Link Tank: What Goes into Becoming a Pro Esports Star?

Esports, classic and contemporary novels by Black authors, most memorable moments from Oscars 2020, and more!

Esports is the hottest thing in gaming, but what does it take to be a star in this fastly emerging arena?

“A growing number of gaming stars such as Ninja, Shroud, TimTheTatMan, Anne Munition, and CouRage, are now making a living in an industry that could be worth $300 billion by 2025. Behind the scenes, execs like Bridget Davidson and Nick Allen from gamer management firm Loaded scout out new talent and keep the deals coming. Davidson, VP of talent, just joined Loaded from Riot Games, where she served as senior esports manager. Allen, SVP of Partnerships and Operations, has been with Loaded for about a year after stints at Twitch, Madison Square Garden, and other firms.”

Read more at PCMag.

For Black History Month this February, check out these classic and contemporary novels by Black authors.

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“After the incident with Barnes & Noble and their ‘diverse’ covers, I wanted to take a moment to highlight Black authors. Included down below are five classics and five contemporary novelists who have created amazing stories. I read all the classics while I was in college, and the recent ones over the years. I made this a mix of many different stories—so whether you’re looking for something more sci-fi or something more ‘literary,’ there’s something for everyone.”

Read more at The Mary Sue.

It was musician Bob Marley’s birthday last Thursday. Check out 75 amazing facts about his life!

“For a lot of people, Bob Marley is reggae music. More than any other artist, Marley embodied the political righteousness and defiant joy inherent to the genre. The dreadlocked troubadour rose from the slums of Kingston, Jamaica to become a global superstar in the 1970s and an eternal ambassador of Jamaican culture. Nearly 40 years after his death in 1981, Marley remains one of the most iconic musicians in the world. To honor what would’ve been his 75th birthday (on February 6, 2020), here are 10 things you might not know about the reggae godhead.”

Read more at Mental Floss.

Between Eminem’s performance of “Lost Yourself” and the focus on music-related categories, it looks like the Oscars this year were trying to take after the Grammys.

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“In most respects, the 92nd annual Academy Awards ceremony was one of the good ones: It ran closer to three and a half hours than four, there was no host bumbling through the thankless MC job, and, most importantly, Bong Joon-ho’s terrific movie Parasite became the first-ever non-English-language film to win Best Picture (it also won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature). Though there have been plenty of surprising and/or deserving choices in recent years, the Academy still makes its share of boring, safe, or outright lousy ones. The only upside of this tendency to anoint movies like last year’s appalling Best Picture winner Green Book is that the ceremony still has the ability to surprise us with something like Parasite, a critically beloved genre-jumping arthouse hit from South Korea about class warfare that wasn’t ever considered a true frontrunner.”

Read more at The Week.

Elijah Wood is reportedly excited for the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV Series on Amazon.

“Elijah Wood, the star of Peter Jackson’s epic Lord of the Rings film trilogy, knows as much about Amazon’s upcoming series as much as you do. Which is to say, he knows very little. But what he does know has the former Frodo actor very excited. ‘I know as much as anybody else knows,’ he told Inverse back at the Tribeca Film Festival while promoting his newest film, the black comedy thriller Come to Daddy. ‘I’m gonna watch with a great deal of curiosity to see what they’re gonna do and how they’ll do it.'”

Read more at Inverse.

Oscars 2020 is no less a spectacle than its predecessors. Here are the most memorable moments from last night.

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“‘Hooray for Hollywood!’ is what we’re singing now that the 2020 Oscars has finally come and gone and actually got it (mostly) right for once. The acting favorites (Renee, Joaquin, etc.) all won, but two major upsets — Parasite over 1917 for Best Picture, and Bong Joon Ho over Sam Mendes for Best Director — sent us home with a twinge of optimism in a year where zero women received director nominations and only one person of color received recognition in the acting categories.”

Read more at Thrillist.