#eventually i took a lower-level science on purpose so it would be less work. i kept getting ds on my report card

[britneyshakespeare]

i’m a smart girl i got a 98% on my physical science exam

[missfay49]

Sanders Sides Theory – July 3, 2019-August 16, 2019

The last side will be Aggression. Please enjoy this short essay explaining why.

 Looong post below the cut.

Premise:

Orange.  The mythical last Side needed to complete the rainbow that is C!Thomas.  According to color theory, orange signifies High Activity, Action, Impulse, and… Aggression.  But many of the sides don’t neatly fit into any of the traditional color theories. While it would complete the rainbow, their color is not going to define their trait.  So just toss that out right now.

I racked my brain to come up with another unspoken personality trait that could be considered shameful like Deceit and Remus, that C!Thomas could possibly have within him.  I actually sat on this post for more than a month because the pieces didn’t fit. But now that I’ve started to see other posts about the last Side being Anger, in the context of standing up for oneself, (Righteous Fury) I think it makes sense.  What is the literally opposite of how we view C!Thomas in these videos?  Kind, sympathetic, accepting C!Thomas?  Aggression and violence.  

Examples of Violence or Aggression in the show:

AoVD – Roman slays a dragon-witch to protect an imaginary Valerie.  Roman is considered to be acting par-for-the-course for killing the dragon-witch, and no one minds because he did it to defend someone.  

AA - Login throws a keyboard at Thomas to make a point.  

-Some kinds of violence are acceptable to society, like defeating ‘bad’ people.  Or for science.

LNTAO – Logan screams and throws a crumpled paper at Roman, hitting him in the eye.  This causes Patton and Roman to lead a full-on puppet-based theatrical production about why we need to express our feelings in healthy ways.  (Logan had to hit him in the eye, for the sake of the idiom, “an eye for an eye”.) (Also, Logan had a feeling for once, and it was anger.)

EP – Virgil throws a rock at C!Thomas and hits him in the face, but immediately feels bad about it.  

-Some kinds of violence are not acceptable.

(I’m leaving out the latest episode for a reason.)

The Sides have quietly been exploring and dealing with aggression the whole time.  This is also why Virgil, as someone trying to reform themselves, seems to actually be afraid of the yet-unknown ‘other’ Side.  He knows how bad something like that has the potential to be.  With the last episode’s reveal of Remus, he seems resigned to the fact that all the Sides will eventually come out, and he can’t control or prepare for it as much as he thought he could.  He’s scared.

Counter-Argument:

Let me stop you right there- if the other sides act out and are violent or aggressive sometimes, does that mean there needs to be a whole ‘nother side for it?  Why isn’t that just something they do?

One Side exhibiting a trait from another Side is par for the course, of course.  We were not officially introduced to Deceit until episode CLBG, but Virgil has been specifically reminding everyone not to lie since way back in AOVD, as well as several episodes that bring up instances of lying to ourselves, or denying reality: ANYOLTM, TDSOD, AOVD.  Patton, Roman, and Logan have all been caught lying since early episodes, despite us not knowing Deceit existed.  Therefore, the fact that many of them have acted aggressively in the past is a solid indicator that Aggression will be its own Side.

The Meat of the Argument – Suppression:

There are no light or dark sides, good or bad sides.  There are only those sides that C!Thomas has, or has not, already accepted are a part of him.

Being nurturing, logical, and creative (to an extent) are all sides that have been encouraged in him, and most of us, from early childhood.  Showing these traits is considered positive behavior, and conducive to functioning in society.  

There are no light or dark sides.

Meanwhile, being duplicitous or selfish, creating things that seem too dark, or having paranoid thoughts are all often dismissed or considered to be unacceptable by large swaths of people, particularly when we’re young.  As my own example, I went to a Christian pre-school in 1992-93 (I’m old, okay?).  One day while finger-painting, I drew a large green snake attacking an airplane.  Yeah, that’s right, I came up with “Snakes on a Plane”, and that’s why I included the date.  Suck it, Hollywood.  

That finger-painting was, and still is, the best depiction of an airplane I have ever produced.  I can still picture it.  I was so proud, I excitedly told my teacher exactly what was going on in the scene when she asked.  She promptly took it away and threw it in the trash, because, “Violence is wrong.”

I cried.  I hadn’t actually attacked a plane full of people, or created a real life violent snake.  I’d only thought about it and drawn a picture.  It was a compelling story for a five year old!

Suppressing ‘negative’ thoughts doesn’t help us.  Every Side only wants what’s best for C!Thomas.  Virgil wants to protect him.  Deceit wants him to be successful.  Remus wants C!Thomas to be free to express himself, without being limited by what society (or even his own wholesome viewers) might find acceptable.  

Yet, we are taught to suppress these kinds of thoughts and ideas, to deny they even exist.  But we know, because the series shows us, that even these ‘darker’ sides can be useful.  How?  

All things in moderation.

Moderation is the key.  Focusing too much on any one facet hurts us, while working towards a balance helps us.  Even our acceptable traits can hurt us when they’re taken to the extreme: Being too logical can lead to disregarding feelings and producing lower quality work, just for the sake of meeting a deadline.  Being too fanciful can cause us to get lost in a daydream when we need to take care of our responsibilities.  Being too protective of an ideal can make us blind to the way someone is trying to express themselves.  

One by one, C!Thomas has shown how each Side can be helpful to him.  And anxiety is the key, the linchpin.  Feeling stress can be a way to alert us of possible dangers, societal faux-pas, and cause us to change course to ensure a positive outcome.  This is the base human emotion, that for centuries has allowed us to conform, just a little, to stay in a group, and keep us from getting eaten by freakin’ wolves!  Anxiety is accepted as useful.

Acceptance.

Heck, Remus was introduced and (more or less) accepted in a single (long) episode!  I left out the examples of violence in his episode until now, because each and every one of them was ultimately accepted as just being a creative part of our brains that happens sometimes, unworthy of lingering on.  They do not matter.  It was immediately resolved that Remus simply can’t control or predict his imaginative outbursts, but would like to be accepted all the same because he doesn’t want C!Thomas to miss out on what could be a huge portion of his creative ability.  He’s hurt by the fact he was rejected in the first place.

So, although Deceit has not yet been accepted per se, we can fully anticipate it, and the acceptance of any remaining unknown Sides, given enough time.  And this pattern of acceptance will be their downfall.

Progression:

Why has it taken so long to get to this Side?  

When the series first started, C!Thomas’s anxiety was high.  He was just coming to accept it existed, let alone how to deal with it and turn it to his advantage.  When you feel anxious all the time, it’s incredibly difficult to ever really feel confident in yourself or what you’re doing.  We can’t stick up for ourselves if we don’t feel confident about ourselves in the first place.  

Anxiety directly inhibits Confidence.

Exactly through the act of resolving his various Sides, the Sides become more and more confident, more valid. C!Thomas grows as a person and feels more comfortable with who he is and his path.  His anxiety evolves and balances out, allowing him to feel more confident in his decision making.

The point is always to achieve balance, and accept what each Side brings to the table.  And now we’re finally at the most recent video, in which we literally come to terms with the ability to have dark thoughts without them necessarily changing our behavior in real life.  Confidence becomes okay.  He believes in his ability to make choices that are just, like in the literal courtroom conclusion.  C!Thomas MUST reach the point where he can accept that premise, because otherwise Aggression would never be palatable.  Standing up for yourself would never be possible.  He could never be confident if he was still worried about randomly committing violent acts against his will.  

In this episode, we see the result of a Virgil that has slowly been growing more confident in his role and purpose, because he and Patton demand the group just “trust us”.  But a confident Virgil is like a feedback loop into the speaker: the noise becomes stronger, more distorted, and more painful with each iteration.  When he finds himself aligned with Remus unexpectedly, his feelings of confidence sink and his doubt skyrockets.

Prediction:

Not in the next episode, but definitely coming up, C!Thomas will experience an injustice from outside forces. There will be an increased level of anxiety, in which Virgil reaches an unbearable level, and C!Thomas wonders if aggressively pursuing his goals will cause him to lose his sense of self.  He was wronged, but how far is he willing to go to right it?  Can he handle that kind of social conflict?

C!Thomas doesn’t believe in violence, sure, but he can’t let this one go, not after everything else he’s given up so far.  Roman deserves this.  He will ultimately be manipulated into tabling his Anxiety, because he feels he deserves to be successful, and he can’t afford to let fear stop him now.  

The Set Up:

With Anxiety out of the way, something changes in the others.  They feel free, more confident.  This time the choice was knowingly made to reject Virgil, instead of leaving everyone confused like it did in AA.  And at least some of them can feel justified about it, because he was getting out of control.  They’ll bring him back when it’s all over, they tell themselves.  But with Patton’s help, C!Thomas still feels one last pang of doubt.  Was it right to remove Virgil?  At this, Logan will turn on him, reasoning that the entire point of EVERYTHING was to be successful, and “now that we’re here, you’re just going to throw it all away?  For what?!  To save face with someone who doesn’t even deserve it?  To let some jerk decide what you’re capable of, for you?  This could be- IS everything we’ve been working towards!”  The set-up of him being the savior in DWIT, and feeling more confident in his status as “cool” and capable, will be his driving force.  Even Roman is on-board with this, he wants the spotlight so badly! Logan’s voice will change.  He’ll become unreasonable, emotional.  And at that point it will become clear he’s not himself.  He will hit the floor like the battery just died in his little robot puppet.  And what rises up in his place?  Well...

Aggression will appear without any fancy dress.  He will be wearing a t-shirt, possibly with some orange, or some small, hard-to-see detail indicating his trait, but will otherwise look exactly like C!Thomas does in everyday life.  This is the insidiousness of anger and violent thoughts; You can never tell, just by looking, who might act on them.

He will be an energetic, twitching mess of barely controlled excitement, looking for any outlet.  He might display potential traits for an addictive personality.  He will give clear instructions and expect to be listened to.  “Do it.  Do it, now- STOP TALKING AND D-!“

All of the increasingly extravagant costumes for each new side have just been a misdirect leading up to this exact moment; A face-to-face confrontation with the part of C!Thomas that he feels most ashamed of: actual pride in himself.  

Why?

Why would it be hard for someone to be proud of themselves?  

Already addressed in DWIT, pride is a ‘sin’.  We convince ourselves not to feel it, because the ‘right’ thing to do is accept our lot in life, to believe we don’t even deserve what we have, let alone dare to reach for more. One of the greatest struggles we face in a world where we have access to a relentless stream of information, is reconciling our position compared to others.  Every time we get a role in the play, are we taking from someone else?  Maybe we didn’t really earn that opportunity.  The act of pursuing anything non-critical to survival is juxtaposed by our sense of justice.  We struggled, so we deserve something for our efforts.  

People who have struggled hard to make something of themselves, only to find their path blocked by someone else, something outside of their control… they snap.  They reach an invisible marker in their timeline where they can choose to either be someone that always gives in, gives to others, never chooses themselves… or they can choose to stand up.  And who helps us stand up?  Deceit.  Because if we aren’t willing to stand up to that roadblock for ourselves, we rationalize that it will benefit others.  How many more people will this roadblock prevent from creating something?  From succeeding?  This isn’t just about us anymore, it’s about justice for all who come after!  It is righteous!  It is good! It’s US versus THEM!

That’s why, when we need to reject civility, anxiety has to go…

Conclusion:

Accepting Deceit is the first step. None of this works if he’s still an outlier.  With the help of Deceit, Aggression will forcibly coerce and overpower each Side in turn as they try to defend C!Thomas, insisting that he is the last, and greatest, piece of the puzzle needed to ensure C!Thomas’s success and well-being. He is self-serving and unabashedly honest about it.  The contrast will even make Deceit look more appealing:  “See?”  He mocks the Sides as they’re defeated.  “I just wanted to give you a calm, civil version of all…” waving a gloved hand, “-this.  But you wouldn’t listen and, now, here we are...”

But you wouldn’t listen.

C!Thomas will continue the pattern of acceptance, because every Side has to have some good in them, right?  If Deceit can be good, so can Aggression.  He doesn’t understand why the other Sides are being so stubborn.  They don’t know what it feels like to be rejected just for being themselves, not like Deceit and Virgil.  Like him.

Leaving us with one last, unanswered question: Who will C!Thomas be once all the Sides are revealed?

But that’s just a theory- a Game Theo- ha, just kidding.  If this turns out to be all wrong, well, it was a good mental exercise.  Hope you enjoyed. 

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 66

This press conference should have been a relatively easy one. It was just a tech demo, really. To finally put to bed the naysayers about the Tower’s clean energy output so that you could move on to bigger and better things. But, for that reason, for the idea you’d concocted, Tony needed to be at the forefront. The idea scared you. He seemed a little unhinged, especially after the previous night’s incident. He was definitely frantic, thinking about too much. Trying still to convince himself and you that he was okay. When he clearly wasn’t. 

But, when you’d put the idea to him that you’d put on a show for the press at the front of the building, using connectors from the grid to power up his suit, he seemed to be fine with the thought. It was going to take a little maneuvering but nothing your tech and maintenance teams couldn’t handle. However, an hour before air time, he posted a very good question: 

“Couldn’t we do this with your suit?” 

The answer was, of course. Of course you could be the one to demo. But you didn’t want to. You hadn’t put it back on since the events, and at this point… maybe if the world stayed quiet you’d never have to climb in again. You were no hero. Not like Tony or Steve or Thor. You had just gotten thrown into the heat of battle with no other options. “Sure. We could. But Iron Man’s more recognizable. And you’ll do just fine talking through it in your suit.” 

You knew the real reason he was asking. The same exact reason you’[d asked him to stay and talk instead of run that nice. You both had demons you were fighting alone. Weren’t you supposed to be a team? Weren’t you supposed to face your problems together? And yet… it seemed impossible. More than that, he was struggling, you couldn’t bear the idea of burdening him with something you’d eventually work out. And he was probably of the same mind. And so the healing would never get started. 

You knew this. You knew it and you thought about it constantly. And yet you did nothing about it. No idea how to move forward. Or from it or closer to an idea of healing. Instead the two of you just asked each other light questions of knowing implication and skirted around one another. It was a nightmare. 

“Fair enough.” He shrugged, zipping up his hoodie. Because he wasn’t going to prod more. He’d gotten his answer. He’d tried to ask you if you were ready to open up and you’d said no. Like you always did. Like he always did. “You’ve done more than your fair share of pressers anyway.”

At this you couldn’t help a smile. “Yeah, it would be nice if you pulled your own weight once in a while.” Teasing, not meaning it in the slightest. “People are starting to forget I’m not a Stark.” You owned stake in the company only because Tony had made it so. It wasn’t actually yours. 

His brows lifted softly, a little sweetly sassy look directed your way with a curve of his lips upward. “You know, that’s a pretty easy problem to fix.”

Holding a hand up to him, “No. Don’t start. Stay focused.” 

“I can focus on more than one thing.” Even going so far as to give you a little brow wiggle. 

“No, Tony.” 

“No- like- no no? Or no like… not right now, no? I’m just asking- I gotta be sure-�� 

Needing to put an end to this, although you desperately would have liked staying in a moment that felt so normal, you leaned into him to press a kiss to his lips. And then, just so he could be sure, “Not right now, no.” 

The tip of his tongue swept out against his lower lip before he bit it lightly. You weren’t sure what he was trying to accomplish- scratch that, you knew exactly, but now was not the time. “Not right now. Got it. So. Next week?” 

“No!” Batting at him, some giggles leaking out, shaking your head. He really needed to stay focused. 

                                                  --------------------

The press was already gathered out on the front steps, watching eagerly behind the barricades security had set up as you helped the tech crew hook the back of Tony’s suit up. A small specially designed modification for the purposes of this exercise. Although if he ever ran out of power somewhere else, hopefully it could be implemented much the same way. Large pipe wires from the building had been drawn out and were now being securely linked to the new access ports at the back of the Iron Man suit. 

You had a tablet with the suit’s readings in one hand, eyeing the charts closely. “Alright… suit’s all hooked up. We ready to disengage?” The demo was simple. Disengage the Arc Reactor’s power source from the suit so that the suit would only be powered by the clean energy the Tower was generating. While visually it would be impressive, although hard to really ascertain what was happening, you’[d send out copies of a finished report later to top it all off. 

Tony had the facemask slid back and gave you a grin with a thumbs up. “You heard the lady, JARVIS. Let’s cut power.” 

None of this should have been nerve wracking. It wasn’t like they were cutting Arc power to the suit in mid flight. So even if, by some chance you were wrong, the suit didn’t take in enough power from the Tower, nothing would even happen. 

You watched as the levels on the suit activity plummeted in a sheer drop, but then steadily started rising as the suit started drawing in its power from the cables in the back. You gave him a return thumbs up and an equally bright smile. “Golden.” 

It worked. Of course it worked. You may not have been a genius but, hey. Credit where it was due. This would be more than enough to finally shut everyone up. Hopefully. 

For visual, you swiped the tablet’s screen onto a bigger one just behind you so the reporters below could follow along. Tony turned to them, but offered his arm to you to give the opening words. Sweet consideration, honestly. He could have easily stolen the show. That was kind of what it was about, but you didn’t mind. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming!” You called their attention and their murmurs died down. “By now I’m sure you all know that the Stark-Avengers Tower is the first completely clean-energy powered skyscraper in Manhattan.” The double name was your idea of bridging the two thoughts together.

It was clear to you and your team that the Tower now belonged to the Avengers, but it had only been Stark Tower in its prime for less than a week. Giving it a new image fully so soon was too much. 

Tony waved a hand, “But we’ve heard some people express doubts. They say we can’t possibly have developed clean energy tech that’s as powerful and efficient as the old methods. And I get that.” Smirking a little. It was at this point you knew you should have prepared something beforehand. “People think- Tony Stark is so handsome, he can’t really be a genius too. It would just be unfair.” 

“Alright.” Giving him a little hip nudge. “Let’s stay on topic here.” The press at least was eating the interaction up, encouraging with their chuckles. “Let us assure you it’s true, though. More than assure you, we’re showing you, right now.” Screens linked, you clicked on one of the graph readings to enlarge it. 

“We’ve shut down the connection between my armor and the Arc Reactor in my chest. You’re watching me charge the Iron Man suit from the Tower’s solar panels alone. And once I’m fully powered up you’ll see-” 

It was too much to ask of the universe to just give you one thing that didn’t go wrong. It must have been, right? Absolutely. You just must have done something terrible in a previous life. This was such a simple tech demo. And yet somehow, much like everything else in your life recently, it was just destined to go wrong. 

A strong blast cut between you and Tony, severing the wires from the Tower and knocking him forward. A gravelly voice cut in after the explosion. Your mind wasn’t registering a lot. “You’ll see Iron Man rendered obsolete!” You’d dropped to your knees to help Tony up, but he raised his arm aside you and the two of you looked up at man in half a mechanical suit- very much reminiscent of all the knock offs on the market. Wearing thick goggles over his eyes and a bulky helmet- black sweater underneath his orange bits of armor and ugly brown pants to match this terrible ensemble of nonsense. No accounting for taste. “By the next generation of offensive weapons. By me! The Melter!” 

With his hand up, Tony fired off a shot to throw… The Melter off kilter. “Is he serious?” 

“Time to suit up.” 

The words threatened to paralyze you to your core. You didn’t want to do that. You shouldn’t have to do that. But as Tony took off, you knew that you did. You couldn’t leave him alone to face this, especially with the press watching. If you just stood there like a frightened child it invited so much more chaos. And you weren’t, right? You weren’t a scared child? 

No. You’d told the world you were Iron Lady. And you would follow Iron Man into whatever came. Taking your Heart Reactor from your jacket pocket, never too far even if you’d stopped wearing it, you stuck it to your chest and double tapped it to activate the suit. The feeling of the metal building and sliding down you made you a little dizzy. 

Stay focused. Stay focused… 

Once you were fully engaged, you rose up without a second thought, following Tony’s lead in firing a double blast. “I’m sorry.” Tony said, voice booming out. “The middle school science fair is just down the street.” 

So. He was unimpressed with what he was seeing, was that it? You’d guessed this guy wasn’t really a threat. Anyone who chose The Melter as their villain name wasn’t really someone you were super threatened by. “Though I think there’s a kid with a baking soda volcano who might be more impressive.” Adding fuel to a fire you probably shouldn’t have. 

The Melter shot off a blast hitting Iron Man square in the chest, and Tony seemed completely unfazed, not even moving. “Nice try, pal. But these suits stand up to atmospheric re-entry.” 

Trying to knock him off balance, even if he wasn’t doing anything, you put a hand up to get another shot off. It effectively blew him sideways, but his attention turned on you. “You’re out of your league here, why don’t you just put the little melting rays down and we’ll take you in.” 

His next shot was on you. And, Tony may have had a point. Not very effective. There seemed to be no warnings blaring, which was usually a good sign, and it hadn’t even knocked you back. It was why you felt confident, even as he continued to concentrate that beam on you, taking a few feet above him and aiming a two handed shot his way- 

One you were two seconds into firing off before, finally, the rest caught up with you. LUNA’s voice caught you very off guard. “Internal systems failing! I have to reboot!” 

“What?!” Both you and Tony seemed to be in a synced state of confusion. 

Yours lasted a little less than his did as your suit went completely dark from the inside out. You weren’t sure you’d ever experienced a terror like that before. Or even enough time to feel it. “LUNA hey- hey!” The free-falling happened immediately after that. But oh so luckily for you, this Melter man caught you from your drop mid air. 

“Here. Let me give your useless suit a little help!” And then promptly flung you right into Tony. 

The two of you went down to the ground in a heap, and the hits didn’t stop coming, as your villain of the week lasered off a balcony portion of a high floor on the Tower, sending it toppling down on the two of you. You weren’t sure how Tony’s systems were faring, but with your internal circuitry going haywire, you really felt those hits from all sides. 

Metal and glass crushed you tight on top of Tony, sending a breath out in a wheeze. And with your suit helmet still on but not registering sound, it was a little hard to hear the man who had caused so much damage with one little burn beam. His voice was muffled, but as you shoved aside rubble, rolling off Tony to allow him to hopefully breathe the two of you simultaneously pulled off your helmets. 

Melter was hovering somewhere midair, going on and on. “-in the next few days I’ll hold another demonstration. After that, the Melter technology goes on sale to the highest bidder! If you have what it takes to be a bidder, you’ll hear from me-” 

Having had just enough of this, and not needing your suit to do all the work here where it had failed, you called out, “JARVIS, lock Tower defense and fire!” 

JARVIS’ voice boomed out from the Tower itself. “Analyzing target now.” 

That was about all the Melter man needed to finally pale and take off without another word. High into the sky. Fast, for such a poor recreation of a much superior suit. ...although, after all that… 

Tony put a hand to his head. “Worst press conference ever.” 

Calling the pack’s attention was probably the worst mistake of the afternoon. As soon as they heard his voice, all the press still waiting (no preservation instincts to be heard of) turned. “Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!” 

You had bruises in brand new places and a headache that was strong enough to put you under. Now was no time to be dealing with the microphones shoved in your faces. How to even begin to explain what had just happened? Fairly simple. Some rando b-story had broken through your supposedly superior defenses, wrecked both your suits, and brought you down to the ground. Then taken off to who knew where. 

Iron Man and Lady had been downed by what they’d deemed a school science lab experiment. Embarrassed on their own front lawn. 

“No questions.” You groaned out. 

                                                 --------------------

It was a sad sight to see, really. Both armors in heaps on lab tables. You’d taken to pacing endlessly, which surely wasn’t helping Tony’s mood as he was analyzing and reanalyzing and re-re-re analyzing what had gone wrong. Bruce was standing by. Mostly for emotional support. 

With his hands clasped together, he dared to ask, “So. Uh… who’d you piss off now?” 

“Why is it our fault?” Tony asked, hands on more than a few keyboards, reading over dozens and dozens of graphs and tables and formulas and… 

You sighed, wrapping your arms around yourself. “We don’t have the best track record for that sort of thing, is what I think he’s trying to say.” 

Bruce nodded. “I mean… come on, now. Let’s get honest about it. First big bad guy on your file was your partner, and he hired terrorists to kill you. And then there was that Hammer guy and… Vanko… personally speaking, when people come after the both of you it’s…” Rolling his hands around, trying to figure out a delicate way to put this. 

Tony looked up, hands coming down just a little hard on the table. “My fault. Yeah. I get it. So. You’re right. Who did I piss off this time?” 

“I think more importantly first…” Trying to get in the middle of Bruce being too honest and Tony’s penchant for self-loathing, “Melter said he was putting on another presentation. What does that mean?” 

“He wrecked the suits- well. Not the outside. That little heat ray couldn’t touch the exterior. It’s the internals. Something about it breaks down the internal circuitry.” His dug his hands deep into the open chest piece of the Iron Man suit, grabbing a few tools, starting to work his magic. “You think he’s stupid enough to announce he’s coming after us for a double feature?” He slipped on some goggles, leaning in close. Sparks starting to fly. 

You shook your head. “Guy doesn’t seem like he has a lot of brains. Even if he did stumble on to whatever it is that did this to our suits.” And you did mean that quite literally. Not for a second could you believe he outsmarted Tony. The suits the both of you were wearing had been redesigned more than a few times now. A heat beam? It didn’t seem like it could do much damage. So he’d lucked into some technology on accident, and came after you two. Why? 

A mystery, still. But as for the rest of it… 

The lightbulb went off. He went after you two, maybe because he had some unfinished business, sure, but he’d come after both suits. And who else had a suit like this worth damaging for a show of control? 

“JARVIS call Rhodey.” 

Tony clicked his tongue against his teeth. “One step ahead of me.” 

“You’re busy with something else. We’ll call it even.” You moved to sit down next to him at another console as Rhodey’s face came on screen. “Hey, listen. We just got our asses pretty much handed to us-” 

He let out an amused scoff. “Yeah. It’s on every TV at the base. What the hell is going on over there? You’re making me look bad.” 

Tony leaned over. “Thanks for the support. Oh. And asking if we’re okay. We are, by the way, but thanks for asking.” 

You waved him away. “The guy that did it is probably on his way to you. Just be careful, okay? Tony’s working on the suits now.”

Rhodey shook his head and then shrugged. “Why announce to the world his next biggest move?” 

The chest piece of the Iron Man suit swung shut loudly. “Because he’s trying to sell his tech. And after today?” Tony gave you a long look. One you returned. You knew where this was going. “He’s not gonna be the only one we have to worry about our history with.” 

Under the desk, your hands clenched together. “Just. Be on the look out, Rhodey. That’s all I’m asking. We’ll work on this here and come to you after.” 

“He’d have to be a moron to come after me.” 

Tony turned, sticking his hands into your suit next. He grunted. “Didn’t stop him from coming after us, did it?” 

“Seems like he made out okay on that bet.” 

“He won’t the next time.” 

They were about to get into a fight that none of you could afford. Bruce was the one to break it up. Hand to his chin he made a murmuring noise, waving at some of the findings on one of the screens. “Tony.” Calling him over. 

It was enough to end the bickering. And as Tony left his station, pulling his goggles up to go confer with his resident science buddy, you gave Rhodey a wave at the screen. “We’ll figure out what he did to the suits and bring the upgrade to you. I’m just asking you to be on high alert.” 

He nodded. “You got it. I’ll be alright.” 

Another wave and a smile and you ended the call. Going over to the two babbling at each other, it was useless to try and make out the science mumbo jumbo coming out of them at rapid speed. “Figured it out?” Hopeful. Because more than all of this, you’d have to deliver a statement to the press. That man had interrupted a tech demo and beaten you red. It made the Avengers thing look like a joke. Too soon to start spreading doubt about that sort of stuff. 

“That ray…” Tony walked away from the screen, going back to your suit. “At first I thought it was just intense heat, but it actually loosens the bonding forces between the molecules of non-organic matter.” 

While you weren’t sure you understood all of that, you got the gist. This was extremely dangerous. “We can’t let him sell this to anyone.” 

Bruce nodded. “And you gotta take it off him.” 

Another big sigh escaped you. “Gotta find him, first.” The best way to curb doubt about you or Tony or the Avengers was to deliver this guy to the police. And to do that… You walked over to Tony, setting a hand on his arm. “You good here? I’m going to start digging. See what I can find on this guy.” 

He stopped what he was doing for a brief moment, looking up at you. “Yeah. I’m good. I won’t let this happen again.” There was a steady stream of anxiety leaking from him, but you couldn’t work through it all right now. It was understandable. The suit he’d designed to keep you safe had malfunctioned. Guilt was not too far behind. Leaning in, probably in an attempt to silence your probing, he gave you a light kiss. “I love you. Go. I’m serious. Do your thing and I’ll do mine. And… then we’ll-” 

“Clean up. Like we always do.” Giving him a sure nod. And one more little kiss. “I love you, too.” Trying not to fall into a too-deep display of affection. You weren’t the only two in the lab. So, parting, you gave Bruce a wave. “Thanks for your help.” 

“Glad to be of assistance.” Waving back with a tired smile. 

Seemed none of you could escape the feeling. And while it would have been nice to lie in a hot bath to soothe the aches out, or fall asleep curled up…

You had work to do. You always had work to do. 

[ask-glados]

GLaDOS Liveplay [Part 3]

We start off chapter 3 and GLaDOS isn’t here to offer any comments in the elevator room because she’s busy fixing the reactor core. There’s some misbehaving panels that need to be recalibrated, but the reactor core is a more pressing issue for her at the moment.

When you get on the Aerial Faith Plate here, your trajectory doesn’t reach all the way to the ceiling because Wheatley has hacked into the panels and raised the ceiling up to talk to you and let you know that he’s okay. He’s been trying to hack into other panels in the other test chambers to talk to you, and you can see him peeking in at several points, but GLaDOS was always there, watching through her cameras, and he didn’t want to talk to you where GLaDOS could see and hear him. He finally finds a good, private spot to hack the panels and talk to you here, and he’s able to move the panels without GLaDOS noticing because she’s away at the moment.

The Aerial Faith Plate senses that a weight was launched but no sensors were tripped on its landing pad. (The landing pad is usually indicated by the glowing circle symbol that shows where you’ll land, though that symbol isn’t always there, so I assume the sensor must just be on the other side of whatever panel it launches you to.) So, the panel sends a distress signal to GLaDOS and she comes back from fixing the core.

She returns with a sigh to her tone. She’s been working hard on fixing the reactor core, and she might not even be finished with that yet, only to get a notification that you somehow broke an Aerial Faith Plate. She isn’t aware of Wheatley’s presence, so she probably thinks you’re just doing this on purpose to annoy her.

She doesn’t even have an insult for you here, she just kinda sighs and tries to fix it for you.

The plate still doesn’t work because Wheatley has raised the ceiling, but GLaDOS doesn’t know that, and she can’t figure out why it’s not working, so she just assumes it’s the maximum carrying capacity of the plate and uses that as an opportunity to make more fat jokes.

Eventually, she just resorts to lowering the ceiling, not realizing that the height of the ceiling was actually the whole issue to begin with.

And naturally, she follows up on that fat joke just because she’s annoyed at you for breaking that Aerial Faith Plate.

We see more rogue panels playing around in the next chamber

GLaDOS, please. You’re attached to the ceiling. You literally cannot “go” anywhere.

Anyway, it’s unclear if she is just completely lying here, or if she actually has cameras up on the surface that she’s checking. A deer WOULD make sense given the rural landscape that you see above Aperture at the end of the game, but who knows with her. She could just be making it up. Also, it’s interesting how she says “yesterday,” as if a day has already passed, which I feel like it hasn’t. I think she’s just trying to mess with Chell’s perception of time, since there’s no way to tell what time of day it is, given how GLaDOS simulates daylight at all hours.

Given how she’s going to be looking for replacement test subjects after she fixes the facility up and kills Chell, and how desperate she is to find human test subjects in CO-OP after Atlas and P-Body fail to satisfy her testing itch, she’s probably lying here — about both the deer and the humans. Because she would’ve jumped at the chance to get some more human test subjects, and she doesn’t want to keep Chell around that long, because Chell’s too dangerous.

Yeah, I think she’s just trying to rub in the fact that you want to be free and go to the surface and that you’re never going to get to do that, because she plans to kill you soon.

Ah, yes, the beautiful blue hard-light bridges that inspired my GLaDOS hologram headcanon, which is made out of the same technology, but modified to be less hot, in full color, and three-dimensional~ :3 (shameless self-promotion pfft)

GLaDOS refers to herself as someone who is “only trying to help them.” She genuinely believes that she is helping out mankind and the world of science by testing humans. She thinks any human should feel privileged to have been a part of something greater than themselves like this. She also thinks that she herself is on a whole other level than the human species, and that being killed and mistreated can’t possibly apply to her. She is the authority and others are supposed to serve and respect her.

Aperture doesn’t do business with the outside world anymore, and Aperture appears to have become self-sufficient, so money should be irrelevant. So, either GLaDOS is making this all up, or she’s actually still following money protocols that were programmed into her back when money was still relevant to Aperture.

GLaDOS is still repairing the place, so there are still some messed up panels, but it’s gradually looking better and better.

She’s still bitter about you breaking that Aerial Faith Plate, lol. She passive aggressively grumbles about how she is going to have to repair the door now too, because no one else is going to. She really does feel like she does a lot of work around here which no one takes the time to appreciate or give her credit for. She also hisses at you to not touch anything while she’s gone, lest you break something else like how you broke the Aerial Faith Plate.

And once again, the cause of the malfunction is actually Wheatley behind the scenes, which GLaDOS still hasn’t realized.

She’s been working hard, and she’s losing patience with all the malfunctions happening around the facility, so she just straight-up kills the door mainframe AI and replaces it with a new one. Apparently, even the doors have AI cores in them.

More snark.

You can see the shed from the end of the game here in the Hard-Light Bridges demonstration of how sunlight is pumped down from the surface to create hard-light.

As you go through these first few chapters of the game, the Aperture logo in the loading screen goes from a dirty, unlit one to a clean and glowing logo. It’s a neat little detail to reflect how GLaDOS is tidying everything up.

This elevator room is in much worse condition than the gradually improving states of the others you’ve been going through because it’s the old turret test chamber from Portal 1.

This elevator room is broken, so you drop below onto the catwalks to enter the next test chamber.

Again, she makes reference to “yesterday.” It’s only been a few hours. Come on, GLaDOS, you weren’t even awake yesterday. She’s just trying to confuse you about the passage of time to make you believe that it could have been your birthday yesterday. It probably wasn’t your birthday, she’s just making that up as an excuse to give you a “surprise.”

This part is really cool. As you enter the next test chamber, you get to see how the test chambers are assembled down below, which involves panels coming along a conveyor belt from the factory down to the testing track, where mechanical arms put them into place.

There she goes bragging about her immortality again, and of course, she’s following up on the birthday thing as an excuse to give you a surprise. I’m guessing this so-called “medical procedure/experiment” basically just refers to filling you with neurotoxin and killing you.

Now she’s trying to make you feel self-conscious about your outfit. She’s just being really petty now, looking for any ammo that can possibly be used to upset a human.

She’s lying, obviously. She doesn’t have any humans in cryogenic storage. All the ones in the Relaxation Center are dead. Of course, in CO-OP, she manages to find some humans in cryogenic storage hidden in Old Aperture, but she doesn’t know about that right now. She’s just going back to preying on the whole “Chell is an orphan” thing again, trying to make Chell feel hopeful about meeting her parents so that she can crush Chell’s hopes and dreams when the surprise turns out to be fake.

Can’t forget to include the singing turrets. :)

Rattmann’s painting here depicts how Aperture’s immoral practices led to karma, where they created something even more morally reprehensible than themselves: GLaDOS, which led to their demise. They didn’t value human life when it came to how they treated test subjects, and GLaDOS just took it a step further by not valuing human life in general, which included them.

An interesting fun fact here! GLaDOS was actually supposed to hum “Happy Birthday” here to go along with her whole ‘birthday surprise’ theme, but back when this game came out in 2011, “Happy Birthday” was still copyrighted, and you had to pay lots of money in royalties if you wanted to use it in any form. However, thanks to a lawsuit in 2016, the song is no longer copyrighted! Hurray! #Petition to have Valve put GLaDOS humming “Happy Birthday” back in Portal 2? XD

For once, GLaDOS is taking a jab at someone who isn’t Chell. I guess she’s just flaunting her superiority and power at this point.

It sounds like she was just pretending to be distracted by other things like Nobel prize winners, trying to make Chell think she’d forgotten about her and her birthday surprise, in an attempt to make Chell more anxious and apprehensive about getting her surprise.

That concludes chapter 3 and part 3 of this GLaDOS Liveplay! Again, I really hope you’re enjoying this! :D

[thesummerstorms]

Leverage/Star Wars AU?

Send me an AU and I’ll give you 5 headcanons

okay, but you didn’t specify who was crossed over where and I have spent way too much time fucking thinking about this even before I was asked, like more time than I should admit to, so…

Leverage Crew as SW characters

The entire crew are Force-sensitives: 

Sophie is a Twi’lek and still an art thief, but no one has ever been able to get a real read on who she was before she broke into the Imperial Museum in Galactic City on its dedication, and she’ll never tell a soul where she learned to use the Force. Her Force abilities come mainly in the form of Consular-like persuasion and mind wipe techniques.

Parker was an infant orphaned in Palpatine’s “after-war” clean up and bounced around in an uncaring Imperial system, watching as it slowly rotted within and other orphans were pulled for cheap or unpaid labor by Palpatine’s goons. She has a very heightened danger sense and uses Force-acrobatics with ease, but she tends to shut down hard at the least bit of Force-heightened empathy, at least early on. It’s a left over survival skill. Eventually she develops some Shatterpoint ability.

Hardison is a slicer, and would’ve been a Jedi sentinel if he had been old enough to be taken into the Order. He has an instinctive understanding of tech, of energy patterns, and of puzzles.His skills fall somewhat in line with Callista Masana’s. He can disable droids with the Force with ease, and manage a reasonable amount of telekinesis. He always put more emphasis on the hacking though. He grew up in Taris’s lower city, and just like in canon, hacking was his way of taking care of his foster mother. Hardison has a pretty strong Force-empathy, but it manifests itself differently than Sophie’s and he doesn’t have the mind-control abilities with it.

Eliot was born a few years before the war ended on a theoretically Separatist planet, an old dustball no one took notice of, that the Jedi would never have found him on even without the disruption of a massive war. He joined the Imperial army against his family’s wishes as a young teenager, lured by the prospects of a higher purpose and seeing something beyond a tenant farmer’s crop fields, and got fast-tracked into ISB. After disillusionment and a bad injury set in, he went rogue and played the mercenary for the Hutt cartels for a while, getting his hands dirtier, before he struck out on his own. His Force-abilities tend more towards those of a Jedi Guardian- Force Sense, Breath Control, Poison Resistance, Pain Resistance, etc- along with a high mental resistance to interrogation and Force manipulation.

Nate is an Arkanian ex-Jedi Initiate who failed his trials and as an adult ended up working the Core worlds for the insurance wing of a Courscanti mega-conglomerate. He his his nature very, very well as an adult, and some part of him even still bought into the old adherence to law and order, believing that what needed reform was the content of Imperial law, not the entire structure. If his conscious sometimes got to him, he had a Force-sensitive son to look after. Or once he did, anyway. Imperial law made Sam’s treatment to expensive for him to afford. His Jedi-raising sometimes causes problems for the crew, but he’s also the first to identify all of them for what they are. His powers are passive and don’t present immediate advantages, the way everyone else’s do, but over time it’s revealed that he has some small ability with Battlefield Meditation and Shatterpoint, which is part of what makes him a good mastermind.

Bonus:

If this were an entirely different kind of fanfic crossover AU, like the truely fic-y kind where a character from one setting finds themself stranded in another?

Parker is very weirded out by Etain bc Etain has trouble not acting on all the extra things she senses in the Force, but Etain’s strengthened relationship with Hardison and Eliot eventually builds enough of a foundation for them to resolve things. Also, Etain is willing to jump off buildings and is less afraid than the others, which helps.

Etain becomes close with Eliot very quickly- in some ways he reminds her of Darman, in others the Nulls- and he’s the one she opens up to most. She trusts him to have her back and visa versa. They do initially have conflict over the guns rule, and once Etain slips and shows her powers, she ends up trying to patch him up a lot. Etain sometimes backs him up as a hitter, though she’s not at his skill level.

Etain is very frustrated by Hardison’s tech limitations, given that she’s used to TGFFA in terms of tech, and initially there’s some friction between them before she learns to manage her expectations and to sound less critical of what Hardison can accomplish. They bond over some bad science fiction movies, though- Etain is the first person Hardison’s shown them two other than Parker who genuinely has no idea what’s going to happen- and she’s quick to defend him.

Etain has a pleasant but neutral relationship with Sophie- who she backs up as a secondary grifter- but starts out fairly afraid of Nate, whose worse qualities remind her somewhat of Kal. Things don’t change until he finds her crying her eyes out over a picture Kad drew her.

Etain is shipper-on-deck for Hardison/Parker/Eliot, bc I said so.

[ostensiblyexistential]

This is an art blog. But this is not an art post. While I do use words artistically, this is not a piece of fiction or a work of poetry, but a personal post. While it may not be art, it’s certainly a catharsis, and in light of everything that’s been happening here in the US, this is a post I feel I need to make. I don’t have many followers, and many of the ones I do have I suspect are bots, so I doubt anyone will really see this, but still. This will be a long post. Please bear with me.

I dated a racist.

And I don’t mean just for, like, a few months and then when I found out he was so deplorable I left him. I mean for nearly 3 years.

“That’s disgusting.” Yes. You are correct. To write that sentence makes shudder. I want to vomit. I am disgusted with myself that this happened. But it happened, and I need to process that. I want people to know how someone could get herself caught up in something so awful. Why didn’t I leave? you ask. Ah, well, we’ll get to that. Sometimes it’s a bit more complicated, and not everyone can easily do the right thing by leaving…

First I want to talk about my background. Personally I think this is important, because context is, so I’d really like it if you read the next part, but if you are of the opinion that none of it matters, or, like, get bored half way through, please skip to the part where I tl;dr and read from there.

I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman, and as such, I have some privilege. I was born in Southfield, Michigan. I lived in Detroit, Michigan until I was 9. I attended a private school in Redford, Michigan for gifted children in the metro Detroit area. At least half of my classmates and friends, if not more, were black. At 9, my family moved to Dearborn, Michigan, which has a substantial Arab and Muslim population. I began public school in the 5th grade. In high school, I spent half of each day at a local community college campus taking advanced courses in math, science, and technology. This program pulled some of the best students from each of the three high schools in Dearborn. Again, at least half, if not more, of my classmates were Arabs. High school was post September 11th, just so you have an idea of the political climate of the nation during the entirety of my teens. At 18, after I’d graduated high school, I left Michigan and moved to Arizona, living and working in and around Phoenix, where I lived for the next 7 years. Many of my coworkers were Mexican immigrants or Mexican-Americans. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could think races other than white are less intelligent, or in any other way lower. I was surrounded by people of color my entire life; the concept that race makes someone less than is completely foreign to me, and so obviously and categorically false.

Tl;dr: I’m a white cis-het woman with all the privileges of the first three who’s been immersed in diversity her whole life.

So how did the topic of this post happen?

I didn’t know, not at first. In my experience, it’s kind of rare for someone to just straight up say, “Hey there, I’m a giant racist!” This is because I’m white. Racism is not directed at me, so I don’t know if someone’s racist or not until I actually see or hear it come from them. Our social circle was nearly non-existent and some topics just didn’t come up apparently, or when they did he stayed silent about them until one day when he decided not to be, but that wasn’t right away. Plus, in public, like many other racists, he hid this part of himself. When we went places, he wouldn’t make comments or disparage people. Not at first. That, to my horror, changed. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s go to when we met and go from there.

While in Phoenix, I worked as a server. At the last restaurant I worked at there, I ended up meeting someone who’d been sent to Phoenix for work. He was my last table for the day and somehow we ended up getting into a conversation that lasted beyond my work day. This… wasn’t normal for me. I really don’t like tables who are talkative, and would always try to find an excuse to get out of it without being impolite. But I couldn’t really find one, so I was kind of trapped. (In retrospect, the foreshadowing on that would be fantastic if it weren’t so personal and painful for me.) That was how it started out at first, but then topics ended up moving to things that I guess, you know, resonated with me, and I felt more comfortable.

We spent the next couple of days that he was in town together, getting to know each other. At the end of it, we decided to keep in contact. For the next year, we had a long distance relationship. We communicated every day. Once a month, we both took time off work and one of us would fly to see the other for a week. This was how I got to know him, and with hindsight, I believe that it was perhaps not the greatest way to really see someone, not the way we interacted. Our visits were isolated - we mostly spent the time together and didn’t go out very much.

After a year, we decided it was time to make things more permanent. Neither of us could sustain long distance, not financially, and it’s hard emotionally as well. It made more sense for me to move than him, so I did, across the country, and to a state where there’s snow, the exact thing I’d left Michigan to avoid. I’d spent a lot of my savings on these visits we’d been having, and used basically the rest of my savings to move. I took a year off work, so the meager amount of my own money I had when I first moved disappeared fast. Although he’d told me I wouldn’t have to work because he’d support me, that turned out not to be true, and I had to get a job.

He’d promised me a lot of things that didn’t come to fruition. He’d told me a lot of things about himself that simply weren’t true. Honestly, I don’t think he was lying on purpose, I think he just has really bad self-perception skills. The omissions, though, I’m not really sure about.

At around six months after I’d moved (so a year and a half into the relationship), I realized the huge mistake I’d made in involving myself with this man. I knew he wasn’t right for me, for more reason than one. He revealed his true self - an overt racist, an only slightly more subtle sexist, and an emotional abuser who wanted to control me rather than have an equal partner in the relationship. There were lots of small things that added up, and some bigger things that more than added up. I’d gotten myself into one of my own worst possible scenarios. I felt sick. I felt helpless.

He made his first racist statement somewhere around that time. It hit me hard. I was confused and upset. I did the only thing I could - I argued. I don’t mean screaming or crying, I mean I clearly and calmly corrected him. I thought maybe he was just misinformed and giving him real facts might change his perspective. He, on the other hand, argued back in a very aggressive manor. As a person who grew up in a home where anger and aggression meant violence, I cannot handle this type of thing. I went into panic mode, the situation escalated, and he wouldn’t hear me. I was devastated. For a while, I still tried educating him, still tried encouraging him to broaden his views. It never worked, and I think I knew it wouldn’t, but still, I felt I had to try. That was the right thing to do; it was the only thing I could do. At some point I stopped, because it always resulted in some kind of argument, and I couldn’t do it any more. This was a man who used racial slurs around me specifically because he knew how much they bothered me. He thought that was funny.

Although I knew this was wrong, both in a larger sense as well on a personal level for me, I felt I couldn’t leave.

First, I had no money. I didn’t get a job until after I’d come to the conclusion I would eventually need to get out of this, so I mean, I really had no money (spent it all to move, remember? Stupid stupid stupid.) The job I did eventually get pays poorly (minimum wage is not a living wage, but that’s another topic), and I only work part time. With things like groceries and car insurance to pay for, plus 3 cats to take care of, plus the fact that he dragged me out to do things frequently despite my not liking leaving the house and not being interested in the things we were going to but him insisting on me helping pay, I wasn’t capable of saving much. This was my biggest factor in not leaving. I wouldn’t have had anywhere to live, and I couldn’t have afforded to live on my own.

The other reason I didn’t leave was fear. He never physically abused me, and he never showed signs that he would. But he was constantly on edge, always agitated, and as a very empathetic person, I picked up on that. It made me uncomfortable. Anger and yelling, which he was prone to when upset, makes me physically afraid, even if it’s from a person I have no logical reason to physically fear. It’s a trigger and I can’t control that reaction. I had so much anxiety that if I confronted him about my problems and/or left him, he’d snap and I’d either be hurt or dead. Was that ever a real potential? I don’t know.

I lied to everyone around me and pretended my relationship was great, because I didn’t have a support system I felt I could rely on. What good would it have done? It just would have exaggerated my sense of failure without gaining any actual help.

We did, eventually, part ways, and I did have help, but it took me a year and a half after my first startling realization to get there. It was not an amicable break up. I don’t want to talk about the circumstances. They are personal, and it was a difficult time. But while I’m finally free of that disgusting person, I’m not free of my guilt. Perhaps my guilt is misplaced - I didn’t enter into it knowingly, and by the time I’d figured it out it was too late to do anything immediately - but it’s still there. I have a hard time coming to terms with being so close to something I find so abhorrent.

Although I’ve rarely taken part in political movements, my heart has always been, and will always be, the heart of a feminist and an ally. The best I’ve ever done is speak up when I felt I could, when people whose lives I care about were being attacked but who weren’t there to defend themselves. I know it’s not much, but it’s about all I have to offer.

I can’t attend the Women’s March on Washington. It’s just not a feasible journey for me. But I will be attending the sister march that’s taking place in Hartford, Connecticut. Donald Trump is a racist, a misogynist, every kind of -ist and -phobe, and unfit to be called a human being let alone President. Attending is not merely an act of contrition on my part for the relationship I was in with a racist. It’s more than that.

I will be attending for many more than myself and other white women like me. I will be attending for all the people of color he has disparaged, called liars and cheats and rapists. I will be attending for all the members of the LGBT+ community who fear for their right to love and marry who they want, to use what bathroom they want, to be called by the name that they want. I will be attending for every black and Arab and Muslim and Mexican and any other person of color I’ve ever known in my life, and for those I don’t know too. I will be attending for all the survivors of sexual assault. I will be attending for everyone who feels they are in danger or have been disrespected by Donald Trump and others like him. I will never speak over you or for you. But I want you to know that I’m right here beside you.

For anyone who’s actually reading this, even if it’s just the one person who I know will, thank you.

[flauntpage]

An Experiment That Changed Baseball: The Moneyball Draft 15 Years Later

"The Moneyball draft, for better or worse, is kind of a line of demarcation between the way things had been done and the way things are done now. We were kind of unwilling participants in a science experiment of sorts, I guess, to see if it would work or not." — Stephen Obenchain, one of the Oakland Athletics' seven first-round picks in 2002

In 2003, author Michael Lewis published Moneyball, a chronicle of the Oakland A's groundbreaking analytical approach to player evaluation. At the heart of the book was Oakland's preparation ahead of the 2002 amateur draft, the first time the A's would use these new techniques on a grand scale to draft and sign amateur talent.

The book revolutionized baseball. Eventually, every team in the majors adopted some or all of the concepts that Lewis outlined. By the end of the decade, "Moneyball" became the term used to describe a statistical-based approach in all of sports.

What follows is an oral history of the Moneyball draft and its impact on the game of baseball, as told by the many people involved or affected by it. Players are listed by their drafted position, college, and pick round and number. All non-playing personnel are listed by their job titles at the time of the 2002 Major League Baseball draft.

Billy Beane, photographed here during in the 2005 amateur draft, believed that the draft could be Oakland's way to compete with bigger market clubs. Photo by Michael Zagaris /MLB Photos via Getty Images.

In 2002, Billy Beane was heading into his fifth major league draft since succeeding Sandy Alderson as Oakland's general manager. This one would be different. For one, his top lieutenant and director of player personnel, J.P. Ricciardi, had left to manage the Blue Jays. For another, Beane believed that, after years of development, a new, analytic-based approach to scouting players was ready to debut. For the A's, who had long operated on a shoestring budget, the experiment could pay dividends. All Oakland had to do was commit to it.

J.P. Ricciardi, General Manager, Toronto Blue Jays: I think Sandy deserves a lot of the credit for laying the groundwork, and Billy took the ball and ran with it. I think as soon as we realized we were definitely going to be a very small market club, we had to buy into a different way of doing things.

Jim Pransky, Area Scout, Oakland Athletics: Things don't happen overnight. Sometimes a thought process goes on for several years. You're looking at the draft, checking the results of the draft. I don't think it was a haphazard thing thrown together. Sandy put the foundation down and Billy worked with him, J.P. worked with Billy.

Ricciardi: I hired Paul [DePodesta, A's assistant general manager, 1999-2004].… In Paul's case, I knew his dynamic would fit what Billy and I were all about. I played with Billy, I'd been with Billy a long time. I knew what missing piece we needed in the front office and Paul was the perfect guy for that.

Chris Pittaro, National Field Coordinator, Oakland Athletics: Paul DePodesta said it best. He said, If we hadn't already been doing it this way, would we be?

Stephen Obenchain, Starting Pitcher, University of Evansville, Pick 1s.37: Their payroll was miniscule compared to most teams and compared to the top teams it was definitely miniscule, and they're trying to make the playoffs and win a World Series. Money was not going to solve the problem, so they had to find another way to do it.

Pittaro: We had to find an area where we could compete and it obviously was not the free-agent market, where we weren't as attractive a destination as New York or L.A. for whatever reason—money, prestige, whatever you want to call it.…

When Paul came in, I started to see things move in a different direction in terms of we needed to find a way to compete. How? What are the answers? I don't think we really had any answers. We just tried to find an area that we felt like was not so much our niche, but here's where we can maybe get a leg up on somebody else. We started to think a little bit differently, outside the box, in terms of a non-traditional type of scouting. It was kind of our way to be relevant or to stay alive in the game.

Beane and his staff came to believe that the amateur draft could be that advantage. At the time, teams were awarded two early draft picks for every major free agent lost. For Oakland, a team that routinely had its players poached by bigger-market clubs, the draft was the only sphere where they had a bevy of resources to work with.

After the 2001 season, the A's lost first baseman Jason Giambi (to the Yankees), center fielder Johnny Damon (Red Sox), and closer Jason Isringhausen (Cardinals) in free agency. That gave them a staggering seven first-round picks: four in the proper first round, plus three more in the draft's supplemental portion.

Pransky: It became pretty clear-cut when we first got there [in 2002, before the draft] that there was certainly a lot more emphasis on the college guys, more so than ever. And also there was a still a group of people in the organization that were still [saying], Let's not eliminate the high school guys. Let's not do that, there are still some exceptions out there.… I don't think Billy thought there were any exceptions. He didn't want any exceptions. He didn't want to talk about exceptions. He was really set on, This is the best route we could go and it's probably easier to have this one route instead of looking for a possible detour. There are no detours. This is the way we're going. This is the direction we're going.

Pittaro: The cost of being wrong was prohibitive for a team like us. When you draft 50 guys and two or three get to the big leagues, sometimes that's considered a pretty good draft. Now, when your first-rounder doesn't get there and you paid $1.8 million for him back then or whatever it is, or a million and a half dollars and you only had a budget of $3 million or $4 million, that was prohibitive for us. We were trying to find a better way to get a return on our dollar. That's all we were trying to do.

John Sickels, Lead Prospect Writer, ESPN.com: They realized that the statistical analysis of players at the college level was something that, while it had been utilized, it had not been utilized enough and they could gain a competitive advantage by doing that more often.

Pransky: I think that's where some of the mistakes were made in earlier drafts, where [they] were projection-based too far. Automatically, you say, The guy is going to get bigger, he's going to get stronger, the guy's going to throw harder, he's going to hit the ball farther. And that doesn't always happen. Some guys are going to throw as hard as they ever do at 16 and that's it. They're not going to throw any harder down the line.…

Once you've gone with the college route, you've gone with the older player. So you've got guys anywhere from three to four years older, so the projection is lessened dramatically.

Pittaro: We still loved guys with tools and upside, but … sometimes the college player was more attractive to us because we had a little better history on them and there was a little less guesswork. Sometimes that means a little lower ceiling but, again, the cost of being wrong for us is prohibitive.

Sickels: Scouts were always aware of what the players were doing. The hard part is, This player is ripping up college, can he continue to do that in pro ball?... There was always some distortion in college because of the aluminum bat, and a lot of times a player who was really impressive in college would maybe get downgraded a little bit because scouts weren't sure how that was going to translate into pro ball. What happened with the Moneyball thing, is Oakland had realized, OK, yeah, college stats can be misleading but there's ways to adjust for that.

Pittaro: I think we just told [our scouts], listen, you go in and you see a player on any given time and it's kind of like taking a snapshot, whereas the statistics and numbers will tell the whole story of a year. They'll give you the film. So which one is more likely to be what the player is? No one ever said, Hey, you've got to go in and like this guy because he's hitting .400 with 20 home runs. That wasn't the purpose of anything. It was, Hey, maybe you need to give this guy another look.

Sickels: There were trends that were already there and the whole thing with the Moneyball draft was the Oakland staff under Billy Beane. They just took it further and in a more intense direction.

Pransky: We had the extra picks that year, too. Which if you're going to try something out, and try something that's somewhat unique and different, you might as well as do it when you've got the numbers to try it. And we did.

Pittaro: If we're wrong, it sets us back in ways that it doesn't set other teams back.… I can remember turning to [director of player development] Keith Lieppman and saying, Either we're going to look really good or we're going to have an organization full of Double-A players, tops.

Nick Swisher became the face and star of Oakland's Moneyball class. Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports.

The 2002 draft began even better than expected. With their first pick, at 16th overall, the A's selected Ohio State star Nick Swisher. Eight picks later, they chose University of Kentucky right-hander Joe Blanton. Each was a consensus first-round prospect, players who passed both the analytics and eye tests with flying colors. No one in the baseball world batted an eyelash at either selection.

From there, the analytics kicked in and Oakland's new strategy became evident. Instead of focusing on a player's raw ability or body type, the A's turned their attention toward skill sets. For hitters, it was on-base percentage. For pitchers, they prized polished arms over punishing velocity. And in both cases, the college stats were of supreme importance.

The result? A collection of names that, on aggregate, stunned the baseball world. In many cases, the people caught most off guard by when they were selected—and by whom—were the players themselves.

Obenchain: I spoke with the Cardinals, and the area scout said, I think we're going to try and take you at 55. It took a while to sink in. He's not saying 55th round. He's saying 55th [overall]. That doesn't make sense. Me? I'm not that good.

I really hadn't spoken to Oakland and, a day or two before the draft, my advisor—who turned into my agent—said, Oakland is looking to take you 35 or 37, would you sign there? I'm like, Uh, yeah! I'm just hoping to have a team pick me, and when he said top 30-something, yeah I'm interested!...

It was kind of a whirlwind because I'm just a no-name guy from not a baseball powerhouse program... I went to the University of Evansville. We're known for our basketball team that wore sleeves and that Andy Benes pitched for us.

Steve Stanley, Center Fielder, University of Notre Dame, Pick 2.67: In my junior year, I was drafted in the 50th round, the last round of the draft. The Florida Marlins drafted me in the 50th round and it was a favor of a pick because of my coach at Notre Dame.…

The next year, my senior season, [I figured] that I would get my degree, get drafted somewhere in the 10th to 20th round because I was a safe pick.… Those were my expectations heading up to the draft.

Two days before the draft occurred, my coach called me and said, Hey, are you sitting down? I said , Yes, who died? I thought it was bad. He said , No, nothing's wrong. I got a call from Oakland. They want to draft you in the second round for $200,000. Of course my jaw drops, I start to scream excitedly. At that time I was married—we were married for about six months. The neighbors called the cops because they thought my wife and I were in some sort of horrible fight.

Drew Dickinson, Starting Pitcher, University of Illinois, Pick 28.848: I never talked to the Oakland A's, nor did I ever fill out a questionnaire from them, when I literally had filled out every single other club.… The two clubs I talked to the most were the Dodgers and the Angels.…

It was getting late. At that time, 2002, you're listening on your computer—simulcast, broadcast, whatever. It's the 28th round and I'm actually frustrated by that point. I know I'm going to get drafted but by that round, I'm kind of disappointed. So I hear Angels, nothing. Dodgers, nothing. So I get up out of the chair and I'm starting to walk down the stairs to get something to drink, and literally I'm halfway down the stairs and I hear my name.

Ben Fritz, Starting Pitcher, California State University, Fresno, Pick 1.30: Things changed throughout the year. I think junior year, it was top ten [rounds]. As things progressed and got better, you started hearing third to fifth, then started hearing before the third. I think my mindset was more second.

By the time we got to the draft, to obviously have your name called 30th and be the last pick of that first round, it was awesome.… There definitely wasn't a whole lot of dialogue with [Oakland].… Honestly, I had no clue going into the day.

Mark Teahen, Third Base, St. Mary's College of California, Pick 1s.39: As the draft got closer, I was expecting go in the top five rounds.… Before the draft, John Baker and I had a workout at the Coliseum where it was just him and I, so I figured they must have a good amount of interest.

John Baker, Catcher, University of California, Berkeley, Pick 4.128: I was definitely expecting to go back to school, graduate and I was going to go to law school, and I was going to be suing people or something.

Anyway, I get a really weird phone call a few days before the draft from Will Shock, who was a Cal guy himself who was an A's scout at the time. He says, Would you be willing to go to the Oakland Coliseum and take batting practice for our scouts? You have to realize, I'm a kid who grew up an A's fan.… The whole time, I'm trying to hit a homer, because who the hell wouldn't do that? I did, too, with a wooden bat. I was fired up after that. I didn't care about getting drafted after that, to be honest. I was just pumped I got to take BP at the Oakland Coliseum.…

They called me and said, We feel like we're going to take you in the fourth round if you're available. And I'm laughing, because I'm like, Nobody's going to take me before that. Of course I'm going to be available.

Teahen: I was at my parents' house in Yucaipa, California, with my family. We are watching the draft online. At that point I knew the A's were supposed to take me at the 39th pick. There was a huge time gap between the first round and the supplemental round and I remember being nervous throughout that time that they might change their mind. Thankfully they didn't.

Baker: The actual draft day, I went with my girlfriend at the time—who I'm now married to—we went to downtown Walnut Creek and we had crepes when it was happening. This is before TV, all that stuff. Further, and I hate to say this, but I still didn't believe anybody.… I didn't even believe [the A's], necessarily. I'm sitting there eating crepes and I got a phone call. Hey, we took you in the fourth ground, congratulations. And I went, Oh, wow, this is real. That's amazing.

Lloyd Turner, Second Base, Kennesaw State University, Pick 16.488: I remember there was a high school all-star tournament at my college. In hopes that I would get drafted, I said , Let me go and get some practice in the batting cage at the ball field. I'm walking up with my bat and my workout gear on, there's a lot of scouts at the game watching the game, and as I'm walking through the stands down the left-field line, I saw these guys. I didn't know who they were but they said, Hello, great job this year. I said thank you and I hope I can continue my career. I'm just going to work out. They said, You shouldn't have anything to worry about, you're a good ballplayer. I said, Thanks, that means a lot. I went on about my business, got drafted by Oakland, obviously, and my first spring training, I'm a new face, I'm walking through the clubhouse and walk outside, and I see this guy. The first thing he says is, Hey Lloyd. I told you [that] you didn't have anything to worry about, didn't I? It was [Oakland director of scouting] Eric Kubota.

John Baker (center) and Jeremy Brown (right) were each selected in the Moneyball Draft. Baker would play seven seasons in the majors, while Brown would leave the game abruptly at age 28. Photo by Michael Zagaris /MLB Photos via Getty Images.

All told, eight members of the A's 2002 draft class would play in the major leagues. Gradually, two players established themselves as the faces of the group. One was the very first pick in Oakland's draft, Swisher. The son of former major leaguer Steve Swisher, he was a rare combination of power and patience, packed inside a muscular six-foot frame. But his play on the field was only part of his appeal. No 'Moneyball' draftee had more tools than Swisher, and no one had a bigger personality, either.

Baker: The first day I got to professional baseball, we had a team meeting. We were in Salem, Oregon, and the manager says, Hey we've got a team meeting, new players signed, that sort of thing. We're all sitting around, he's talking and talking, he starts looking around and is like, Somebody's missing. And out of the laundry basket, like a jack-in-the-box, Nick Swisher, who's been hiding, pops up screaming something incoherent. That was my first meeting of Nick, him scaring me and somebody in the room by popping up like a jack-in-the-box. I go, Who's that? Somebody turns to me and is like, That's the first-rounder. That figures. That's what I thought first-rounders were supposed to be like. It was perfect.

Stanley: He was a combination of everything the scouts wanted and everything Billy Beane wanted in Moneyball. He was the perfect science experiment. It was a lot easier to buy into Nick Swisher because of his power potential. You could basically say, We're going to invest our time, money, and potential in Nick because that's not such a far-fetched proposal.

Pittaro: If Moneyball had never come along, I think Nick would still have been a guy we were extremely, extremely interested in. He absolutely would have been that guy, and his career proved that out, too. He was a Team USA guy, a center fielder at a major college program that had success at a major college conference. That's a thing where we weren't smarter than anyone else.

Teahen: Swisher did become the face of our draft class and he wouldn't want it any other way. He has a ton of personality and I remember right after the draft there was a conference call with me and John Baker, because we were the local guys drafted by the A's, and Nick Swisher, because he was the first pick. On the conference call, John Baker and I each answered one question quickly and the rest of the call was Swish talking.

Dickinson: Swish had been acting like a big leaguer since he was 12. That's just how he was. We called him 'Big League Swish.'

Teahen: I do laugh once in a while when I see Swisher on TV in a suit, because during our first instructional league, Drew Dickinson had to take him to the mall to show him how to buy collared shirts.

Baker: He grew up in a major league locker room. He acted like a major leaguer when he wasn't, and truthfully it pissed off a lot of people. A lot of people got pissed off by his act. But baseball is so complicated with those things, because how many people are angry because they're jealous he's a first-rounder who got more money, and how many people are really annoyed with the stuff that he does? Because when I look back at all my experiences with Nick, even batting behind him in Double-A and getting hit when he would pimp homers and they wouldn't go over the fence—I would get hit for him, it happened multiple times—when I look back at Nick Swisher as a teammate, I always laugh and it always brings a smile to my face.

The second face of 'Moneyball' was far more reluctant to be in the spotlight. Jeremy Brown, the fifth of the Athletics' seven first-rounders, was a record-setting catcher from the University of Alabama. He was also, by conventional wisdom, not a first-round talent. That made him the unwitting embodiment of the 'Moneyball' ethic. No draftee had more ink spilled about him in Lewis's book, or more screen time devoted to him in the eventual movie adaptation. For a different player, it would have been the opportunity of a lifetime, but according to many of those closest to Brown, the attention weighed on him like an anchor. It would become a major catalyst in his premature retirement from the sport at age 28.

Sickels: The only one that I thought, at the time, was a real surprise was Jeremy Brown. He was seen more as a fourth- or fifth-round guy. And, of course, the story is that he had really great college numbers but a bad body, not a guy who was a real pure athlete and somebody who traditional scouts didn't like. And I think that was very true. He was basically the first one [who made people] say, Oh, wow, why'd they pick that guy?... He was the one a lot of the attention ended up getting focused on.

Pittaro: Having seven [first-round] picks was great. Affording seven picks was another issue. Jeremy Brown allowed us to draft the rest of the draft. He was a senior. We got him for a senior signed slot and it freed up money to do other things. Mainly, draft the rest of the draft.

Dickinson: The ultimate nicest guy. At the time, always trying to buy and pay for everything. I think he got the least amount of those seven first-rounders, like $350,000, but he'd try to buy you dinner and buy you drinks all the time. He was just that guy. One of the nicest humans you've ever met.

Brian Stavisky, Outfielder, University of Notre Dame, Pick 6.188: Nick really likes the spotlight and he shines in it, really enjoys the attention on him but deflecting it on other people, too. Jeremy is kind of the opposite.

Joe Blanton, Starting Pitcher, University of Kentucky, Pick 1.24: If you watch the movie, the attention wasn't the most enlightening attention, either. I don't think the book did this, but the media after that kind of took their own spin and was more into, Oh, look, he's not a normal draft pick who is 6-3, 5 percent body fat, 220 pounds. He didn't fit that mold but he was a great baseball player.

Dickinson: I thought Jeremy Brown would be a big leaguer. Jeremy Brown was so good.… He actually hit for power, and as a pitcher, he was always so invested in you. You knew, Hey, this guy's got my back. He's not back there thinking about his four at-bats or what he could do to be about himself. He did what big-league catchers do. Big-league catchers run the pitching staff, and he did that.

Baker: I think if people dive deeper into that story and get to the bottom of him leaving baseball, I think the pressure became too much. Because it is unfair, to come from a place that is that small and to have so many people expect so many things of you. Even to be put in places where you're not baseball-wise ready, thrust into the big leagues or moved ahead when you shouldn't have been moved ahead because you have these expectations.

Pittaro: I know people are going to say that, Oh, he played there because Billy got him. Well, the guy did play in the big leagues.… When you go out to play and you have to try and prove everybody else wrong or everyone else right, it's a very difficult game to do that. Unfortunately for Jeremy, he was made almost into a caricature of himself and his abilities. I don't think it was fair to the kid.

Fritz: We lived together on a couple of different occasions throughout the minor leagues and if he had trouble dealing with it, he dealt with it himself. It wasn't verbalized by any means. I think all of us were a little shocked when he decided to stop playing. Especially when he's about to get this big-league job, backing up in the big leagues. The timing of it all was shocking to me, for sure, but we don't always know what goes on behind closed doors. The guy did a good job of masking whatever it is he had going on, and that's what caused him to step away.

Dickinson: Jeremy just had all the off-field stuff and it kind of brought him down and he never had the big-league career I thought he would have had. At the very least, he would have been a Henry Blanco–type, a lifetime 15-year backup type. That's how good he could have been. I always feel bad he never got to do that.

Tabitha Soren, Photographer and Journalist, Wife of Moneyball author Michael Lewis: He doesn't really like being away from home. He likes living in Hueytown, Alabama. He likes being with his family. He doesn't need to be on a world stage. He loves baseball, he would love to be someone who owns an indoor facility where he could train kids year round and have sort of like a mini-university for baseball in Hueytown. Instead, he went back and got paid really well and got amazing medical benefits to be a coal miner in Alabama with his dad and work the night shift.… If his personal life hadn't imploded, I think he would have stuck around. He says he doesn't have any regrets. He seems happy.

J.P. Ricciardi, left, and Sandy Alderson, right, each helped Beane build the foundations of Moneyball. Both men are now in the New York Mets front office. Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images.

On June 17, 2003, a little more than a year after the 2002 amateur draft, Lewis's 'Moneyball' hit shelves. It was an immediate commercial sensation, rocketing up best-seller lists and revered by casual and hardcore baseball fans alike.

Within the game, however, the book was far more divisive. Beane and many in his front office came off as strident, sometimes to the point of downright arrogance. It was one thing for a front office to espouse new ideas. It was another to spit in the face of tradition. Inside baseball, many in the scouting community regarded the book as the latter. In some cases, they even wondered if Oakland's real mission was to eradicate their livelihood.

Pransky: I didn't know a thing, to be honest with you, until I was in a CVS or a pharmacy or something, maybe in October or November. I saw a copy of Sports Illustrated on the shelf and one of the captions on the cover was something about the A's Moneyball draft or something like that. Well, of course that got my attention. I think they ran a couple chapters, a couple excerpts.

I sat down in my recliner and I read those chapters and I said, Uh oh. This is going to get some attention… This is going to hit the news and this is going to be something big. And you knew that some people weren't going to like it, just some of the things mentioned in there. Some people just weren't going to see it the way other people saw it.

Ricciardi: I think the biggest misconception was the scouting community looked at anyone associated with the A's as basically the guys with the black hats, that we were going to get rid of scouting, we were going to do the draft differently. They totally had a misconception about what we were going to do and what we were all about, and nothing could have been further from the truth. But it was a shock to the industry because it was a different mindset, and it got a lot of paranoia up among traditional scouts—and a lot of traditional writers who were friends with scouts, who got all of their information from scouts.

Eddie Bane, Special Assistant to the General Manager, Tampa Bay Devil Rays: I think old-time scouts, whether they said that or not, felt threatened by it. Because a lot of times, we didn't understand it and when you don't understand something, you always feel threatened by it. I think the old-time scouts, hopefully not including me, but even the middle-age guys thought people were trying to cost them their jobs. So that's why people got so fired up about it, I think. Wow, you're threatening my livelihood. Which I don't believe at all.

Pransky: Initially Moneyball was so dramatic and had so much press and stuff that automatically you kind of divided the camps a bit between the old school and the new school. That went on for several years afterwards. You had that, Oh we don't needs stats, we don't need this, and you had the other ones saying, We need all these stats. When in reality, you really needed to know right down the middle a little bit. You needed a bit of both. You needed scouts' understanding and you needed the numbers to do these things. For a while, there was definitely, no doubt about it, it was old and new school. There was no way around that. I couldn't walk into a ballpark without somebody mentioning Moneyball or the draft and You guys think you're better than me.

Pittaro: I felt the cold shoulder many times walking into a ballpark.… People didn't talk to you. In particular cases, I can remember, a guy didn't talk to me for a couple of years. That was part of the blowback. I think when you go in and challenge someone's view of themselves, it can be startling, obviously.

Ricciardi: I've had people say to me, You're an analytics guy. Well, nothing could be further from the truth: I was an area scout almost ten years. I signed ten big leaguers myself, non-drafted players, free agents. My whole background was scouting but all of a sudden I became a nerd.

Bane: Especially when the book came out, there were some people who made fun of them—or not made fun of them, that's the wrong word for it, but thought they were on the wrong track and they were taking it too far. But there were a lot of other people thinking, OK, we already kind of do this and they're just getting more attention for it.

Pittaro: Billy Beane didn't write the book. The Oakland A's didn't write the book…. Did we open the door a little too far? Yeah, probably. I think if you ask most of the people, Do we regret saying some things or letting some things [go]? Yeah, sure, probably. I just think there was probably more access given than we would have liked at the time. A lot of it was just locker room talk that came out in the book. I can't speak for Billy or anybody or else, but I don't know, if we were given the opportunity to do it over, we would have done it again.

Mark Teahen became one of three Moneyball first-round picks to carve out major league careers. Photo by

Jerry Lai-USA Today Sports.

Unlike the men who drafted them, the members of the 'Moneyball' draft class had little interest in changing how the game was played. " It's not like any of us said, 'Hey, we want to be a part of this fun thing,'" says Obenchain. "We all said 'Hey, we want to play professional baseball.'… They picked our name and we said 'Heck yeah, we'll play.'"

Nevertheless, it didn't prevent some of the front-office enmity from spilling over onto the field itself. Occasionally, it was malevolent. More often, it was innocuous. It all added up to the same thing: the 'Moneyball' draft class were marked men, and not just outside the organization.

Baker: It was the next year in spring training when people found out that a book was coming out. The previous draft class, the kids from the class in front of us, you could feel their eyes. They felt that they could now blame every non-call-up or pass over on us being a part of this Moneyball draft class. That we're going to get special treatment because we're in some book. I definitely think some of us did and some of us didn't.

Teahen: Lots of other prospects and players definitely knew we were part of the Moneyball draft. People that didn't read the book would make comments once in a while because all they heard was the stuff about walks and scouts not being as important as they once were. Obviously, the book was much more complex than that. For the most part, people were very supportive, but early in my career I noticed some people from other organizations possibly cheering against my draft class in hopes that Moneyball would look bad.

Stavisky: The Moneyball guys were at the lower levels but they changed the whole minor-league system to where they were trying to emphasize walks and on-base percentage. I think we probably were looked at as "the Moneyball guys" by the Double-A, Triple-A guys at the time, the new guys coming in once everyone knew what Moneyball was.

Fritz: You definitely heard the term "Moneyballer."

Baker: We were up with the Dan Johnsons and the previous year's class, and they really thought we were being shot through the system without any merit. It felt like that to me at certain times. Not that anyone was overly malicious, they just actually said that stuff out loud. I'm not saying I felt a vibe but they'd be like, Oh yeah, I wish I were drafted one year later because then I'd be in Double-A right away. That's just a natural element of baseball players and insecurity in a game inherent with failure.

The unique circumstances in which the 'Moneyball' draft class came together and how they started their careers forged an unusual bond. It was also aided by the writer who made them all famous. In the years after 'Moneyball,' Lewis mulled over the idea of a sequel, called 'Underdogs,' that would chronicle the players' lives since the draft. Meanwhile, his wife, Tabitha Soren, began photographing each of the players at the onset of their professional careers and continued for the next 15 years. It resulted in a book entitled 'Fantasy Life: Baseball and the American Dream,' for which several members of the draft class contributed essays.

Well after most groups break up and go their separate ways, the 'Moneyball' draft's closeness endured along with their reputation.

Stavisky: The numbers really don't measure personality and character and things like that, but either something must have gone into that, in addition to the numbers, or the numbers just produced a bunch of guys who really could get along that well.

Fritz: In my experience still being in the game as a coach, I think it was a uniquely tight group.

Baker: Everybody was 21 or so when we started our first season, 22, and everyone had gone through three years of college baseball where you develop how to be a teammate. And they drafted players that were thoughtful about their approach in baseball, so we had that common ground. And you add the element of everybody thinks you're only getting promoted because you're part of this special draft class. So you have something that links everybody.

Teahen: I think there was a bit of a sense that a lot of people throughout baseball weren't exactly cheering for our success, so we stuck together and pushed each other to continue to improve and grow as players.

Blanton: I don't think it was intentional but obviously seven first-rounders is quite a few and we all kind of moved together along the way for the most part. We all, I feel like, from '02, '03, '04 there were at least a few of us playing together on every team. So you play with the guys for a few years.

Fritz: [Tabitha] was there every spring and it was that whole draft class, so it wasn't just a select few or five guys she was taking photos of. It almost created a tighter bond between that group of guys because you were doing stuff together after the fact where she's doing a photo shoot at sunset and you're all coming back for it. There's 30 dudes out there for it.… Off-seasons come around and you're still in contact because of certain things with Tabitha and Michael.

Dickinson: With the Moneyball stuff, it was having Tabitha keep doing stuff and emailing us. It's allowed us to, when we may not have kept in touch as much, we talk more through email or something like that. Even that is nice to bring up a story when we played together. It's the stuff you never forget.

Today, Joe Blanton is the last active player remaining from the Moneyball draft class. To date, the eight signees who played in the major leagues combined to gross 41.2 wins above replacement, more than three quarters of which come from Blanton and Swisher. No baseball draft class is more famous or more influential, but is it actually an on-field success?

Stanley: It definitely would not have had the impact that it did had we not had a couple of players that really had success. Nick being one of those, Joe being another one that made an impact.

Pransky: I don't think Swisher and Blanton were guys that weren't on other people's lists. They were going to go in the first round to somebody. I think once you get past those guys, that's when the other stuff pops in, the other aspects of it pop in.

Ricciardi: I think it was a little bit out there in the sense that they took some guys most people wouldn't take and they over-drafted some guys most people wouldn't take.

Sickels: But even back then, it was not as different as everybody thought. It wasn't like they were drafting people that nobody had ever heard of in the first round. Swisher, Blanton, Fritz, McCurdy—these guys were all legitimate first-round picks by either scouting or statistics.

Pransky: Now it's 15 years later and now people can go back to that draft and you can analyze it. And you know what? You're going to get arguments on that.

Sickels: So basically, seven guys at the top, two of those guys became major league regulars—Swisher and Blanton, who had long major-league careers. A third, Teahen, was a decent role player. That's three out of seven right there, which is really good considering how difficult these kinds of things are. If you look at history, a lot of times when teams have multiple picks, there are many examples of teams that had multiple early-round picks and none of them panned out. So overall it's a successful draft. There's no question about it in my opinion.

Bane: Joe Klein told me one time—and I think it was brilliant, when he was my GM in Cleveland—that you get your first-round pick to be a good major-league player, you get one of the two-through-fours to be a good major-league player, one of the five-through-tens to be a good major-league player and you hit on one other guy after that. If you did that, you had a really good draft.…

Grading off the scale that I always use, it's not a successful draft. You need to produce more major-league talent out of a draft than that. In [the Angels'] 2010 draft, we got Kole Calhoun and Cam Bedrosian.… We had five picks in the [first] 80 or something like that and I didn't consider that a successful draft.

Ricciardi: There was some unconventionality to it but in our game, if you don't try things, how are you going to find out things? Look, if I came away with Joe Blanton and Swisher, and the rest of the guys didn't work out because they took chances, I wouldn't sit here and say that was a failure. I would say it was an exercise in trying to figure out something and if it didn't work, then I move on to something else.

Pransky: I think there's more argument about how the draft came out than, Should they even have done it this way?

Ricciardi: Moneyball is a way of surviving for teams that don't have money. I don't think it's going to be the end all, be all of you're going to win it all because history has told us in the last 20 years, it's been the teams with the top seven payrolls in baseball that win it. The Moneyball aspect is you're always going to have deficiencies but you're probably going to make yourself as good as you can on a limited budget.

I think that was lost on a lot of people. They come back with, Moneyball, it doesn't work, they don't win the World Series. Well, it's tough to win the World Series on a $50 million payroll. What you're trying to do is put out the best product you can and be as competitive as you can within the budget that you have, and I think that's where a lot of the scouting community missed out and were quick to pass judgment, and a lot of the writers were, too. Oh, how good are the A's? They can't get out of the playoffs. I don't think they realized how hard it was to make the playoffs on that type of payroll. And I think that was one of the biggest misconceptions that was out there.

Bane: Guys would always point to, Well, what's Oakland ever won? How many titles have they won with this group? That's the way people approach things when they're threatened by something: Nah nah nah nah nah, you didn't do this or you didn't do that. Instead of looking at the whole picture and saying, Hey, they've got some good ideas here, we need to start thinking about this.

Joe Blanton, the 24th overall pick in the 2002 Draft, has pitched 13 seasons and counting in the major leagues. Photo by Kyle Terada-USA Today Sports.

Fifteen years later, baseball has done much more than consider the ideas 'Moneyball' wrought. It has implemented them across the board; every team in the sport has changed the way they hire, scout, draft, and construct their organizations. Meanwhile, Oakland's 'Moneyball' class distinguished itself as the most recognized group to ever come out of the Rule 4 Draft. All told, a draft day born of desperation became one of the most influential moments in baseball history.

Stavisky: It's kind of neat that after all those years that the organization has existed, and the organizations that draft every year, this is the one draft class that kind of stands out with a title.

Fritz: I don't think they can name people but when you say Moneyball, they say "Oakland, 2002."… Even players now, when somebody mentions it, Oh really, you're Moneyball? They couldn't mention names but just Moneyball draft, you know Oakland, 2002. You at least know it was something beyond the norm.

Sickels: Fans of a specific team would remember certain drafts.... But baseball fans in general, I think the Moneyball draft is the one that gets remembered most often for logical reasons. I also think that back then, 15 years ago, there was not much attention paid to the draft in general. I think that's changed now, and the rise of the internet has made it a lot more visible. MLB has done a lot of work to get the draft more attention … and I think the Moneyball draft feeds into the increasing amount of attention that the whole draft process has received over the last few years.

Pransky: It hasn't just been the last 15 years. You take the 15 years before that and there wasn't anything of that note, I think, as far as the baseball draft. There wasn't anything that ever rivaled the attention.

Sickels: Statistical analysis for us, for draftees, is looked at a lot more now than it was 15 years ago, but that change can be exaggerated. Teams did look at it 15 years ago. I think Oakland maybe did it more, but it wasn't as big a change as, say, Hollywood would want you to think.

Blanton: On the stat side, there was probably a little bit going on before that, but [the 2002 draft] brought it to the forefront.… That's kind of where everyone started talking about analytics and this is how they do it and what it's turned into today. You're talking about spin rate, perceived velocity, exit velocity, launch angle, you're talking about so many things and that was the start of it, with on base plus slugging.

Baker: Baseball is always a sport I feel like is a little bit behind, even working in it now. It's a little bit behind and always catching up on that progressive front. What they did absolutely changed the game, not necessarily their particular methods but their way of viewing things and realizing that we need to dive deeper into this information.

Bane: We needed to get pushed into this century and that philosophy kind of helped.

Ricciardi: If you look at where the game has come in the last 15 years, I think if you talk to a lot of those scouts, they're a lot more open-minded today about what the numbers are. I think any time you can have a hybrid between scouting and player development, and scouting and the numbers, that's when you're going to have more success.… A lot of the unknown has been demystified, so to speak.

Pittaro: I don't know if there was any one point in time but over the course of a few years you started seeing teams hire analytics people. You look at the general managers who have been hired since 2001 or 2002, you look at the departments that have been created, you look at the positions that have been created, and over the course of time you realize that the owners have come to the realization that, yeah, you know what? There's something in this. I think that's for every team to realize exactly what that is.

Baker: And now, if you look, so many of these front office that fit those kinds of decimals—Ivy-league or equivalent educated, they're generally white, liberal-arts background or economics, they go to business school or law school, like in the case of my boss Theo [Epstein]. I want to say 18 of the 30 GMs fit this type of thinking. Progressive thinkers relying on data. If it didn't work, then it wouldn't be in baseball 15 years later.

So it's really worked in that this kind of ethos has now swept through all of professional baseball. And I think if you're not looking at it from that perspective, if you don't have that research and development team or you don't have a sabermetric team and you're not using this information, then you're behind and you're going to get beat.

Billy Beane (current Athletics president and former general manager), Paul DePodesta (former Athletics assistant general manager), David Forst (current Athletics general manager) and Eric Kubota (Athletics scouting director) all declined requests for comment for this story.

Multiple interview requests by VICE Sports to Michael Lewis's publicist went unreturned.

Where Are They Now?

Eddie Bane: Special Assistant to the General Manager, Boston Red Sox

John Baker: Mental Skills Coordinator, Chicago Cubs

Joe Blanton: Relief Pitcher, Washington Nationals

Drew Dickinson: Pitching Coach, University of Illinois

Ben Fritz: Manager, Tri-City Dust Devils (San Diego Padres Short-season Single-A affiliate)

Jed Morris: Head Baseball Coach, Eastern University – St. Davids, Pennsylvania

Stephen Obenchain: Supervisor of Portfolio Support Services, Donaldson Capital – Evansville, Indiana

Chris Pittaro: Special Assistant to the General Manager, Oakland Athletics

Jim Pransky: Area Scout, Colorado Rockies

J.P. Ricciardi: Special Assistant to the General Manager, New York Mets

John Sickels: Executive Editor, Minorleagueball.com (SB Nation affiliate) – Lawrence, Kansas

Steve Stanley: Owner, Stanley Insurance Agency – Scottsdale, Arizona

Brian Stavisky: Inside Sales Analyst, Dresser-Rand – Olean, New York

Tabitha Soren: Author, Fantasy Life: Baseball and the American Dream – Berkeley, California

Mark Teahen: Owner, Sorso Wine Room – Scottsdale, Arizona

Lloyd Turner: Hitting Coach, Vermont Lake Monsters (Oakland Athletics Short-season Single-A affiliate)

An Experiment That Changed Baseball: The Moneyball Draft 15 Years Later published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv