This morning, Capital New York broke a fascinating story about how Wikipedia articles on police brutality have been edited from inside 1 Police Plaza, the NYPD headquarters in Manhattan. Among the articles changed by users with an NYPD IP address were ones on "Death of Eric Garner" and "Stop-and-frisk." Another page, on the shooting death of Sean Bell in 2006, was recommended for deletion by a presumed cop who claimed, "He was in the news for about two months, and now no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore. The police shoot people every day, and times with a lot more than 50 bullets. This incident is more news than notable."

Wikipedia has an informal rule against editors having conflicts of interest, though obviously users don't always abide by it. Though it's not clear which individuals were responsible for the edits, the list of changes made to Wikipedia articles from the NYPD IP address compiled by Capital provides insight into how police employees feel about policies, events, and news stories that affect them.

Like everyone else, cops have interests beyond their jobs, and Wikipedia edits made from that IP address concern a wide variety of topics ranging from Alkaline Trio to the Rush song "Xanadu." We decided to look through some of the NYPD's less politically charged contributions to the online encyclopedia to see what's important to New York's Finest.

Fucking with Other Cops:

On September 23, 2012, they tweaked the entry on Four Loko to tease a cop named Phil Anschick:

Four Loko in Phil Anschick - contains 24% [[alcohol by volume]] and 24% less brain cells

The Japanese comic Sailor Moon was also used to tease Anschick that same day:

Sailor moon originated with a wet dream that Phillip Anschick had during a nap in study hall 1997

On August 9, 2012, it was Barry Manilow time:

In August 2012, Manilow and inspiration to millions, met face to face with his biggest FANILOW... Michael Dario of NYC. Dario was quoted as saying, "This is the biggest moment of my life. It's even bigger than my Las Vegas Wedding."

Politics:

On September 25, 2012, noted left-wing activist Susan Sarandon was in some NYPD employee's crosshairs:

She is also noted for her social and political activism for a variety of [[Modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]] causes. Most of which are all Commie-Pinko, Liberal causes that are for criminals and dictators.

The Classics:

On January 3, 2008, a George Orwell scholar weighed in:

While it is common in Europe today to use a 24-hour clock, it must be kept in mind that at the time the book was written, English readers would refer to that hour as "one", and not "thirteen". In 1949, a clock that struck thirteen would not hvae existed, and so there is am immediate shock of dislocation to the reader presented in the opening line.

On March 28, 2008, someone was reading Dante's Inferno:

Brooklyn South Narcotics of the NYPD is an offshoot of this circle of Hell.

On March 22, 2007, the target was everybody's favorite nude mag:

Today, ''Playboy'' is still Responsible for teenage boys for having their first orgazime.

Race:

This May 13, 2011, tweak to the entry on Today Show host Hoda Kotb speaks for itself:

Who are you to decide someone's ethnicity? If someone's parents were born in Italy, then say their child, who was born in America and only speaks an American dilect Eglish, went to Italy, the people Italy would laugh at him if he claimed that he was Italian. Especially when that person orders a Cappucino after his dinner. Have you never heard of American Cuisine, I'm sure Indian's weren't eating hot dogs and hamburgers before Christopher Colombus showed up. With your logic Indians and the Eskimos can't call themselves American either, they're actually Asian.

Sports:

On January 25, 2008, recently retired Yankees shortstop and book publishing maven Derek Jeter got some love:

In other news P.O. Rindos would like to thank Derek Jeter for "making the bronx exciting again." This was a gift to the star on his 22nd birthday

And on May 28, 2009, New York's boys in blue paid their respects to hall-of-fame baseball player Ted Williams:

The manliest man this country ever produced.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Our third season of VICE is currently airing Fridays on HBO, and we've got a sneak peek of tonight's episode to get you excited. Last week, we investigated climate change, in the process traveling from the melting glaciers in Antarctica to the decision makers in the United Nations. This week, host Thomas Morton takes a look at the increasing militarization of America's police in the aftermath of Michael Brown's fatal shooting in Ferguson. Watch an exclusive clip of Thomas playing with weaponry at a gun show, and then catch the full episode tonight.

Watch VICE Fridays at on HBO at 11 PM, 10 PM Central.

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Photo via Flickr user alexkerhead

Last month, New York City Councilman Daniel Dromm introduced a bill meant to eliminate typewriters from police stations by the end of 2015. This is a police department that's already equipped with secret drones (maybe!), specialized Windows phones, and advanced data collection and analysis technology, so the idea that they have to be told not to use typewriters seems somewhat anachronistic and surprising. Police officials have argued that certain forms officers must fill out have not yet been digitized, but until the files go in the computer, the typewriters stay in the stations.

The NYPD aren't the only ones still using typewriters in 2015. According to a 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal, the machines are also still used by funeral homes, where death certificates are often filled out on typewriters, as well as prisons, where inmates often use them in lieu of computers for correspondence. The machines are still widely used in areas of the world such as India and Latin America, where reliable electricity is sometimes not a guarantee. Olivetti, one of the last remaining typewriter manufacturers, is based in Brazil. The German government, for a time, resorted to using typewriters to write up sensitive documents to keep the NSA in the dark.

Typewriters have a certain mystique among authors, especially ones who came of age in the pre-internet era. Hunter S. Thompson used them up until his 2005 suicide, the science fiction author Harlan Ellison prefers them over computers, and Cormac McCarthy used the same typewriter for 50 years, because of course he did.

Young Americans use typewriters too—though their reasons are mostly aesthetic. Much like vinyl, which has seen a resurgence in the past few years, typewriters offer a tactile sensation that an mp3 or computer word processor cannot. Just as many argue that taking a record out of its sleeve, carefully placing it on a turntable, and positioning a needle over a groove offers a completely different experience than simply pressing "play" on a song, one might argue that the physical sensation of pushing down a key and watching words take shape on a piece of paper in front of you jogs different parts of your brain than sitting and churning out words into a Google doc.

Using a typewriter can be a way of signaling your seriousness or soulfulness or your appreciation for nostalgia. If you're typing by hand, you can imagine you're using the same instrument that Kerouac and Bukowski and Ginsberg used. By contrast, everyone uses computers. Your mom uses a computer. It's no surprise that Urban Outfitters, one of the companies most responsible for the commercialization of hip aesthetics, sold Olivetti models for a time, though according to the retail chain's website it no longer offers them.

Tony Abbadessa of Chicago, a self-proclaimed "philosopher, theologian, and poet," tells me he uses his Olivetti Underwood 21 to write poetry "pretty much exclusively." He tells me, "It's a really good tool. All of your drafts are saved, it feels great, and it's really pretentious—you can imagine whatever poet you like from the 50s doing it, too." He also points out that a typewriter is an easy tool for those with poor handwriting to write legibly on birthday cards and other bits of ephemera. "Everyone should have a fucking typewriter," he says.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/wZCh4EY_kug' width='640' height='480']

"It's completely different from a laptop," Zach Schonfeld, a Brooklyn-based culture writer for Newsweek who inherited his Olympia manual typewriter from his grandfather, says. "You have to think before every word, because you can't backspace."

Jackie Shuman, who works in music supervision in Los Angeles, echoes this sentiment. "I tend to think about what I want to write BEFORE I use a typewriter. In an email I just type as a I go and whatever mundane crap about my day comes out."

Perhaps because of the premeditation involved with composing on a typewriter, those who write poetry tend to favor them. Charlie Ambler, a VICE contributor who occasionally writes poetry on a typewriter in his spare time, tells me, "It just produces text on a page, finished, immediately, it makes noise, and it's more physical than something like TextEdit." For Ambler, part of the novelty also lies within the typewriter's ability to immediately produce work on an array of materials. "I was drunk one time," he says, "and was like, 'These poems are so shitty,' so I started typing them on toilet paper."

Despite their passion, typewriter fans are a tiny minority—computers are so much better at doing so many different things, and most people regard typewriters as quaint at best and an affectation at worst. But companies like Olivetti and Brother soldier on, manufacturing typewriters for both home and office use, and there remains a small but dedicated community who collect them. Antique typewriters routinely go for upwards of $1,000 on eBay, and Tom Hanks is such a fan of them that he developed an iPad app called Hanx Writer that replicates the look and feel of three vintage typewriters from his personal collection. In an interview with NPR about the app, he said, "Typing on an actual typewriter on paper is only a softer version of chiseling words into stone." As long as a computer can't replicate that feeling, typewriters may always have a home in the world.

Drew Millard is on Twitter.

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Bill and Turner Ross's documentary, Western, premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival to widespread praise. The film is about two sister towns located on either side of the Rio Grande. Although the towns are technically in different countries—Eagle Pass, Texas, and Piedras Negras, Zócalo, in Mexico—the film shows them intermingled in both business and personal matters. But throughout the course of the documentary's 13-month span, a rash of cartel violence in Piedras Negras begins to drive a wedge between the towns. The subsequent uproar in Texas, and the United States as a whole, shines a sharp light on our complex relationship with Mexico.

One of Western's first scenes takes place at the Abrazo Ceremony, where families from both towns meet for fireworks, food, and music to celebrate their continuing connection. (Abrazo means "hug" in Spanish.) But the Ross brothers capture the towns' growing schism as drug cartel fears and border anxieties ultimately lead to the Justice Department suing Eagle Pass for the right to erect a $49 billion wall between them.

Despite dealing with politically-charged topics, the Ross brothers' documentary does not take a stand on immigration or the drug trade. Western is, simply, a glimpse at two towns on opposite banks of a river who happen to be in the middle of something beyond their control.

I spoke to the Ross brothers last week as they were getting ready to leave for Austin, Texas, where the film will be shown during SXSW's Festival Favorite category.

VICE: What first brought you to Eagle Pass, Texas?
Turner Ross: The idea was to go out and make a non-fiction western. Or, to say it differently, go out and find what the frontier actually looks like in its modern-day iteration. We scouted border towns from New Mexico down the Rio Grande and eventually landed in Eagle Pass, Texas. Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras are two symbiotic towns facing each other on the Rio Grande, so visually it sort of tells that story. And since we're relying a lot on visual storytelling to do that, it made a lot of sense.

And in Eagle Pass, there was Mayor Chad Foster, a giant iconic figure who started opening doors. We stayed there for 13 months and captured what we could.

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Photo by Harry Garfunkel

Mayor Foster is such a larger-than-life character in Western—a cowboy hat-wearing, bilingual, incredibly idealistic Texan. Was it just luck to stumble upon him, or did you go town-to-town looking for a mayor like Foster?
He just happened to exist. The amazing thing, always with all of this stuff, is that we're depending on real life to give us the things we need. John Wayne actually exists somewhere, and he looks like that.

The regions of tension in Mexico are constantly shifting, because much of the violence stems from cartels fighting for control of an area. You happened to be in Piedras Negas while the cartels were battling over that region. Has Piedras Negras become less violent since you left?
It goes in waves, and it just happened to be the crest of a wave while we were there. Another wave came in a couple years after we left, and it got really nasty. But life's like that. Life goes on, and this crazy shit, this noise, happens in the background, and sometimes right in your face, but it's not necessarily the community that's living there. It's this other thing—this wild industry—that has to make its way illegally through the corridors of business.

At the time you were there, the mayor of Piedras Negras died in a plane crash that appears to have been cartel-related, and Mayor Foster was in a café during a shooting. Did you guys feel the violence around you while you were filming?
I hope that we presented the movie in such a way that you feel it the way that we felt it, and the way that we think most other people feel it to, which is just this anxiety. A lot of times, it's not right in your face. Sometimes it is, but other times just the awareness of it creates that great discomfort.

The cartels are noticeably absent from the film, except in news clips. Was that meant to mirror the experience in town?
Bill Ross: It was out of a desire to see the place as the people we were filming saw it. Like you say, they only hear about it. Although it's very close to them, they're not seeing the heads rolling on the floor.
Turner: So it's the truth and also a filmic device. That thing becomes scarier and creates more anxiety if you don't see it—if you don't put a face to it.

You guys lived in a town on the border for over a year. Obviously, the conversation about immigration reform and drug reform is going to continue to come up more as the 2016 presidential election approaches. What did you learn from your time in Eagle Pass? What can be done?
It's much bigger than a talking point. It's a cultural region. And you know, our own politics, our own ideas, are our own. Really, I don't feel that it's our place to say those things. Our movies aren't trying to say those things.

If we've done anything, I hope that we've at least created a capsule of a place, instead of the vision of something being absorbed through political talking points. It's people's lives! I don't think our politics are important. We're more interested in figuring out what that place actually looks like, as opposed to what we're supposed to argue about regarding that region.

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Photo courtesy of Lilith Starr

Some find recovery in a church basement. Others need something with a little more Satan. I was first introduced to the Satanic Temple through participation in the Harvard Black Mass because, you know, sometimes in life you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bondage nun. As a politically active organization—you may have read about their statue in Oklahoma—the Temple separates itself from the Church of Satan by doing away with elitism. Instead of worshipping demons through child sacrifice, as Satanic panic might have you believe, many Satanists use the Temple's emphasis on free will and personal empowerment to overcome their personal demons. To learn more about how Satanism can help alcoholics and drug addicts overcome addiction, I turned to Lilith Starr, the head of the Seattle chapter of the Satanic Temple. With a BA in English from Harvard and an MA in Journalism from Stanford, Lilith scooped up the ashes from a charmed life destroyed by drugs and sprinkled them in the shape of a pentagram, recast as a happy Satanist. (That's even the name of her book, The Happy Satanist, due out this spring.) I spoke with Starr about how she beat a nasty nitrous addiction with the power of Satan.

VICE: Hey, Lilith. Can you introduce yourself?
Lilith Starr: I'm Lilith Starr and I'm the head of the Seattle chapter of the Satanic Temple. I live in Seattle with my husband who is also my full-time slave boy.

How did you become involved with the Temple?
I've just been following them online and seeing what they are doing, and I got really excited. I was digging into their website and there was a section on how to ask about a chapter, and I decided to ask about it. There wasn't [a Seattle chapter] so I decided I was up to the task of chapter head.

I love learning how many women hold power within the Temple.
Right? It's amazing. Our group has a lot women and it's really diverse.

How did you end up involved in drugs?
My drug past is basically all of my adult life, after I got out of college. Before college I never tried any alcohol or drugs. Then I got into college and I found alcohol. I really liked alcohol and I became the social director for the band. That was my life, throwing parties and partying. When I got to grad school and joined the [Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band] they were doing drugs. So I got my taste of soft drugs. I got addicted to nitrous oxide, of all things. It's super rare, but in the Stanford band we used a lot of it. It was legal to get. I also did mushrooms there, I did acid for the first time, and I really liked the mushrooms. They had a really good antidepressant effect for me.

I've credited acid with helping me get over an eating disorder.
Wow! I totally believe it. They're doing studies now for it. So I wanted to do more mushrooms but I wasn't cool enough to know anybody who sold them. So I ended up doing nitrous oxide because it was legal. You go down to the head shop and buy some whippets, which is what I was doing. I have major depression that runs in my family; I've had it since I can remember. I spent my teen years thinking about ways to kill myself, some of my adulthood too. And I ended up getting really dependent on the nitrous. It gave me a quick dissociative high where I was no longer myself. Of course the more I used it and wanted to stop, the worse I started to feel about myself, and the more nitrous I used.

How did your drug use become problematic?
Right after I got out of grad school I was really successful. I went into the tech industry and ended up at Amazon, and I had all kinds of stock money and a giant house. I lost it all because of nitrous oxide. I would spend every dollar on it. So everything fell apart and just kept getting worse and worse and my partner left me. I moved out; I wasn't paying the rent. I started doing other drugs, and picking up strange people. [Nitrous] really ruined my life.

Did you try Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, or any other 12-Step programs?
It was in 2003 or 2004 that my boyfriend suggested I try NA. He had gone to AA when he had an ecstasy addiction. Although he also told me that he was only there to pick up chicks. They call it "13th stepping." I really wanted to stop, so I went to the NA meetings near my house and right away I could kind of see a problem. They say you should take out of it what you can, so I tried to ignore the fact that you had to have a "higher power" other than yourself. In my view, your own will is the most important, powerful thing. I was trying to use my will to stop using the nitrous and they were telling me that I couldn't, that I had to let God fix me.

Whereas 12-step programs ask you to find a higher power, Satanism encourages self-will and individuality. Was that helpful in your search for recovery from addiction?
100%. Finding Satanism was the path that I needed to get out of the addiction. Because it was so self-empowering. I did meet my current husband at NA; we fell in love and almost immediately I stopped doing the nitrous. However, I started doing meth. I'm pretty sure I just transferred my addiction. My life kind of fell apart, both my husband and I had different partners, we lost our housing, we were on the streets homeless for a while. Once I was stabilized, trying to get off these drugs, I went back to the concept that I was the one that had the power to stop. In the middle of the homelessness, that's when I had picked up the Satanic Bible. I read it. The parts that kind of advocate violence aren't really my thing, but this concept that, Hey, you're actually worth taking care of and you should have a passion for yourself, and you're the only one with the power to do anything in your life: that made a lot of sense to me. I took that as my banner and I ran with it.

What attracted you to the Satanic Temple? What do you like most about being involved?
What I really love about the Temple is that it makes so much sense. I really feel like everything the Temple is doing is fighting for the common sense changes that nobody else is willing to stand up and do because they're afraid of the religious right. What I really love the most of it is how much it's brought together a community that hasn't existed before. That's a really beautiful part. I think most of us always thought we would be practicing alone.

I like that you brought up the word community, because the fellowship element of AA is often credited with its success. But that can be problematic for those who don't believe in all AA stands for.
It's the key. There are other recovery programs out there like Smart Recovery, where you get the community plus science-based ways of dealing with addictions. What I learned from looking at the science is that it seems addiction comes about because you feel cut off or isolated.

What advice would you give to someone who is struggling with addiction but feeling out of place and struggling with the mainstream prescribed path to recovery?
My first bit of advice to anyone struggling with addiction is give yourself a break. We get so many negative messages about addiction and you end up feeling like you're the worst thing on the planet. Second, go look for community. Go online, take some time and find some other people that share your worldviews that are also struggling with it. See what they have to say, and see if you can meet them in person.

What does your life look like now?
It's night and day. I'm living with the life that I always dreamed. All those days I thought I would never be able to stop nitrous... but I did. Today I'm realizing just how wonderful my life is. There's a lot of pain, but there's a lot of joy, and I'm sober enough to enjoy it.

Do you credit the Satanic Temple with your recovery?
The Temple work is what gives meaning and purpose to my life. It was the community I was searching for all those lonely years of depression and addiction. It's even inspired me to finally find effective therapy for my depression, so I can be everything my community needs me to be. It's what gets me up out of bed in the morning. It's my anti-addiction! Now I actually have something to live for, and it's not the false promises of the drugs.

If you or someone you know struggles with addiction or substance abuse, please call the Free Addiction Hotline at 1-855-315-4766.

Follow Sophie St. Thomas on Twitter.

Our third season of VICE is currently airing Fridays on HBO, and you should all obviously be watching. We just aired a new episode about police militarization in America followed by a segment about the perilous journey immigrants are making to get from El Salvador into the United States. Then we sat down with host Thomas Morton to debrief the recent episode and reflect on his time reporting on the police in our post-Ferguson world. Check it out above.

Watch VICE Fridays at on HBO at 11PM, 10PM Central.

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Check out Esther Pearl Watson's website and buy her books from Fantagraphics.

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Many say Cum For Bigfoot by Virginia Wade is the origin text (or at least the pacemaker) for the relatively new subgenre of "monster erotica." The story is a rags-to-riches self-publishing tale like any other. Wade is a stay-at-home mother who was hit with an idea for a book. She wrote it, went through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program, and waited. At first, nothing happened: Wade made $5 in the first month.

But then, Cum For Bigfoot—in which "an ape-like creature kidnaps a group of young women with the purpose of procreating with them"—found its audience.

The ebook, now titled Moan For Bigfoot (more on that later), sold more than 100,000 copies in 2012 alone, earning Wade $30,000 a month at her peak. She replicated her success with sequels (there are 16 Moan For Bigfoot books in total), similar concepts (Taken By Pirates, Seduced By The Dark Lord) and translations (her mother did the German translation, Komm Für Bigfoot). In short, Wade fully propagated the subgenre, variably called "monster erotica," "monster porn," "cryptozoological erotica," and "erotic horror."

The titles tend to be straightforward and self-evident: Goblins Love Ass, Mounted By A Minotaur, Taken By The T-Rex, The Ape Men Cumeth, Fertilized In Space (properly classified as "implantation, bondage, pregnancy, erotica"), and Sex With My Husband's Anatomically Correct Robot.

Of course, the books vary in quality and appeal. I spoke to one anonymous reader about what he looks for in his next read. "Doing research and making the monster somewhat believable is a plus," he said. "Sensual yet HOT erotica. Not just smut. Proper grammar and editing is a must... Lovable characters are also a must. Even the villains." In other words, monster erotica fans want what you'd want from any novel.

Like any subgenre title, monster erotica helped label what was already out there as well as guide future writers with a legacy to build on.

"I definitely find [the genre] useful. That was something I had to learn early on because in my non-erotica writing life I've always wanted to write without that much concern for boundaries or classifications," said Ellie Saxx, author of Sweet & Forbidden, Back Door Bargain, and Pegged To Order. "I never thought of targeting a particular subset of readers. An early story like 'The Man Who Came Too Much' [released in February of 2012] represents a writer with no understanding of how to focus a commercial work; it fits in no particular space and never sold."

After Wade's hit, producing prolific monster erotic proved very profitable for many authors; it still does, to a point, today. "There's this figure going around that says almost a third of authors make less than $500. I think if you were to single out the erotica writing community, you'd find that number goes way up," said Dalia Daudelin, author of Sex with the Beast, Booty Call Of Cthulhu, The Demon's Slave, and many other titles. "I know more than a handful of authors that are looking at making at least half a million this year. By next year I hope to be joining them."

But times were even better back in late 2012 and early 2013. The stuff was flying off the shelves—hypothetically, as nearly all monster erotica titles are sold as ebooks. But then came the backlash—or as Kobo COO Michael Tamblyn put it, "EroticaGate." While there's a wide variety of vulgarity in monster erotica, some stories do feature rape, incest, bestiality, and underage sex. After media outrage in late 2013, retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble systematically removed offending titles. In doing so, they also pulled less offensive ebooks, likeCum For Bigfoot. (Wade changed the title to Moan For Bigfoot, and was eventually allowed to sell again.)

The problem endemic to the banning of any book is that vulgarity can be subjective. Amazon's policy was murky: "What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect."

"Censorship easily becomes a slippery slope," said Amanda Hocking, a writer of self-published paranormal romances who's found great commercial success with more than two million dollars in sales. "One man's taboo is another man's norm, and which one of those is allowed to decide what is taboo and what is norm? Who gets to choose what is appropriate, and what isn't?"

Despite the profits these books bring, it's usually not worth it for retailers to offend their broader audience. But one retailer refused to fold, even when they received pushback, long before "EroticaGate." Smashwords, the publishing and distribution platform, has a democratized approach to the process and refused be fearful of backlash. In February of 2012, PayPal announced they would cease doing business with the e-bookstore if they continued to purvey "erotic fiction that contains bestiality, rape, and incest." To say Smashwords relies on PayPal is an understatement, and the publisher found itself as vulnerable as the vocalized few.

"Once they gave us their initial ultimatum, I scrambled to engage them in high-level discussions about their concerns," said Mark Coker, the Founder of Smashwords. "I felt that they were treading down a slippery path that would jeopardize not just the careers of professional erotica authors, but the careers of all authors. I didn't think a payment processor should have the power to censor content and remove the payment processing infrastructure upon which all indie ebooks depend."

PayPal had its own worries, and was feeling pressure from the credit card companies and issuing banks. If PayPal violated its agreements with these companies, it could lose the ability to process credit card payments.

"PayPal had used their fear to steamroll individual erotica authors previously because as single individuals, they had no voice," said Coker. "But when they took on Smashwords, suddenly they heard the voice of tens of thousands of authors and their readers. They kicked open the hornet's nest."

And so, through a multi-pronged strategy—featuring direct engagement with PayPal, a partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and strong press outreach—Coker fought back, and eventually prevailed with a truce in March of 2012. Though, he'll readily point out, Smashwords doesn't allow anything and everything on their shelves.

"Certain types of content are 100% off limits. We don't accept erotica with underage characters," he said. "We don't accept pornography, which by my definition are books that contain nude images with the purpose to titillate. By my definition, erotic literature is erotic literature, not pornography."

Today, it appears censorship is as stable as it's going to be. But the consensus seems to be that the gold rush is over.

"Based on what I was seeing at the height of my Lion God series, I'd guess that it probably has peaked by now," said Saxx. "I mean, the Virginia Wade's Cum for Bigfoot series had already blown up and drifted away by then... However, the popularity of all of these genres and subgenres seems to run in cycles."

Daudelin agrees. "Porn never dies, it just goes through phases," she said. "By 2025, we'll have seen new genres come and go and, eventually, monsters will make a comeback as well. Like fashion, porn has fads."

In a publishing landscape where many hold their noses up to anything without the proper literary whiff, it's easy to dismiss erotica—let alone that involving alien anal probes or Minotaur cunnilingus. And monster erotica is, admittedly, incomparable to any National Book Award finalist. For one, it gives its readers real, tangible pleasure.

"I have a lot of stories that have brought a lot of women to orgasm," said Daudelin. "We're not such a prude world as we used to be, but it's nice to know that I can help women enjoy their fantasies in a safe and consensual way."

To be fair, how many times has Philip Roth brought you to orgasm?

[body_image width='1920' height='1080' path='images/content-images/2015/03/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/13/' filename='burkina-faso-film-festival-african-film-industry-body-image-1426248343.jpg' id='35791']The red carpet at Fespaco Film Festival. All photos by Assia Boundaoui

Neither the nearby outbreak of Ebola nor the toppling of Burkina Faso's government could stop this year's FESPACO, the biennial Pan-African film festival held in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou. Over the last week more than a hundred African-directed films including features, shorts, and documentaries screened at half a dozen theaters scattered throughout the city.

"Blaise + Ebola Dégagé!" was scrawled on walls and intersections across the capital, referring to the recently overthrown dictator Blaise Compaore, who originally seized power after the 1987 assassination of his close friend President Thomas Sankara. Sankara was a beacon of the post-Independence generation of African Lumumbas and Nkrumahs, who refused to submit to Western hegemony, decrying debt structures and aid dependence as the new architecture of colonial relations.

After Sankara's assassination, Blaise dialled down the rhetoric and ruled the Sahel nation with close cooperation with France for a relatively uneventful 27 years. Four months ago, however, as the parliament prepared to change the constitution to allow Blaise to seek a fifth term in office, protesters surged into the streets and set fire to government buildings. The military sided with the people, and within days, Blaise was on a plane to Morocco. One of the buildings torched was the Hotel Independence, the unofficial headquarters and watering hole for festival-goers at FESPACO.

Walking between venues and talking to filmmakers over the weekend, there was little feeling that the country's political and social climate had threatened the atmosphere of the festival. "The context this time was particular—there was the Ebola virus and at one point we hesitated," says Gervais Hien, a festival organizer. "And then you have the political context. A few months ago, there was a popular insurrection. So donors and authorities hesitated. But thank God the festival came out on top, and it's African cinema that benefits. So the adventure continues!"

[body_image width='1920' height='1080' path='images/content-images/2015/03/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/13/' filename='burkina-faso-film-festival-african-film-industry-body-image-1426248433.jpg' id='35799']Poster for 'Timbuktu,' by director Abderrahmane Sissako

Filmmakers from Senegal to Madagascar, from Algeria to South Africa, gathered to screen and watch hundreds of films, most of which will rarely be seen outside of local festivals. These works tell stories of local importance, and are made with African audiences in mind. The question of funding and resources often complicates things. A major sponsor of FESPACO is the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF), France's soft diplomacy effort to keep a sense of community and common culture alive among its far-flung former conquests. Many films that are lucky enough to receive production funding often get it from French or other Western organizations, meaning that financing plays a role in shaping which stories get told and which don't.

Two filmmakers who came from Cameroon to attend the festival criticized the fact that they seemed to only be able to find European financing for stories about AIDS, poverty, or migrants fleeing Africa in boats. "They orientate cinematographic subjects according to their political and social points of view and their interests," says one of the two, Regis Tala, who received support from the OIF for a film about a young girl with HIV.

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Another film that also received OIF funding, La Pirogue and won third prize at FESPACO 2013, showed boat people languishing on their journey to escape Africa and seek salvation on the shores of Europe. Tala says he hated the film. "I think Africa is much more developed than they imagine—it's not just the bush—there is joie de vivre, stories of people who succeed from nothing."

While for most young filmmakers living and working in Africa getting funding or resources remains an enormous challenge, FESPACO gives even the most low-budget films made on the continent a platform and a wide audience, and lets high and low filmmakers network, sharing contacts, stories and tips. During the day, the sun strikes hard through the haze of the harmattan and cool theaters provide shelter from the heat and the dust. At night, directors and critics sip whiskey and Brakina beer at roadside bars, where Malian refugees play electric guitar and prostitutes circle in heels.

[body_image width='951' height='695' path='images/content-images/2015/03/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/13/' filename='burkina-faso-film-festival-african-film-industry-body-image-1426248586.jpg' id='35802']Portrait of filmmaker Hajouj Kukka

Sudanese filmmaker Hajouj Kukka is in his early 20s, and his documentary film about the war and creative resilience in Sudan's Blue Nile and Nouba Mountain region, Beats of the Antonov, has gone on to screen at film festivals around the world and has won multiple awards, including one at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Kukka says that when he started screening Hollywood blockbusters to people at the refugee camps in South Sudan, people would sit and watch for about 20 minutes before the entire audience got bored and left. But when he started screening cuts from his own film to people in the camps, they stayed and watched. "It was images of things they experienced and people they know, and so they get really into the film," says Kukka. "There is always a local market for local films, because people want to see themselves reflected back."

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Portrait of Iquo B. Essein

For years FESPACO has only accepted films into competition made by African filmmakers living and working on the continent, but for the first time this year they've allowed films by African filmmakers in the diaspora to compete on equal footing. Iquo B Essein is a Nigerian-American filmmaker, based in New York, whose short film Aissa's Story competed in the shorts competition. The film is inspired by the real life case of former IMF director Dominique Strauss Khan, accused of assaulting a maid in his hotel room in Manhattan.

Essein's fictionalized short tells the story from the point of view of the maid, an immigrant from Guinea who struggles to move on with her life after charges against her assaulter are dismissed. While Essein has screened her film at festivals around the US and Europe, she says the film has really resonated with African audiences at FESPACO. "When I screen it here people are like, 'Oh you're telling Nafissatou Diallo's story!' I appreciate coming here to Burkina, because here they know [the maid] by name, and that's not the case in the United States—there it's a story about Strauss Khan."

Some films were obvious hits with the local Burkinabe audience. People queued for hours to get into the screening for Run, Ivorian director Philippe Lacote's magical realism-inspired feature chronicling a young Ivorian boy who comes of age during the civil war of the early 2000s. Miners Shot Down, a film by South African director Rehad Desai about the violent police repression of the 2012 Marikana miner's strike, received a long standing ovation. Moroccan filmmaker Hicham Lasri's captivating feature film They Are the Dogs (C'est eux les Chiens) used a dizzying but effective handheld technique to tell the story of a man freed after 30 years of torture in a Casablanca prison. Ethiopian filmmaker Hermon Hailay opened eyes and broke taboos with her beautiful The Price of Love, about a tragic romance between a young taxi driver and a prostitute.

The stories being told here are at once universal and very much local, and reflect the kinds of narratives that resonate with Africans today. "Theres no African cinema per se. Outside of the film festivals, it'd be very hard to watch these films," says Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kukka, "But we are in an amazing place where we can actually create and have a captive audience around us who want to watch things from our own experience."

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Last week, we ran a brief interview with Andrew Smith, the acclaimed young adult (YA) author of The Alex Crow. One of Smith's answers created a fairly loud boom in the online echo chamber of YA writers and readers:

VICE: On the flip side, it sometimes seems like there isn't much of a way into your books for female readers. Where are all the women in your work?
Andrew Smith: I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all. I have a daughter now; she's 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life. I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I'm trying to be better though.

A lot of The Alex Crow is really about the failure of male societies. In all of the story threads, there are examples of male-dominated societies that make critical errors, whether it's the army that Ariel falls in with at the beginning, or the refugee camp, or Camp Merrie-Seymour for boys, or the doomed arctic expedition, they're all examples of male societies that think that they're doing some kind of noble mission, and they're failing miserably.

Several writers, including Sarah McCarry, author of All Our Pretty Songs, and Tessa Gratton, author of the Blood Journals series, took offense to Smith's answer, finding his statement "othering." Gratton wrote that Smith's comments implied women are "less than human, or at the very least, inherently different from men. That is one of the oldest sexist arguments in the entire world."

McCarry expressed her offense through a series of satirical tweets, such as: "huddled together, the women and females cackle and chant!!!!!!! what is their language???? perhaps a Daughter will solve this riddle." In a follow-up on her blog, McCarry wrote, "Smith's comments do not seem to me personally to be worthy of any kind of critical engagement whatsoever."

The issue of sexism in YA literature (or all literature, or the world) is not a new one. And it doesn't begin, or end, with Andrew Smith's comments. As writer Derek Attig acknowledges in his Book Riot piece on Smith's comments, "The problem is quite the opposite: it's that this whole thing is totally normal."

VICE reached out to several YA authors to hear their take on the rift in their community.

In an email to VICE, New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman wrote, "The degree to which we as a culture still assign more gravitas to that which is male (and white, and straight, and middle class, while we're on the topic) is hugely problematic. It is underpinned by a larger issue, which is that in books, and the culture at large, white male is still the default. Those stories are for everyone. Everyone else's stories are niche, i.e. only relevant to you if you're the same world of the characters. So there's an assumption that boys won't enter books about girls, white kids won't want to read a book about Asian kids. This is hugely problematic. And it has nothing to do with Andrew Smith."

When asked if she found Smith's comments offensive, Forman replied, "No! I found them to be honest." Gratton, too, said that she was not offended by Smith's statements. "What offends me is when sexism is purposefully used as a weapon, and I do not believe Smith was doing that, or even necessarily aware that his comments reflected a sexist idea."

"I am so sorry that Smith has been denigrated. I only meant to point out that the comments themselves reflect cultural sexism," Gratton clarified.

Carrie Mesrobian, author of Sex and Violence, had little time for the controversy. In a statement to VICE, Mesrobian said, "He's a writer who writes boys and men as they are, not as we wish them to be. He is kind and generous and the last thing from sexist. This entire Twitter dust-up was bullshit. Further, I'm feminist as fuck. If I thought Drew was being sexist, I'd probably tell him directly. But I don't think his comments to VICE were sexist."

While the controversy began over Smith's comments, it has also raised concerns about the ways in which writers and readers discuss sexism and gender inequality online. Given the speed and severity of online debate, how can the community engage in measured, educational conversations? Many YA fans saw Smith's comments as tone-deaf, but honest. One male writer, who requested anonymity, saw Smith's comments as "brave," admitting a weakness where others would deny one or turn the other cheek. But, as is often the case online, the loudest voices were those of anger and hurt. Smith has since removed himself from social media.

"The worst thing we can do is pretend sexism has an easy solution, or that it's isolated from racism, ablism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.," concluded Gratton, "Nobody is the villain here, nobody is the hero."

"I think we—and I mean authors, editors, publishers, illustrators, publicists—need to first and foremost be able to have uncomfortable conversations, about gender, about race, about sexuality, about class, about who can write what and how," wrote Forman. "But I fear in this kind of charged environment, that won't happen. People are too scared of saying the wrong thing."

Andrew Smith declined to comment.

Hugh Ryan contributed reporting. Follow Hugh and Jennifer on Twitter.

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Cover image courtesy of Caroline Hagood

What if Dante were a female hobo who confused ideas with orgasms, saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre when she closed her eyes, and thought she was the devil's daughter?

Author Caroline Hagood's newest book, Making Maxine's Baby (out next month from Hanging Loose Press) is a literary hybrid that reads like poetry but arcs like a novel. The postmodern Inferno is told from the perspective of Maxine, a once privileged New Yorker who gives up modern life to make a home underground in the subway tunnels and mates with Marvin, a homeless man who wears one trash bag shoe and one golden clog. Hagood packs her latest work with references for readers to parse apart, from Medusa to Leatherface, exploring the use of ultra-violence in art.

To learn more about her process and the story behind Making Maxine's Baby, I spoke with Hagood about ultra-violence in art, orgasms, and slasher films.

VICE: Your character Maxine lives underground in the subway tunnels. Did you research mole people?
Caroline Hagood: I did research mole people. I remember seeing Marc Singer's documentary on people who live in the NYC subway system, Dark Days, and being totally fascinated.

In the poem "How Mermaids Save the Drowning," you describe Maxine's a self-immolating tendency: "She'll Medusa herself." What's that about? Is there something powerful in masochism and self-immolation?
There's a lot in that idea of Medusa-ing yourself. There's making yourself grotesque like Medusa, but I also like the image of turning yourself to stone just by catching a glimpse of your own eyes. Medusa can be a manifestation of the monstrous feminine as seen from the male perspective. A woman with snake hair who can turn you to stone is a scary prospect for any man.

There's something lowbrow or cheap about horror movies, or as you say "slasher films." What draws you to horror movies?
In the book I talk about horror movies as a way of working through trauma. These films can provide a safe space for the working out of all sorts of dark things. Then there are the ones that are also funny, so you're alternately shaking and laughing. This can be particularly cathartic.

Can we say that Maxine is in an inferno?
I wanted to respond to the great mythologies of heroes who had gone underground for insight with a heroine who does the same in her own quirky way.

And you reference Pandora...
Yeah, I like the idea of simultaneously referencing the music genome project and the woman accused of releasing all the evils of humanity on the world.

Maxine is a woman who "confuses ideas with orgasms." Is this why she is likable?
For me, yes, but Maxine will not be everyone's cup of tea. This is another reason I like her.

Besides all the monsters and horror theory, another pervasive theme in the book is negative space.
I've always been intrigued by the concept of negative space: the space around and between what you think you're looking at, the space that makes one thing what it is by being what that one thing isn't.

Does this book suggest we are all damaged and we all take one addiction and replace it with another?
I wanted readers to walk away with the sense that no matter what they have been through, there's always something worthwhile to pull them through. I wanted the reader who has known pain to read the book and feel a little less hopeless, a little less alone.

Follow Jill Di Donato on Twitter.