The Emperor Who Turned His Ex-Lover Into a God | Rise of the Black Girl Gamer

Women of color are building a network of support organizations to help aspiring gamers reach new heights.

Michelle Martin was a Zelda and Donkey Kong girl growing up in a Nintendo household, her parents the type to set the kids down with snacks and toys and then sneak to the living room to play video games. It wasn’t until later that the 33-year-old African American woman realized her childhood was uncommon. “I don’t think I knew anyone else who had parents who gamed,” the Baltimore County native says. Now, she’s working to make sure the next generation doesn’t feel that way.

Black women are among the least represented demographic in the $135 billion global gaming industry. They suffer from a double disadvantage — of race and gender. Only 1 percent of gaming industry professionals identify as African or African American, according to the latest International Game Developers Association Satisfaction Survey. Women of any race make up only 27 percent of the industry. It’s little surprise, then, that none of the world’s 20 top-earning female gamers are Black. But an emerging generation of millennial women of color is now beginning to carve out space for others like themselves. They’re building a network of support organizations that never existed before, aimed at facilitating, encouraging and training aspiring female gamers of color to reach new heights in the industry.

India’s Dr. K Padmarajan has run for office 168 times since 1988. How many times has he won? Zero.

Dr. K Padmarajan is a little different from the rest of the candidates running for the General Elections in India. Mostly, and majorly, that’s on account of his losing 168 elections since 1988. It’s a feat that has gotten him entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for being “the most unsuccessful candidate in elections in the world.”

But sporting a big bushy mustache, a round red tilak and a colorful shawl on his shoulder, Padmarajan is, to put it mildly, unstoppable.

To date, the humble tire shop owner has spent Rs. 30 lakh (about $43,000) running for a variety of positions in national, state and local elections. The distinction has earned a passel of well-placed queries: "Why is he acting like a clown?” ”Who does he think he is, trying to get into politics?” And these are, according to him, from his friends.

Hadrian had lost Antinous, but he wasn’t about to let the younger man’s face be forgotten.

In the last week of October, 130 A.D. a man died and a god was born. But this man was no king. In fact, not much is known about his lineage at all. Still, he was by no means ordinary. He was the lover of the most powerful man in the world at the time, Emperor Hadrian, and his name can be found scrawled beneath countless statues and busts scattered throughout museums the world over: Antinous.

If Antinous had not drowned when he did, if he had not been Hadrian’s great love, and, perhaps, if he had not been one of the most beautiful creatures of the ancient world, his death might have been swiftly forgotten within history’s march. But all of these factors combined turned this teenage boy from Bithynia (today’s Turkey) into a demi-god with a cult following so powerful that it nearly beat out Christianity as the new state religion of Rome.