Welp.

The holiday season is upon us, and with it, the usual slew of obligations: buying presents, topping up grandma's wine, running interference on that right-leaning uncle. And for the 60-ish percent of us who don't already live at home, it likely means spending a night—or two—nestled snug in a bed at mom and/or dad's.

Now, we know what you're thinking: "I'm a sex-crazed twentysomething! I'm not capable of keeping my hands to myself for 48 consecutive hours! How the hell am I going to get through a week with nothing to put inside me besides booze and mom's cooking?"

To answer this ago-old question, VICE polled a few brave pioneers who have already blazed that trail. Of course for most of us, having sex in our childhood bedroom is weird and off-putting (don't look at me with those eyes, Elmo), but since you're going to be doing it anyway, maybe you can learn a thing or two from these tales of success and failure.

Andrea, 24:

My strategy was always simple: get my dad drunk and wait until he passed out.

My dad and I really don't get along. We don't talk anymore, but when I was younger I used to go to his house around Christmas and we'd have to stay over and he'd make us ooh and ah over his stuff—child support money never seemed to show up, but he always managed to buy expensive shit like plasma TVs or a fucking pool table. Every time I had to go, it was horrible. I dreaded it all year long.

So one year, to make the whole thing bearable, I brought my boyfriend, with the idea that having him fuck me in my dad's house would be a good way to get back at him for, you know, my entire childhood. I knew that when he passed out, he passed out hard—a train couldn't wake him up. So we all hung out and drank, and anytime my Dad needed a drink, I'd do him the "favour" of refilling it for him. He inadvertently put down a lot of doubles that night. For good measure, we made sure to have him do a couple of hits off of a joint with us, and BINGO. He was out like a light by 10:30 PM. And then my boyfriend and I proceeded to have the most aggressive sex we could all over his stupid pool table.

The holidays really bring out the best in everyone.

You can do this. Photo via Flickr user m01229

Pete, 34:

This is back when I was in high school. We get back to her place after a night of partying—I don't know when it was—probably one or two in the morning. The house is asleep. We go to her room and get to fooling around, and I start going down on her under the covers. Classic: her on her back, knees up, with me in this little tent. And that's happening for a little bit. Then suddenly, her legs snap shut. It was probably a couple of seconds in retrospect, but at the time, it felt like I spent forever trying to pry myself out of there.

I figured that something must be up, so I poke my head out the sheets, and there's this dark figure standing in the doorway. It must have been opened, I guess. And I catch sight of this person, and my response, for whatever reason, was to immediately collapse onto the pillow and pretend to be asleep. I imagined that this was some cunning plan. It would have been the most painfully obvious thing in the world: me poking my head up, seeing this person, and then being suddenly 'asleep'. But it worked. Not that anybody was convinced, of course, but the situation just kind of resolved itself. They backed away. Nothing was said. And we never talked about it.

To this day, I don't know if it was her mom or her dad. I suspect it was her mom. I don't think her dad would have put up with that sort of behaviour at all.

Erin, 25:

Sometimes you have to get creative. A few Christmas eves ago, I got drunk at a local pub near home, and invited two friends—a guy and a girl—over to pass out since cabs weren't available. Mid-sleep, me and my male friend slipped into the living room (while mum and sis were asleep upstairs, and our female friend was still asleep in my bed). We just did it on the couch, and no one was ever the wiser. Although the next morning, my mom was pretty shocked to find two randoms in my bed and promptly called them a cab. Success?

Good luck, champ! Photo via Flickr user daryl_mitchell

Landon, 30:

The problem I have with sex at your parents' house is, every time I do it I feel 17 again. I moved [to Vancouver] from Ontario ten years ago, so I've always had my own place, but a few years ago my girlfriend moved back in with her dad while she was going to school. Her dad's house was way out in the suburbs and I don't drive, so we were almost never there. Why would you? I had an apartment in the city. But the one time we did have sex out there, it turned into the most 17-year-old thing ever.

We were on the phone, and we ended up getting into this big fight—she wanted me to come visit her, but wasn't willing to pick me up. She wanted me to spend two hours on the bus when she could have been in the city in less than half the time. Anyway, we got into a fight, and she kept getting more and more unreasonable. So finally I said "OK, I'll come out, but you're not going to like it when I get there."

I hung up and got on the bus and just hated her the entire way out to the suburbs. She'd calmed down by the time I arrived, and apologized for being unreasonable, and then I took her upstairs for some very angry makeup sex. And as she's probably ten seconds from an orgasm, we hear the front door open. And her dad walks into the house and starts calling her name. Not just once, either—probably two or three times.

Her bed is quite squeaky, so we had to stop basically right away. We just kind of froze and waited to see what he'd do. She didn't say anything at first, but then he came up the stairs toward the bedroom, asking if she was home. We were terrified he was just going to open the door. She said something obvious like "We'll be right out!" and we put our clothes on in this big rush. Literally the only time I've ever done it, and it turned into a scene from American Pie. She never did have that orgasm. Which, given how mad I was, was fine with me.

Her dad bought her a new bed a month or two later. A big part of me hopes it was some kind of comment.

Jesse Donaldson is a Vancouver author.

Anis Amri, the prime suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, was killed in a shootout during an early morning traffic stop in Milan Friday, Italy's Interior Minister has confirmed.

Marco Minniti told a press conference that the 24-year-old Tunisian, wanted on suspicion of having killed 12 people in Monday's truck attack, was stopped during a routine patrol shortly after 3 a.m. in Sesto San Giovanni, a suburb of northern Milan.

He said that when asked for his ID papers, the suspect pulled a gun from his backpack and fired. Police returned fire, killing the suspect. One of the officers, Cristian Movio, was shot, but his wounds are not fatal and he is recovering in hospital, Minniti said.

He said that the person shot in Milan was "without a shadow of doubt" the Berlin market attacker, praising the police for their response.

Read more on VICE News

For Christians, the key symbol of the Christmas holiday is the nativity. That iconic scene of animals, angels, Joseph, Mary, and the Wise Men silently adoring the infant Christ in his bed has captured the imagination of believers for nearly eight centuries. But according to some ancient Christian lore, the babe of Bethlehem didn't stay "tender and mild" for long. Apparently, young Christ could be a real terror.

The Bible is notoriously scant on details of Jesus's life between his circumcision at eight days old, flight to Egypt, brief tenure impressing folks at the temple in Jerusalem at age 12, and baptism at 30. Even these events are handled in just a few lines. Early Christian and classical rhetoric scholar Mike Whitenton of Baylor University points out that early Christians were likely underwhelmed by this lack of detail in Jesus's origin story. And that makes sense. This was an era when Greco-Roman biographies of legendary men took great care to outline their heroes' childhoods, foreshadowing their future power.

"[Early Christians] wanted more information about Jesus that [the core biblical] gospels did not provide," adds York University professor of early Christianity Tony Burke, "such as: Why was Mary chosen to be the mother of Jesus? What was he like as a child?"

To address this, early Christians, already busy creating other non-canonical biblical books—think the gnostic gospels and various other apocrypha—recorded or invented a host of stories about Jesus's childhood. Some of the most famous are in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which pops up in the 2nd century AD. Whitenton thinks, based on the language used, that it may have been a direct attempt to continue the stories of baby Jesus found in the canonical Gospel of Luke. Elements of this work were incorporated into other works, like the Infancy Gospel of Matthew, along with additional tales of young Christ. Translations or adaptations of these texts picked up new elements and stories, and even more tales circulated in independent folk traditions.

In some of these tales, young Jesus is a real mensch. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas shows him, between the ages of five and 12, miraculously saving his brother James from a poisonous snake bite, stretching a beam to help his father with some carpentry work, and resurrecting a dead construction worker, among other feats.

But almost as often, Jesus comes off as a dangerous wanker. When the son of a local scribe gets on kid Christ's nerves, Jesus declares that the child should "be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit." So, the kid shrivels up and dies. On another occasion, Jesus curses a child to death after he bumps into him on the street. Rightfully pissed off, the whole community calls upon Joseph to reign Jesus in or get out of town. When Joseph tries to talk with Lil' Jesus about his bad behavior, Jesus tells his father he knows the townspeople are causing him trouble, so he blinds them all. Jesus also gives a number of teachers absolute hell, resurrects a child named Zeno just so Zeno can tell his parents that Jesus didn't kill him, and only revokes some of his curses once a teacher complements him on how smart he is compared to the other students.

At one point, Joseph laments of kid Christ that "all they die that provoke him to wrath."

And that's just one text. In others, Jesus withers the hand of a woman who questions his miracle birth—just after he's been born; climbs a sunbeam, coaxing other children to follow him up, then lets them tumble to their deaths; and turns kids into pigs when their parents hide them from his wrath.

WATCH: Jesus of Siberia

Clearly, these gospels and other folk stories did not make it into the bible when it was codified in the 4th and 5th centuries by consolidating churches that became state faiths. But according to Burke, this wasn't because stories of Christ's childhood clashed with his reputation.

"The problem for the Infancy [Gospel of] Thomas when it comes to doctrine is that it challenges the Gospel of John's statement that the miracle of the wine at the wedding in Cana was Jesus's first miracle," he says.

Yet while some non-canonical texts fell out of circulation or favor over time, these stories of a sometimes miraculously kind, sometimes dreadful young Jesus hung around for centuries. Burke notes that infancy gospels showed up in dozens upon dozens of manuscripts. And according to the writings of Mary Dzon, a medieval literature expert at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, many clerics even in that era may not have taught these stories, but permitted them to flourish as useful devotional fictions. As a result, medieval art is rife with references to the miracles performed by kid Christ. Depictions of the good ones are legion, but Dzon notes many instances of his malevolent acts appearing in sacred manuscripts and well-executed art pieces, too.

No one's entirely sure why the ancient Christians developed this Christ to fill the gaps of the core gospels, or why centuries of Christians far and wide perpetuated this image rather than significantly tweaking or abandoning it. Burke suggests these stories were meant to show Jesus's divinity through displays of blessing and curses common in ancient literature—think God in the Old Testament. Brandon Hawk, a medieval literature expert at Rhode Island College working on a translation of one of the infancy gospels, notes that medieval people might not even have seen these acts as vengeful curses, but responses to what might be seen as legitimate insults against God. Hawk adds that the people Jesus cursed and berated are clearly meant to be doubting Jews.

"The unwillingness of the Jewish characters to recognize Jesus as Christ, or to understand his miracles," says Hawk, "is thus meant to defame them."

Photo via Flickr user Waiting For The Word.

Others go in the opposite direction, suggesting this image of Christ was initially uncomfortable for many—and that it may have been written by opponents seeking to undermine the young faith, but was reinterpreted and absorbed by the movement, putting a positive spin on common tales.

Dzon suggests that medieval folk especially may have seen a reflection in these stories of their own view of children: as irascible not-quite-adults. In this reading, Jesus is humanized by the stories—transformed into a growing being learning to control his powers and his human self.

"I've argued that the strange behavior... is attributable to what we might think of as 'growing pains,'" adds Whitenton, suggesting the narratives show his moral development into a man.

Some or all or none of this might be true. It's likely that the appeal and meaning of the stories shifted from their original rhetorical intent with age and distance, varying by time and place. But regardless of the context, as Hawk points out, "these stories probably captivated medieval people for the same reasons they captivate us today: They're entertaining." Modern readers rarely get to engage with these entertaining stories, though, in no small part because of Martin Luther and company.

"Infancy gospels began to lose interest [to] Western Europe during the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation," says Hawk. "Protestants began to reject it for its non-canonical status, and especially for its associations with the veneration of Mary [and] Catholics wishing to implement their own reforms also called for a return to the Bible... Apocrypha were left behind in these debates about the Bible, doctrine, and [other] theological points."

The tales lived on in some cultures—apparently some Coptic Christians still tell variations of these stories today—just not in the West. Elements of other apocryphal stories thrive among European Christians and their New World spawn, but Burke points out that often what survived was already part of established festivals or similar institutions. Without that, the stories in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and many narratives parallel to it slowly withered away by institutional marginalization.

That doesn't mean modern Americans don't have the same impulses that created this impulsive, violent young Jesus. Our culture still loves apocryphal views of Christ, take Martin Scorsese's 1998 The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ. We still want to know what young Christ might have been up to, as seen in this year's bible drama The Young Messiah. And we still love to humanize and reinterpret Christ in ways that range from the thoughtful to the absurd.

While modern man has brought the world tales of Jesus as bizarre and violent as 2001's Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (watch at your peril), not even this irreverent and experimental age has come up with stories quite as theologically dense, narratively amusing, and morally disconcerting as the early Christians' views of the young Jesus, asleep in his crib, but ready to unleash his blessings and wrath on the world as soon as he wakes up.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

US News

Feds Ask Foreign Visitors for Social Media Details
Government officials have begun asking some prospective foreign visitors for their social media account details. Travelers applying for the visa waiver program are now presented with the option to provide "information associated with your online presence." A US Customs spokesperson said details would be used to "identify potential threats." – Politico

Eric Trump Puts Charitable Foundation on Hold
The President-elect's son Eric says he has suspended all financial activity at the Eric Trump Foundation, claiming "no new money will come into the EFT bank account." The foundation has been criticized for opening the door to potential conflicts of interest, following rumors of auctioning off access to the first family there and via another group. – The Washington Post

Deutsche Bank Reach $7.2 Billion Settlement with US Regulators
Germany's Deutsche Bank has agreed with the US Justice Department to pay $7.2 billion as punishment for its role in bundling risky mortgages into bonds in the build-up to the financial crisis of 2008. The bank will pay $3.1 billion in penalties and another $4.1 billion to customers by easing loan repayment terms. Credit Suisse reached a similar deal valued at around $5.3 billion. - AP

Obama Administration Shuts Down Muslim Registry
The Obama administration is officially closing the Department of Homeland Security's Muslim registry, a post-9/11 program obliging immigrants from some Muslim countries to register with the government. The program has not been used in the last five years, but President-elect Donald Trump is believed to have some interest in reviving it. – VICE News

International News

Italian Police Kill Berlin Christmas Market Suspect
Anis Amri, the man suspected of the Berlin truck attack, has been shot dead by police in Milan. Italy's interior minister said Amri began firing at cops when he was stopped and asked for identification. One officer was wounded in the shootout. Fingerprints taken by Italian authorities reportedly match those found inside the truck at Berlin's Christmas market. – BBC News

Libyan Flight 'Hijacked' and Diverted to Malta, Passengers Released
An Afriqiyah Airways plane making a domestic flight in Libya was forced to land in Malta in a suspected hijacking. The Airbus A320 had 118 passengers on board, but Maltese PM Joseph Muscat said all had deplaned safely by Friday evening local time. – Al Jazeera

Australian Cops Prevent Christmas Bomb Attack
Australian police say they have thwarted a terrorist attack planned for Melbourne on Christmas Day. Six men and one woman, all Australian nationals, were arrested following raids on a series of homes in the city. Police said the "imminent terrorist event" involved a plan to bomb busy public places, including Federation Square. - Reuters

Duterte Calls UN Human Rights Chief an Idiot
President Rodrigo Duterte says Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is an "idiot" and a "son of a bitch" for suggesting the Philippines' authorities investigate his claims to have murdered suspected criminals. "You do not talk to me like that, you son of a bitch," Duterte said. – The New York Times

Everything Else

Beach Boys Consider Offer to Play Trump Inauguration
The Beach Boys are considering an offer to play Donald Trump's inauguration in January. A spokesman for the group confirmed they had been asked: "No decision has been made at this point as to how or whether they will participate." – The Hollywood Reporter

Chance the Rapper Drops Christmas Mixtape
Chance the Rapper has released a nine-track Christmas-themed mixtape with Jeremih on Soundcloud called Merry Christmas Lil' Mama. The Chicago rapper has also revealed some of his favorite Christmas songs, including stuff by Jackson Five and Kanye West. – Noisey

Amazon Gets Patent for Drone Protection
Amazon has succeeded in getting a US patent for "mesh network" technology to protect its delivery drones from hacking. The company is worried that its Prime Air drones could be compromised by wireless signal jammers. – Fortune

Companies Reject Calls to Add Encryption to Cameras
Over 150 leading documentary filmmakers and photojournalists signed an open letter to major camera companies urging them to adopt encryption into products. But Nikon and Olympus have said they won't be changing their cameras. - Motherboard

Donald Trump's cabinet will be the richest in history—one estimate calculated that 16 of his picks for top posts have as much wealth as the poorest third of American households put together. These selections have something else in common: They have given a lot of money to the senators who will be charged with vetting and confirming them.

According to a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics and additional data from the center's website, cabinet-level appointees and their spouses have given nearly $1.7 million to confirming senators' campaigns, leadership PACs, and outside groups that poured money into their races. (This total does not include donations from prospective ambassadors, many of whom are often political donors and require Senate confirmation but are not considered part of the cabinet.)

"There have been donors in the cabinet before… but there hasn't been such a large number of them at one time before," Adam Smith, communications director of the campaign finance reform group Every Voice, told me. "Trump is literally putting big donors in charge of his administration, everything he accused Hillary Clinton of doing during the campaign."

From the beginning, Trump sold himself as a man who couldn't be bought by donors, unlike other politicians. And he's bragged about spending far less money on his campaign than Clinton. But selecting donors to his cabinet raises significant ethical and conflict-of-interest concerns, said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at the nonpartisan good-government group Common Cause. "It's human nature to be disposed to liking the donor, taking their phone calls and doing something nice in return," he told me. "Access- and influence-buying that flows from contributions will likely lead senators to be perfectly comfortable to vote for a donor's confirmation."

Ryan thinks that while not required by law, senators should recuse themselves from votes on nominees with whom they have relationships, but he says recusals are unlikely.

The clearest example of a megadonor turned cabinet nominee is Betsy DeVos. In 1997, as the New Yorker reported, she wrote a defense of "soft money" political contributions: "I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence... They are right. We do expect something in return."

DeVos's family is worth billions and has contributed to a variety of conservative initiatives, especially charter schools and private school vouchers. DeVos herself was recently chairman of the American Federation for Children, a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" nonprofit that advocates these causes and spends large sums on state elections.

DeVos and her husband Dick, whose father co-founded the company Amway, have since 1990 donated over $265,000 to numerous senators who will consider DeVos' nomination; these include four members of the Senate education committee, which oversees the nomination process, and others including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

Perhaps more significantly, the DeVoses have bankrolled numerous independent political spending groups that commit large amounts of money towards TV ads, mailers and other forms of support for Senate candidates. Betsy and Dick DeVos contributed more than $1.9 million to several super PACs in the 2016 election cycle alone, including $750,000 to the Koch brothers-funded Freedom Partners Action Fund—which spent over $21 million benefiting four successful Senate candidates—and $400,000 to the super PAC supporting Rubio's run for president.

It's not surprising that Trump would nominate people who are ideologically aligned with the conservative movement, and that those people would have financial ties to Republican politics. But given the president-elect's promises to "drain the swamp" of Washington, DC, it's striking how many of his cabinet picks have been bankrolling the GOP for years.

Former World Wresting Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon is Trump's pick to head the Small Business Administration. In addition to donating more than $7 million to outside groups supporting Trump's presidential bid, McMahon has spent $650,000 in support of confirming senators since 1990, including $183,000 directly to the campaigns of 26 senators.

Then there's John Bolton, the hawkish foreign policy specialist who is reportedly Trump's pick for deputy secretary of State. As Paul Blumenthal detailed last week in the Huffington Post, Bolton founded his own super PAC in 2013 that chipped in more than $3 million towards electing Republican senators Richard Burr, Thom Tillis, and Tom Cotton. (Most of this amount is not included in the total given to help elect confirming senators because Bolton did not personally contribute the bulk of the super PAC funds.)

Andy Puzder, CEO of the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr. and Trump's nominee to head the Department of Labor, has spent over $151,000 to help elect 17 confirming senators, as well as hundreds of thousands to Republican Party groups. Puzder actually donated to Bolton's super PAC in October as well as a super PAC supporting Rubio.

Trump's pick for commerce secretary, billionaire investor and major Republican Party donor Wilbur Ross, has given $62,000 to eight confirming senators — including several Democrats — Rubio's leadership PAC and an outside group supporting McConnell.

As for ExxonMobil CEO and secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, Trump's most controversial pick, he's a big donor to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee. He's also given over $26,000 to six senators who will vote on his confirmation, including McConnell. The ExxonMobil PAC, to which Tillerson donates, regularly gives to Senate campaigns.

Other cabinet nominees who have given to the campaigns of senators who will vote on their confirmation and outside groups supporting them include transportation secretary nominee and McConnell's wife Elaine Chao, deputy commerce secretary nominee Todd Ricketts, Treasury pick Steven Mnuchin, Office of Budget Management nominee Mick Mulvaney, and secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price.

These nominees are broadly expected to be confirmed by the Republican majority in the Senate. But Smith of Every Voice told me that the senators who received money from the nominees "should ask tough questions in confirmation hearings, provide real scrutiny to the nominations and their conflicts, listen to their constituents, and vote on what's best for their state, not just for their party.

Alex Kotch is an independent investigative journalist who specializes in money in politics. Follow him on Twitter.

Everybody in the Tri-State area has strong feelings about SantaCon—New York City's annual December tradition where bros dress up as Santa and binge drink. To some, Santacon is a great opportunity to channel Old Saint Nick and get very, very jolly. To everybody else, its a vomit and piss-stained nightmare.

During the final episode of Desus & Mero this year, the two hosts put on brave faces and stepped into the heart of the Santacon storm, Manhattan's East Village, to see what the faux-holiday is all about. Spoiler alert: It's a total shitshow.

You can watch this week's episodes Desus & Mero for free online now. The show returns in January 2017, weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

For her 2014 tome Masturbation in Pop Culture, Lauren Rosewarne, an expert on pop portrayals of sexuality, identified over 600 modern film and TV scenes that either depict or reference self love. Male or female, shamefully or shamelessly depicted, at first blush the clips seem to run the gamut. But while many make open reference to a variety of sex toys targeted at women and built for the female anatomy, almost none make reference to sex toys targeted at men or built for the male anatomy—save for sex dolls, cartoonish inflatables like Bud Bundy's "Isis" on Married… With Children or uncanny valley fleshy imitations like Bianca in Lars and the Real Girl. Without fail, they're almost all meant to be sad sex substitutes for creepy men.

These depictions are part of a prevailing dim view of the historically limited world of male sex toys. But recently this image has become outmoded. Within the past decade, male sex toys have come into a renaissance of design, quality, and diversity, fueling rapid growth (at some stores, sales are up by 1,000-percent over the past decade) from a changing demographic of men, and shaking off much of their old stigma.

As Claire Cavanah, co-founder of the sleek and popular sex-positive toy retailer Babeland, puts it: "It's a good time to have a penis and prostate when it comes to sex toys."

There's not as much information out there on the history of male toys as there is on the ancient origins of toys for females. Yet it's safe to say that by the mid-to-late 20th century male toys were often shady, poorly crafted, and targeted at men with performance issues—think penis pumps—likely limiting their wider appeal.

The market got a boost following the 1995 creation of the Fleshlight, a masturbation sleeve that tried harder than prior toys to mimic the feel of human orifices using better materials. "They made masturbation with a toy popular among straight men," says Leo Debois of adamstoybox.com, a male-focused toy retailer that launched in 2013. "That's an entry point to everything else."

Yet the Fleshlight only did so much. Shifting attitudes, better materials, and positive portrayals (like the Rabbit vibrator on Sex and the City) brought female toys into the mainstream around the millennium, fueling innovation. But male toys didn't catch that wave. Recent studies suggest that many (or most) men, like women, have used sex toys—but they used vibrators, often built for and marketed to women, and usually on partners, less often for solo masturbation. According to Cavanah, by the mid 2000s Babeland (like many shops) only carried a few male masturbators, like the Fleshlight and cock rings, the latter mostly marketed to gay men.

Things got interesting around the turn of the decade, though. Masturbation sleeve maker Tenga, launched in 2005 in Japan, started to get a foothold in the US with products using innovative textures to move beyond mimicking flesh, and pushed sleeker, more modern designs. Meanwhile a host of developers realized what men playing with vibrators had long known: dicks like vibration. They started incorporating vibes into everything from cock rings to masturbation sleeves, creating new bestselling toys. Vibration opened up a new world for couple's toys as well, which could be used to simultaneously stimulate the happy bits in two people with the same or different anatomies.

The same period also witnessed what Steve Thomson of LELO, a meticulously-designed luxury toy brand from Sweden, calls "The Great Prostate Rush of 2010—a bona fide run on the anal bank," in which consumers, especially heterosexual men, began to demand more stimulation for the p-spot. Long embraced by men who have sex with men as something like the male anatomical equivalent of the g-spot, heterosexual guys began to realize they could trigger independent or stronger orgasms by embracing this old-yet-new erogenous zone—a recent LELO survey found that 71 percent of straight men in relationships had tried or wanted to try prostate stimulation.

"[There] was a clamoring of brands to produce new and better prostate massagers," Thomson tells VICE—from larger toys to vibrating devices triggering a hands-free anal orgasm; Babeland went from stocking two prostate toys in 2008 to 23 today. "When the dust had settled a couple of years later, the quality of male anal sex products was better by orders of magnitude and the landscape of male sexuality looked completely different," says Thomson. While sales figures for masturbators or cock rings have increased modestly in recent years at many outlets, almost across the board prostate massager sales have boomed massively.

Wild innovation in prostate massagers also points to a willingness to abandon the old male toy quest to replicate sex—a fools errand sex writer Lux Alptraum argues harshly limits their possible forms and sensations. Beyond prostate toys (and the B-Vibe, which replicates something akin to anal rimming) this impulse is exemplified by Hot Octopus's much-lauded Pulse, a penis sheath using an oscillating piston rather than a typical motor to provide a unique form of vibration focused on the frenulum that triggers a hands-free and (for many men) unique orgasm. Sir Richard's ELEMENT MS likewise abandons old design to focus on the shaft, augmenting rather than replacing sex with new physical sensations for both parties involved.

Abandoning the quest to replicate human anatomy and embracing liberalized design dovetails with a move away from scandalous packaging and provocative designs to sleek modernism—things the average consumer wouldn't be ashamed to own. Thomson thinks it was around 2014 when these trends hit critical mass, redefining the total male toy market. Debois started adamstoybox.com the year before because his team saw this growing and evolving male toy niche and believed someone needed to service it specifically. They've seen 60 percent sales growth year-on-year ever since they opened, which seems apt to continue.

Some developments in male toys may stem from the overall growth of the $15 billion per year sex toy market, which optimists think could increase to $50 billion by 2020—symbolic of a continued march of increasing acceptance of wider views and experiences of sexual pleasure. But there's been a special shift amongst men as well. One recent survey indicates that today up to 78 percent of men would consider buying a solo toy and 70 percent disapproved of stigmas around male toys. Retailers say the consumer base is getting younger and less embarrassed and sees toys as less linked to performance issues. Ariana Rodriguez, the products editor at industry publication XBIZ, thinks the focus on nuanced, accepting views of sexual pleasure in the media, especially lifestyle and health and wellness publications, has done a lot to push back on stigmas—which might explain why male toy users in one study had better sexual health habits than others.

"There are more resources available online that are promoting the sexual health and pleasure benefits of prostate play" as well, she says. "Movember, for example, provides a great opportunity to publicly explore and discuss p-spot stimulation while promoting prostate health."

Prostate toys have also likely benefitted, Debois believes, from a wider understanding and embracing of both homosexuality and sexual fluidity, such that typically hetero men no longer fear they'll go gay if they embrace butt stuff. Likewise better packaging and marketing, Cavanah and Thomson agree, has done a lot to assure men that buying toys doesn't make them seedy.

Despite these advances, Rodriguez thinks there are still twice as many female-targeted products on the market as male. Debois estimates female toys are still a decade or more ahead of men's. And Alptraum correctly notes that many toys still focus on replicating human anatomy and forget the importance of design and the diversity of pleasures male anatomy can experience. These products, like the updated Fleshlight models, still take pride of place in industry awards shows and mainstream media coverage and command major consumer loyalty and market space.

It's unclear whether the recent deluge of innovation will hold strong long enough to close the male-female toy gender gaps. Perhaps genderless toys focusing on malleable and distinct pleasure independent of the user's anatomy, like those LELO is working on, could lead the way in doing so. And thinking about toys and sensations independent of gender could well prompt all manner of new innovations.

For now, it's probably enough for people with male anatomy to embrace all the wondrous new options that've come online for them in just a few short years. Today's male toys already offer an entirely bold new world for most men. The more we explore it, the more we can break down stigmas, provide user feedback to guide innovation, and come like we've never come before.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Jim Glaub never intended to be Santa Claus. But the hundreds of letters that appeared on his doorstep every Christmas season convinced him otherwise.

Glaub and his husband, Dylan, have been mysteriously receiving letters addressed to Santa since 2007 when they moved to apartment No. 7 at a West 22nd Street complex. They didn't think much of it at first since previous tenants said they'd also gotten these letters for no clear reason.

But after receiving hundreds of letters in 2010, they decided to put on their red hats and get to work. This year, nearly 400 letters poured in, and all of them will be answered by Glaub's elves.

They've since created a Facebook group with helpers from across the world, and they scan each letter and email them to a family who wants to buy the gifts on the child's wish list. The letters always come from the Bronx, Harlem, Queens and other areas of New York City with significant low-income populations, but they aren't sure why those children wrote to Santa at a Chelsea apartment on 22nd Street.

Read more on Motherboard

In 1979, on the tenth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, New York City commissioned artist George Segal to create a monument to gay liberation. The resulting four statues, made up of two same-sex couples, were done in his traditional, solemn style of white plaster cast in bronze. They were so controversial that despite being completed in 1980, they weren't installed in their permanent home on Christopher Street until 1992.

While striking in their time, the statues today feel anodyne—a safer, softer version of the spark of liberation ignited by Stonewall itself. As art, they may still hold up, but as a public memorial, they fail to express a modern vision of queer liberation.

We asked ten artists and artist groups to imagine updates to these statues, compiled here into a series named Squatting on Stonewall. Working in conversation with Segal's original monument, they created new pieces to speak to the movement for queer liberation as they see it today. Some provided trenchant critiques of our current moment, while others created memorials to those we have lost, or dreams of what our movement and world could be. There is humor, rage, passion, betrayal, devotion, love, and anxiety to be found among these images—a wide gamut of gestures that might begin to define fresh contours for an expansive and diverse community.

Squatting on Stonewall transforms the expression of our liberation from a single statement spoken in one voice into the vital and complicated conversation it actually is.

Untitled

David Zinn is a Tony-nominated set and costume designer for theater and opera, including the musical FUN HOME, based on Alison Bechdel's graphic novel.

"I propose something akin to the fury and power of the original Stonewall riot—the anger that sparked it and the movement it unleashed. Flaming, literally. Giving warmth and light. And dangerous as hell."

The Lover's Grotto

Nayland Blake is an artist and educator. His is the chair of the ICP/Bard MFA, and has exhibited in numerous venues around the world.

"The Lover's Grotto is an attempt to answer the question 'How can a monument be engendering of further activity rather than a mute husk of previous activity?' It is an augmented reality monument based on the traditions of rock gardens and scholar's stones, that takes the form of open source software that allows mobile device users to activate a site by manipulating data."

Rainbows Are Just Refracted White Light

DarkMatter is a trans South Asian artist collaboration between Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian.

"Rainbows are just a trick of the light. They make us forget the storm is still happening."

Together

Adejoke Tugbiyele is an award-winning queer artist/activist born in Brooklyn, New York in 1977 to Nigerian immigrants. She weaves complex ideas about race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and migration. Her sculptural process combines fibrous materials around light metal structures, producing abstract figurative forms with universal elements of androgyny, armor, flight, seduction, myth, and mystery. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, and in significant private collections in the United States and Hong Kong.

"Together reminds us about the power of LOVE, which knows no socially constructed boundaries, including race and sexuality. It also builds on the history of Stonewall and is sensitive to the broader, complex nature of the LGBTIQ movement."

Untitled

Ken Gonzales-Day's interdisciplinary and conceptually-grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. Gonzales-Day's photographs have been exhibited at the Generali Foundation, The Getty, LACMA, LAXART, New Museum, Palais de Tokyo, and Smithsonian Institution, among others. His books include Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke) and Profiled (LACMA). Gonzales-Day is a professor at Scripps College and is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

"I wanted to imagine a monument that sought to acknowledge the difficulties and often limited life chances experienced by many in the LGBT community. The piece sought to formally recognize the site's relationship to the 'Stonewall Riot' of 1969, but also to speak to the larger issues facing the LGBT community globally. The billboard component of the installation was included to address the specific role of ACT UP and the Silence = Death campaign, which was so formative to my own experience of coming out in New York City in the late 1980s."

Sunday in the Park with George – A Lesbian Melodrama

Carrie Moyer is a painter and writer who teaches at Hunter College. She is represented by DC Moore Gallery in New York City. Sheila Pepe is an artist currently preparing for the June opening of Put me down gently: a place to be – Made in conversation with Sondra Perry and the anticipated summer heat at Diverseworks in Houston, Texas.

"By definition, public sculpture is the art of the common denominator. Our project, Sunday in the Park with George – A Lesbian Melodrama, revisits the social position of lesbians now that we've received a modicum of visibility when we look and behave like everybody else. Now married with an infant and mainstream jobs, our ladies suffer the predictable bumps and bruises of living in the new (New York) 'village.' Or are we witnessing, up close and personal, a schism between two women driven apart by the encroachments of heteronormativity into the intimate lives of lesbians and lesbian culture at large."

Untitled

Carlos Motta is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws upon political history in an attempt to create counter-narratives that recognize suppressed histories, communities, and identities. His work is known for its engagement with histories of queer culture and activism and for its insistence that the politics of sex and gender represent an opportunity to articulate definite positions against social and political injustice. In 2015 he will have solo exhibitions at Mercer Union, Toronto; PPOW Gallery, New York; Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen; MALBA, Buenos Aires; and Instituto de Visión, Bogotá.

"When I think about the Gay Liberation Monument at Christopher Street Park I think of silence... And I think about the failure to memorialize the lives of the victims of institutional abuse on our own terms. No one used words better than Audre Lorde. Her strategy to transform: 'silence into language and action' pointed to the violence, neglect, and erasures of history and gave us the tools to speak up, get empowered, act, and create our own accounts of history. For this piece I chose to ignore George Segal's figures, pretend they are not there and to give Lorde's words the power to represent communities that may have been rendered visible yet are continuously oppressed by failed acts of representation."

Untitled

LJ Roberts is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York and Joshua Tree, California. Translation by Marco Antonio Huerta

"to block surveillance
to thwart criminalization
a partial fingerprint
a reclaimed architecture
an unrecognizable body
as tactics
as possibilities
let's scheme and imagine together"

Study / Revision for an Embrace

Paul Mpagi Sepuya is a Los Angeles based artist whose work is founded in concerns of photography and portraiture.

"I propose an alternative to the touch so hesitant in Segal's original sculpture."

Fire Starters at the Unicorn Roast (What Happened to the Queer Radical)

Cassils is listed by the Huffington Post as "one of ten transgender artists who are changing the landscape of contemporary art." Born in Montreal, based in Los Angeles and represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City, Cassils works in intense body-based performance and watercolor. Cathy Davies is a designer, information architect, and all around wizard. Currently she casts spells as the senior user experience designer at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

"This illustration depicts a haunting: Miss Major, Angela Davis, Sylvia Rivera, David Wonarowicz, Audre Lorde, and Marsha P. Johnson gather around a roasting and flayed unicorn. The George Segal monument is used as kindling to stoke the flames of their revolutionary spirit."

This article is part of the VICE series The New Queer. Read the rest of the package here.

For whatever reason, some albums get less critical love than others. Chalk it up to a lack of hype, less visibility, or lazy promotional efforts. Whatever the cause, some records are bound to get swept under the rug to make way for the glory of a few select darlings each year. These overlooked gems might've slipped through the cracks in 2016, but all are still highly worth your time, Here are a few albums that unjustly missed out on many of the critics' coveted year-end lists (including ours) in this especially jam-packed year in music.

Read more on Noisey

Four years ago I bought my mom a ninety-dollar scarf for Christmas. The scarf was oversized, turquoise, and made out of a natural fiber I couldn't pronounce. The gift was undeniably expensive but I figured it was an appropriate token of affection for the women who raised me. That year I also bought mom an animatronic dancing Santa. It was in the discount bin and cost two dollars. The Santa spun in circles and played Jingle Bell Rock. Mom thought the Santa was the greatest thing she ever saw. She laughed and played it dozens upon dozens of times. She has never worn the scarf. Not once.

I hadn't intended the dancing Santa to become a Christmas tradition. It was a throwaway gag. A festive accent to the actual present I had put time and effort into. My mistake was assuming that mom loves things in the way I love things—with a droll sense of detachment and a well practiced eye roll—but that's just not the case. She loves things with an unbridled enthusiasm usually reserved for primary school teachers. It's one of her absolute best traits and it drives me up the wall.

"It's so good of you to make a new Christmas tradition!" she said playing Jingle Bell Rock Santa for the umpteenth time. "This is something I'll look forward to every holiday season! With a new Santa each time!" Jingle Bell Rock Santa stopped. Mom smiled and hit the button. Santa started up again.

Since that time my mother has collected twenty-two animatronic dancing Santas. They were gifts from myself, other family members, and well-meaning friends. There is the sunglassed Santa that dances to Gangnam Style. There is the limited edition singing bass that wears a Santa hat and croons Bing Crosby. There is also the jumping Santa that our dog tried to eat and is missing half its face.

During the holidays mom places these festive robots around my childhood home and sets them off at random. They are her absolute favorite things and have turned the simple act of walking to the bathroom into a veritable Five Nights at Freddy's, full of jump scares and unprecedented use of the word fuck.

This year in my latest effort to hide from my extended family and avoid my childhood friends, I hauled up in my former bedroom and decided to rank Mom's top-five Dancing Santas. The uncanny monstrosities were judged based on their festive qualities and movement abilities. The videos were taken between the time my brother stopped doing drum pad covers of Christmas Carols and when my grandma phoned to ask why we don't visit more often.

5. Gangham Style Santa

I purchased this bad boy at Honest Ed's, the iconic Kubrickan maze of discount goods and terrible puns located in Toronto's Annex [soon to be closed for a condo obviously]. I hadn't tried out the Santa before bequeathing it to Ma, and I couldn't read the label because it was printed in Mandarin. Gangnam Style was a surprise for us all. On Christmas when the tune blared out of Santa's backside and Saint Nick began thrusting his hips, Mom squealed until literal tears were rolling down her face. When she caught her breath she said "Go put Macarena Santa beside the dog!"

4. Figuratively Snowing Frosty

Last year due to a fun little bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder ( S.A.D LOL) I put off Christmas shopping until December the 23rd. That meant that I had to make my way to an overcrowded mall, frantically battling it out with all the other sad sacks desperate to purchase the their family's love. After four hours of grinding my teeth and swiping my card the only thing left to buy was the Santa. The closest thing I could find was Figuratively Snowing Frosty. Later that night on the bus ride to my parent's house I made him snow until the batteries wore out. I felt oddly at ease.    

3. Jumping Snowman

The Jumping Snowman made the list because the Jumping Santa no longer works after the dog attack. While Jumping Santa still exists somewhere in the abode as nightmare fuel for unsuspecting visitors, for the sake of this article he was disqualified from the rankings. The most impressive thing about Jumping Snowman is the height he gets. In my lesser moments I fear he will track me down replicant style in a hunt for meaning and vengeance.

2. Santa's Little Helper: The Walking Dog

Look at this bullshit.

1. Jingle Bell Rock Santa

The one that started it all. There he is with his face all aglow.  There he is spinning in circles, ringing his bells, and playing his music in some kind of ill-fated attempt to stay with it.  To turn on Jingle Bell Rock Santa you push the button on its back. Two years ago the button broke. Now unless you physically restrain Santa he will continue indefinitely, spinning ad nauseam, and bringing continual festive cheer until some Grinch comes in and ruins the party.  I am usually the Grinch.

Bonus: Mom opens up Santa's Little Helper: The Walking Dog

That look on her face… probably not worth it. I'll probably get her a book next year.

Follow Graham Isador on Twitter.

Over the past seven days, America witnessed six mass shootings that left seven dead and 22 wounded. These attacks bring the US mass shooting body count so far in 2016 to 389 dead and 1,485 injured.

Meanwhile, Europe suffered one mass shooting over the same period: At about 6 AM Sunday, a street fight in Nikolaev, Ukraine, escalated into a shooting that left four injured. The fracas brought the continent's mass shooting deaths so far this year up 53 dead and 169 injured.

All of America's latest mass shootings followed common national patterns. But the first three incidents of the week all hit Chicago, Illinois, within the span of just 24 hours, making an already-historic year for gun violence there even more brutal. Within the span of just 30 minutes last Friday afternoon, two mass shootings on the streets of the city left a total of six people injured and two dead. And at about 12:40 PM Saturday, a suspected robbery gone wrong at a reputed drug house left four dead and one injured—the deadliest mass shooting in the city this year.

The remainder of the week was mercifully silent for Chicago, if not the rest of America. Later on Saturday, at about 10:30 PM, a shooting at a nightspot in Charlotte, North Carolina, left four injured. At about 12:45 AM Monday, a shooting at a cafe in San Juan, Puerto Rico, left eight injured. And finally, after several days of relative piece, a shooting at a nightspot in Birmingham, Alabama, early Friday morning killed one and injured three.

We can only hope Chicago's tragic week is the coda for what has been a uniquely terrible year for the city. VICE has identified some 35 mass shootings there in 2016 to date (nearly a tenth of the total number of incidents nationwide), but more broadly almost 4,300 people have been shot in Chicago since the start of the year. That's already over 1,200 more shooting victims compared to the total from 2015. In fact, this year is set to be the deadliest for the city in terms of gun violence in decades, continuing a crime spike that runs counter to nationwide trends. Chicago's shooting rate is not necessarily the highest per capita in the nation, but this rapid upward trend is worrisome at best.

Most of this violence, as local officials like Mayor Rahm Emanuel often point out, is clustered into just a few neighborhoods and often perpetrated by repeat offenders with illegal firearms. The ridiculously high local gun murder rate—as high as one in 1,000 residents in some areas—and the lack of trust in or effectiveness on the part of a police force that has severely compromised its own legitimacy in local eyes contribute to a spiraling culture of violence.

Over the years, gun violence experts have identified a number of programs that, in case studies in Chicago and elsewhere, have had some effect reducing gun crimes in hard-hit urban centers. These programs range from targeted enforcements against key offenders and illegal guns to community-based interventions to change norms of violence and get people the social services they need.

Unfortunately, as gun policy experts have expressed to VICE in the past, these programs are not necessarily well known or funded, and need more study for us to better grasp how they can be most useful. Even more unfortunately, Chicago will likely be left to experiment with possible solutions on its own in the coming year. The nascent Trump administration, extolling a law-and-order message that suggests places like Chicago just need more cops, has been rhetorically hostile to any new form of gun control—and that probably includes funding for local programs or research into alternative solutions to gun violence gone horribly out of control.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

New York Times film critic Glenn Kenny recently observed that there are innumerable Christmas-themed movies, but most of them "aren't very good." Though many movies perennially televised in December or released theatrically each calendar year are well thought of—even treasured—there exists a noticeable dearth of high-quality, acclaimed masterpieces. As Kenny contends, "Holiday Classic almost never equals Actual Classic."

Critics are often unkind to the holiday cheer of the Christmas movie; indeed, many titles today considered classics received mixed or negative reviews upon release. Kenny suggests that "conventionally beloved," when used to describe Holiday Classics, is a euphemism for "widely disparaged." It's A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story were considered artistic failures and underperformed at the box office; more recent titles like Scrooged and Love, Actually were popular amongst fans but garnered mixed, predominantly negative reviews. It's too soon to tell, but this year's crop of Almost Christmas, Office Christmas Party, Bad Santa 2, Collateral Beauty, and Why Him? seems destined to suffer the same fate of consignment to the trash heap of cinematic history.

Despite this dim view, it's a mistake to see Christmas movies as little more than intentionally—one might say cynically—sentimental rubbish. Closer inspection reveals those beloved classics of the season to be quite ambivalent. Beyond mawkish sentiment, one more often finds a tension between a utopian wish—home, hearth, and community—and a fraught negotiation of life's challenges to have animated the genre's classics.

It's not that Christmas movies are inherently bad. It's that they are deliberately sentimental films about sentimentality.

Consider that the holiday film is a product of the mid-1940s, which saw the release of classics Holiday Inn, It's A Wonderful Life, Christmas in Connecticut, and Miracle on the 34th Street. At the start of the holiday film phenomenon, the collective national trauma of WWII cast a long and purposeful shadow over these films' optimistic message (derived from Dickens' A Christmas Carol) of goodwill towards all. What distinguishes these early texts is that sense of shadow, one in conflict with the idealistic desire for goodness and wholeness. It's a Wonderful Life is the prototype—a severe, surprisingly dark story is balanced by a narrative about the sanctity of the family and urgent necessity of tight knit community. But the line between optimism and pessimism is a permeable one—beneath every Bedford Falls lurks a Pottersville.

Similarly, Miracle on the 34th Street raises the issue of mental illness, while it also contrasts Santa Claus, the secular mystical figure of the season, with post-war American consumerism and loss of hope. Rather than blithely ignoring life's complexities, the artistically successful Christmas movie acknowledges and negotiates them before enacting a miraculous resolution to the dilemmas they pose. It is in that resolution where we find the source of the disparagement of holiday films, and the source of their proclivity towards awfulness: their relationship to sentimentality.

The question is not "why are there so few good Christmas movies," but rather, what leads to the perception that they are, generally speaking, so terrible? It's not that Christmas movies are inherently bad. It's that they are sentimental films about sentimentality. What seems to distinguish the contemporary Christmas film from the "classic" is an imbalance between severity and sentiment on the one hand, and the expectations of genre on the other. Audiences anticipate the feel-good ending, so films that liberally ladle the schmaltz over magical resolutions upend the delicate balance between drama and sentiment, producing an abundance of self-awareness. In other words, these films come off as transparently inauthentic, trite, and manipulative.

Philosopher Robert Solomon's influential work In Defense of Sentimentality provides a useful way of investigating the critical and popular understanding of Christmas films. Solomon (who makes a memorable appearance in Richard Linklater's Waking Life expounding upon the virtues of existentialism) observes that sentimentality is seen as a bad thing, as to be labeled a sentimentalist is to be derided as a hypocrite and fraud.

Those willing to see a Christmas movie know that it will recklessly exploit their nostalgic feelings towards home and hearth, and they savor the movie for that very reason.

Moreover, there is a correlation between sentimentality and bad taste—to respond emotionally is to exhibit bad taste. Sentimental literature, in Solomon's view, is "tasteless, cheap, superficial and manipulative," which can also be said of Christmas films. As one often finds with negative aesthetic judgments of popular culture, the audience is seen as equally culpable as the creative team. A sentimentalist is someone who doesn't just relish a good cry but is moved by that which is designed by entertainment conglomerates to evoke such a response. The sentimentalist enjoys their own manipulation, without irony, cynicism, or critique. Since this response implies self-indulgent shamelessness in enjoying being manipulated, it is not only objectionable on aesthetic grounds, but on moral ones as well. Those willing to see a Christmas movie know that it will recklessly exploit their nostalgic feelings towards home and hearth, and they savor the movie for that very reason.

One of the many defining characteristics of a bad movie is an overt manipulation of emotion. There's a nagging sense that today's Christmas films lack the authenticity of the classics—rather than obliquely acknowledging the challenges of life, recent works only introduce hardship for the sake of wishing it away through recourse to sentimentality itself. They may introduce plot devices that frustrate or endanger the characters but only for the purpose of getting to the tear-inducing result. Sentimentality, as Solomon observes, involves in giving oneself over to such manipulation; the criticism of consumers as complicit in this process implies that the emotions felt are not the person's own, real and authentic, but a product of the skillful manipulation of Hollywood. Cliché bleeds over into bad taste when evocation of emotion is perceived as being false or fake. In Home Alone, when Old Man Marley (a clear reference to A Christmas Carol) reunites with his family thanks to Kevin, we don't just partake in a good cry at the magical happy resolution, but appreciate the fact that the film allows us to enjoy a good cry, to be aware of our emotions and wallow in them. These feelings are seen as inauthentic. Solomon remarks, "The most common charge against sentimentality is that it involves false emotion" and displacement—we are moved not because of the movie before us, but for our own lost youth, lost connection, lost familial love.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the stories that move us the most are the ones that are, ultimately, about ourselves, with Christmas as the impetus for accessing those tender feelings—the crux of sentimentality in Solomon's estimation—that we suppress all year long. The sweet embrace, the warm succor, of the Holiday Classic is difficult to resist. For in the immortal words of Clark W. Griswold in the "conventionally beloved" National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, "Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye."

Dr. Julian Cornell is a professor whose research and teaching interests involve the politics of taste in American pop culture, with a focus on Hollywood genre movies. For 15 years, he has taught at NYU and Queens College. Prior to teaching, he was a programming executive at HBO from 1993 until 2001.

We're smarter than we used to be. In terms of health, anyway. Compared to the generation before us, we're less likely to eat heavily processed diets or tremble at the sight of dietary fat. We're still not great in the kitchen, but we're getting better. And occasionally, we go to the gym. Things are really looking up.

But we still have some problems to work out. Some ideas that are making life difficult and doing no favors for our health. Here are those ideas.

Read more on Tonic

In September 1993, Dan Amrich raced home from Electronics Boutique and jammed his shiny new Mortal Kombat cartridge into his Sega Genesis. After the SEGA logo flashed on his screen, Amrich's speakers pumped out heavy percussion as text describing three types of codes—ethical, honorable, and secret—engraved itself across a stony background. The last line caught his attention: Mortal Kombat adheres to many codes, but does it contain one? As a matter of fact, it did, and Amrich was one of a select few who knew about it.

Shortly after he began playing, his friend Carl called to tell him about a code he'd found on Usenet, an online bulletin board. Carl didn't have a copy of the game, so he asked Amrich to try the code. At first, Amrich thought he was referring to ABACABB, a sequence of button presses in the Genesis version of Mortal Kombatthat unlocked all the gory fatalities from the arcade version that had invoked the ire of U.S. politicians. Carl's find was way better.

Read more on Waypoint

Yeah we all took the piss, didn't we, out of Kylie Jenner, that Lola-from-Shark's-Tale looking motherfucker, the teen make-up monolith, the future of the Kardashian clan, the one who will outlast them all, surely, the one most likely to ascend to presidency long after the plastic remains of Kris Jenner have been incinerated to death: we all took the piss when, at the turn of the year, she said 2016 was, quote, "about like the year of just realising stuff".

We laughed, and then it turned out we were wrong. We laughed, and then Kylie Jenner escalated her net worth to beyond $10 million while we all somehow got a paycut??? At work??? We laughed, and then the world collapsed in on itself and folded in two, and now we realised the most important thing: we realised we were wrong about realising things, and that Kylie Jenner was right. Here's what various VICE writers realised this year:

"YOU ARE ALONE"

People always assume that realisation is a sort of moment that you can swim around in, enjoy, that realisation is an immediate process you can see happening in front of your eyes, in deep wonder. That realisation is a little like this: you are out, in the snowy woods, lying on your back in a puffa jacket, looking up at the clear night stars and the ink they swim in. Breath slow and watch the air around you shuffle into steam. You are alone, here, out here, just the occasional crack and creak of tall pine trees, the fresh chill on your cheeks, a slight icy dampness seeping into the back of your jeans, around by the calves. And then, there, in the middle of this peacefulness, boom: ree-uh-lies-aitch-shun, and the stars grow, large and bright, white and light purples, greys in there too, swirling ever nearer towards you, around you; you are levitated with your own genius; the air grows cool then warm, warm then cool, meaningless beneath you; and, like a laser, knowledge is transferred into your mind, through that good solid bit of your forehead, the bit you can knock on with a knuckle like a door. It is there, and you realise, and You Know. And if I were to have that moment this year – if I were to have realisation run through me like electricity, my mind and body on fire with the truth of it, even though I definitely haven't had that even once at all, but if I were to – I think the extent of my realisation begins and ends with this: the annual Amazon Prime subscription is not really worth it.

- Joel Golby

"MOST OF THE WORLD DOES ACTUALLY HATE PEOPLE LIKE ME"

This year, I realised that the world was still a totally racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic place. I know, right? But you can't blame me for thinking that maybe the world could Have got a little better, what with the first black president and all those tweens coming out as queer, and Transparent winning a thousand Emmys. That shows me for living in my liberal echo chamber! Turns out that the most of the world does actually hate people like me, and not only that they did hate me, but they hated me a little bit more than they hated me a few years ago – in fact, studies have come out showing that Europe is even more xenophobic than it was in the salad days when we had European Union diktats commanding us to only eat regulation-shaped vegetables and give our last pennies to Jean-Claude Juncker so he could make a giant pile of money and dive into it like Scrooge McDuck. Now that Brexit is happening, we can't even blame the country's seething hatred of the Other on EU fishery treaties. Nope, we only have ourselves to blame for everything that happens from here on out. Roll on 2017!

- Zing Tsjeng

"THE INTERNET IS A PLACE I DON'T LIKE ANY MORE"

I'm thinking over the few things that have brought me true joy this year and the complete list is: Stranger Things, girls with shaved heads and memes. But mostly memes. I'm not saying that to be contrarian or ironic or delicately pathetic. My duvet is frequently shaking four hours after I said I was going to sleep on a work night because I'm crying at meme accounts.

Women – and mainly women of colour – have used confessional femme memes to talk about female experience, mental health and their own truths in some of the funniest, most relatable ways I've ever seen.

Generally, though, the internet is a place I don't like any more. There's another "thing I realised". I only go on Facebook every few days, I hate Twitter but keep it for work, I only have a passing interest in Instagram. My phone is a source of suspicion – a hoax that means I should be constantly connected to work, to content, to the world, anything and everything. The news cycle has been remorseless. I'll sit at my desk in the morning before anyone gets in, scrolling through sites, wondering, like many other people, if the world has always been this horrible or if it's only now that I'm aware of it. Memes bring relief. Thank you, memes.

- Hannah Ewens

"I HAVE COME TO A REALISATION THAT LIFE IS LIKE BEING A POUND COIN"

Do you know what a charity coin spinner is? I am hoping my commissioning editor will place a picture of one directly above this so that when you read my poor description of the kind of large plastic money collection device they tend to have in the foyers of most RNLI gift shops and regional museums it won't matter too much.

A charity coin spinner – also known as a spiral wishing well, coin funnel or a coin vortex donation box – has a slot in the side, into which you roll a pound coin, and then you stare down through the clear domed plastic covering to observe your pound's journey down the funnel. Initially the coin rolls on its side – almost upright, as if along a flat plain stretching out in front of it – in a large graceful circle. Except, the coin does not roll around the whole circumference, as by the time it rolls back round again, it is slightly nearer to the dark foreboding funnel and is now leaning ever so slightly more towards it. The process repeats, the coin speeds up, the funnel deepens and narrows, the coin goes ever downwards.

Well, I have come to a realisation this year that life is like being a pound coin in one of these devices, and when you are middle-aged you are at the bit just before the coin starts going whump, whump, whump in horizontal circuits of the lower funnel that are so rapid as to be indistinguishable, just seconds before it disappears for good.

- John Doran

"THE CORNER OF THE INTERNET I ENJOYED BECAME UNBEARABLE"

Things weren't meant to end as seriously as this. Reflecting on the year we've had should have been a bit more fun, or at least more light-hearted – especially since a 30-second Kylie Jenner video on "realising stuff" underpins this entire piece. But, dear reader, I have to say that 2016 was the year when the corner of the internet I used to frequent – Twitter, Facebook, comments sections, what a teenager might call "mum social media" – became unbearable. The whole thing's fucked. At the risk of sounding like a Black Mirror scriptwriter, we've reached a saturation point online of people gleefully hiding behind the relative anonymity of their profiles, arguing for the sake of it and trying to apply homo economicus reasoning (itself a construct) to every statement with which they so desperately must disagree. Yes, debate is important for a robust civil society. But the way people default to angry debate online is beyond tired.

2016: the year I realised that we haven't really thought about how using avatars of ourselves to shout at strangers may come to affect our devotion to compassion and our aversion to being pricks.

- Tshepo Mokoena

"SMUGNESS IN THE FACE OF EVERYONE ELSE BEIN WRONG ISN'T A POLITICAL POSITION"

Strange as it might sound, being a political journalist in 2016 should have been a blast. Several times I've met somebody this year and they've asked what I do, they say something like, "Ah, politics, plenty to write about – that's good!" In fact, having to watch the puss burst out of the angry spot that is British politics has been fairly bewildering (though not as horrible as for the already marginalised communities who are watching their situations go from bad to worse).

I think that's because in a world as cynical as ours, cynicism is no longer sufficient to understand politics like it seemed to be when every politician was a blank faced version of the lesser evil. I'm not saying it's time to generate false enthusiasm for politicians, or lobotomise ourselves and stop being critical in the face of bad ideas. But those of us who think we've got it sussed should probably realise that smugness in the face of everyone else being wrong isn't a political position. Climate change, shivering refugees, increased bigotry in all its forms – all of these are bad and stupid, but knowing that doesn't stop them happening. An understanding that a lot of well-intentioned political initiatives are themselves limited should be the starting point of engagement, not the end.

The increase in dread needs to become an opportunity for actual change. We – and I'm using "we" to project onto others to make myself feel better, since loads of people have already been doing important work on these things – we need to go from cynicism to solidarity, and extend that to people who don't have the luxury to have that as a choice.

- Simon Childs

"TRIGGER WARNINGS ARE NOT CENSORSHIP"

Safe spaces got a bad rep this year, and the term "generation snowflake" was invented to describe people my age who are oversensitive about everything. The Atlantic, in an article about campus culture, said "the focus on trigger warnings and microagressions presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche".

I used to agree with that take, and while I still believe things like no-platforming influential thinkers who you disagree with is moronic, I do believe there is a lot to be said for trigger warnings.

Triggers are not made up bits of nonsense created by the politically correct. If your day-to-day life involves trying to forget being raped, or physically abused, or self-harm, is it that much to ask that people warn you when one of those things is about to be discussed? Or for someone to give you a heads up that the film you're about to see contains a gratuitous sexual abuse scene?

Of course we should still celebrate culture that is gratuitous, and I personally can watch a horrifyingly violent film and then get on with my day. But warning people about what they're getting into is not the same as censorship. It's easy for someone who has never witnessed their mother get hit over her head by their dad to say "man up, stop stifling culture", but if you have experienced that, and are having a bad day, it may be that you're not up to the task of reading about it right then, at that moment.

So what I realised in 2016, I suppose just at the moment that everyone else was backlashing against them, is that trigger warnings are not a regressive step but a positive one; they acknowledge the awesome power that culture can have, and recognise everyone comes to a text with a different outlook.

- Sam Wolfson

(Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy)

This year has not been a great one to be an inmate in a UK jail, with murder, suicide and increasing concern over prisoner welfare all making the headlines pretty frequently over the last 12 months. This doesn't bode especially well for Christmas on the wings, a time where an already fraught atmosphere can often be pushed to breaking point.

I teach at a prison, and spoke to some of the prisoners in my class about how they were feeling about spending the impending festive season behind bars.

MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS

Leon, 35, is in the last few months of a six-year sentence for selling coke to students at his local uni. His hopes of making it out on license in time for Christmas were dashed when he was sent back from an open prison for missing a weekend curfew by an hour.

"I'm used to it now, missing birthdays, Christmas, all of that shit," Leon says. I ask if he can confirm my theory that the atmosphere inside is worse during Christmas than at any other time of the year. "Yeah, deffo," he says. "And it's got worse since I started my stretch. It used to be that we'd get a bit of Christmas dinner, extra association [communal social time outside of the cell], screws would turn a blind eye to a bit of this, bit of that." It's not like that any more then? "Nah. Last year I was down the block on my Jack Jones for having a bottle of hooch in my cell. Wasn't even mine. Merry fucking Christmas. Basically, they've tried to make [Christmas] like any other day now, but they must be tapped if they think we're not going to know what day it is just because they don't plate us some turkey and roasties. Thank fuck I'm out of here soon. I'll do my Christmas in bed, watching whatever shit film is on ITV2."

I'm well aware that some prison officers can be massive jobsworths – or even pretty vindictive at times – but I ask Leon if he has any good Christmas experiences from the past six years. "Yeah, there was an old fella – hard as fucking nails, mind – but he brought in a load of takeaway one Christmas Eve, heated it up in the microwave and came round mine and a few other lads' cells who'd helped him out on the wing organising the lads, keeping an eye on things. Never in my life have I eaten a better curry. Made sense... we helped him, he returned the favour. Governors gave him redundancy because he earned too much. Can't blame him for taking it. All the governors want now is thick roider cunts, wannabe bouncers, that they can pay shit wages. Best of luck with that..."

Leon's favourite Christmas movie: Gremlins

THE PARTY-TO-PRISON CYCLE

Russell, 25, is due to be released on the 3rd of January. Despite never having served a sentence in excess of 14 weeks, it will be the fifth consecutive Christmas he has experienced inside. Russell isn't the first prisoner I've met who seems to have spent plenty of Christmases inside. I ask him how and why he thinks this is happening.

"Start off by getting released early in the year. It's cold and no one is partying, so it's easy to keep my nose clean. I'll be round me mam's every night for tea, then a few cans and a smoke before bed. Into March and I'll pick up a bit of work labouring, buy a Playstation, go to the gym few nights a week. Still no partying – everyone's saving or paying off their holiday credit card. Around Easter you might get the odd nice weekend, bit of sun. That's when it all goes to shit for me. Too much flake, too much cider... guarantee I'm looking at a charge some time in the next couple of months, and bang up by October, November."

I ask Russell if this is worth it. Wouldn't he rather keep a lower profile, do less coke and drink fewer snakebites, and actually get to spend Christmas at home? "It's never bothered me before. Getting a bit sick of it now, like." Having spoken to Russell previously, I know how close he is to his mother; I ask him if he thinks his annual absence is a problem for her. "She'll get a bit upset on the phone, but I'm one of six and there's fuck knows how many grandkids now, so I think she just gets on with it. Probably happy to have one less mouth to feed."

I don't buy Russell's bravado and am not surprised when he later tells me that the reason he wants to make this his last Christmas inside is that his girlfriend is now expecting their first child together. "See, when it was just me and the missus, that's one thing... but there's no way I'm missing me kid opening his presents, getting excited, all that Christmas shit. Time to grow up."

Russell's favourite Christmas movie: Elf

AN EASY CHOICE

I've know Gaz, 36, for quite some time. Like Russell, he's seemingly stuck in the habitual banged up at Christmas cycle; but while Russell has an endlessly patient and supportive family outside, Gaz has been homeless for nearly 20 years, with only intermittent contact with his sister.

I know that Gaz has worked with community outreach programmes in the past, so I ask him if he can shed some light on why he seems to return to prison every Christmas. "Because it gets fucking cold in December," he says. "I need to stay off the gear, so I avoid hostels and shelters where possible. It's alright most of the year – you get used to it, get to learn where to sleep, how to sleep safely outdoors. But come November, December you can't have it. Too brutal."

Gaz continues to explain that deliberately getting arrested, knowing full well he'll do a relatively short custodial sentence, is his safest bet to see out the winter months. "Walking out of Tesco with a 50-inch TV, slapping a traffic warden, trying to nick a bike outside a police station. I've done it all, mate," Gaz laughs. The outcome? "A couple of months of warm water, a mattress to kip on, hot food, catch up on the soaps..."

I ask Gaz about the rising violence and welfare concerns in prison, and whether this might make him rethink his winter strategy. "Bitter screws and some kids on spice tearing up the wing versus freezing to death on the street? Easy choice, mate, easy choice."

Gaz's favourite Christmas movie: Scrooged

Top image by Dave Herholz

More from VICE:

Here Are All the People You're Going to See When You Go Home This Christmas

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Looking Back on Christmas 20 Years Ago to See If the World Really Was a Better Place

This article originally appeared on VICE France

In the past, summer meant at least one guy yelling "Shit, look at her tits!" as I was waiting to cross the street. I'd ignore him and he'd call me a slut – because, when it was warm out, I sometimes had the gall to wear a tank top out in public. This scene would play out whenever the sun was shining. That is, until after ten years of trying to deal with my D-cups, I decided to go under the knife to rid myself of part of my breasts.

The operation for breast reduction is performed far less frequently than breast augmentation. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 1,300,000 women across the world have had silicone breast implants in 2015 alone, making it the most common form of plastic surgery in the world. The number of breast reductions worldwide in that same year was 423,000.

I was flat as a pancake until I was 16. I hit puberty late and had never had to wear a bra before. Boys mocked the fact I didn't have any breasts, but I didn't care—I liked my chest that way. Like a model's, I thought. Then one day they started growing at a phenomenal rate, which really hurt. In six months I went up three cup sizes. It shouldn't have come as a complete surprise – all the women in my family have large breasts. Like hair colour or eye colour, boob size is hereditary. But in my family it's never been a source of pride – as it is for, say, the Kardashians.

In fact, having Kardashian boobs when you're not Kim Kardashian – when you're not a celebrity and don't make money from your appearance in some other way – isn't as much fun as it can look. In fact, even Kim Kardashian has confessed to having had a huge complex about her breasts as a teenager. "I remember crying in the bathtub. I took a washcloth, made it really hot, put it over my chest and prayed, 'Please don't let them grow any bigger! They're embarrassing me!'" she told Shape in 2010.

Large breasts are heavy – a bigger cup size can weigh around 1.5kg, or 3.3lbs. That's like having a big melon strapped to your chest all day. Your back won't thank you for carrying that kind of weight around. That's why, in France, health services will cover a reduction if your breasts weigh over 300 grams each, and in the UK the NHS will cover breast reduction in cases where women experience back pain, neck pain and skin irritation.

Having heavy breasts might be a pain, but the way people respond to them can be an even bigger pain. Many men and women find it completely normal to leer at people with larger breasts, comment on them or worse. And it's not just insolent strangers – it's people close to you, too. Once, at a party, a friend came up behind me. "For a laugh" he decided to surprise me by grabbing my breasts, as if they're public property. It cost me a rum and coke and him the price of a new shirt.

"My worst experiences were back at school," Manon, 26, tells me. She went from a 36E down to a B cup last October. "Boys are really unbearable in their teens." I know this all too well – boys would entertain themselves by unhooking my bra at lunchtime, taking it from me and chucking it around like a ball. In the worst cases, they touched me like I was something someone had brought in for show and tell. It was a terrible feeling, but no one seemed very appalled by it. We didn't realise at this time that it wasn't something trivial – that this was well and truly sexual harassment.

"I often heard someone behind my back saying I've got 'a great pair', and then recounting everything they'd like to do to me."

Stephanie underwent a breast reduction six months ago. She tells me that it was this kind of harassment that led her to feel disgusted with her own body. " I don't like men looking at me – even now," she says. "I don't want to please men with the way I look, because they don't please me at all." Manon weighed the decision for five years before she chose to have the operation. "It's tiring; it wears you down eventually. Everything becomes unbearable."

"I often heard someone behind my back saying I've got 'a great pair', and then recounting everything they'd like to do to me," Manon says. Stephanie adds, "There are men who won't hesitate to mime a tit wank in the middle of the street."

I've also noticed that, between the sheets, some men are only interested in one thing: your boobs. Those guys tend to ignore the rest of your body – your mouth, your back, even your clitoris. I'm not exactly a prude, but having a grown man suck on my nipple for an hour makes me think of breastfeeding at best, or being a cow at worst. Neither thought is comfortable, nor arousing. Then there are the guys who, faced with an imposing pair of naked breasts during sex, choose to ignore them completely. When they're as difficult to miss as mine, that's frustrating too.

Not being able to leave your big breasts at home can be just as annoying at work. Manon recalls a day when she arrived at work and her shirt fell open when she took her coat off, exposing her E cup bra to all, including "this insufferable guy who had been leering at me for months". Women already reckon they're not taken seriously at work – about half of women in the UK have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. If you have exceptionally big boobs, you're likely one of those women.

"Eventually I just started dressing down," says Leonie, 35, who works for a large private sector company. She traded the blouses that "made me look like a bimbo" for oversized jumpers and large T-shirts until she had her operation. "One day a colleague told me that he was sure he had to work harder than me because he didn't have big breasts," she recalls.

Friends can have as little sensibility about the issue as colleagues. Manon recalls her mates telling her that she was being stupid when she told them she planned to have a breast reduction. "They said that having a big chest was great – both for pleasing men and for breastfeeding," she says. That's assuming, of course, that she aimed to please men, that all men love big breasts and that she wanted to breastfeed or even have children. And even if she does, it's not relevant – if a breast reduction goes to plan, it has no effect on her ability to breastfeed at some point.

The women I speak to don't regret their decision for a second. "It changed my life," says Johanna. "I can wear a bikini again and undress in front of my partner without feeling uneasy." Stephanie is the only one who's slightly disappointed. She asked for a B cup, but for whatever reason ended up with a D. "I still have a complex about it. I think my surgeon prioritised current beauty standards over my well-being, over what I asked for. Now I have to wait two years to have the procedure again."

I had a lot of doubts before having my operation. The idea that someone would cut a piece off of the most sensitive part of my body was a source of anxiety – plus I'm terrified of hospitals. I wasn't thrilled about the thought of being on an operating table for three hours under general anaesthetic and with a risk of tissue damage to the nipple. On top of that, I had people telling me that I was mad, that they dreamt of having tits like mine. I ignored them. Last January, three days after my 26th birthday, I had my operation. Today, I'm certain that it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. My breasts are no longer a burden.

More breasts on VICE:

A Guide to Big Breasts for Men

The Victims of Cameroon's Breast Ironing Tradition

10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask a Person With Breast Implants

Netflix's Sense8 hooked viewers with a unique story about eight people (sensates) from all over the world who share a telepathic connection. It also tugs at heartstrings with romantic relationships—the most powerful being between sensate Nomi Marks (Jamie Clayton), a white trans woman, and Amanita (Freema Agyeman), a non-sensate cisgender black woman. Many TV pairings teeter too far toward incessant infighting or improbable ideals, but "Nomanita" represents the perfect balance as a lovable couple facing unreal external drama. A free-spirited, colorful-haired book store employee (Amanita) and her lowkey, computer hacktivist girlfriend (Nomi) seem like an odd pair, but these contrasts drive the beautiful narrative behind their relationship.

In a flashback scene, we see the couple at their first Pride together. Nomi is verbally attacked by a woman who calls her the "tranny who blogs about politics," but Amanita interjects to defend her girlfriend. When asked why the incident made Nomi cry, she responds that it was the first time someone ever stood up for her. As the scene transitioned back to the couple before a present-day Pride parade, Nomi said it was when she knew she'd love Amanita forever—and it was the first of many times that Amanita would protect Nomi.

Amanita's advocacy for Nomi fills a void left by Nomi's broken family. Later, after Nomi wakes up in the hospital and is horrified to find her homophobic mother in the room—and that Amanita isn't there because, as Mrs. Marks coldly states, the hospital only allows family into the area. Nomi asserts that Amanita is her family—that she'd fulfilled everything Nomi desired from family: love and acceptance from someone who helped her feel like she had a place in the world. In "Art Is Like Religion," Nomi says, " I saw you, the first person that made all of that go away, that made me feel I did fit it, that I belonged. "

As a supporting character, Amanita's background was not extensively explored in the first season but Sense8's small glimpse into her family structure explains her open nature. Even though she was raised by an adoptive spiritual white hippie mother, Amanita was unsurprisingly receptive to Nomi when she talked about her connections to strangers. In "I Am Also A We," Nomi told her about Dr. Metzger's suspicious diagnosis and an impending lobotomy, as well as how she's been hearing and seeing unusual things.

Nomi expected Amanita to think she was crazy, but Amanita gave her hope by believing her story. Amanita also vowed to burn the hospital down before letting anyone touch Nomi's beautiful brain, and it's Amanita's fierce love for Nomi that helps drives the series.

After being hospitalized, Nomi knew that she couldn't let her own family take charge. The power struggle between families and domestic partners can get out of control when one person has lost their agency; Nomi was at the mercy of her mother's will, but Amanita came to her defense, even if it meant pushing the boundaries between right and wrong when Nomi helped Amanita escape. Amanita knew she had a moral right to protect Nomi so she selflessly exercised it without questioning her actions.

As a cisgender lesbian raised in a supportive environment, Amanita couldn't identify with Nomi's struggles as a trans woman and she couldn't fix Nomi's life, but she could respect the validity of Nomi's feelings. What's more is Amanita is adept at deciphering when she should provide perspective vs. when she should simply listen.

In turn, Nomi's unshakeable trust and receptiveness to Amanita's opinions display a mutual respect between the couple. This is something that isn't always seen depicted within television's relationships; too often television still relies on tired gender tropes and uneven displays of power. In the sci-fi world of Sense8, we see how Nomi made sure Amanita was a priority whether it was by diverting trackers with fake flights or keeping Amanita in the loop of her "cluster."

Nomi's character development was placed in the hands of the film director/writer duo The Wachowskis, trans women siblings, and Jamie Clayton, also a trans woman—a successful example of why we need diversity not just on screen but behind the scenes as well. Clayton spoke to author Janet Mock on MSNBC about her experiences on the show, saying she exchanged life stories with Lana Wachowski. Together, they brought Nomi to life in a rich, nuanced way without her story being diluted through a cisgender viewpoint.

Portraying Amanita was new territory for actress Freema Agyeman, who had never portrayed a character in a romantic relationship, much less an American lesbian with several nude sex scenes. Agyeman talked about her initial nervousness to After Ellen, but she said Wachowski's direction was instrumental in helping her focus on the bigger message—a sex-positive, passionate, and authentic relationship. Challenges aside, Agyeman's flawlessly conveys the character's patience, passion, and loyalty.

As Sense8's 2016 Christmas special premieres today with season two's release coming in May 2017, Nomanita's relationship will continue face new trials. As the connection between the sensates gets deeper, the couple's bond may become strained as Nomi struggles to keep her sense of self. Plus, the ever-present danger of Whispers hunting them could force the couple into new territory. However, they have proved that even when the world crumbles, they are a united front, providing a powerful message to viewers.

Follow Tai Gooden on Twitter .

There are always a couple of random gifts everyone frantically pulls out of storage this time of year. Their origin could be a yankee swap seven years ago, an ex-lover, or a well-meaning grandma. We all have received and gifted questionable, vanilla-scented things.

After a recent SNL skit immortalized the ever-circulated peach candle, VICE thought it was time to do a highlight reel of the type of present that no one wants or keeps. Photographer Trey Wright brought theses gems to life in the gallery below as a cautionary tale for this holiday season.

Inflatable fruit cake

Applebee's gift card

Nordstrom medium leather-wrapped stone

Yankee candle (buttercream scent) with mini cupcake

Bath and Body Works lotion in Dark Kiss and Velvet Sugar

Re-gifted old ornament

Nine bolt Duracell batteries

Celebrity perfumes (Meow by Katy Perry, Fantasy by Britney Spears, and Can Can by Paris Hilton)