenz is a noble in name, but in nature he is a man. He is a solider, a son, a friend, a politician...a human. One not immune to temptations or the grievances of loss no matter what face he may display for the public eye.

There was a soul he once found vibrant. They were a mere commoner yet full of dedication. He placed a barrier around them immediately, one he was not allowed to cross no matter how tempted. They did not fit the criteria he sought

Yet the night of the ball he allowed “them” the curtesy of a dance. Their warm hand on his own, their body held tightly in his embrace, and lighthearted small talk being tossed between quips about their poor dancing skills

They left his mouth dry as he bid them farewell to their next partner. He allowed the barrier to resurface as he went his own way

“You must rethink this (Y/N). How could siding with the empire lead to any promising future/ They will kill us all and then themselves in the process! Please, join us”

“Spoken like a true noble, Lorenz. This social hierarchy has divided people for too long and you would realize that if you’d only look beyond Alliance borders!”

If only he had grasped their hand longer- listened. They were the first to show him a world beyond his bubble, if only he popped it sooner.

Hilda:

You really annoyed her in the beginning. The way you carried yourself like some kind of prophet, or how you’d question everything the professor taught. Was it so hard to just do what was needed and move on? Even with something as simple as weeding the courtyard you always had to add your own two cents

It was like always being under analysis. She got that enough from Claude and didn’t need two people trying to read her. On many occasions she tried to gain traction over you, but somehow her efforts never bore fruit

For a try-hard you were very accepting of her shortcomings. So long as what you were tasked with got done, the performance of others was never a secondary priority

If only she could be that carefree about other people’s opinions. Maybe then living would be easier?

Perhaps you were what she wanted to be? Satisfied with who you were enough to question the world around you while remaining secure with what you had

Someone with the ability to step beyond your comfort zone and make your own decisions. Respected, knowledgeable...loved for who you are. Maybe that’s what drew her to you and lead to her envy forming into adoration

and that adoration being trampled by sorrow

“I still love you so no hard feelings, okay? I can’t back down” is what she told you. It was a taunt, but she did not expect your smile

“Of course. I’m glad you’ve decided to show your backbone, just think of this as a spar like old times”

The casual talk did not fit the clash of blades that followed. Nor did it suit the battle roaring nearby

A spar- just like old times. It was a familiar battle but this time her axe did not halt before delivering the deciding blow.

Her hands shook as your body fell, yet you still appeared at peace despite the gash adorning your back. Perhaps you knew this would be the outcome before the day even began

Hilda did not cry, but asked for you to be buried on alliance soil. If anything she owed you that curtesy

Leonie:

She would never forgive you. Not today, not ever.

How dare you choose to side with the people who killed the captain? He never did anything to anybody, and if you chose to betray everyone than Leonie would return the favor

She decided that any history between you two was nonexistent the moment you lifted your weapon. Mercy was a word you forgone long ago when instead of defending Garreg Mache, you slaughtered it’s inhabitants

She thought you felt the same as well. Yet, fate always liked to twist in ways to hinder justice

She watched from a distance as the professor approached your fallen form. They had insisted on trying to sway her old classmates, but she scoffed at the mere thought

What made them think traitors would be good allies? Did they want to be stabbed in the back like their father?...like the captain

She ignored the sting in her chest as you swatted their hand away. You had some nerve to reject their kindness and it pissed her off. She wanted this entire situation to simply end but-

Her feet moved on their own

“Why are you such an idiot? Were you always this irresponsible?” her words cut deep, clearly shown by how you turned away. She could only grit her teeth at the stubbornness and reach for her lance

You made your choice, and clearly it was up to her to deliver justice if no one else would

So she did what she’s always had to do, the brunt work. With one swing it was over and you were just another count among the others

She doesn’t know if the captain would praise her for remaining strong or scold her for remaining indifferent

Lysithea:

Everything always boils down to one thing: people cannot be trusted. Each and every time Lysithea has allowed someone close it has blown up in her face

and somewhere deep down, she knew this situation wouldn’t have ended any differently. The world always found new ways to crush what she cared for

The only question that remains is how much longer will she have to endure? How much longer did she have to fight?

because now she had to fight for two. She had to find a cure or die trying

During the battle for Garreg Mache many had been taken prisoner. She hadn’t the empire to conduct unethical experiments; maybe torture, but nothing like what she was witnessing.

It was a fever dream one couldn’t fathom, but the mindless husk killing without remorse kept her in reality. What had they done to you?

She noticed the white hair in an instant. One of her worst fears had come to life seeing you at the death knight’s side, but the way you hadn’t even flinched when she called your name made her terrified

Not even a whack of thoron could snap you out of it. She began to lose hope...were you even there anymore? Is this what they had planned for her if she didn’t flee?

“Say something you jerk! Don’t tell me you’re letting some petty magic keep you grounded, fight it!”

No matter what anyone said it did nothing. When moral dwindled the only solution left was to free you through other means

The death knight escaped after you fell. Next time...next time he would die at her hand.

Lysithea instantaneously moved to further her research after your burial. Not for herself, but to find out if you were gone long before they found you. She needed to know if your death was peaceful, if you could see that she tried

If you would forgive her

Marianne:

“This is Nova. I have to leave for a mission, would you watch him for me Marianne?”

Bright blue eyes bored into hers as she gingerly took hold of the bunny. It’s fur was soft, well groomed. She took notice of how it snuggled into her arms as if it feared no human. Marianne knew instantly that the animal was well loved and cherished. The though made her almost refuse the favor in fear of hurting it, but her classmate’s insistence wasn’t something to fight.

Despite her warnings (Y/N) never listened, and at some point Marianne gave up on pushing them away. Their company was appreciated yet she would never say it, and the cuddly creature in her arms truly proved their trust in her

She could only nod in agreement as they skipped off to prepare the bunny’s necessities to bring to her room. Marianne hoped she could care for the animal properly, and that nothing would happen to it

She worried for the wrong reasons, as (Y/N) never returned home. They were sent to face Solon and avenge the death of the Professor’s father. Marianne was asked to remain and help in healing injured soldiers from the most previous confrontation.

·If she knew that would have been the last time (Y/N) would show up in her room, she--no, she wouldn’t have done anything. She may have tried to convince them to stay home but Marianne knows she would have not confessed anything

Not that she valued their friendship or that she worried for their wellbeing. Not that she was grateful they trusted her with Nova, or that they help her care for her horses. She wouldn’t have even thought it.

She didn’t think of it afterwards either. Her fondness for her deceased friend wouldn’t have been noticeable at all if not for the bunny. Despite everything she cared for it as if it were (Y/N) themselves.

When she sees a familiar figure take charge at Gronder, time freezes. She remembers the bunny sitting in her dorm without an owner. She wonders how abandoned it must have felt to never see it’s best friend again. She feels for the bunny because it’s how she felt.

Without thinking she shoots a blast of magic their way and watches them crumple on the floor

Why did they abandon their precious bunny? Did they give up on it? Did they give up on her?

Did you...finally realize you had befriended a monster?

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itsuki-minamy · 4 years

Text

BEFORE ZERO: CHAPTER 4 “THE EYE OF THE KING, THE EYE OF THE HUMAN”

Translation: Naru-kun Raws: Ridia

* Chapter 1 * Chapter 2 * Chapter 3

Zenjo, Akio, Azuma, Bado, Chidjiiwa, Daiba.

The cooperation of the six masters easily cuts through the dense formation of "Purgatory".

A six-man training unit called "Saw Traction Unit" by its Lord, "Blue King" Habari Jin, the movement is unique, different from traditional combat techniques and modern urgent operations.

They have their own specialties in each hand and have different speeds, ranges, and advance powers. While running at full speed. A group of dry blue blades is turned into a four-dimensional excavator and dismantled through a large group of talented fighters. After the six swordsmen stormed past, a heartbeat later, the black-robed strangers splattered, splashing heat and burning blood.

"What are they?"

Shiotsu coughed while avoiding the hot blood splatters.

A six-member chainsaw, which is also a pioneer.

One, two or three people for each sword strike. His appearance of stroking the monster "Purgatory" and going through it reminded him of another monster that hunts and bites the monster.

"What are they?"

Shiotsu asked again.

The word was also directed at the members of the “Purgatory” clan, who continued to blatantly defy the violence of the opponent.

Men dressed in black who burn and heat the entire body's blood with the ability to "red" and literally gain an explosive spine and destructive power. Of course, such use of different abilities touches and destroys their own bodies first and foremost. Many of them will take enormous damage in their environment and die in a single battle. A human bomb in a black robe who simply rushes to destroy the moment without saving his own life. It is a destructive and unconventional variant, both mentally and physically.

Both enemies and allies are monsters. There was no possibility for ordinary people to enter the battlefield.

Shiotsu gave instructions to the next rushing forces. It is a cleaning of the remains of the red monster that was spoiled by the blue monster.

Shiotsu and the followers stabbed the end of each of the dying black robes that fell to the ground and leaned against the wall. Some were able to save their lives, but at the same time, they still have the power to suddenly kill opposing members. For those who don't have normal human sensitivities, this was also basically dealt with mechanically.

Perhaps the current scene is one of the most horrible little battles ever fought on land. However, if "Purgatory" is left unattended, it will cause much more damage in the future. This is a necessary public act. As a member of a security organization, Shiotsu understood that point.

But at the same time, in light of the common sense of modern human life and ethics, his life on this battlefield is too light.

"Huh!"

From the other side of the door that opened, he hears Akio's laugh. She does not belong to Shiotsu's common sense, and she seems to think of this situation as a game.

It's not just Akio. The "Red King" and the "Blue King", "Purgatory" and "Scepter 4", many of the people here think of this battle as some kind of game. If he do not get caught up in the weight of life and the heavy burden of society and move lightly like a sports competition, he will become entangled and die.

Something was moving at Shiotsu's feet. The mortally wounded black robes of "Purgatory" were wringing out their last power and concentrating their abilities on their fists. When the fist was about to be hit by Shiotsu's leg, Shiotsu's sword flashed, and when he slashed his fist, he pierced the eyebrows of the black clothing with his returning sword.

The bright red fist bounced several times, leaving a scorched mark on the ground, eventually turning into a black mass and burning.

When Shiotsu sighed, he accompanied his subordinates and followed the group of six members.

++++++++++

A "Scepter 4" command vehicle is parked on the street in front of the "Purgatory" grounds.

The "Blue King" Habari Jin is in the passenger seat with several rear commanders. The appearance of leaning his elbows on the door and closing his eyes is like taking a nap, but his brain is spinning at high speed.

Various noises are heard from outside the vehicle. Status reports exchanged through communication devices. Noise due to radio interference. The tremors caused by explosions and collapses transmitted from their feet. All that information is collected to keep track of the situation.

The smile on his mouth shows that things are going according to Habari's plan. The sword of the "Red King" was quickly and surely approaching the throat of the "Red King". Kagutsu may or may not know the situation.

Even if he is in the middle of a war or disaster, he is a man who will fall asleep without raising his eyebrows.

Noises, tremors, screams, do not trigger Kagutsu's actions. The "Red King" continues to sleep in silence.

The "silent blade", which spreads sparks and roars, does not give the "Red King" time to wake up.

"That would be a beautiful ending."

Minato raised his face from the control table at the words that Habari suddenly leaked out.

"That is beautiful"?"

"Eh? Ah. I was thinking about the "Saw Traction Unit"."

"I see, members Zenjo and Akio..."

Minato was also witnessing a mock group training the other day. He can imagine the situation at the scene. The light of the blue sword and the sparks woven by the six masters, and the blood and explosion of the prey. High speed group sword dance, it was a spectacle that could certainly be evaluated with some kind of aesthetic sense.

"Beautiful...?"

He thought he didn't have that kind of sensitivity to talk about how life explodes from the perspective of "beauty."

Habari said in response to the confusion mixed with Minato's tone...

"To reach an overwhelming existence like Kagutsu's, you have to have some kind of 'beauty', no power, no reason... It seems like that to me."

Habari said that with a slight silence.

"Don't you think so, Minato?"

"No... I'm not in a position to say anything."

"I don't care. I want to hear your opinion."

"If that's the case..."

Minato said with a preface.

"I don't know anything about the existence of the 'King' and the discipline to follow, but the closest thing to 'beauty' you say is you, the 'King of Blue'... I think so."

"In other words, not that chainsaw."

Habari struck the handle of the sword placed next to the seat.

"I should use this sword to face Kagutsu, that's what it is."

"No, until then."

“It is a very plausible opinion. Traditionally, the flight from royal authority has been suppressed by the direct action of another royal authority. It can be said that it is a thought."

"Eh... if so, why...?"

“Kagutsu is different from other kings. It is a non-standard monster that seeks destruction and violence. If I or any other royal authority were in front of him, that would be what he wanted. The clash of the two kings' abilities will bring an unprecedented amount of destruction to earth."

"Blast of royal power...?"

"Exactly."

Habari looked up at the sky beaming in response to Minato telling him to do so voluntarily.

“The power of two opposing "kings". The different skill fields of "red" and "blue" speed up, inflate and collide with each other. It would be a beautiful sight."

What exactly do you see in the eyes of the "Blue King"?

"Blast of royal power". A runaway and destructive phenomenon of a force field of extraordinary capacity predicted by Weissmann's theory. Minato lost his words to the "Blue King" who speaks of the ruin that the "Seven Kings" and their helpers are trying with all their might, except Kagutsu.

"But it is a beauty that should not be on earth."

Habari looked down at the "Purgatory" battlefield and the "Saw Traction Unit." Minato was relieved for some reason that his line of sight returned from heaven to earth.

"The highest potential for forbidden beauty is reaped with the next best beauty. That is the meaning of our chainsaw."

When he came to the conclusion of that, there was a slight tilt in Habari's profile.

He felt something was wrong with the noise outside the vehicle or the communication that he heard leaking.

"Commander…?"

"It's bad. Something unexpected is happening."

"Habari!"

As expected. Above Minato's head, Zenjo's voice came over the phone line.

"Can you hear! Can you hear me, Habari? Akio is dead!"

++++++++++

The situation was extremely confusing.

Immediately after Zenjo announced Akio's death, the counterattack from the members of "Purgatory" began. The hordes of demons that had been ripped apart and crushed by the "Saw Traction Unit" reappeared inexhaustibly from here and there in the facility, dividing "Scepter 4" and sifting through each one. Some have been injured.

"What is the situation? Zenjo! This is the command vehicle! Habari!"

The command vehicle operator barely answered Shiotsu's question.

“Saw drive unit. The report is that it is no longer available. The commander has just headed to recovery."

"What... idiot, stop!"

Before the words were finished, there was a person running through Shiotsu.

The "Blue King" Jin Habari.

"Shiotsu!"

Without looking back and slowing down, Habari said.

"Assemble the group. Leave in five minutes!"

After a moment of victory, Shiotsu nodded and yelled in a loud voice that echoed around him.

"Scepter 4, get together!"

However, the situation is now inferior. At the edge of the corridor and in one corner of the room, there are several abandoned and isolated members.

First, gather the people in the center of the room and then collect the isolated people. However, not all members are on time.

When Shiotsu thought that, several silver lights streaked through the space.

Multiple throwing knives from Shiotsu, who followed Habari with his gaze, and were thrown from behind.

It was the work of Hayatoshi Minato, who ran in succession.

Like Habari, Minato moved his arm left and right without slowing down and threw three knives at once. Although rarely used in everyday life, Minato puts a series of small throwing knives similar to medical scalpels in the sleeves and pockets of his uniform as a convenient weapon, in addition to being equipped with his official sword.

Each knife followed a different curved path and hit the body of those in black as if it had been inhaled. The power of each is not high, but it creates a rift in the black clothes movement to help cornered members, and surely creates an opportunity to escape.

In the blink of an eye, a dozen knives were thrown, and Minato took a deep breath and jerked his arms forward.

Until then, the knives that had been thrown one after another, this time, were thrown six at a time, rushing forward like a torrent of light, stepping forward as they dodged Habari's back from side to side. Beyond that, he pierced the key points of the three black clothes guarding the door at the same time.

All three of them were only a part of the black outfit on the spot, but that was enough.

Habari draws his sword and slashes the three with a returning sword, and rushes into the dark room without gambling.

"Minato!"

Shiotsu called out to Minato, who ran over to the side.

"Protect the 'Blue King'."

Minato nodded briefly, chased after Habari, and leapt into the darkness.

++++++++++

Just a few minutes ago...

"Akio is dead!"

When he heard the words, Hayatoshi Minato became a self-defeating body for a few moments.

"Akio...?"

As a couple in a fighting organization, he was prepared to say goodbye in this way one day. However, when they told him it was "today", he was surprised.

Meanwhile, his lord, the "Blue King" Habari, jumped out of the vehicle and quickly used the sword at his waist.

"Minato."

"Oh, commander...?"

"Ask here. I have to remove the rest of the "Saw Traction Unit" and the forces that run."

Coming to himself with that word, Minato also jumped out of the vehicle.

"I'll accompany you too!"

It was an intuitive action.

On today's site, there are some items that exceed the expectations of "Blue King" Habari Jin. Something that took the life of Akio, who was creating a rift in cooperation with Zenjo.

He, Hayatoshi Minato, was said to be a foreign molecule in the "Scepter 4" organization. "Why is a decent person like you in such a small and stretched world?"

The answer is: "I came with Akio as a bonus." In contrast to Akio, who was a person who should enter "Scepter 4" in terms of personality and ability, Hayatoshi Minato originally had the qualities to lead a life as a general citizen.

The reason he entered "Scepter 4" is because he is with Akio. There is no doubt about it.

In response to Minato, Habari said, "It's an unexpected change." While maintaining common sense, he highly evaluated Minato's willingness to adapt to the air of an abnormal group without hesitation, often asking Minato for his opinion as a pseudo "big picture".

Minato offered to accompany him to the center of enemy territory.

Habari instantly caught Minato's will and nodded.

"Okay, let's go."

And now…

Minato ran after the "Blue King" and entered the devil's lair.

What does a mere human eye, a "king" or a demon see there?

What caused the death of his wife, Akio?

When the eyes get used to the darkness of the prison, Minato's eyes will find her.

(To be continue…)

#k #k project #K BEFORE ZERO #SCEPTER 4 #habari jin #shiotsu gen #zenjo goki #k novel

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sciencespies · 3 years

Text

To Boost Black Men in Medicine, Advocates Turn to Sports

https://sciencespies.com/nature/to-boost-black-men-in-medicine-advocates-turn-to-sports/

To Boost Black Men in Medicine, Advocates Turn to Sports

Emily Laber-Warren, Undark

Aaron Bolds didn’t consider becoming a physician until he tore a ligament in his knee while playing in a basketball tournament when he was 15. His orthopedic surgeon was Black, and they hit it off. “He was asking me how my grades were, and I told him, ‘I’m a straight-A student,’ and he was, like, ‘Man, this is a great fallback plan if basketball doesn’t work out,’” recalls Bolds, who is African American.

“He looked like me,” Bolds says, “and that was even more encouraging.”

If not for that chance encounter, Bolds, 34, a doctor at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, might never have gone into medicine, he says. When he was growing up, there were no physicians in his family or extended social network to model that career path. And at the schools he attended, he says, his aptitude for science didn’t trigger the kind of guidance young people often receive in more privileged contexts.

What Bolds did get attention for was his athletic ability. He got a full basketball scholarship to Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, where his team won a conference championship. But when he transferred to Bowie State University in Maryland, where he also played basketball, an academic adviser discouraged his pre-med ambitions, Bolds recalls, saying his grades were low and he lacked research experience.

Bolds is not alone in finding in athletics a fraught lever of educational opportunity. Whereas Black players comprise more than half the football and basketball teams at the 65 universities in the top five athletic conferences, and bring in millions of dollars for their schools year after year, the graduation rates for Black male college athletes are significantly lower — 55 percent as compared to 69 percent for college athletes overall — according to a 2018 report from the USC Race and Equity Center. Many Black college athletes end up without either a professional sports contract or a clear career path.

Now some educators and advocates are looking to reverse this trend by connecting sports, an area in which African American men are overrepresented, and medicine, where the opposite is true. As of 2018, 13 percent of the U.S. population, but just 5 percent of doctors — according to the Association of American Medical Colleges — identified as Black or African American. (The AAMC data notes that an additional 1 percent of doctors identified as multiracial.) Decades of efforts to increase diversity at medical schools have made progress with other demographics, including Black women — but barely any with Black men. “No other demographic group is broken down with such a large split between men and women,” says Jo Wiederhorn, president and CEO of the Associated Medical Schools of New York. “And none of them have stayed stagnant, like that group has.”

According to data the AAMC provided to Undark, the proportion of Black men enrolling in medical school hasn’t changed much since 1978 — with only some headway being made in the past few years.

The absence of Black male medical professionals ripples across the health system, experts say, contributing to widespread health disparities. African Americans tend to be diagnosed later than White people with everything from cancer to kidney disease, leading to more advanced disease and earlier deaths. Meanwhile, a recent study suggests that Black men who see Black male doctors may be more likely to follow medical advice. Other research also suggests that racially concordant care, in which patients and doctors have a shared identity, is associated with better communication and a greater likelihood to use health services.

“We are in a crisis point, nationally,” says Reginald Miller, the dean for research operations and infrastructure at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the health of communities of color are directly proportional to the number of practitioners available to see,” he says. “It’s just that straightforward.”

Last year, the National Medical Association, a professional organization representing African American physicians, embarked with the AAMC on a joint effort to address the structural barriers to advancement for Black men. “We need to look at this with a unique lens,” says Norma Poll-Hunter, senior director of workforce diversity at the AAMC.

There is no single solution to such an entrenched and multifaceted problem, Poll-Hunter says. According to her, some medical schools have adopted a holistic admissions process that evaluates many personal factors rather than relying on standardized test scores, which can exclude promising Black candidates. In addition, she says, students of color need better access to high-quality K-12 science education, particularly in under-resourced public schools. “There are a lot of barriers that exist early on,” she notes, “and that then creates this narrowing of the pathway to medicine.”

But the novel strategy of wooing athletes is slowly gaining traction. Advocates point out that high-performing athletes possess many of the skills and attributes that doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, and other medical professionals need — things like focus, a commitment to excellence, time management, and problem-solving skills, as well as the ability to take constructive criticism and perform under pressure.

“When you say, ‘What’s your ideal medical student?’ it’s not just a kid who’s academically gifted. It’s a kid who’s got resilience, attention to detail, knows how to work on the team,” Miller says. “Because science and medicine are team sports.” And by virtue of being athletes, these young men are already attuned to nutrition, fitness, and other aspects of human biology.

Two former NFL players, Nate Hughes and Myron Rolle, recently became physicians. And there is evidence that competitive sports experience contributes to medical success. A 2012 study of doctors training to become ear, nose, and throat specialists at Washington University, for example, found that having excelled in a team sport was more predictive of how faculty rated their quality as a clinician than strong letters of recommendation or having attended a highly-ranked medical school. Likewise, a 2011 study found that having an elite skill, such as high-achieving athletics, was more predictive of completing a general surgery residency than medical school grades.

Advocates of the athletics-to-medicine pipeline point out its practicality. Thousands of Black men are already in college, or headed there, on athletic scholarships. It would only take a small percentage of them choosing medical careers to boost the percentage of Black male doctors to better reflect the proportion of African American men in the general population, they say.

No one thinks it will be easy. One obstacle, advocates say, is a lack of role models. Black sports celebrities are household names, but some young athletes may never encounter a Black medical professional. “People don’t believe they can become what they don’t see,” says Mark R. Brown, the athletic director at Pace University.

And for the best chance of success, many say, these young men need to form and pursue medical aspirations as young as possible, along with their athletic training. “Those kids who are able to do both, the rewards at the end are enormous,” Miller says. But the adults in their lives may not believe the dual path is possible. “The second that a kid says to a science teacher or someone else that he’s an athlete,” Miller says, “they go into a different category. ‘They’re not really serious about science and medicine, they’re just here, and so I don’t expect this kid to really achieve.’”

Rigid course and practice schedules also make it challenging for busy athletes to undertake demanding and time-intensive science majors, observers say. What’s needed is “a cultural change, and not just a cultural change with the athletes. It’s a cultural change with the whole structure,” Miller says. “Everybody’s excited about the idea” of the physician athlete, he adds, “because it makes sense. But when the rubber hits the road, it is challenging.”

Donovan Roy, the assistant dean for diversity and inclusiveness at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, was one of the first people to envision the potential of directing Black athletes toward medical careers.

Roy, 48, who is Black and a former college football player, grew up in the working class, primarily Black and Latino community of Inglewood, California. Attending an elite private high school on a football scholarship was eye-opening. He vividly remembers the first time he ever saw a walk-in pantry, at a friend’s home. “It was stocked like a convenience store,” he recalls. “Five different types of Hostess, Ding-Dongs, sodas, every type of snack that you ever wanted.” Equally startling was speaking with another friend’s mother, who was a lawyer. “I’d never seen a road map to success in my community,” he says.

Roy’s athletic talent continued to open doors — at 18 he got a scholarship to the University of Southern California — but poorly prepared by the under-resourced public schools he had attended through ninth grade, he struggled academically, and left both USC and later another university that he also attended on an athletic scholarship.

Eventually Roy found his footing, and when he did, he became a learning specialist. After working through his own academic struggles, he wanted to help others with theirs. Roy took a job as a learning skills counselor at UCLA’s medical school. There he helped the students who were struggling with classes like anatomy and genetics. In early 2015, he returned to USC as the director of academic support services at Keck School of Medicine.

Something Roy noticed at both these medical schools stuck with him, though it would take a few years for the observation to crystallize. A certain kind of student sought help despite, by ordinary standards, not needing it. These were the athletes, and many of them were Black or Latino. “They always talked about, ‘How can I excel? How can I get better?’” he recalls. They “were getting 90s and they wanted to be 100.”

Roy began a doctoral program in education in 2015, the same year the AAMC published a damning report about the lack of Black men entering medical school. This was a crisis Roy understood both personally and professionally. For his dissertation, he decided to interview 16 Black male students at Keck School of Medicine. What was it about them, he wanted to understand, that had gotten them there against all odds?

The answer, he discovered, was what academics call social capital. For medical students from privileged backgrounds, social capital might take the form of a family friend who arranges a summer internship at a biotechnology lab, or a well-funded high school that offers advanced placement science classes. The young men Roy interviewed did not, for the most part, have access to those sorts of resources.

“Growing up, I didn’t see a Black male with a college degree until I got to college,” medical student Jai Kemp said in a separate interview Roy conducted for a documentary he’s making on the topic. The social capital these young men leveraged to get to medical school took the form of parental support, science enrichment programs and clubs, peer social networks, faculty mentors — and the perks that come with athletics. “For me it was just sports that got me through,” Kemp said.

The pieces started to fit together. Roy knew from his own experience all the benefits athletes get, not just entrée to educational institutions, but travel, enrichment, and academic advantages like tutoring and early class registration. Athletes also tend to possess social cachet on campus and, with more exposure to different types of people, may feel comfortable in environments that seem foreign and forbidding to other young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Roy also recalled the drive for academic excellence he had observed in the athletes who came to his tutoring programs. “I got this epiphany,” he says. “Why don’t we look at student athletes in order to increase Black males’ representation in medicine, because they have the most social capital and the most network on predominantly White campuses.”

Donovan Roy at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, where he is now the assistant dean for diversity and inclusiveness. While working on his doctoral degree, Roy interviewed Black men in medical school and discovered one key to their success: social capital.

Mark Bugnaski

But when Roy began talking to his medical school colleagues about recruiting athletes, who according to a report from the Center for American Progress — a liberal think tank — make up 16 percent of Black male college students receiving athletic aid in the Big 12 athletic conference, he says most weren’t receptive to the idea. The same thing happened when he got up the nerve to make the suggestion publicly at a 2018 conference in Orlando, Florida. The idea ran against type. “I think people tend to lump athletes into this box,” he says. “They just think that athletes are big meatheads.”

Roy knew this truth viscerally, because with his offensive lineman’s build of 6-feet-6-inches and 300-plus pounds, he sticks out in academic settings. “People stare,” he says. “They do not expect me to be in the role that I am in.”

What Roy didn’t know was that the idea was percolating elsewhere, including at the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, says he and Poll-Hunter of the AAMC are in talks with several universities about launching a pilot program to support African American athletes interested in medical careers.

Meanwhile, in 2018 Miller founded the organization Scholar-Athletes with Academic Goals (a.k.a. SWAG, a name he hopes will resonate with young people). The initiative connects promising athletes with a range of available programs to help them pursue and succeed in science and medicine. Recently, Miller worked closely with leadership at Pace University to create a program, expected to launch next year, to support Black college athletes interested in attending medical school. Pace officials want the initiative to become a magnet for out-of-state athletes and a model for other schools. “My hope is that two years from now, colleges and universities will call” and ask, “Wow, how did you do this?” says athletic director Brown. “Once we have some success, and proof of concept, then I think it can really grow.”

Bolds graduated medical school in 2018 and is now doing his residency at Mount Sinai. His focus is rehabilitation medicine, and he plans to tend to injured athletes and serve as a team physician. He got a business degree while in medical school, and his long-term goal is to open his own interventional spine and sports medicine practice specializing in preventing and rehabilitating injuries in both athletes and non-athletes, as well as helping serious players enhance their performance.

But there were tough moments along the way, such as the encounter with that academic adviser, which Bolds says only served to motivate him. At the time, he thought, “Wow, this person doesn’t believe in me. So let me make them a believer,” he recalls. “That was, moving forward, really a turning point for me, honestly. Because I knew that people aren’t going to believe in you unless you give them a reason to.”

Bolds began to apply an athletic mindset to his pre-med classes. “That same grind of having to get up, 5 a.m., get to the gym, get shots up before anybody gets there, to put in that extra time — I was doing that with my studies,” he says. “I would get to the library before anybody.” Once Bolds turned his grades around, professors began to notice and help him, he says. Still, he says, his score on the MCAT, an entrance exam required by nearly all U.S. medical schools, was borderline. Instead of giving up, he attended multiple events at Howard University’s medical school, where he met people who advocated for him. It was the only medical school he got into.

Whereas Bolds had to bushwhack, he saw other Black students fall off the medical path — and his fellow Black teammates avoided it entirely. Many athletes find themselves enmeshed in a profit-making system that may not prioritize their education. The NCAA has been criticized in recent years for its long-standing policy which prohibits profit-sharing with college athletes — a policy that was only recently reversed under interim guidelines. Others have said that Black labor has been especially exploited.

In his residency, Bolds is focusing on rehabilitation medicine, and is pictured here working at Mount Sinai’s sports medicine clinic.

Jeenah Moon for Undark

As of 2014 reports, fewer than 2 percent of athletes in the NCAA will go on to play professionally. But for self-serving reasons, critics say, (Clemson University’s football team, for example, made $77 million in average annual revenue from 2015 through 2017) universities often direct athletes to “academic paths of least resistance.” Many schools practice “major clustering,” in which players are steered to the same relatively undemanding major, such as communications, so they can devote themselves almost entirely to their sport. Major clustering is more pronounced among athletes of color, according to a 2009 study of football teams at 11 universities. At six of those schools, the study found, over three-quarters of the non-White football players were enrolled in just two academic majors, although dozens of majors were offered.

Sheron Mark, an associate professor of science education at the University of Louisville, co-authored a 2019 case study of two young Black men who arrived at college on basketball scholarships, with the intent to pursue respective careers in computer science and engineering. But both found it difficult to balance academics with athletics because of pressure and blandishments from coaches and faculty advisers.

“For so long, they’ve been sold this message that you don’t have many choices, that banking on a professional sports career is one of very few options for you if you want to advance your station in life,” says Mark of many Black athletes. It’s important to have a plan B, she says, since “the odds just aren’t in their favor.” But coaches can discourage academically demanding majors because they may cut into practice time, and college athletes are not always capable of pushing back, she says, because their financial packages are tied to fulfillment of their team responsibilities.

Many Black college athletes are already strong candidates for medical school, advocates say, but others may need extra academic support to compensate for deficits acquired at under-resourced K-12 schools. They may also need post-graduation training to take science classes they did not have time for while working long hours as athletes — with some working 20-plus hours a week. “How are they being mentored and guided and protected in planning for their futures?” Mark asks. “They are high achieving in sports, they want to be high achieving in academics. Why don’t we support them?” When people wonder whether student-athletes can cut it in science and medicine, Mark’s response is: “It’s on us. It’s on us to help them do so. That’s how we can grow their representation.”

That’s what Pace University intends to do. The school already nurtures academic success in its athletes, who collectively had a B+ average last school year, but premedical studies have never been a great fit, in part because afternoon practices can conflict with long lab classes, says athletic director Brown. As part of the school’s new initiative, Pace science departments have pledged to offer flexibility in course section offerings in order to accommodate football commitments. Athletes of color from any sport will be welcome, but football was prioritized because it is the largest and one of the most diverse teams and has the most complicated schedule, Brown says.

The school also plans to adjust its advising, tutoring, and library services to ensure that pre-med athletes won’t falter when they struggle with personal issues or tough classes like organic chemistry. “Rather than saying, ‘Oh, chemistry, nobody likes chemistry, you’re right, you should just drop that,’ instead now it’s going to be, ‘Yeah, you’ve got to buckle down. And here’s how we’re going to do it,’” says Hillary Knepper, the university’s associate provost for student success.

Meanwhile, Brown will be directing his coaches to actively recruit Black and Latino high school athletes who are interested in medicine. In the past, Brown says, his coaches were less likely to select such students because of anticipated scheduling challenges. But now Pace is trying to establish a partnership through which a nearby medical school would give preferred consideration to pre-med athletes who have completed the Pace curriculum. “With our new approach, you’re not only going to have the ability to do it,” he says, “but you’re going to have a support system, to make sure that you follow the path.”

Some advocates for the athlete-to-doctor paradigm see this work as part of the larger movement for social justice. “Look what Jackie Robinson did, right? Look at Muhammad Ali, look at Colin Kaepernick,” Roy says. “Athletics has always been the vehicle for social change.”

Medical professionals can influence public policy, accumulate wealth, and help empower others in their orbit. “The impacts ramp up really quickly, from just that individual benefiting,” Mark says, to “your family, your neighborhood, your social network, and society — people you won’t even meet, and across generations.”

Studies suggest that African American doctors are more likely to choose to work in underserved communities. They also may be more attuned to, and motivated to combat, the disparities in health care. A study published last year, for example, suggests that Black newborns are half as likely to die when they are cared for by a Black physician.

Bolds is keenly aware of the health disparities for Black communities, and he jumps at opportunities to mentor other young Black men, to show them that they, too, can become doctors. “It seems like there’s so many steps that just are never-ending,” he says. But, he adds, to see someone “that you can connect with that’s at that finish line or has already passed that finish line — I think that’s very key to their success.”

One of the people Bolds has connected with is Darius Ervin, a talented Black basketball player from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who is now a sophomore at Cornell University. The two met when Ervin attended a virtual event late last year, sponsored by SWAG, at which Bolds spoke. Afterwards, the two chatted, and Bolds now checks in periodically with Ervin, who says he appreciates the encouragement. “Those are people that have once laced up shoes and got on the court and played just like how I did, and now they’re in the hospital helping people,” he says. “Being able to speak to those people gives me the visual, allows me to see that it’s an opportunity and it’s definitely possible for me to do.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this article referred imprecisely to the institutional affiliation of Donovan Roy. He is at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, not the Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine at Western Michigan University.

Emily Laber-Warren directs the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Doctors

Health

Medicine

Race and Ethnicity

Sports

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anchoredtether · 3 years

Text

2020 Writing Roundup

Stolen from Rue! This was fun to reflect on!

Everyone is welcome to use this same format if they’d like to do the same!

~~~~~~~

S T A T S

Words written:

A whooping 232,867 - which is more than half of all the words I’ve written on Ao3 in the past seven years LOL. I guess I wrote to keep myself sane this crazy year.

O N G O I N G: S T A R T E D / U P D A T E D

AN UNORTHODOX APPROACH (21,586 words)

First new fic of the year, this is my Shrek AU! I really adore this fantasy AU and it’s fun to explore such a crack concept and treat it seriously. It’s also a Pikelavar AU of sorts.

DEFENDERS OF AURITA (62,538 words)

Only updated my fantasy AU epic with one chapter this year, and I’m actually kind of sad I didn’t work on it more. It’s been hard to find muse for it when it hasn’t gotten nearly as much traction as other projects.

PARADISE LOST (13,013 words)

Another new fic started in June, this is a Zootopia AU! Heavily inspired from Zootopia, Beastars, and The Last of Us, it’s an apocalyptic future involving hybrids, people who have animal traits in order to combat a deadly strain of cancer. Plus I just love fox!Lance and rabbit!Pidge.

SCALING BACK (6,041 words)

New fic started in March, this is one I’ve had stewing on the backburner for quite awhile actually, and decided to start. It’s basically canon but Lance is actually a merman and hiding it from the team. It surprisingly fixes a ton of plot holes and fits with canon narrative.

SHATTER AND TESSELLATE (19,661 words)

This new project kind of took over my life if you couldn’t tell from all the art I’ve cranked out this past year for it. Oddly enough the idea just kind of hit me one day in March. I think Rue’s “worst timelines” got me thinking along those lines and I came up with the idea of Honerva seeing into the future and kidnapping the future paladins and turning them galra to prevent Voltron from defeating the Empire. So it’s a Galra AU but in the worst way possible.

SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS (7,243 words)

Another new fic started in August, this Wonderland AU I’ve had notes and ideas for since 2018 or something. And it’s hilarious because I thought of Lance being the Cheshire cat long before Pike existed. Thanks to lots of brainstorming on Discord I’ve figured out a lot more worldbuilding for this AU and I can’t wait to expound on it.

SLIDING LEFT MAKES MR. RIGHT (2,788 words)

Crack Tinder AU which says I posted in 2020 but I think I wrote it in November/December of 2019. This is a oneshot and it’s taking me forever to finish because it’s hard for me to write short things lol.

THE VACANT ETHER (31,121 words)

This is from the Stories in the Dark bang back in October 2019 and I’m still working to finish it. Post s8, horror, cosmic Reaper AU. This is a favorite AU of mine because of how nicely it fixes and explains all the plot holes of s8.

WHAT TIDES MAY BRING (20,704 words)

The Mer AU that Rue and I started writing last year! I really adore this AU and the Plance family feels it has, and sadly I’ve been slacking on my end with writing the next chapter but I hope to get more content in before MerMay this year.

WHERE SAPPHIRE ROSES GROW (31,101 words)

I wrote a lot this year for my Beauty and the Beast AU. I’m quite pleased I finally got to the part where Lance learns Pidge is a girl because that’s when things start moving into motion (and obviously the romance starts developing, but still not for awhile yet because I’m a sucker for slow burns).

WHERE THE SUN MEETS THE OCEAN (8,620 words)

I barely touched my Atlantis AU this year. This is another AU that doesn’t get as much love so it’s hard to find muse for it at times.

R E F L E C T I O N S

Best title

I am really fond of Shatter and Tessellate. Not only does it sound pretty and gives great imagery but it’s symbolic of how the paladins are broken and put back together.

Worst title

Probably Paradise Lost. It’s unoriginal (I stole it from the book by John Milton) though it fits the themes of the fic. But I also couldn’t think of anything better and I do find it funny that shortened it becomes PL which is like Pidge/Lance.

Best/worst last line

Best: from Where Sapphire Roses Grow:

She opened her eyes to see Lance looking up at her with his captivating irises as brilliant a blue as the very sapphire rose that cursed him, eyes that were still human.

“I swear to you Lance… I will figure out a way to break your curse.”

Worst: from Paradise Lost:

“Please…” she says in a muffled voice between sobs. “I can't - I can't do this alone."

“You won't have to,” he promises softly as he holds her close. “I'm here. I'm right here..."

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I wrote uhhh.... way more. Than I thought possible considering all the stress that happened this year. I started six new fics and progressed a ton in others.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

This is a hard one to choose... but based on the content I covered this year for the fic as opposed to the fic itself, I’d have to say Where Sapphire Roses Grow. It’s so fun writing feral Lance and him protecting Pidge from the wolves was one of my favorite scenes to write this year.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

By a freaking landslide, Shatter and Tessellate. This really caught me off guard - I never thought this fic would be so popular, especially considering it starts out as a kid fic of sorts (paladins are all early teens at first) and most people don’t like kid fics. It’s also quite dark and highkey horror? So I’m shocked it’s so well loved.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

By far The Vacant Ether. I thought it would gain a lot more traction considering everyone and their dog wants a s8 fix it fic, but then again TVE covers really dark topics and is technically a horror fic. So I shouldn’t be surprised it isn’t for everyone. But I am really happy with how it has turned out, even if less people read it.

Story that could have been better?

All of them Hmm. I feel like Scaling Back could have been more imaginative, considering the second chapter mostly follows the events of a canon episode with little divergence.

Sexiest story?

None of them have really gotten to that point yet... though I have been working on some future steamy scenes for some fics. If I had to pick one though probably Where the Sun Meets the Ocean because Pidge ogles Lance in that one.

Saddest story?

Yikes this is a hard one. I think I have to say Shatter and Tessellate, because not only does that one cover death and kidnapping, but metamorphis and body horror. And it’s all the more sadder because they’re just kids.

Most fun?

I think the one most fun to write is Where Sapphire Roses Grow. I love the time period, I love monster!Lance, I love Pidge and Lance bickering, there’s just so many good points to it. Plus BatB is a classic I loved and grew up with as a kid so it’s really fun to write out the themes I love.

Story with single sweetest moment?

I think Lance comforting Katie in Shatter and Tessellate when she asks him to call her by Pidge from now on fits this one. Lance and Pidge have a lot of little moments like this in this fic but this one in particular is very tender.

“Pidge is cute,” he finally says as he nervously rubs his wrist. “Reminds me of Pokemon.”

She makes a small sound which he thinks is an attempt at a laugh and turns her head to face him, tucking her hair behind her ear. “That’s where Matt got it from, actually.”

He smiles at her. “Is Matt your brother?”

She nods. “I’ve always loved owls, but I had a hard time saying it when I was learning how to talk. I watched Matt play enough video games that I could say ‘Pidgey’ though, and so I started calling any owl I saw as Pidgey. At some point the nickname Pidge stuck.”

Hardest story to write?

Easily The Vacant Ether. It covers a lot of heavy and dark topics and it’s hard to really nail the horror vibe sometimes. But also Sliding Left Makes Mr. Right solely because I can’t write short one-shots to save my life LOL.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Not really? Aside from just... cranking out a ton. I suppose starting 6 new fics can count as taking a risk. Keeping up with all my projects is also a project but I somehow manage to do it.

Proudest Achievement:

I think Shatter and Tessellate reaching so many kudos and hits. I seriously was not expecting that.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Just keep writing I guess. I do have two ambitious plans, to finish Not All Pain Heals, my Teen Wolf fic that is long overdue to be finished, as well as The Vacant Ether which is the fic I have planned out the most and would be easiest to finish.

#fanfic writing roundup #2020 stats #Ao3 stats #my fanfics #plance

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inevitably-johnlocked · 6 years

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Hey Lovely! I was wondering how you first became a part of the fandom? When did you start watching the show, at what point did you feel John and Sherlock might be(come) a thing, what made you start a blog on these two? I just want to know it all ^^ Hope you don't mind sharing a bit :) Thank you for everything you do for this fandom, love you lots!

Hi Lovely!

Oh gosh, what a nice question! I think I’ve talked about this in snippets in various posts, this post being the one talking the most about it, but never as a whole! Apologies if this turns into a long ramble, hah hah!

So I remember exactly when I got into the show SO CLEARLY. It was July of 2013, just a few months before S3 was to air in January 2014. I was over at my friends’ place, and they suggested the show to watch, since we always watch movies together whenever I visit. I remember asking, “Is that the show with Martin Freeman and that Khan actor from Star Trek 2?”. We finished Season one all in one go, and immediately fell in love with Ben and Martin’s portrayals and their chemistry. And then I had to head back home. I was ANGRY because OMG WHAT HAPPENS NEXT and my friends just laughed.

So as soon as I got home, I downloaded S1 and S2 and watched them ALL the way through. I needed more. So, because I already had a Tumblr and knew it was for fandoms, I decided to see what it had to offer.

Oh boy what did I get into???

So I lurked for a bit, and then I discovered something called “meta”, back when the TRF theories were the prominent meta in the fandom. So while I was getting deep into meta, I started switching my fanart from Ninja Turtles to Sherlock, because I was warming up to Ben’s ethereal face and I wanted to draw it. And I wanted to be a Sherlock fanartist. I briefly shipped Sher1011ie for a week or so, until I rewatched the series again and it just didn’t jive like it did the first few watch-throughs. I was too invested in John and Sherlock’s friendship – I saw them as bestest friends ever, too devoted to each other.

Now, at this point, y’all need to remember this: I was naïve, have never been exposed at length nor ever heard of subtext, was and am not part of the LGBT community (I grew up in a different time and in a conservative city, so being “gay” just wasn’t a thing), had a very heteronormative view on my life, and I just had always just insisted that in all of my fandoms, when I liked two male characters together, it was because “bestest friends ever!!”. I didn’t know I was ace and I’d never read smut up until 3 years ago (yes hi hello I’m so old and so innocent LOL).

Okay, so I was just lurking for a bit, learning my way around fandom, reading meta and just generally dipping my toes quietly into the fandom.

Then came Season 3.

As many of my followers know, a lot of my fondness for season 3 stems from this being the season that LITERALLY opened my eyes to EVERYTHING: subtext, Johnlock, my own sexuality, and my meta-writing career.

So, season 3 aired and I decided to dip my toes into “reviewing” the episodes as my first “meta”. They were posted onto my multi-fandom blog here, here and here. I was so proud of them, because it reinvigorated my love for writing (I used to be a pretty prominent Sonic fan-fic author back in the 90′s… I never finished my stories because my interest in the fandom died before I finished them), despite how laughably bad they were, haha. I got a couple compliments on them, but nothing beyond that, especially since I sat down and wrote them for HOURS after each episode aired.

Sometime between TSo3 and HLV, I discovered loudest-subtext-in-television (aka LSiT) and deducingbbcsherlock completely by accident and I was FASCINATED. I ate up everything they wrote. The first time I watched TSo3, something was niggling at my brain but I couldn’t quite place it. It was one of LSiT’s meta that twigged at it. That’s when I learned about subtext, heteronormativity and the queer community. And suddenly, just like that, something in my brain clicked.

Oh. My god. This show is gay, and I actually SHIP these idiots like I did in the Mother Ship (ie. The X-Files Mulder / Scully). That’s why I was SO ANNOYED with Irene. Why Molly was slowly grating on me. Why Mary’s introduction kind of annoyed me but okay I guess I can deal with it. Why everything seemed really romantic but it just couldn’t be, could it?

I rewatched the series. And it was gay. Y’all, those rainbow-coloured glasses were suddenly GLUED to my head, and I saw gay EVERYWHERE.

So, after HLV, I discovered The Johnlock Conspiracy and I was eating up all the meta about Johnlock I could. Around this time, I also was learning a lot about the LGBT community, its history and sexual fluidity from wsswatson. It was also around this time I discovered asexuality, and I started reading a lot about it.

In February of 2014, I started this blog because I wanted a place to reblog Johnlock meta. This was the first post I made on this blog, and looking back at it now, I am DYING because wow I never imagined I was going to be this deep into the fandom the day I wrote that. I don’t even remember writing it, to be very honest. I just shake my head, HAH. I think I really started understanding Johnlock because of this post here. It’s still one of my favourites and is one of the ones I credit for helping me understand what I was watching was actually a romance, not a “crime show”.

Anyway, after learning how to read subtext from mostly LSiT (they wrote a meta about how to read subtext and it was super informative) and other Johnlock bloggers, I wanted to try my hand at my own little Johnlock meta. It was more of an observational post, as my way of trying to interact with the fandom. I am a terribly nervous and shy person, so I never tagged anyone in anything. It was an overwhelming fandom, and it was terrifying to interact. A few bigger bloggers noticed me and were nice enough to comment on a couple of my posts, but I mostly stayed in my little corner, and interacted with my small little group of other smaller fans. I dabbled in both fanart and writing, just plopping my thoughts and art into the aether, hoping something would interest someone enough to start a discussion.

I started getting braver, and I was “moderating” some of my favourite posts that weren’t mine, but had my additions to it. Mostly, the Phones and Hearts post. I didn’t want to impede, but it was one of my favourite posts, so I went and copied all of the comments in the notes and put them onto one post. I don’t honestly remember HOW I ended up moderating it, but I just did because I was FASCINATED with symbolism, and I was excited because I could finally read subtext and understand it. I still had a small following, and a few people I regularly interacted with on my blog.

So, during the hiatus between S3 and TAB, somewhere along the way I suddenly had a sexuality crisis, when I suddenly realized I wasn’t broken and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, and damn it, there’s such thing as split attraction model and asexuality?? Mind was BLOWN. I was also slowly becoming obsessed with Mary’s character, and at the time I couldn’t understand why (inevitably, it was because of events happening in my own life and me trying to understand them), but I really enjoyed just psychoanalyzing her. It’s something I’ve ALWAYS loved doing – character studies; I’ve done it in EVERY fandom I’ve been in – and I was doing it for her, Sherlock and John’s characters.

So yeah, nothing much really happened to me during the S3 hiatus, except my entire world view flipped on its head and I was completely Johnlocked beyond repair. I became known for some painful posts and some lovely revelations and writing a lot of character study posts on both John and Sherlock. I’m very proud of some of my earlier meta, just sad they never really got seen (some of my earliest meta can be seen on my Ao3).

Then came the announcement for TAB in 2015, and the start of my “Tumblr Career”. I put a lot of my energy into my fandom life. I was OBSESSED with TAB, and became known for it. I put my moderation skills to use and created the TAB Starter Pack, which started gaining me some followers because OMG some loser is taking the time out of their day to compile all the news about this new series! AWESOME. I remember, it was around this time I was excited because I got to 1895 followers and it was one of those milestones all Johnlockers like having, hahah.

In October of 2015, I lost my job and was unemployed. Conveniently, this is also the time when the promo season for TAB started, because we now had a name and airdate. I devoted a LOT of my time, when I wasn’t job hunting, to working on this blog. I was just writing a lot, and obsessing about the upcoming episode.

Then the trailer aired.

And immediately after that trailer dropped on October 24, 2015, I made this post here, which, some would probably say, was the beginning of everything for me. As I was writing that post, with a cracking headache, something clicked in my head, and several hours later, I had written and posted the original Mind Palace Theories of TAB at 2AM-ish, and went to bed.

When I woke up, my post had suddenly gone viral and I couldn’t figure out why. Then it just kept expanding from there, and I made sure to include everything I could onto it, because WOW something I wrote was gaining traction, and interaction, and I just wanted us all to have a good time with it. And as the time for TAB drew closer, suddenly I was gaining followers, and more people interested in what I had to write. I welcomed everyone to continue to predict the outcome with me.

January 1st. Was a complete and total mind fuck. I was liveblogging the episode, and inadvertently created another viral post with my Mycroft’s Death post because FUCK ARE THEY KILLING MYCROFT OFF?? kind of freaked people out (sorry loves!), which gained me some more followers, and at the time, my top post was my December 31st reblog of my Mind Palace Theories post, so anyone who came to my blog, it would have been on the first page of it.

After the episode aired, suddenly, EVERYONE had questions for me, about EVERYTHING, but mostly to scream at me that I was a mind reader, LOL. No, I’m not, I was just a sad, unemployed twat with too much time on my hands and was avoiding job hunting. But good god, all DAY on Jan 1, I was replying to asks, gaining followers like crazy, and pretty much just stating my opinion on anything that someone wanted to know.

I became known as the unofficial TAB blog, and the one to come to with questions about my interpretation of the episode. I was SO obsessed with TAB, studied every nuance and narrative structure I could. 2016 was “my heyday”, and it was fun. I found my niche, and meta-writing is what I became known for. And until I got a job in April of that year, I was a pretty solid presence in the fandom, if I understand some of what I’ve been told correctly. I still ran my blog as full-time as I could having a full-time job, and still do in some ways, but yeah, 2016 is when I produced a LOT of meta, mostly Mary meta because, as I said above, I was and am obsessed with her character arc. I was learning about myself a lot more by writing meta, and my “original�� meta turned into “asks” meta, which was fine by me, because I do like a good prompt to get me going.

Somewhere in there I also somehow became the blog new bloggers came to, which I didn’t and don’t mind at all, because being new in a fandom is scary and I wanted to be a friendly face because I like meeting new people.

Then we got an announcement for S4, and like TAB I also kept track of anything and everything S4-related, so once again I was sort of the “go-to” place for everything S4 because I compiled all the stuff from setlock bloggers and listed them all for easy-access. I kept track of everything promotional, and I reblogged some of my favourite pre-S4 meta here.

Essentially, I LOVE organizing things, and people liked that I LOVED doing it, so that’s sort of how I kept my following when I wasn’t posting as much new meta. I did make a few original meta before S4, and I made a 68 day video countdown to the series which is cringy AF and I’m not linking it (lol you can find it if you look hard enough).

We all know what happened in S4. I took a bit of heat after S4 aired, because I got people’s hopes up. I was discouraged for a bit, but then I started receiving asks that weren’t really asks, but “I need advice” and “I need support”.

And I started answering life questions, and realized people LIKED my responses, liked my little personal anecdotes in each of my replies, and felt comforted by it. So, after S4 aired, I became an eclectic mix of life advice, meta, fics, music and TJLC / tinhatting blog. I have a “no judgement” approach to my blogging, and I think that’s why I’m still gaining a steady dozen or so followers every couple weeks, rather than losing. The only time I took a big hit was the Tumblr Feedpocalypse, where they fucked up the algorithm and I’m not getting nearly as many hits on my posts as I used to, but that could also be because we lost so many people to S4, especially after Jan 1, 2018 when people were hoping for another episode.

I personally don’t think I’m popular, but I suppose I am by Tumblr standards. I dunno, I think we all have that “starry eyed” view of popular bloggers, and I just can’t picture myself as someone anyone would fawn over. I’m just me, and you can take it or leave it.

I think where I’m at now and what I’m known for is a good place to be, to be honest, despite how S4 turned out. I’m not certain, but I FEEL like I have a positive reputation here, but don’t quote me. I know I have people in this fandom who hate me, and quite frankly it saddens me that they feel they need to expel energy on me that way when they deserve to just be happy and forget about me.

ANYWAY, sorry that got long and rambly, but it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for awhile, but I was waiting for the prompt to come because *shrugs* I dunno, self esteem thing, makes me think no one REALLY cares until someone actually asks, hah.

And if you made it all the way to the end here, Love ya Nonny, and thank you for asking and thank you for being a follower of my blog

#steph replies #about me #fandom life #steph's storytime #fandom history #Anonymous #long post #my blog

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brn1029 · 3 years

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Get those tin foil hats ready to go!

The 10 greatest conspiracy theories in rock

By Emma Johnston

In a world where fake news runs rampant, rock'n'roll is not immune to the lure of the conspiracy theory. These are 10 of the most ludicrous

Conspiracy theories, myths and legends have existed in rock’n’roll for as long as the music has existed, stretching all the way back to bluesman Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for superhuman guitar skills, fame and fortune.

There are those who believe Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison live on, others who think the Illuminati control the world through symbolism in popular culture, and plenty of evangelical types with their own agendas trawling rock and metal songs for secret messages luring the innocent to the dark side.

Let us take a look, then, at rock’n’roll conspiracy theories ranging from the intriguing to the ludicrous, as we try to separate the truth from the codswallop.

Lemmy was in league with the Illuminati

Few men have ever been earthier than Lemmy, but one conspiracy theorist claims that the Motorhead legend didn’t really die in December 2015, instead “ascending into the heavenly realm” after making a “blood sacrifice pact” with the Illuminati.

A “watcher” of the mythical secret society some believe are running the world – despite evidence that is at best flimsy, at worst straight from The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s discarded notebooks – told the Daily Star: “Lemmy signed up for the ultimate pact – he signed his soul to the devil in order to achieve fame and fortune.”

While we can only imagine what the great man would have to say on the matter, there’s one word, in husky, JD-soaked tones, that we can just about make out coming across from the other side: “Bollocks.”

Paul McCartney died in 1966

As you might expect from the most famous band that has ever existed, there are enough crackpot theories about The Beatles to fill the Albert Hall. From John Lennon’s murder being ordered by the US government, who, led by Richard Nixon, suspected him of communism (the FBI actually did have a file on Lennon, but the story is spiced up by the man behind murderlennontruth.com, who apparently believes author Steven King was involved due to, uh, looking a bit like Mark Chapman) to Canadian prog outfit Klaatu being the Fab Four in disguise, there are plenty of tall tales more colourful than a Ringo B-side.

The most enduring, though, is the notion dreamt up by some US radio DJs that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike. They came to this conclusion having studied the cover of Abbey Road – McCartney’s bare feet on the zebra crossing apparently symbolising death, while others found “evidence” in the album’s opaque lyrics. There were a lot of drugs in the 60s.

Gene Simmons has a cow’s tongue

It’s easy to see why all kinds of far-fetched stories sprung up when Kiss first took off in the 1970s. The fake-blood-spitting, the fire, the demon-superhero personas – middle America clutched its pearls and word spread that these otherworldly weirdos’ moniker stood for Knights In Satan’s Service. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

It was Gene Simmons’ preposterous mouth that got the nation’s less voluminous tongues wagging though. So long and pointy is his appendage, and so often waggled at his audiences (whether they asked for it or not), that eventually the rumour spread around the world’s playgrounds was that he’d had a cow’s tongue grafted onto his own. The bovine baloney is, of course, bullshit, but Simmons has admitted it's one of his favourite Kiss urban myths.

Supertramp predicted 9/11

The Logical Song may be Supertramp’s calling card, but one man in the US stretches common sense to the limit having come to the conclusion that the artwork for their 1979 album Breakfast In America gave prior warning of the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001.

Look at the album cover – painted from the perspective of a window on a flight into the city – in a mirror, and the ‘u’ and ‘p’ band’s name appears to become a 911 floating above the twin towers, while a logo on the back features a plane flying towards the World Trade Center.

So far, so coincidental, but when our intrepid investigator falls down a rabbit hole of Masonic interference, strained Old Testament connections (“The Great Whore of Babylon – Super Tramp”), and the title Breakfast In America reflecting the fact that the planes crashed early in the morning, things get really tenuous.

It’s fair to say it’s unlikely a British prog-pop band had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks 22 years before they happened. But maybe Al Qaida were really big fans.

Stevie Wonder can see

Stevie Wonder is a genius. That fact is not up for dispute. The soul/jazz/funk/rock/pop legend was born six weeks prematurely in 1950, and the oxygen used in the hospital incubator to stabilise him caused him to go blind shortly afterwards. But his love of front-row seats at basketball games, the evocative imagery in his songs, and the fact that he once effortlessly caught a falling mic stand knocked over by Paul McCartney (who, let us reiterate, did not die in 1966) has caused basement Jessica Fletchers to muse that he’s faking his blindness as part of the act.

Wonder himself, a known prankster, has great fun with his status as one of the world’s most famous vision-impaired musicians. In 1973, he told Rolling Stone: “I’ve flown a plane before. A Cessna or something, from Chicago to New York. Scared the hell out of everybody.”

Dave Grohl invented Andrew W.K.

When Andrew W.K. first broke through in the early 2000s, dressed in white and covered in blood, his mission was serious in its simplicity: the party is everything. He took his message of having a good time, all the time, to levels of political fervour. But rumours of his authenticity have been doing the rounds from the start.

Reviewing WK’s first UK show at The Garage in London, The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis wrote: “One music-biz conspiracy theory currently circulating suggests that Andrew W.K. is an elaborate hoax devised by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.”

As time went on, the theory gained traction – Grohl was believed to be the mysterious Steev Mike credited on the debut album I Get Wet. And as W.K.’s style changed over subsequent records, and his own admission that there were legal arguments over who owns his name, whispers began that he wasn’t even a real person – he was a character, played by several different actors, an attempt to create the ultimate Frankenstein’s frontman.

"I'm not the same guy that you may have seen from the I Get Wet album," W.K. said in 2008. “I don't just mean that in a philosophical or conceptual way, it's not the same person at all. Do I look the same as that person?" The jury is out, but if this is a great white elephant concocted just for the sheer hell of it, we kind of want this one to be true.

Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager

An early victim of the 27 club, the death of Jimi Hendrix was depressingly cliched for a man so wildly creative: a bellyful of barbiturates led to him asphyxiating on his own vomit, according to the post-mortem. But in the years following the grim discovery at the Samarkand Hotel in London on 19 September 1970, a different theory was offered by the guitarist’s former roadie, James “Tappy” Wright.

In his book Rock Roadie, Wright claims Hendrix was murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffery, who he says force-fed his charge red wine and pills. The motive? He feared he was about to be fired and was keen to cash in on the star’s life insurance. One thing we do know for certain is Jeffery won’t be able to give his version of events, as he was killed in a plane crash over France in 1973.

The 50th anniversary of Hendrix's tragic passing was "celebrated" with the release of Hendrix and the Spook, a documentary that "explored" his death further and was described by The Guardian as "a cheaply made mix of interviews and dumbshow dramatic recreations by actors scuttling about flimsy sets in gloomy lighting." Sounds good.

Courtney killed Kurt

Courtney Love is no stranger to demonisation from Nirvana fans. When Hole’s second album, the searing, catchy, feminist, witty, aggressive, vulnerable and unflinchingly honest Live Through This was released, days after Kurt Cobain’s death, rumours almost immediately started up that Love’s late husband wrote the songs. That was insulting and sexist enough, but nowhere near as damaging as the conspiracy theory that Love hired a hitman to kill Cobain amid rumours they were about to divorce.

After Cobain’s first attempt to take his own life in Rome, the Nirvana frontman was eventually convinced to go to rehab following an intervention by his wife and friends. He ran away from the facility, and the private investigator hired by Love to find him, Tom Grant, eventually became the source of the idea that Love and the couple’s live-in nanny Michael Dewitt were responsible for Cobain’s death shortly afterwards.

His claims, made in the Soaked In Bleach documentary, include the notion that Cobain had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger of the shotgun, and that he believed the suicide note was forged.

People close to Cobain (and the Seattle Police Department) have refuted the theory, including Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg: “It’s ridiculous. He killed himself. I saw him the week beforehand, he was depressed. He tried to kill himself six weeks earlier, he’d talked and written about suicide a lot, he was on drugs, he got a gun. Why do people speculate about it? The tragedy of the loss is so great people look for other explanations. I don’t think there’s any truth at all to it."

The CIA wrote The Scorpions’ biggest hit

Previously synonymous with leather, hard rock anthems and some very questionable album artwork, West Germany’s Scorpions scored big with Wind Of Change, a power ballad heralding the oncoming fall of the USSR, the end of the Cold War, and a new sense of hope in the Eastern Bloc.

In a podcast named after the 1990 song, though, Orwell Prize-winning US journalist Patrick Radden Keefe follows rumours from within the intelligence community that the song was actually written by the CIA, as propaganda to hasten the fall of the ailing Soviet Union via popular culture.

“Soviet officials had long been nervous over the free expression that rock stood for, and how it might affect the Soviet youth,” Keefe is quoted as saying. “The CIA saw rock music as a cultural weapon in the cold war. Wind of Change was released a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and became this anthem for the end of communism and reunification of Germany. It had this soft-power message that the intelligence service wanted to promote.”

It's a convincing theory, but one that is disputed by Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine: “I thought it was very amusing and I just cracked up laughing. It’s a very entertaining and really crazy story but like I said, it’s not true at all. Like you American guys would say, it’s fake news."

There are satanic messages in Stairway To Heaven

The great comedian Bill Hicks had something to say about people searching for evidence of devilry in rock’n’roll: “Remember this shit, if you play certain rock albums backwards there'd be satanic messages? Let me tell you something, if you're sitting round your house playing your albums backwards, you are Satan. You needn't look any further. And don't go ruining my stereo to prove a point either.”

The memo didn’t get through to televangelist and stylus ruiner Paul Crouch, who in 1982 attempted to scare the Christian right into believing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven was stuffed with demonic meaning, and that played backwards it revealed the following message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”

Guitarist Jimmy Page, of course, is no stranger to the esoteric, making no secret of his interest in occultist Aleister Crowley and the attendant magick, and there were even rumours the band made a Faustian pact to achieve fame and fortune. But hiding messa

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politicaltheatre · 7 years

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Team Building Exercises

If there was an irony in the NFL protests of this past weekend, it wasn't that athletes and executives in the NFL rallied around Colin Kaepernick and others who have been protesting during the national anthem - after Trump's attacks, that was entirely predictable - but rather that the result was ever in doubt.

When members of a group are attacked, even unpopular ones, the other members take notice; the more the threat appears to threaten them as well, the more they will step in to protect all of the other members. That is what groups do, they protect each other so that individuals among them can feel safe.

In attacking Kaepernick and those kneeling, arm locking, and raising a fist with him, it would be fair to say that the President of the United States, nominally speaking to support a candidate for Senate who would support him, hoped to gain and/or retain the support of his rally's Alabama audience, people who surely don't want anyone telling them they have to accountable to others, only that others have to be accountable to them.

Choosing as his victims black men who have been making more money than his audience can for playing a game that they can't must surely have seemed perfect to Trump. Kaepernick has effectively been blackballed by his league in a way not seen since the dark days of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Those still protesting, even with the (slowly) growing support of white teammates and the emerging dialogue with NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, had, until Sunday, remained comparatively few and, as more and more games had been played this season, had mostly been forgotten by fans.

Picking on outsiders with little or no support from their group is, after all, what bullies do. That this involves race and violence against unarmed black men and women is important - it's what Kaepernick was protesting against - but that is actually secondary to what was said and done this weekend. This is first and foremost about what bullies will do to gain support from one group and what happens when they finally threaten another group as a whole. This is about what pulls groups together, both for aggression and defense. In no small way, this is just another story about the "game" of politics.

You see, the greater part of what got Trump elected might actually be thought of as something of a team building exercise. When we talk of "dog whistles" and "coded language", we aren't talking about simple, wired-in racism, we're talking about rallying supporters and allies by giving them the justification for fear, anger, isolation, and, ultimately, violence. To take from others anything they should have an equal right to, such as the famous "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", requires all of those things. Bullies from the playground to the workplace to the halls of power all know that and cultivate it. Trump may offering a new brand, but it's the same old, shitty product.

What may be most surprising for many following this past weekend is that Trump and those around him welcome the NFL response. If it seemed strange that he was taunting the league and those playing in it for trying to reduce the violence of the game, remember that he was speaking, and tweeting, to two distinct audiences, one that resists change and fears losing its power and another that welcomes progress and resists losing any progress made.

To the league and its players, past and present, changing the rules to reduce the risk of traumatic and chronic injuries makes sense, but it is change and in a culture in which social and political strength is still associated with brutal manliness it is the wrong kind of change. Is it really a surprise that NASCAR owners stepped in to back Trump after NFL owners - well, all but four - sided with their players? It certainly wasn't to Trump.

He and his advisors no doubt also welcomed the responses to his attacks on Stephen Curry and his Golden State Warrior teammates, and for the same reasons. Trump wants to fire up his base, to draw them closer together, so he gives them an opposing group to fear, to be angry at, and to isolate themselves from. Stephen Curry makes more in a single year between salary and endorsements than perhaps Trump's entire audience in Alabama will make, combined, in their lifetimes. That he has earned it doesn't make it easier for them to take. That his success and wealth have given him a voice others will listen to when they feel silenced only makes it worse.

When Trump talks about Curry, Kaepernick and others as "ungrateful employees", it most certainly is coded language, but not just because of race. His base is terrified of chaos, of the lack of order in the world. When Trump presents himself as a strongman in the mold of Putin, Erdogan, or names we're not supposed to say, he is telling his audience that he will defend them against chaos, that he will restore order, that he will make them feel safe. He is the strong father, the protector, and the enforcer. Employees will respect the will of their employers. Children will respect the will of their parents. And, yes, blacks will respect the will of whites.

This was the core message of Trump's presidential campaign (and the reelection campaign he's already running right now). Trump won't outright say women will respect the will of men, but he doesn't really have to. It's baked in. As Hillary Clinton, who has had her own unfortunate history with coded language, rambles her way through her "What Happened" book tour this month, she has mostly ignored this group and its fearful, angry needs. As she has acknowledged more than once, her most notable attempt to address its culture and Trump's use of it, the "basket of deplorables" comment, backfired spectacularly.

That comment brought many Trump voters closer to him and each other, much in the same way Trump's "son of a bitch" comment just did for the NFL, but that alone could not explain why she lost, not that a political memoir is a good place to look for answers.

Clinton lost for many, many reasons. Many. Ignore, if you can, the quotes and sound bites pulled from the book in which she blames Bernie Sanders and others, including the Trump-crazy media. That's just that very same news media stirring up conflict, which is it's own version of team building. They want an audience, with ratings numbers and clicks sending advertising money their way. In focusing our attention on those quotes they actually make much of her case for her. Then again, that she participates in much of that coverage without drawing attention to that makes another kind of case entirely.

Even though the title of Clinton's memoir suggests that it will explain "what happened" that led to her defeat, the title itself reveals why that answer is nowhere to be found. It's possible that there really was nothing she could have done to prevent losing as she did, but asking what she did rather than what happened is the difference between actively seeking answers and passively accepting the next best thing. Whatever is in the book, Clinton the TV star seems content with the latter.

The world Clinton presents in her book and on tour is one with which she is at war. She is beset on all sides by the same sexism and bullying that plagues women the world over. And you know what? She's right. It was there and has been with Clinton since before her own attempt to reform health care almost twenty five years ago. In that case, sexist attacks on her served as a means to undermine not only women in positions of power but congressional Democrats and her husband, President Clinton. For the right wing, that's Christmas.

That she as the wife of a male politician was expected to have the right hair and the right clothes and not much else was a constant drum beat during her years as First Lady. That role, even after Clinton and Michelle Obama have fought to change it, is still engrained in our culture. It is the vestige of "older, simpler times". It represents a kind of order, a world in which everyone knows their place and doesn't step out of line, which is exactly what appeals to Trump's base.

It's a good narrative and it serves to hold Clinton's own Pantsuit Nation together and that will serve her well as a base going forward. As we've seen in Congress with the seemingly unending Republican war on Obamacare, in today's political world a niche group is all you need. You don't have to build consensus or even try. Clinton writes and talks about achieving the possible, but from the tone of her book and her book tour, we should recognize that it's also kind of bullshit. Clinton sells herself as a political pragmatist, and in some way she may actually want to see herself as one, but "pragmatist" is really just another piece of coded language.

Whatever her political base, Clinton's real group is that of the DNC, the Democratic party elite who work the Beltway and Wall Street in and out of office. It's a community like any other. The argument that she literally ignored white working class voters in the Rust Belt is demonstrably false, but the myth gained traction only because of Clinton's reputation for speaking fees and cozy inside deals. The Democratic party she and her husband have represented for the past quarter century is every bit that, and those members of that group clinging to power in the party since last November are, like her memoir, doing whatever they can to avoid facing reality.

Why Clinton lost can actually be demonstrated in just two interviews from her book tour. In one at the very start of it, she sat down with Jane Pauley on CBS. In the interview Clinton presented herself as we saw her in the campaign. She is stiff, clearly trying to project herself as she wants to be perceived. It wasn't terribly revealing about the campaign or Clinton herself, but Pauley did manage to draw out two phrases that accurately sum up the inaccuracies in the book: "It is my truth" and "what I believe happened". When Clinton said those words, she might as well have called the book "fiction", but the way she said them, oddly, was the most revealing thing about her, her campaign, and politics in America to day than anything else she has said or written.

Her interview with Ezra Klein on Vox went much better, both for her and for us. In it, she was relaxed. She was confident and competent. She was the version of herself her friends have always been telling us was there but we never got to see. She was, above anything, authentic. Really authentic.

Watching her, we don't even have to agree with her on anything she says, but we can't help but like that someone so smart and knowledgable and engaged is so great at talking about it. Imagine this person debating Senator Bernie Sanders. Imagine this person debating Senator Barack Obama. If this had been the Hillary Clinton we saw throughout either of her presidential campaigns, she very well would have done better in both.

That's the shame of it for us right now. She still refuses to accept that her perceived lack of authenticity was a big reason for her defeats, and that in no small way is why she lost. Authenticity builds trust. It builds political capital. It builds a base. Donald Trump has built a devoted, trusting base with tens of millions of Americans, and he lies about everything. They know he lies about everything and they still love him. Why? Because he sounds authentic. Enough.

They love him so much it probably never even occurred to them that their president just used the exact same tactic on Kim Jong-Un and North Korea that he used on Colin Kaepernick and the NFL. Sure, he sounds tough. Sure, he sounds certain. He also just gave North Koreans the best reason they've had in years to stick together and support their lunatic man-child of a dictator. How's that NFL thing working for Trump in the long run? How’s it even working right now?

Yikes.

- Daniel Ward

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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The Last of Us Doesn’t Need a TV Series Adaptation

March 11, 2020 11:30 AM EST

While coming to a prestige TV network like HBO, the story of The Last of Us should be contained to its original medium: video games.

Since 2013, The Last of Us has become a video game phenomenon with acclaim from both critics and fans. For years after, we knew that Sony and Naughty Dog were trying to develop the IP into a movie, but the project never gained any significant traction. After waiting for any updates regarding the film, we now know that The Last of Us is being adapted as a television series helmed by Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin. As someone who avidly doesn’t think The Last of Us is all that, but understands its significance for fans, I don’t think bringing Joel and Ellie’s story to another medium is going to bring much new to the table.

Whenever I ask someone “what makes The Last of Us so great?”, normally I get a response about something that it achieved that, in my opinion, another game that existed previously already did much better. Normally, when I tell people how I feel about it, I describe it as an okay game with remarkable performances, and I still stand by that. It wasn’t until recently that a friend of mine told me that “The Last of Us is a magic trick, and you saw the wiring behind the curtain.” That is the best explanation that I have ever heard that explains my feelings towards the game. I think the gameplay is fine; the story didn’t really grab me and is relatively predictable, and Joel’s obsession over Ellie kinda just…happened? Plus, Joel is a monster and I hope Ellie kills him in The Last of Us Part II, but that is just probably me.

“I don’t think bringing Joel and Ellie’s story to another medium is going to bring much new to the table.”

The one thing that I think everyone who’s played The Last of Us can agree on are the powerful performances from both Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson as Joel and Ellie. While I’m sure that fans are already thinking about their ideal casting as to who should play the post apocalyptic duo, I think the answer is clear; no one. Baker and Johnson’s performances are so one of a kind to the point that I think no other person will be able to replicate let alone surpass them to satisfy fans. As a major fan of another zombie franchise, Telltale’s The Walking Dead, I couldn’t imagine a live-action adaptation without Dave Fennoy as Lee or Melissa Hutchison as Clementine. Granted, they wouldn’t be able to physically portray those characters, so I realize it won’t work. But it just wouldn’t be the same because it was their performances which sold that game, and I feel that Baker and Johnson are the same case.

Alongside its performances, The Last of Us is known for its grounded cinematics which are reminiscent of a film itself. With this in mind, there isn’t much benefit in my opinion to bringing it to television that would add something new to the story. The game by itself was easily well made enough that one who is outside the gaming realm could watch a compilation or walkthrough and get the story that way. An even better idea: sit down with your family, whoever it may be, show them the story and characters you care so much about that way. It will bring you closer and may even show them that there is more to video games than meets the eye. The Last of Us is an accessible enough game that even those who aren’t familiar with video games could get through it on the easiest difficulty if they want to play it themselves. Even if someone is interested in the game but doesn’t play video games often, there are numerous ways to experience its story.

“The Last of Us is a video game. Let anyone who wants to know its story do so the way it was meant to be done; through a gaming narrative.”

In recent years we have gotten video game adaptations in TV and film that most find good and exciting because they don’t directly follow a specific story but are more about the world, like Detective Pikachu. But bringing the same plot of the first game to a TV series is something that I find hard to be desirable. Whatever changes or additions that end up being made for the show won’t translate to the games, so why not just create a new story in that world specifically for a TV series? It would be much more interesting and justify going to a new platform. I’m sure that those who love The Last of Us will enjoy the show solely because it exists, but I believe that at the end of the day, it will never meet the ultimately high expectations that fans will have for it, or ever match people’s love for the game.

I get it; from a business perspective, it makes perfect sense bringing something as popular as The Last of Us to TV for people outside of video games to consume, but to me it isn’t necessary. Video games are able to tell stories and deliver experiences that no other medium can do, which is why I think the game resonated with so many people; again, I can’t really tell. Bringing that experience to television makes me feel like maybe it isn’t as special as I once assumed. The Last of Us is a video game. Let anyone who wants to know its story do so the way it was meant to be done; through a gaming narrative.

March 11, 2020 11:30 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/the-last-of-us-doesnt-need-a-tv-series-adaptation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-last-of-us-doesnt-need-a-tv-series-adaptation

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

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Helping businesses bring more firepower to the fight against AI-fuelled disruptors is the name of the game for Integrate.ai, a Canadian startup that’s announcing a $30M Series A today.

The round is led by Portag3 Ventures . Other VCs include Georgian Partners, Real Ventures, plus other (unnamed) individual investors also participating. The funding will be used for a big push in the U.S. market.

Integrate.ai’s early focus has been on retail banking, retail and telcos, says founder Steve Irvine, along with some startups which have data but aren’t necessarily awash with AI expertise to throw at it. (Not least because tech giants continue to hoover up talent.)

Its SaaS platform targets consumer-centric businesses — offering to plug paying customers into a range of AI technologies and techniques to optimize their decision-making so they can respond more savvily to their customers. Aka turning “high volume consumer funnels” into “flywheels”, if that’s a mental image that works for you.

In short it’s selling AI pattern spotting insights as a service via a “cloud-based AI intelligence platform” — helping businesses move from “largely rules-based decisioning” to “more machine learning-based decisioning boosted by this trusted signals exchange of data”, as he puts it.

Irvine gives the example of a large insurance aggregator the startup is working with to optimize the distribution of gift cards and incentive discounts to potential customers — with the aim of maximizing conversions.

“Obviously they’ve got a finite amount of budget for those — they need to find a way to be able to best deploy those… And the challenge that they have is they don’t have a lot of information on people as they start through this funnel — and so they have what is a classic ‘cold start’ problem in machine learning. And they have a tough time allocating those resources most effectively.”

“One of the things that we’ve been able to help them with is to, essentially, find the likelihood of those people to be able to convert earlier by being able to bring in some interesting new signal for them,” he continues. “Which allows them to not focus a lot of their revenue or a lot of those incentives on people who either have a low likelihood of conversion or are most likely to convert. And they can direct all of those resources at the people in the middle of the distribution — where that type of a nudge, that discount, might be the difference between them converting or not.”

He says feedback from early customers suggests the approach has boosted profitability by around 30% on average for targeted business areas — so the pitch is businesses are easily seeing the SaaS easily paying for itself. (In the cited case of the insurer, he says they saw a 23% boost in performance — against what he couches as already “a pretty optimized funnel”.)

“We find pretty consistent [results] across a lot of the companies that we’re working with,” he adds. “Most of these decisions today are made by a CRM system or some other more deterministic software system that tends to over attribute people that are already going to convert. So if you can do a better job of understanding people’s behaviour earlier you can do a better job at directing those resources in a way that’s going to drive up conversion.”

The former Facebook marketing exec, who between 2014 and 2017 ran a couple of global marketing partner programs at Facebook and Instagram, left the social network at the start of last year to found the business — raising $9.6M in seed funding in two tranches, according to Crunchbase.

The eighteen-month-old Toronto based AI startup now touts itself as one of the fastest growing companies in Canadian history, with a headcount of around 40 at this point, and a plan to grow staff 3x to 4x over the next 12 months. Irvine is also targeting growing revenue 10x, with the new funding in place — gunning to carve out a leadership position in the North American market.

One key aspect of Integrate.ai’s platform approach means its customers aren’t only being helped to extract more and better intel from their own data holdings, via processes such as structuring the data for AI processing (though Irvine says it’s also doing that).

The idea is they also benefit from the wider network, deriving relevant insights across Integrate.ai’s pooled base of customers — in a way that does not trample over privacy in the process. At least, that’s the claim.

(It’s worth noting Integrate.ai’s network is not a huge one yet, with customers numbering in the “tens” at this point — the platform only launched in alpha around 12 months ago and remains in beta now. Named customers include the likes of Telus, Scotiabank, and Corus.)

So the idea is to offer an alternative route to boost business intelligence vs the “traditional” route of data-sharing by simply expanding databases — because, as Irvine points out, literal data pooling is “coming under fire right now — because it is not in the best interests, necessarily, of consumers; there’s some big privacy concerns; there’s a lot of security risk which we’re seeing show up”.

What exactly is Integrate.ai doing with the data then? Irvine says its Trusted Signals Exchange platform uses some “pretty advanced techniques in deep learning and other areas of machine learning to be able to transfer signals or insights that we can gain from different companies such that all the companies on our platform can benefit by delivering more personalized, relevant experiences”.

“But we don’t need to ever, kind of, connect data in a more traditional way,” he also claims. “Or pull personally identifiable information to be able to enable it. So it becomes very privacy-safe and secure for consumers which we think is really important.”

He further couches the approach as “pretty unique”, adding it “wouldn’t even have been possible probably a couple of years ago”.

From Irvine’s description the approach sounds similar to the data linking (via mathematical modelling) route being pursued by another startup, UK-based InfoSum — which has built a platform that extracts insights from linked customer databases while holding the actual data in separate silos. (And InfoSum, which was founded in 2016, also has a founder with a behind-the-scenes’ view on the inners workings of the social web — in the form of Datasift’s Nic Halstead.)

Facebook’s own custom audiences product, which lets advertisers upload and link their customer databases with the social network’s data holdings for marketing purposes is the likely inspiration behind all these scenes.

Irvine says he spotted the opportunity to build this line of business having been privy to a market overview in his role at Facebook, meeting with scores of companies in his marketing partner role and getting to hear high level concerns about competing with tech giants. He says the Facebook job also afforded him an overview on startup innovation — and there he spied a gap for Integrate.ai to plug in.

“My team was in 22 offices around the world, and all the major tech hubs, and so we got a chance to see any of the interesting startups that were getting traction pretty quickly,” he tells TechCrunch. “That allowed us to see the gaps that existed in the market. And the biggest gap that I saw… was these big consumer enterprises needed a way to use the power of AI and needed access to third party data signals or insights to be able to enabled them to transition to this more customer-centric operating model to have any hope of competing with the large digital disruptors like Amazon.

“That was kind of the push to get me out of Facebook, back from California to Toronto, Canada, to start this company.”

Again on the privacy front, Irvine is a bit coy about going into exact details about the approach. But is unequivocal and emphatic about how ad tech players are stepping over the line — having seen into that pandora’s box for years — so his rational to want to do things differently at least looks clear.

“A lot of the techniques that we’re using are in the field of deep learning and transfer learning,” he says. “If you think about the ultimate consumer of this data-sharing, that is insight sharing, it is at the end these AI systems or models. Meaning that it doesn’t need to be legible to people as an output — all we’re really trying to do is increase the map; make a better probabilistic decision in these circumstances where we might have little data or not the right data that we need to be able to make the right decision. So we’re applying some of the newer techniques in those areas to be able to essentially kind of abstract away from some of the more sensitive areas, create representations of people and patterns that we see between businesses and individuals, and then use that as a way to deliver a more personalized predictions — without ever having to know the individual’s personally identifiable information.”

“We do do some work with differential privacy,” he adds when pressed further on the specific techniques being used. “There’s some other areas that are just a little bit more sensitive in terms of the work that we’re doing — but a lot of work around representative learning and transfer learning.”

Integrate.ai has published a whitepaper — for a framework to “operationalize ethics in machine learning systems” — and Irvine says it’s been called in to meet and “share perspectives” with regulators based on that.

“I think we’re very GDPR-friendly based on the way that we have thought through and constructed the platform,” he also says when asked whether the approach would be compliant with the European Union’s tough new privacy framework (which also places some restrictions on entirely automated decisions when they could have a significant impact on individuals).

“I think you’ll see GDPR and other regulations like that push more towards these type of privacy preserving platforms,” he adds. “And hopefully away from a lot of the really creepy, weird stuff that is happening out there with consumer data that I think we all hope gets eradicated.”

For the record, Irvine denies any suggestion that he was thinking of his old employer when he referred to “creepy, weird stuff” done with people’s data — saying: “No, no, no!”

“What I did observe when I was there in ad tech in general, I think if you look at that landscape, I think there are many, many… worse examples of what is happening out there with data than I think the ones that we’re seeing covered in the press. And I think as the light shines on more of that ecosystem of players, I think we will start to see that the ways they’ve thought about data, about collection, permissioning, usage, I think will change drastically,” he adds.

“And the technology is there to be able to do it in a much more effective way without having to compromise results in too big a way. And I really hope that that sea change has already started — and I hope that it continues at a much more rapid pace than we’ve seen.”

But while privacy concerns might be reduced by the use of an alternative to traditional data-pooling, depending on the exact techniques being used, additional ethical considerations are clearly being dialled sharply into view if companies are seeking to supercharge their profits by automating decision making in sensitive and impactful areas such as discounts (meaning some users stand to gain more than others).

The point is an AI system that’s expert at spotting the lowest hanging fruit (in conversion terms) could start selectively distributing discounts to a narrow sub-section of users only — meaning other people might never even be offered discounts.

In short, it risks the platform creating unfair and/or biased outcomes.

Integrate.ai has recognized the ethical pitfalls, and appears to be trying to get ahead of them — hence its aforementioned ‘Responsible AI in Consumer Enterprise’ whitepaper.

Irvine also says that raising awareness around issues of bias and “ethical AI” — and promoting “more responsible use and implementation” of its platform is another priority over the next twelve months.

“The biggest concern is the unethical treatment of people in a lot of common, day-to-day decisions that companies are going to be making,” he says of problems attached to AI. “And they’re going to do it without understanding, and probably without bad intent, but the reality is the results will be the same — which is perpetuating a lot of biases and stereotypes of the past. Which would be really unfortunate.

“So hopefully we can continue to carve out a name, on that front, and shift the industry more to practices that we think are consistent with the world that we want to live in vs the one we might get stuck in.”

The whitepaper was produced by a dedicated internal team, which he says focuses on AI ethics and fairness issues, and is headed up by VP of product & strategy, Kathryn Hume.

“We’re doing a lot of research now with the Vector Institute for AI… on fairness in our AI models, because what we’ve seen so far is that — if left unattended, if all we did was run these models and not adjust for some of the ethical considerations — we would just perpetuate biases that we’ve seen in the historical data,” he adds.

“We would pick up patterns that are more commonly associated with maybe reinforcing particular stereotypes… so we’re putting a really dedicated effort — probably abnormally large, given our size and stage — towards leading in this space, and making sure that that’s not the outcome that gets delivered through effective use of a platform like ours. But actually, hopefully, the total opposite: You have a better understanding of where those biases might creep in and they could be adjusted for in the models.”

Combating unfairness in this type of AI tool would mean a company having to optimize conversion performance a bit less than it otherwise could.

Though Irvine suggests that’s likely just in the short term. Over the longer term he argues you’re laying the foundations for greater growth — because you’re building a more inclusive business, saying: “We have this conversational a lot. “I think it’s good for business, it’s just the time horizon that you might think about.”

“We’ve got this window of time right now, that I think is a really precious window, where people are moving over from more deterministic software systems to these more probabilistic, AI-first platforms… They just operate much more effectively, and they learn much more effectively, so there will be a boost in performance no matter what. If we can get them moved over right off the bat onto a platform like ours that has more of an ethical safeguard, then they won’t notice a drop off in performance — because it’ll actually be better performance. Even if it’s not optimized fully for short term profitability,” he adds.

“And we think, over the long term it’s just better business if you’re socially conscious, ethical company. We think, over time, especially this new generation of consumers, they start to look out for those things more… So we really hope that we’re on the right side of this.”

He also suggests that the wider visibility afforded by having AI doing the probabilistic pattern spotting (vs just using a set of rules) could even help companies identify unfairnesses they don’t even realize might be holding their businesses back.

“We talk a lot about this concept of mutual lifetime value — which is how do we start to pull in the signals that show that people are getting value in being treated well, and can we use those signals as part of the optimization. And maybe you don’t have all the signal you need on that front, and that’s where being able to access a broader pool can actually start to highlight those biases more.”

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 6 years

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Integrate.ai pulls in $30M to help businesses make better customer-centric decisions