I was raised by a single mother. She wasn't single when I was born, but two years into her marriage with my father, she left the Church of Scientology in Southern California and moved back to her hometown in Washington state. It was there that I grew up, in Seattle suburbs; Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton, Redmond. I lived in so many apartment complexes and went to so many schools that I can barely remember any of them.

When I look at class photos the students look like strangers to me, the teachers indistinguishable. Instead of cohesive memories, I have short film reels: standing in an administrative office at an elementary school, the secretary asking me how many schools I'd been at so far that year, and the look on her face when I gave the answer.

We were also poor, which meant that my clothes and shoes were always falling apart. I begged my teachers to let me stay in the classroom during recess, terrified of being bullied. I was an only child and learned quickly that it was easier to be by myself than try to connect with other children.

By the time I was seven, my mother could no longer afford daycare. So after school I would come home by myself, usually finding a path through the Pacific Northwest woods. I don't remember all the apartment complexes we lived in, but I do remember one in particular. We lived there for two years, the longest I'd lived anywhere up to that point. The complex was painted light tan with dark brown trim. It had a swimming pool and a large swath of woods filled with pathways made by homeless people and high-school kids. I would walk through the woods to the Drug Emporium, stare at the aisles of cosmetics, lotions, and hair dyes and imagine myself as a movie star, older and sophisticated.

I was sure that because I'd been born in Hollywood I was destined to go back there someday, and someone would discover me walking down the street, or eating dinner at a restaurant. They'd grab my hand and tell me they needed me in their film, and that would be it. In Drug Emporium, I would pick up the bottles of nail polish and packages of eye shadow and sometimes put them in my pocket. My mom never asked where these things came from.

[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='judy-blume-saved-my-life-500-body-image-1432851110.jpg' id='61116']

The author as a child, with her mother

When my mom came home every night, exhausted from work and often in a bad mood, I tried to make myself invisible. The sound of her key in the lock around five in the evening caused me to jump up from the couch, turn off the television, and quickly and quietly run to my room, where I would softly close the door and pick up whichever book was near. I'd inherited from a cousin a wide array of stuffed animals, but those were more for decoration. My most important possessions were my books—the only things that could take me away from my real life for a moment.

Read: Sara Nović Takes You to the Front Lines of Croatia's Civil War in Her Novel, 'Girl at War'

Judy Blume was my favorite author. Back then, I couldn't explain it, but as an adult, it's obvious why her books resonated with me. In Tiger Eyes Davey, the protagonist, begins the book with the thought: "It is the morning of the funeral and I am tearing my room apart, trying to find the right kind of shoes to wear." Teenaged Davey has just lost her father, who died a violent death at the small store he manages. Davey suffers from panic attacks, and her mother has trouble dealing with the death of her father. The narration is first person, which allows the young reader to witness first hand what it's like to lose a parent and creates empathy not only for Davey, but also for her mother, her brother, and her aunt, and uncle. Tiger Eyes deftly tackles the subjects of losing a parent, moving to a new place, not feeling understood by the adults around you, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

No matter how many times my father disappointed me, I would return to my bedroom and find Judy Blume waiting for me there.

Tiger Eyes was my favorite Judy Blume book. I read it over and over again—so many times that my mom bought me several copies. I hadn't lost my father to a violent death, but he was absent, and had been since my mother left him when I was two. When he entered my life it was always brief. He'd call and tell me he was going to take me shopping, or to the park, or the flea market, and I would wait for the weekend. I would imagine getting into his car (always a Cadillac) and him telling me how beautiful I was (instead, he always commented on my weight). On the day he'd promised to take me, I'd sit on the stairs outside our apartment and wait. And then wait some more, until the concrete steps felt too cold to sit anymore. Eventually my mom would come into my room, or outside, and curse him.

He only showed up a few times. He died last November, and I barely knew him.

[body_image width='900' height='1200' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='judy-blume-saved-my-life-500-body-image-1432851206.jpg' id='61117']

The author with her grandfather, who helped raise her in the absence of her parents

No matter how many times my father disappointed me, I would return to my bedroom and find Judy Blume waiting for me there, promising to take me away from my real life and teach me how to cope. I remember reading Deenie, her book about a middle schooler who is forced to get a Milwaukee Brace because of her scoliosis. Deenie is also dealing with her curiosities about masturbations and sex and a mother who only values her physical appearance. My mother was obsessed with her looks, and was always commenting negatively about my face and body. I read Then Again, Maybe I Won't, about a middle schooler named Tony who has to move to a wealthier neighborhood and doesn't know what to do when he realizes his rich next door neighbor is stealing from local stores. Blume gives him a "nervous stomach," which functions as his conscience. Blubber illustrates the cruelty of bullying, allowing the protagonist, a first-person narrator, to go on a journey from bully to bullied. Of course, I was bullied in school all the time, so I understood—but the book helped me to see that even a bully is a real person.

When I read Blume's books, the characters weren't make believe. They were people I knew and loved. As a child and teenager who felt deeply ostracized and isolated, I felt that they were my friends. The strength of Blume's female protagonists gave me strength. After a torturous day at school, where I was made fun of for being overweight or not having the right clothes, I would come home to the refuge of one of Blume's books—books that parented me in ways my own parents were incapable of, books that taught me that I wasn't the only person in the world feeling alone, the only person who was different.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson on why he turned the novel 'Inherent Vice' into a film

Maybe it's going a little too far to say that Blume's books saved my life. But I know they helped save my life. It was Judy Blume who gave me the courage to run away from home when I was 13, after my mother married an alcoholic. And it was Judy Blume who taught me to be brave when I hitchhiked to California at age 16, where I forged a new life briefly working on a farm.

By the time I was 21, I was fighting forest fires and working for the Forest Service on a hotshot crew in Oregon. I thought I'd finally gotten my life together. But I was addicted to heroin; throughout my 20s, I continued to struggle with substances, an eating disorder, and relationships. Still, I never stopped believing that things would somehow get better.

[body_image width='1024' height='768' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='judy-blume-saved-my-life-500-body-image-1432851035.jpg' id='61115']

The author, working as a firefighter

When I turned 28, I cut off communication with my mother and began therapy. I was starting to work through the many issues that stemmed from a childhood filled with abuse and neglect. But then my mother got sick, and the next year, she took her own life with a shotgun.

It's been five years since my mom's death. When she died, I could find very few books about the trauma of suicide. But I remembered Judy Blume. I bought a bunch of her young adult books that I'd read in my childhood, as well as Summer Sisters, a beautiful adult book she wrote that examines what friendship means between two women. Rereading the young adult books, I was struck by how they didn't seem dated, and how several of them still made me cry. They helped me deal with the trauma of my mother's death. At the end of several books there was a short section about why Blume decided to write the story, and often the reasons had to do with her own life, what she herself had experienced or what she saw her children experience. Those sections meant so much to me, as I am also a writer who puts a lot of my own experience into fiction.

Read: An Excerpt from Sarah Gerard's 'Binary Star'

Three years ago, I went back to school to get my bachelor's degree. I graduated a little over two weeks ago, with top honors, and started writing an autobiographical novel about a young woman who struggles with drug addiction and has a difficult relationship with her mother. Next fall, I am entering the MFA program at Syracuse University. There are so many people who played a part in where I am today and how far I've come—and Judy Blume is one of them, although she doesn't know it.

And I know I'm not the only person she's helped. Blume instilled in me the belief that literature can create a space for healing, not only of oneself, but of the world. We can learn how to treat each other and ourselves through literature, if we haven't been given those tools otherwise.

Next week, Judy Blume's newest book will come out—her most autobiographical yet. In the Unlikely Event is about confronting your past, coping with loss, and the beautiful ways in which our lives are shaped by unexpected events. As someone who's experienced how transformative a traumatic event can be, I am looking forward to the journeys of the characters and the narrative arc of the book, and I know that my copy will become worn with multiple readings, just like all my other Judy Blume books. I know that I will be surprised, as I always am, at her ability to connect with readers of all ages, and to confront traumatic events, big and small, with compassion and ease.

Follow Anastasia Selby on Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='803' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='your-parents-mess-you-up-388-body-image-1432823716.jpeg' id='60973']

The author as a child.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Sitting in a therapist's lately, we went over the abysmal state of my life. When the subject of my parents came up, I explained that, though I didn't feel like I'd ever truly connected with them, I didn't want to complain when, clearly, so many of my problems were my fault. My therapist said their lives sounded a lot like mine, that those with low self-esteem (me) often live lives preventing them from being happy, and what better model to follow than one I know works?

When I thought about this later, it began making sense, so I drew two lines on a piece of paper, one plotting my parents' lives since my birth and one plotting mine since I left their house, and both looked exactly the same. When I went back, I asked my therapist, "If this is actually true, how can I break out?" Surely, if the problem was low self-esteem, I just needed to love myself more.

"Well," she said, "that'd be the ideal solution."

At the time of my birth in 1987, my parents lived in a one-bedroom flat. With its threadbare carpet and pisser without bath or shower, the place was decidedly a dump. To say it felt constrictive to a growing child was an understatement, but for them, sharing a bedroom with their infant son was hardly a picnic, either—not something to come home to after working as a house painter and a shop assistant.

TRENDING ON MOTHERBOARD: Might Intelligent Machines One Day Convince Us It's Time to Die?

Naturally, they aspired to more, and that their financial situation wasn't really malleable to this could be forgiven in the context of them needing a reason to live other than me. So when they moved out, finding a house, they at least compromised on a rough area. But my mother sensed an opportunity anyway, and they loaded themselves up to the gills with debt to furnish it. Clearly she had a hole inside her, her own lack of self-esteem, and soon she invited people around I hadn't seen in years to give her validation.

The locals didn't take too kindly to our pretensions, though, and after a while began pelting our house with stones and putting rubbish through our letterbox. They also started drinking in our back garden and bullying me, and when we finally moved out, they broke in, smashed the place up, and smeared shit all over the walls. It was a sendoff fit for a clan of murderers, not a family of three who were 99 percent the same as them, only with potted plants outside our door instead of washing machines. What could we do, however, but move on, spending more money in the belief it'd further protect us from arseholes?

[body_image width='1200' height='803' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='your-parents-mess-you-up-388-body-image-1432823810.jpg' id='60975']

The author in his flat in Germany

Fifteen years later, I moved to Germany with my girlfriend, where we rented a flat over the internet. At the time, it didn't matter that it was a dump, but when summer faded, everything in it being broken became a metaphor for our lives. The shower went hot and cold depending on its mood; the toilet had a ledge, meaning when you took a dump you could see it up close; and birds nested in our air vents. So just like my parents, we aspired to more. Our only mistake was, instead of finding a better place in Germany, we moved to Dublin, which was getting more expensive by the day.

But at least we had a nice house—though we also had housemates, another couple who avoided paying for stuff, rarely cleaned, broke things and blanked us. We combatted this by buying shit—draining our accounts even further—like appliances, cushions, whatever. But Alcatraz would have been homelier. In anger, I wrote this and got us kicked out. Immediately it put us under pressure to rent somewhere within weeks when, if we'd have just left of our own accord, we could have found somewhere cheaper. But I thought we could handle it, assuring my girlfriend the added expense of the place we found could totally be done.

[body_image width='1200' height='1553' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='your-parents-mess-you-up-388-body-image-1432823901.jpeg' id='60977']

The author about to move to his parents' first house.

My parents thought the same thing when they were approved for a mortgage, but after a time, things in our new house—like Sky, the phone, and the internet—started being cut off, and places like the car insurance company would call, leaving angry messages with me because my mother refused to answer. Though my father was bringing in more money than ever because of Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy—the one that'd crash a decade later and send me packing to Germany—it was going out even quicker because of my mum's expensive tastes. I started resenting her for what she was doing while still taking part in it, hoovering up whatever bullshit extravagance I could get.

For my dad, that there was an alternative to this life other than winning the Lotto didn't seem possible. Because he'd come from nothing, he thought he was fucked regardless and that whatever money he did have might as well be blown or spent on bills. I didn't agree with this, imagining all the things you could do with money beyond a chest freezer and a shed to put this chest freezer in, beyond a garden to put the shed in, beyond a house, on and on working backwards until your entire existence could be traced to a lowly impulse you had in the freezer section of Currys.

Because I was taking part, though, what right did I have to complain? I knew it was wrong accepting stuff, but being a teenager with my own friends to impress, I could hardly resist. Still, I promised when older that I wouldn't repeat their mistakes. I'd live within my means.

After a year living in our palatial apartment, my girlfriend and I had almost no money. Every month left us with an increasingly low amount on which to live—having a full life became impossible. Like my parents, we'd spent a lot of money protecting ourselves from arseholes, but when we couldn't take it any more and the girl who, at that moment, became my ex walked out the door, who we were really protecting ourselves from became clear.

It hit me like a bolt of lightning. Since the weather had changed in Germany three years previous, being together was no longer enough for us, and we'd begun spending not just on deposits and furniture, but on entertainment: time half-spent with other people, often drinking, to protect us from each other. So when our accounts became perilously low, we couldn't engage with friends, nor rage against housemates, thus we directed our attention—and dissatisfaction—toward our relationship.

I wondered if this had happened to my parents, too; if, at some point, being together had stopped being enough for them and if that was when their materialist cancer had set in—or if, before that, that was when they'd decided to have me.

[body_image width='1200' height='808' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='your-parents-mess-you-up-388-body-image-1432823946.jpeg' id='60978']

The author after his mother's death

When the hole inside my mother was filled with real cancer, our house was about to be foreclosed on, but because the cancer was deemed terminal, the life-insurance clause in our mortgage cleared it. Once we'd sold the house and moved in with my grandmother, my parents lived like the Lotto winners they always wanted to be for the final two years of her life.

For this, it's hard to blame them. Mom didn't even have the mercy of death coming softly in the night, rather it stalked her, always near but sometimes far enough away it appeared she might outrun it. For dad, it didn't matter when she died that she left him broke and alone. He loved her, and having been unable to give her what she needed (life), at least he'd been able to give her what she wanted.

Similarly, when my ex and I broke up, unable to give each other money, at least we could give each other freedom. Getting together at 20, we didn't want to be alone, but after six years, what we wanted was the recognition that—in all but name—that's exactly what we'd once again become.

So is my therapist right? Did I follow some subconscious roadmap made by my parents to destroy my relationship? Did I bring down my entire life because I have low self-esteem and, incapable of making mindful decisions, would rather make mindless ones out of some unintelligible need to self-destruct? I'd say there's evidence there, yes. At the same time, maybe it's just easier to point the finger at these things than take responsibility for being a fuck-up. My ex tried harder to love me than anyone could, but still, because my decisions were so bad, even she had to run away eventually.

Related: Watch our film 'Young Offenders,' about growing up locked in a cycle of crime and incarceration:

I'm broke right now and living with my grandmother. This has been my life for the past six months. The bedroom I'm sleeping in is the one I spent years in when my mom was ill, the one across the hall from where she died. It's also the first place my ex and I had sex, as well as where we stayed during many Christmases, birthdays, and trips home. Once a grown man with a full life, I now feel like a 28-year-old teenager.

Some nights lately I talk to my mom more openly than I did when she was alive, asking for help. Not about money—money will return, I'll move back out—rather about how the fuck I should live. The thought of continuing to self-destruct is unbearable, so if it's about loving myself more, do I first need to forgive myself? And what about the people who made me? Clearly I resent my parents, not only for what they denied me but also for what they denied themselves: the satisfaction of just being alive without adornment. However, they did love me, and because they believed things could always get better, instilled in me a bitter sort of endurance, some insane unwillingness to quit, which is particularly vital right now.

But I don't think I can forgive myself yet. Any control I have over my self-esteem feels fleeting, and though therapy and writing help, in the face of long-term feelings, freedom seems a long way away. However, one thing I know is that mistakes, if they don't destroy us, ultimately make us stronger and inspire us and others to reach heights we otherwise wouldn't be able to. I'm not saying I would have felt better seeing my parents piss their lives away if I knew I was going to write about it someday, but it's also doubtful whether I would have become a writer—the thing I love the most now that my girlfriend's gone—without the childhood they gave me.

So maybe I'll be capable of loving myself as much as words someday. Until then, writing them is probably the least self-destructive thing I can do.

Follow James on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

When I woke up this morning, a slither of sunlight was creeping through my window. It's Friday, I thought. I can be drunk in eight hours' time. I kissed my girlfriend goodbye and got on the tube with a spring in my step, and began checking the news on my iPhone. Immediately, the sky became overcast. The sounds of the other commuters dulled to a mute. I saw there, in the palm of my hand, the news I have been quietly dreading for much of my adult life: The Government Have Banned Poppers.

It's true, I'm afraid. It was announced yesterday that poppers, a.k.a. amyl nitrate, would fall under Cameron's new blanket ban on legal highs along with a whopping 500 other substances. This includes nitrous oxide—more widely known as laughing gas—and cannabis substitute, Spice. Under the Psychoactive Substances Bill, most of these drugs are now illegal to produce, supply, and distribute, and anyone found doing so could land themselves with up to seven years in jail.

Read on Motherboard: It's Really Easy to Create Your Own Legal High

Over the last four years, our politicians' war on fun has been mounting. Soaring rent prices in our capital and stringent local council policies have lead to the closure of some of our favorite clubs, including gay bars like The Joiners Arms and Madame JoJos. Drug legislation over the last decade has seen cannabis move from class C to B, mushrooms outlawed and mephadrone made illegal (OK, that last one might not be such a bad thing, I ~hear~ snorting that stuff was like having an hydrochloric acid enema up your nostrils, but who's to say).

And now? Now policy makers taking away our right to huff nitrous oxide out of children's party balloons and chemically open our arseholes with a small, potent bottle of gaseous liquid. It makes you wonder, doesn't it: Is nothing sacred?

Have some questions about poppers? We answered them back in 2012.

Sure, poppers are notorious for giving you a 20-second high in exchange for a two-minute residual headache. And I'm not claiming they're not harmful; they cause a surge in blood to the brain, essentially lightly asphyxiating you. It's likely the oxygen deprivation causes some kind of cell damage. Christ knows, I'll happily attribute sniffing them at the back of English lessons in Year 10 as the catalyst for a lifetime of bad decision making. And I will definitely admit that I didn't feel *great* the day after I sniffed an entire bottle at G-A-Y that time.

Related: Our documentary on the banning of Khat

Yet, while I can appreciate that the legislation comes with our health risks in mind, banning substances like poppers isn't saving us from ourselves, it's policing relatively harmless behaviors and pushing simply us towards others. It's patronizing and reductive. As the Government's former chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, puts it, the ban is "pointless" because "people will just go back to cocaine and heroin... It is an extraordinarily simplistic and retrograde step. It won't reduce harms, it may well increase harms."

I for one do not plan to start taking cocaine or heroin: They are much more expensive than poppers and not nearly as much fun. Why would I spend $75 on a gram of cocaine with no cocaine in it, when I could—for a steal at just $8 a bottle—give myself a dizzying poppers-induced headrush with none of the stress of having to locate a credit credit card or kitchen utensil?

My taste in drugs aside, even if the legal high ban doesn't encourage people to turn to highly classified drugs, there are plenty of other, more dangerous substances of which many remain legal to buy: tobacco, alcohol, and solvents, to name just a few. All have been found by the Lancet Medical Journal to cause much more harm to the body than poppers. Unless of course you drink the poppers. Really, don't do that.

[body_image width='778' height='580' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='in-defence-of-poppers-body-image-1432897200.png' id='61256']
The party is over :( Image via WikiCommons.

Has anyone spared a thought for people who rely on poppers for their more practical uses in all of this? They are famously the gay party drug, their primary point of sale to loosen up one's blood vessels and relax the muscles around one's sphincter to enhance the pleasure and ease of anal sex.

Will the poppers users of the gay community take this personally? "Poppers bring all the fun to the party," says John*, 29, a gay man from Nottingham. "Who hasn't openly taken poppers induced dance coma to the sound of 'I Feel Love' at an East London gay bar? Our rights are slowly being taken away one at a time." He adds, "How will all gay virgins take anal without pain now? How are we going to encourage tops to swap to bottoms? Gay sex will become vanilla and boring."

Without poppers, I also worry that some gay men will turn to more harmful substances as club drugs or facilitators of chemsex, like GHB or meth for example, both of which have seen a resurgence in popularity recently. Unlike these drugs, poppers are extremely unlikely to cause death unless you have an existent heart condition, for example, and in terms of your altered behavior when you're on them, the high is so fleeting that you remain largely in a cogent state and aware of your actions.

Every blanket ban has a silver lining though, and the good news is that, for the time being, you can't get done for possession of poppers. So instead of getting drunk after work today, I'll be heading to Soho to bulk buy a year's supply of poppers from the area's waning number of gay sex shops, and will undoubtedly find myself fighting in the aisles. When the headache wanes, though, we'll all be left wondering: What's next to be struck forcefully off of our list of petty vices?

Follow Amelia on Twitter.

*Names have been changed

[body_image width='1024' height='768' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='strip-club-crawl-883-body-image-1432887533.jpg' id='61174']

A woman dancing on a bar in a bikini, not taken on this crawl of East London's strip pubs because obviously you're not allowed to take photos inside. Photo by James Creegan via Flickr.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"You alright mate?" says the concerned barman.

It is 7 PM on a sunny Friday night and we're in the street outside The Flying Scotsman, one of London's most down-at-heel "striptease pubs." A few regulars—football shirts riding over their soft, distended guts—watch as I sway woozily, holding my hand to my jaw, which is pumping blood out onto the King's Cross pavement. I have just embarked on a crawl through London's dingiest strip-joints, keen to discover what, if anything, can be learned about the human condition by hitting eight of them in one night, before a bottle to the face nearly scuppers my plans.

"Come back inside, mate. You should get that seen to."

An older woman with spiky blonde hair and a leather coat at the bar had done the damage. Presumably she'd already pissed someone off, because while I was waiting to get served, a wave of cold lager doused us—a drink had been chucked. The next thing I knew, amid shouts and falling chunks of jagged glass, she had lashed out randomly and I received a blow to the chin that nearly floored me. Satisfied that it was only a minor cut, and with the irate woman turfed out, I continued as I'd started.

Being bottled in this particular corner of London didn't come as any great surprise. Sitting at the top of the Caledonian Road, the Scotsman is one of the oldest surviving pubs in the area, offering red-faced, tooled-up football away fans flat lager and semi-naked women. Inside, it looks like a set from The Sweeney. Reputedly one of the last pubs in town to put sawdust on the floor, it has decaying wood panels and paintings of hunting scenes on the walls, and smells of stale alcohol and farts.

On stage, a blonde girl in stockings and suspenders swings a pair of leopard skin knickers around to 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." A crowd—including a group of Polish lads in builders' attire, a defeated-looking businessman, and an old geezer in a dirty vest and an MA1 jacket—watch raptly.

For those unfamiliar with how a strip pub works, basically, as each girl dances, another parades around with a pint glass eliciting pound coins from the assembled punters. Anyone refusing to contribute gets forcibly ejected. There's something strangely English about a woman in Ann Summers underwear chugging loose change under your nose in exchange for a spot of stage-writhing. It's also a fantastic business model, with customers effectively paying a tax every ten minutes they're in the venue.

"How long you been here?" I ask the old geezer.

"Since before you were born," he says, fixing me with a rheumy stare. Judging by his clothes, this might well be true. His outfit is every bit as dilapidated as you would expect from someone who has spent most of his adult life putting all his pound coins in a pint glass.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: The Age of Giant Sexy Robot Strippers Is Here

8 PM: The Griffin, Farringdon

"You been here before, mate? You know the rules?"

Just a mile down the road, but leagues away in terms of an ambience, is The Griffin. Here, I'm greeted by a unresponsive bouncer who hulks moodily at the door. Given his intimidating bulk, I'm less concerned about bottles being thrown than of my chances of getting out alive if I run out of loose change.

First opened in 1993 "in the heart of London's law district," the venue was refurbished a couple of years ago from a shabby fruit-machine-and-dart-board pervert's paradise into something that now looks like an All Bar One with added naked people. Welcoming "high-profile celebrities" like "NFL Stars and Premier League Footballers to World Famous Actors and Singers," the venue allows no touching between patrons and dancers. Like the Flying Scotsman, which has its own Twitter feed, the Griffin's website advertises its daily lineup of girls on a handy calendar.

As Alex from Romania gyrates around the venue's smeary pole, I don't see any stars. But the crowd—largely composed of after-work media executives in suits—is definitely less shabby than that at The Flying Scotsman. They're being hyped up by Tony, a chuckling DJ who introduces each of the girls over the records ("Welcome the very lovely Taylor from Bethnal Green to the stage") and sings along to the Alexander O'Neal track he's just put on.

"I was thinking about The X Factor, but I don't want to give this job up," he smirks, nodding at the scantily-clad dancer beside him.

Aside from a Japanese guy reading a book in the roped-off VIP section, the crowd is stag-do merry. Guys with their arms around each other sing along to "Wonderwall," pissed on Stella, as a pink spotlight illuminates a dancer's ass. When she gets mad with an office worker, accusing him of taking photos on his iPhone, and the bouncers pile in, I decide it's time to leave.

"Perverts!" shouts a girl passing by outside, as her boyfriend stares longingly at the door.

Interested in stripping? Watch our film 'Life as a Truck-Stop Stripper'

9 PM: Venus, Farringdon

"There's nothing going on in here. It's shit!" a tattooed bloke with a TOWIE haircut complains loudly.

He's talking to one of the polite Greek waiters who show customers to their tables here, to buy expensive champagne and get fleeced by girls offering "private dances." Unfortunately, he's right. Apart from him and his mates, the place is dead. After his rotund friend has had a go on the pole in his suit, a girl begins dancing dolefully to Usher's heartfelt paean to a stripper girlfriend, "I Don't Mind," without actually taking any of her clothes off.

I leave, glad that I refused to shell out the £20 they tried to charge me for coming in.

[body_image width='800' height='533' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='strip-club-crawl-883-body-image-1432886903.jpg' id='61172']

All photos by Jake Lewis.

9:30 PM: The Nag's Head, Aldgate

"Who's more important—Bill Gates or the President of the United States?" asks Phil, a city boy who looks a lot like Ben Stiller, to Inga, his Latvian companion, presumably trying to impress her with this contemplation on the true essence of power.

A cab over to Aldgate and I've hit the Nag's Head, a busted-up old boozer of pungent toilets that rivals The Flying Scotsman in terms of that very unique form of dilapidated charm. Here, a tall, Charles Dance-lookalike, East End hardman in an ill-fitting pinstripe suit looks moodily on as a girl masturbates onstage to Turkish music.

The women take it in turns to dance, and the pound-in-the-pot rule is strictly imposed. But the atmosphere is relaxed and the girls find ways to entertain themselves, searching eBay for shoes on iPhones and apparently pulling the punters. Phil, for instance, seems to be getting on very well with Inga. I wonder whether I'm finally witnessing a real human connection in this world of mirrors, dry ice, cheap perfume, and exceptionally tall transparent high heels.

[body_image width='800' height='533' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='strip-club-crawl-883-body-image-1432880128.jpg' id='61150']

11:30 PM: The Rainbow Sports Bar, Shoreditch

I've now been joined by Jake, the photographer, and my friend Dave, which is fortunate—I need the company. Five venues in and I'm beginning to wonder whether this trawl through London's strip pubs is actually going to teach me anything about humanity, or simply force me to part with a week's worth of wages.

The Rainbow is a hot, crowded little neon box on Shoreditch High Street that shows fights on TV along with live stripping, thus satisfying the requirements of the most machismo-fueled guys in town, all of whom are gathered around me.

Inside, you're grasped at by a series of girls with sharp, polished talons, and little conversation beyond: "You wanna dance?" Dave succumbs almost immediately and is led away by a thin-lipped lady in white lingerie. After batting off a number of similar interlocutors, Jake is reflective.

"The thing I hate about these places is that no one is genuinely interested in you."

Apparently, he's not the only one in a philosophical mood. From our vantage point by the private room I see a man sitting at a table gazing deep into the anus of his nude dancer, who's bending over in front of him. He is rapt, as though staring into Nietzsche's abyss, searching for God.

[body_image width='800' height='533' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='strip-club-crawl-883-body-image-1432887026.jpg' id='61173']

1AM: Browns, Shoreditch

Browns is operated by the same company who own The Griffin. Once a dodgy 1970s dive, it now has the same gastropub-lite décor as its sister venue, which means no atmosphere and oddly incongruous half-naked girls.

As ZHU's "Faded" plays—a big tune on the strip club circuit—a fat bloke in a Brideshead Revisited-style blazer creates a space in the sparse crowd before the stage and begins breakdancing to the enjoyment of absolutely no one.

We sit down at a table.

"It's champagne only there, lads," says a moody bouncer.

Dave is tempted to buy a private dance with Jenny, a small brunette, but we dissuade him and move on to Hackney Road.

[body_image width='800' height='533' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='strip-club-crawl-883-body-image-1432891038.jpg' id='61211']

2AM: Ye Olde Axe, Hackney Road

By the time we reach Ye Olde Axe, everyone is wasted, buoyed only by the neon "Striptease" sign on the side of the building and the promise of more warm lager.

In many ways, the Axe represents the spiritual nirvana of our journey—if you're looking for tawdry East End strip pub heaven, then this place delivers in spades. A Grade II listed building—like the Flying Scotsman—the interior is stunning, with what the British Listed Buildings website refers to as "highly decorative deep-coved cornice frieze patterned with lion's heads, winged creatures and shells." There are also those cut-glass mirrored panels common to old-school pubs. And a lot of girls in neon thongs.

It's not that busy, but there's more of a club vibe, with people dancing to a DJ who is spinning a Jagged Edge slow-jam, including a few girls who are here as customers.

As soon as we enter we are grasped at roughly by a girl in white lingerie with hard eyes who wants to know—with alarming predictability—whether or not one of us wants a private dance. We decline and make for the bar. My jaw is still hurting and I'm confused, wondering what significance is to be drawn from all of this. That some men enjoy seeing random girls get naked so much that they are willing to pay for the pleasure, even though any sexual desire they may have won't be sated? Hardly a stunning insight. What is clear, though, is that these are places where a normally intimate human interaction has been codified and reduced to a cold, commercial exchange. The girls are not unempowered, but they are smiling money machines, out for all they can get, while the guys who objectify them pay for the privilege. It's not very sexy.

But while the scene can feel fake at times, that's not the full story. There are also moments of genuine friendship and camaraderie between the girls and their customers, and plenty of humor and Carry On banter, too.

[body_image width='800' height='533' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='strip-club-crawl-883-body-image-1432891912.jpg' id='61216']

3 AM: Metropolis, Hackney

"For a hundred quid you get the full carwash experience," explains Kandy, an Asian girl who's fresh off stage after dancing to Rihanna's "Where Have You Been" in black feathered knickers. We're in Metropolis, a three-floored venue that looks a little like an 80s disco, with video screens showing silhouettes of nude girls all around.

We stare at her, bleary-eyed and knackered, our incomprehension shining out as bright as a neon sign.

"There's a real carwash upstairs. And a car," she explains brightly. "The girls get naked and wash it while you're inside. You can even hose us down if you want."

So there you have it. The main thing I learned about humanity from my trawl of the capital's late-night strip clubs? That there are men who are willing to pay good money to simulate automobile cleansing in the early hours if there are a couple of naked women involved.

Passing up the opportunity for a nocturnal Dukes of Hazzard experience, we make our excuses and leave, snaring the nearest Uber on the way out for home and an ice pack.

Follow John Lucas on Twitter.

When I first got in touch with Stanley Richards, we talked about Rikers Island. The NYC jail complex, which sits just north of Queens, has a reputation for brutality that continues to make headlines despite intense reform efforts. Richards knew the violence wouldn't disappear overnight: As a former inmate at Rikers himself, he told me about the deeply ingrained culture there—and how it engulfs inmates and officers alike.

Now, after being confirmed on Wednesday in a 49-0 vote, Richards joins the Board of Correction, the body that essentially oversees all the jails and inmate activity in the city.

After getting out of prison in 1991, Richards went on to become a leading member of the Fortune Society, which helps former inmates like himself acclimate to regular life and also engages in advocacy for improving jails. Because of his work, Richards was nominated by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who has made criminal justice reform a top focus.

"Stanley Richards will be a welcome addition to the Board of Correction, where his unique perspective of personal experience will bring needed oversight to New York City's jails," the Speaker said in an email. Along with confirming Richards on Wednesday, the Council also unanimously voted to establish an Office of Civil Justice, which will advise the mayor and seek ways to establish free legal services for those who need it in the city.

Richards joins the board at a crucial time. In light of the federal investigation into Rikers, Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte and Mayor Bill de Blasio have been on the offensive with changes, like ending solitary confinement for young adults and establishing enhanced supervision units. I spoke with Richards after his confirmation about this moment in correctional history, what his experience brings to the table, and what he wants to do on day one.

VICE: How were you first approached about the position?
Stanley Richards: I was always interested in the Board of Correction service, and, in an official capacity, the changes I could make to the criminal justice system through the board. And I just casually mentioned it to Council Member Daniel Dromm at an event, that I would love to serve on the Board of Correction. He said, "Oh yeah, that would be really nice," and then took it when the opportunity came. With a new Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, she thought it was a great idea. It'd really open up the board, and she agreed. And now it's history.

What was that feeling like—to go from a former inmate to the board that oversees every inmate in New York City?
I can see all of the possibilities. You had a board that, for a long time, hasn't been fulfilling its potential; it hasn't been active in both raising issues and presenting solutions. And I know by my experience, both on the inside and as a part of a social service organization, I can offer them a unique perspective and really start working on the solutions, not just identifying the problems.

When you were an inmate, what was your view of the board? Did that change when you became an advocate?
When I was an inmate, I didn't even know the board existed, and I think that's true today, too. It also wasn't active when I was an inmate, and as a service provider, they weren't so active on issues presented by advocates. The board took no action. The report that came out of the Department of Justice on Rikers Island... that should've come out of the board! The board oversees all of that. The board should've been much more active with their investigative role and in its problem-solving role. And they've just been absent. I feel like we have a progressive City Council who cares about this, who wants a city where all citizens are valued, and they want an inclusive process. We have a mayor who's going to put resources into solving some of the problems. So the stars are aligned to do some creative work on the Board of Correction, and I'm looking forward to it.

Why do you think it's important then that you have someone in your position on the board? What kind of insight and solutions can you bring?
For one is that—and this is what I'm gonna do right away—is when I go out there and I visit, I want to be able to talk to inmates and officers. Because, in my mind, the officers are not the enemy. They work in a really tough system that, for far too long, has rewarded brutality, isolation, custody and control. But now, with Commissioner Joe Ponte and the Council Speaker, we have a team of folks who are willing to have these conversations. And so, my perspective is, when I go out there, I know what to look for. They cannot dress it up when I come out there, and I'm not gonna let them dress it up.

Interested in mass incarceration in America? Check out this documentary on mental health in Chicago's Cook County Jail:

In light of what's happened, or is still happening, at Rikers, what do you think are the biggest issues facing the board right now?
I would start by saying there's not adequate staffing at the board to fulfill its obligations. You take a look at the staff and there are nine investigators. But on the back end, there's not a system to both identify problems and find solutions. They haven't been resourced, and in recent years, it's been diminished. So looking at the board's staffing and the resources the Council has provided for it to do a good job.

The other piece is that the board hasn't been fully conferenced in problem-solving. I met with the Commissioner, and he said he wants the board to be part of initiatives and look for solutions. And I told him, that's what I want to do. I told him I don't want to be on the board to climb ladders; I want to be on the board to find solutions and other alternatives.

And so those two pieces have been so important in the board's role as a partner and taking ownership. The staff has been insignificant. You have nine investigators in total, with two at Rikers, and then their research staff is four or five people. It's ridiculous. You're talking about a system that houses 100,000 people, with 75,000 people going through the system a day. There are ten facilities on Rikers Island. You just can't manage it with a group that small.

So when do you start?
I just reached out to my contact to see when I can get an ID and start, because I'm ready to start. I'm going to stay at the Fortune Society, and I have the support of my staff, who are very excited for me. And as part of my role on the board, as we come up with solutions, I want those advocacy organizations to be part of the solutions. I know they'll all say yes.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

The story of the Josh Duggar scandal—that as a teen, the 19 Kids and Counting Star molested multiple young women, only to have his father Jim Bob Duggar underplay and cover up his actions—is simple. The narratives surrounding it, however, are not, exposing underlying questions about faith, morality, and abuse in the Christian patriarchy movement, a fundamentalist set of beliefs popular among evangelical homeschooling families like the Duggars.

The scandal is the latest in a series of sexual abuse allegations that have rocked the Patriarchy movement, which holds that women in general should be subject and subordinate to men. According to evangelical leaders, including Home School Legal Defense Association founder Michael Farris, who has distanced himself from movement, Biblical Patriarchy goes beyond even typical Christian fundamentalism in treating women as subjects, discouraging females from voting or attending college and promoting the idea that "unmarried adult women are subject to their fathers' authority."

The Duggars, who homeschool their children, belong to an even more specific sect known as "Quiverfulls," which advocates for large, patriarchal families. Each family member is an "arrow" in a "quiver." Vyckie Garrison, a former Quiverfull adherent who runs the Patheos blog No Longer Quivering, which acts as a watchdog against the movement, describes the "quiver" metaphor this way:

The whole point of having a quiver full of babies is to... out-populate the "enemy"... and to shoot those many arrows "straight into the heart of the enemy." And by that, we meant that our children would grow up to be leaders in all the major institutions of our society.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a central tenet of Quiverfull beliefs is a rejection of any and all forms of contraception. The Quiverfull website contains links to articles with titles like "The Case Against Birth Control," sells a booklet titled "Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?," and includes a link to a now-disabled site that encourages vasectomy reversals. The message is clear: women ought to have as many children as possible, regardless of their personal preferences.

Writing of her time in the Quiverfull movement, Garrison has said that "using any form of birth control was tantamount to playing God, so I was kept perpetually pregnant or nursing, or both for more than 11 years." She wrote that her husband would downplay her arguments in a discussion by saying, "What you are suggesting SOUNDS reasonable, but how do I know that Satan isn't using you to deceive me?"

Another harrowing account posted on Garrison's site recently by an anonymous woman detailed how her bipolar estranged husband manipulated her into calling off their divorce by impregnating her.

"He seemed overjoyed but not surprised," the blogger wrote. "We rejoined our church, I had another baby and then had more pregnancies, one every year as the pressure to be Quiverfull increased in our group." She continued, "Charles had planned everything, his seduction of me, poking holes in the condom before hand and the renewal of our marriage. He purposely impregnated me in order to control me—the real essence of Quiverfull: Men controlling women via their uterus."

In an interview with VICE, Miranda Blue, a senior researcher for special projects at People for the American Way, an advocacy group founded by Normal Lear meant to challenge the Moral Majority, explained that all this fosters a high potential for abuse among right-wing Christian groups."If you're in an environment where girls are brought up to submit to men and being told they're the property of their father until they're the property of their husband, that's not a safe place for women and girls," she said.

Victims of abuse in these situations tend to not seek out police, Blue added, because these sects view "the family unit and church as a separate governing body from the secular world."

"Women in these situations would be very reluctant to talk to an authority," she said. "They won't necessarily get a fair hearing from their church if they come forward."

The problem seems to be evident in the case of Josh Duggar. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, after the teenage Duggar admitted that he had molested several girls, his father, Duggar patriarch Jim Bob, attempted to reform his son by sending him to the well-known evangelical Bill Gothard, a leading voice in the Christian homeschool movement whose Institute in Basic Life Principles offers a tiered program of seminars pushing (among other things) patriarchal views on the Bible and Christianity. According to the paper, Josh helped Gothard construct the Little Rock wing of his Institute from March to July of 2003.

Gothard was perhaps not the best choice to mentor Josh. In 2012, a website run by former members of his Institute published allegations that Gothard had engaged in a pattern of sexual harassment and abuses. The site, Recovering Grace, eventually helped unearth stories of 35 women, including several former female employees, who claimed to have received inappropriate sexual treatment from Gothard.

The site's FAQ section explains that while attempts were made to reconcile Gothard's actions privately, "Bill Gothard has not only resisted these attempts, but, like the Old Testament kings, has 'stoned and run off the prophets God has sent him.'" It also notes that Gothard's Advanced Training Institute helped establish the curriculum that the Duggars drew from when homeschooling their children (Gawker wrote at length on the ATI's curriculum here).Gothard stepped down from his post at the Institute last year.

Gothard is not the only homeschool advocate to have faced allegations of bad behavior. As VICE reported last year, a sexual abuse lawsuit against Doug Phillips of Vision Forum Industries, a major figure in Christian homeschooling circles, rocked the Biblical Patriarchy movement and sent ripples through the evangelical homeschooling community.

In the suit, a woman named Lourdes Torres, who had lived with the Phillips family as a live-in nanny, alleged that Phillips repeatedly groped and masturbated upon her for five years. Following the lawsuit, several of Phillips' contemporaries distanced themselves from the Patriarchy ideology. In the same article referenced above, Farris wrote, "If public policy makers believe that the homeschooling movement promotes teachers and teaching that have a strong likelihood of damaging people—particularly children and women—then our freedom will suffer."

And in a case that bears some similarities to the Duggar allegations, a group of Christian homeschooled brothers were sentenced to jail time last week on charges that they had molested their younger sister from the time she was four until she was almost 15. Five of six brothers in the family were arrested in in 2012 after the oldest admitted the abuse to his pastor. The parents, who according to reports were "anti-school" and "anti-government" are alleged to have known about the abuse, but said nothing.

According to RawStory, the sister, "told investigators that she believed she would go to hell if she told anyone about the assaults, which she said took place at least twice a week." On May 22, four of the brothers have been sentenced; the fifth awaits trial in July.

Related: The Real True Detective

When children homeschooled under fundamentalist and patriarchal doctrines go off to college, they are often sent to private, conservative Christian institutions, where thepattern of assault and subsequent victim-shaming often continues. Last year, the New Republic published an article outlining alleged misdeeds at Patrick Henry College, detailing how the school's "Dean of Women" told victims of sexual abuse not to speak about their abuse outside of her office.

Earlier this year, the consulting firm G.R.A.C.E. (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) published a 301-page report on the handling of sexual abuse at Bob Jones University, a longtime bastion of Christian fundamentalism. The report's found rampant victim-blaming on the part of the Bob Jones faculty, and accuses the school of displaying a "lack of distinction between sexual abuse and consensual sexual sin."

The report also claims that Jim Berg, who served as dean of students from 1981 until 2010 and was responsible for handling sexual abuse disclosures, ad a "lack of formal training and professional supervision" that "was evident in several judgment errors in the counseling he offered."

If one snoops around the Bob Jones University site enough, they can find this page video response to the report, which contains BJU President Steve Pettitt's video response to the GRACE report, as well as a detailed written response to the findings. In it, the school writes that "We greatly desire to meet and talk personally with each victim of sexual abuse or assault who was not helped by our response to their disclosure." The invitation, the school notes, is open indefinitely. BJU also said it would begin to offer outside counseling services to victims of sexual assault as well as their on-campus "biblical counseling."

Of course, people who ascribe to Quiverfull and Biblical Patriarchy beliefs aren't inherently bad people. In the wake of the Duggar scandal, many Christian news organizations have posted news stories about the news, and while few have outright condemned him, most have been fairly neutral.

Earlier this week, Christian Headlines, a Christian news site, posted a damning condemnation of sexual abuse in evangelical movement, titled Moving Forward from the Duggar Scandal: The Church, Sexual Abuse, and the Epidemic of Silence. The author wrote, "The good news: the truth is getting exposed. The bad news: statistics tell us these stories are only the tip of the iceberg." She called for more accountability within the church, saying, "When civil justice is brought as well as ecclesiastical justice, the gospel is on display."

On Huffington Post Religion, Christian theologian Joel L. Watts penned an op-ed titled Dear Duggar Family Children, offering advice to those whose abuse was condoned by their belief systems. He wrote, "What you are told is Christianity is not Christianity, I assure you." He continued, "Just because the god of Quiverfull and your parents may not be in the box you were given, it doesn't mean God does not exist."

Drew Millard is on Twitter.

[body_image width='806' height='1024' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='martial-portraits-of-new-zealands-largest-gang-the-mongrel-mob-body-image-1432794172.jpg' id='60752']

Shano Rogue, 2010. C-Type Photograph, 1.9M x 1.5M

In the 1960s, a gang of variously disaffected youth sprang up in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. They didn't ride bikes, but they quickly developed all the trimmings of an outlaw motorcycle club: patches, club colors, and a fiercely violent process of initiation. They came to be known as the Mighty Mongrel Mob and today they're the largest gang in the country, with around 30 chapters across both islands.

Media access to the Mob is rare, which is why this photo series by Jono Rotman is kind of a big deal. Jono, who is a Wellington born photographer now living in NYC, cut his teeth capturing New Zealand's prisons and psychiatric wards, before he took on gang life in 2007. We asked him how he convinced hardened gang members to sit for large format photography, and what he learned along the way.

[body_image width='759' height='600' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='portraits-of-new-zealands-largest-gang-the-mongrel-mob-body-image-1432795851.jpg' id='60758']

Notorious Snapshot #24, 2014. C-Type Photograph, 1.8m X 2.3M

VICE: Hey Jono, how did you get access to these guys?
Jono Rotman: Initially I called the gang liaison officer at the NZ police and got a list of numbers of people who communicate between the gangs and the police. When I started it was to cover the gamut of NZ's gangs, but ultimately I focused on the Mongrel Mob.

How did you convince them this was a good idea?
I explained that I wasn't trying to "tell their story," expose them, or some shit like that. Instead I told them I wanted to take martial portraits. And you know, regardless of where the Mob are viewed in the social hierarchy, these men have committed to a creed and fought battles, sometimes to the death. Basically the more they thought it was honest, the more they understood I wanted to produce something more complex than a cultural postcard. Then once there was go-ahead from the top, the guys down the bottom were happy to cooperate. These guys are hierarchical.

Did you feel intimidated?
Of course. Mob history is very bloody and NZ is a country with few guns so these guys don't earn their stripes without putting their bodies on the line. Perhaps because of this, they have little to prove and are very upfront to deal with. There was always a tacit understanding that they could kill me if I fucked with them.

[body_image width='806' height='1024' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='portraits-of-new-zealands-largest-gang-the-mongrel-mob-body-image-1432795884.jpg' id='60759']

Denimz Rogue, 2008. C-Type Photograph, 1.9M x 1.5M

Can you describe the first portrait you took?
The first place I went to was in Porirua to photograph Denimz, the guy with the dogs on his cheeks. That's a largely Pacific Islander and Maori area with a lot of state housing. Denimz's place is nice though, he's got a good family and he's a well-organized guy. I think as they get older their outlook gets wider: it's less about turf war, and more about the health of their community. When we met I tried to speak as directly as I could. At that stage, I didn't know what I was dealing with, so I just said what I wanted to do, and he told me what he didn't want to do.

[body_image width='795' height='1024' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='portraits-of-new-zealands-largest-gang-the-mongrel-mob-body-image-1432796180.jpg' id='60762']

Sean Wellington and Sons, 2009. C-Type Photograph, 1.5M x 1.2M

Generally speaking, what are their homes like?
Their houses are pretty clean. Many have wives, and a lot of them have been to prison, so they've come away with that regimented attitude towards cleanliness. I've tended to focus more on the older guys too, so they tend to have their shit together. But I've been to some squalid dives, too. In general, they're not loaded so there's not a lot of ostentatious wealth.

And what are they like in person?
They're pretty significant characters forged from the coalface of life. I've been a photographer for a long time and I've had my fair share of meeting the famous and lauded, but in many ways I found a lot of the mobsters to be more impressive human beings. I've taken maybe 200 hundred portraits since I started. Of that, there weren't any overly negative experiences, maybe just some teething problems to start with. Sometimes someone would get an idea about what you're doing and, down the grapevine, it's completely off track.

[body_image width='806' height='1024' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='portraits-of-new-zealands-largest-gang-the-mongrel-mob-body-image-1432796208.jpg' id='60763']

Bung-Eye Notorious, 2008. C-Type Photograph, 1.9M x 1.5M

Did you ever see anything that shocked you?
OK, here's an anecdote. I was on a memorial run, which is a basically a road trip to visit their fallen brothers around the country. They drive classic V8 Fords, which they call "Henries," and we were 30-cars deep going through a town that was Black Power territory. That's their rival gang.

The Black Power guys must have seen the first handful of patched cars enter the town and sent word to the guys at the other end. When we got there half a dozen guys with bricks and baseball bats came out of their lairs and started laying into the cars. And then more and more Mob cars turned up. It turned into this big brawl in the middle of the main street. Luckily the Mob chief showed up and stopped them. It would have been a bloodbath otherwise, as the Blacks were way outnumbered.

[body_image width='806' height='1024' path='images/content-images/2015/05/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/28/' filename='portraits-of-new-zealands-largest-gang-the-mongrel-mob-body-image-1432795976.jpg' id='60761']

Greco Notorious South Island, 2008. C-Type Photograph, 1.9M x 1.5M

So when you look back at the eight years you spent with the Mob, what have you learned?
It peeled the lid off the NZ I knew—some of these guys are from serious poverty and from some fucking difficult environments. That's helped a lot in understanding my country. You don't tend to join a gang because you had access to good schools and all that sort of stuff.

As an artist, I'm most interested in distillations of the human condition and, to me, gangs represent a set of human drives taken to an extreme. They have a certain purity. This is what I set out to explore, and it still stands true. But as the relationship evolved, the focus of the work became more complicated. It's humbling to meet people who've had an utterly different upbringing to my own, and to be welcomed. It's also an insight into the forces that have made New Zealand. These guys have played a very important role.

Interview by Julian Morgans. Follow him on Twitter

In Wellington? Jono's portraits are at the City Gallery until June 14

Like VICE on Facebook and have more great stories like this one delivered to your feed.

In the near future, the world will be overrun by robotic felines that recharge their lithium ion batteries by feasting on the electrical charge from a freshly dead human corpse. From a distance, the robot beast's matte-black skin makes it look panther-like; up close, the flesh is hairless and smooth and wholly unnatural. It is dull, gray-black in color, rubbery. Sweat will fall from your brow and roll in droplets down the robot's side, barely leaving a trace on its water-resistant surface. You will only have a few seconds to register this, though. Get anywhere close to the beast and it will turn its head toward you with a dull, whirring sound and then seamlessly dislodge your esophagus from your neck.

Sounds shitty, huh? Don't worry—we still have a few years before the beast is fully operational and things inevitably spin wildly out of control. For now, we can only sit back and watch as scientists at MIT continue to refine their robot cheetah prototype into a soon-to-be killing machine.

This morning, MIT News Office released an article about their robotic cheetah—the "first four-legged robot to run and jump over obstacles autonomously." An accompanying video shows their soulless, godless monster galloping through a gymnasium, effortlessly leaping over barriers. The beast looks silly and harmless now, but that's exactly the kind of thinking that will get you ripped to shreds by its magnesium alloy teeth in a decade or so.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About the Future?

1. The Future of Drugs According to VICE
2. The Future of Television According to VICE
3. The Future of Terrorism According to VICE
4. The Future of Sex According to VICE

Follow River on Twitter.

[body_image width='1024' height='576' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='hands-on-with-the-ultimate-batman-simulator-of-arkham-knight-830-body-image-1432885713.jpg' id='61165']

Batman and Nightwing join up to beat down the Penguin's goons in 'Arkham Knight.'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Being Batman in a video game has never been more thrilling than during Rocksteady's last two games featuring the DC Comics icon. The London-based studio produced Arkham Asylum in 2009, leading to substantial plaudits, and 2011's Arkham City was even better, for my money anyway, taking the action outside of Gotham's infamous institution for the insane and onto the crime-polluted streets and sewers of the wider metropolis.

Rocksteady took a break after City to focus on a new-gen-only Batman experience, allowing Warner Bros Games Montréal to fill the void between then and now with the prequel of Arkham Origins, the reception to which was warm but came with criticism of its recycling of prior gameplay elements (and fantastically jaggy frame rate problems). It was sweet to be back in Gotham, but with no new tricks of real note added to Batman's arsenal—simple crime-scene analysis sequences aside—Origins lacked the compelling bite of Asylum and City. But this summer's Batman: Arkham Knight is looking to correct that critical course—back towards the acclaim, the high scores, and the prestige that comes with delivering a triple-A game that truly makes good on its many promises. And this one is promising a lot.

[body_image width='640' height='426' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='hands-on-with-the-ultimate-batman-simulator-of-arkham-knight-830-body-image-1432885738.jpg' id='61166']

This very-real version of the 'Arkham Knight' Batmobile is currently at London's Joe Macari showroom.

"The opportunity that going new-gen only presented us was huge, and it gave us the chance to bring in features that we'd wanted to see for a long time," Rocksteady's Guy Perkins tells me, after I've spent half an hour with Arkham Knight, playing through a handful of snappy scenarios featuring collaborative brawling, silky smooth rooftop traversing, dead body scanning (which I wasn't really supposed to see, but I finished up the other stuff quicker than my guide expected), and fireman rescuing. And then there's the small matter of a certain vehicle making its Arkham series debut. "Having the additional horsepower (of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) meant that we could create the entirety of Gotham City, and bring in the Batmobile. We've made the game we always wanted to make, and Batman is at the peak of his powers in this outing."

The addition of the Batmobile is exciting, for sure, and Rocksteady's team has been careful to ensure that its massive-scale Gotham— Knight's open world is said to be five times larger than that of City—isn't divided into obvious in-car and on-foot sections. "We approached the design so that they work with each other, so the Batmobile is an extension of you," Perkins says. "If you want to use the car, you can, but you don't always have to."

In practice, though, the Batmobile is a fiddly, fidgety contraption that may well take a while to satisfactorily tame. What I play skips any kind of tutorial proper, and it's likely that the full, final game will break the player into the car's many powers slowly. But all the same, I regularly found myself pressing the wrong button while in control of Rocksteady's vision of the Dark Knight's powerful wheels, ejecting from the driver's seat when I meant to boost, or activating its guns-blazing, chassis-strafing battle mode when I was simply trying to back up from a wall I wasn't supposed to be parked in. In my hands, the Batman of Arkham Knight wasn't quite as cool as his cinematic depictions have presented him.

[body_image width='1919' height='1080' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='hands-on-with-the-ultimate-batman-simulator-of-arkham-knight-830-body-image-1432885766.jpg' id='61167']

Poison Ivy is amongst the recognizable Batman villains making their return in 'Arkham Knight'

But then again, that's fine, because Rocksteady's Batman isn't the same as the comic book Batman, or the Hollywood Batman, or the animated Batman. He is the developer's own creation, a character certainly taking cues from previous versions of the Caped Crusader, but unique and original to the video games medium. "There's a style and tone to our Batman that's different to others," Perkins explains. "We've got Kevin Conroy back, doing the voice. We look at all sorts of places for inspiration—it sounds cheesy to say it, but a lot of people at the studio are Batman fanatics. Everyone has a favorite Batman, a favorite actor, or show, or series. People love Batman in all his guises, so [for ours] to be considered amongst all of those is great. It's an amazing privilege."

Perkins is keen to stress the emotional, personal aspect of Knight's story, one that will pit Batman against the titular Arkham Knight, a new villain of the studio's creation, and Scarecrow, who has successfully brought a number of recognizable adversaries, such as the Riddler, the Penguin, and Poison Ivy, together to bring our hero down. In the vertical slice I get to see of the game, there's little evidence of quite how the story will unfold, but with prior Arkham series games praised for their bold narratives, I've no doubt that Rocksteady will realize a plot that keeps players hooked beyond trophy chasing and Batmobile racing. The precedent's there for quite the finale.

Related: VICE's documentary on the growing world of eSports

"We've done things in the past like killing the Joker at the end of City—and that was a brave move," Perkins says, referring to this climactic sequence where, yup, Rocksteady went and bumped off Gotham's premiere super criminal. "He's very dead, and very gone, and that changes Arkham Knight from a narrative perspective, because who is going to step into those shoes? Scarecrow was left out of City for a reason, and that was to bring him back here. As much as Joker was part of Batman's psyche, the yin to his yang, Scarecrow is almost the same as Batman, in so much as he uses fear as a key weapon. He's an interesting character for Batman to play off against, as he's not physically intimidating—he's mentally challenging.

"Batman is not indestructible—he is just a guy in a suit, and that vulnerability is evident. We've this personal story that sees his own agenda come to the fore. The story that we're telling is very emotional—it certainly feels that way to us. And the way it's revealed and developed is paced really nicely across the missions. If you're a massive Batman nerd, while our story is a new one, there's tons of stuff in here that you'll identify with, and things that will resonate with you. And if you're not, then it's still a great action-adventure game, which just happens to have Batman in it."

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Bm-6kYvPEdM' width='560' height='315']

'Batman: Arkham Knight,' Time to Go to War gameplay video.

The ingredients are in place for the great action-adventure game Perkins is selling—Batman's movement is fluid, and this new Gotham feels like the adventure playground this digital superhero's always needed, full of perplexing puzzles to solve and lore-nodding environmental details. But where Origins failed to do much new with Batman's skills, Knight does dial up the gameplay, adding a clutch of fresh features which extend beyond the belated arrival of the Batmobile.

During a raid of one of the Penguin's weapons caches, my Batman engages in a bout of fisticuffs with an intimidating slew of goons—but not alone. Nightwing joins the fray, and with the tap of a shoulder button his moves can combine with Batman's to double-team any individual foe. One of the four main face buttons allows the player to step into the boots of the former Robin, opening up new moves unique to this sidekick. Together, they defeat the goons and deal with the stockpile of arms that, otherwise, would end up on Gotham's streets. Combat is something that the Arkham games have always been celebrated for, their free-flowing combo system and countering mechanics inspiring other games' own close-quarters encounters. Wisely, Rocksteady haven't tried to dramatically fix something that isn't broken.

"We have tinkered with it, and refined elements," Perkins says. "We've added new moves to the combat, and increased the number of animations. Now, when you get grabbed, it doesn't have to break your combo, as you can bash your way out of it. We've got moves where you can pick a thug up off the ground and immediately go into a super beat-down, which is pretty awesome. If you're fighting near a wall, Batman's behavior will change—there are context sensitive actions, so Batman might flip off the wall, or bash people's heads into it. So there are a lot of changes, but the fundamental combat is still there and hasn't changed. And it's flattering that other people have seen our system as an inspiration."

Prefer real blows to virtual combos? Visit Fightland.

[body_image width='1024' height='576' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='hands-on-with-the-ultimate-batman-simulator-of-arkham-knight-830-body-image-1432885847.jpg' id='61168']

The new Gotham is five times the size of the open world of 'Arkham City.'

Elsewhere, the Riddler's been busy, converting sections of the city's sewers into traps-laden tracks for the Batmobile to blast through—the one I take a few laps around has controllable platforms that slide in and out above a watery death, and it's up to the player to hit the right button at the right time, while keeping up the car's momentum, to beat the Riddler's time limit. It's a fun distraction, but it is just that—these courses are something I'll probably visit only sporadically during the story proper, unless I need to in order to progress, and come back to after the plot's completed. The Gotham City Police Department is open for business in Knight, too, and Batman can apprehend criminals and drop them down into the cells across the course of the game. There's more—new gadgets, new-to-the-series allies, and the constant threat of the Arkham Knight's militarized forces, who come at you in tanks and armored cars. It must have been tough for Rocksteady to know exactly where to draw the line on all this new-gen-facilitated stuff, given the increased power of today's home consoles.

"How much do you want to bite off, as a developer, is always a challenge," Perkins confirms. "But the way we approached this was by thinking about what we really wanted to create, and that was the ultimate Batman simulator. We needed the car. We needed the city. But we also have to make sure that what we're doing is relevant, fun, and exciting, and that it stays fresh for the duration."

That consistent freshness is something I obviously can't confirm after just the briefest of hands-on time with Arkham Knight, but what I've seen so far fills me with confidence, and great anticipation for the full game. I loved City, and while I enjoyed the tense claustrophobia of Asylum, being out in the open really gave me the Batman experience I'd always wanted in a video game. Knight is set up to be a very natural expansion of City, and if my gut feeling proves correct, and I get a proper grip on the blasted Batmobile controls, it'll be a trilogy concluding adventure that Rocksteady can be proud of.

"This project is the final Batman game for us, and it's been an emotional rollercoaster," Perkins concludes. "We're sad that it's coming to an end." The rest of us will have to wait and see what tears roll when the game's credits do.

Batman: Arkham Knight is released for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on June 23.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

[body_image width='1500' height='1006' path='images/content-images/2015/05/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/29/' filename='the-greatest-moments-of-metal-gear-solid-320-body-image-1432903339.jpg' id='61314']

Illustration by Stephen Maurice Graham.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

You can't really talk or comment or think about Metal Gear Solid like you used to without noticing the large black shroud that's appeared over it. That's the outcome of the recent turmoil at Konami, and it's made it a sad time to love the series that made Hideo Kojima famous.

Metal Gear Solid may not even be "his" anymore, or at least after Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is released in September. And whatever the internal truths at Konami may be, their public actions have put the entire MGS legacy in question, if not outright jeopardy. When MGSV is over and done with, it may be time to follow Snake's lead and spread the ashes of the series' past over our faces.

This all makes right now perhaps a strange time to reflect, but reflect we shall. After all, Kojima's Metal Gear is still Metal Gear even when stripped of his name. But it's because of Kojima's goofy, hallucinatory blend of uncompromising vision, self-awareness, and refusal to present reality at face value that MGS is chock full of memories, from the ludicrous to the gravely sobering.

So Kojima's not far removed from Big Boss. He inspires such fierce and absolute loyalty from his most devoted followers that countless have spent decades shouldering the weight of MGS's increasingly dense plot like overloaded packs of field equipment. Few series have as much baggage, or as much meat—there's more eating in one helping of its meta-commentary, long-winded gravitas, and deranged narrative matrices than Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed could eke out in a hundred servings.

It goes without saying that most creators (particularly Japanese ones, who lean more toward auteur sensibilities than many of the West's equivalents) eventually leave their most-famous creations behind to do something new, and Kojima's more than earned the right to make whatever he wants. But you have to wonder what Metal Gear really means without him, or why anyone would want to bother trying to find out.

On to the best bits, then, or at least some of my favorites. Disagreements are assured. Oh, spoilers, obviously.

Snake's nightmare – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Most modern big-budget games go out of their way to beat players over the head in pointing out hidden secrets or fan-service aspects they might otherwise miss. Not MGS—you could miss some of its best-hidden treasures without a guide. Take the nightmare Snake has late in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, after being captured, tortured, and thrown in a jail cell in the mountain fortress of Groznyj Grad, for instance.

Triggering this optional sequence requires two steps. First, you have to save your progress when you're dragged to the brig. Second, you have to exit the game entirely. If you're lucky (as I was when first playing the game), watching Snake get beaten within an inch of his life by Volgin and company will feel like a good stopping point. Saving your progress here prompts Para-Medic to tell Snake a story about Bela Lugosi's Dracula; Snake growls back that he'll probably have nightmares.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/CCfrWhRI8mE' width='560' height='315']

Come back later and the expected fade-in to Groznyj Grad's dingy lock-up is replaced by what resembles a rejected concept from Silent Hill. Instead of controlling Snake, you move a sullen-looking kid wielding two hooked blades around a dirty room, hacking and slashing at misshapen zombies that pop open like gory wind-up toys as blood splashes across a washed-out sepia and orange screen. Cut down these soulless hordes for a confusing couple of minutes and the view jumps back to Snake, jarred awake from the intensity of his apparent dream.

Upon discovery, I couldn't believe what had just happened. It wasn't until much later I would learn the nightmare, called "Guy Savage" by Konami staff, only takes place if you let Snake "fall asleep" by saving and exiting the game—continue pushing on at this point and he never loses consciousness. Sadly, all traces of "Guy Savage" have been inexplicably cut from modern versions of MGS3 (likely because it was originally being developed as its own game before the project stalled), though it's still present on old PS2 discs. Kojima also sort of revisited the motif later in the game and then again during MGS4 in a very unexpected place.

Rogue's gallery – Metal Gear Solid

The cast of adversaries in the original Metal Gear Solid made Kojima a recognizable name in the West, while the game itself revived the dormant concept of stealth that the original Metal Gear pioneered over a decade earlier while introducing a new generation of players to Solid Snake. And what an intro MGS had.

I remember being 14, listening to Campbell's awkwardly translated descriptions of FOXHOUND while watching Snake travel through the Bering Strait toward Shadow Moses. These outlandish terrorists sounded like larger-than-life figures ripped straight from comics, with their intriguing complement of animal codenames, I couldn't wait to face this group of renegades, before I even had a grasp of who they were.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/v9Jm2iSokug' width='560' height='315']

From there, FOXHOUND took on mythic proportions and somehow never failed to disappoint. In 1998 (as it is now) it was unlikely you'd seen bosses like these, where one minute you'd be facing down a Russian gunship and the next a minigun-wielding giant was getting eaten alive by a flock of ravens. You could get a good sense of Ocelot from his loving obsession with the Colt Single Action Army, whose bullets kicked all over a small C4-wired area; likewise Grey Fox's bloody, off-kilter introduction heightened tension like a horror film, before the exoskeleton-clad ninja unleashed the battle-hungry mania of a mind melted by unchecked cybernetic augmentation.

And then there was Psycho Mantis, the granddaddy of all boss battles, who truly fucked with you by reading out the Konami saves on your memory card and demonstrating his psychokinetic power by making your DualShock vibrate. Each passing encounter suited to its character, with Codec-based backstories and wonderfully overwrought death scenes breathing more life into every unit member's thoughts and motivations, to the point where you felt you knew them. FOXHOUND set a precedent for MGS that Dead Cell and the Cobra unit built upon, and the rest is history.

Snake crawls through the microwave corridor – Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Metal Gear Solid 4's themes dealt with suffering more than any other games of the series—a fitting end to Solid Snake's saga that paralleled Kojima's own beleaguered relationship with MGS. Every stop was pulled out and every possible loose end tied off with appearances from close to the whole extended Metal Gear cast.

It was a completely batshit finale even for Kojima and the send-off had its price: resembling a crusty, aching Clint Eastwood with a mullet, Snake has prematurely aged and doesn't have long to live due to some genetic complications with his origins as a clone of Big Boss. Continuing the parallel between creator and creation, Kojima puts Snake through more excruciating abuse than you're likely to find afflicting nearly any other video game protagonist. That MGS4 intentionally goes out of its way to present an emotional barrage of trauma to pretty much everyone you've ever loved in the series works on multiple levels.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mdjLBYxAcUI' width='560' height='315']

The culmination of MGS4's emotional slugfest happens as Snake must infiltrate Liquid Ocelot's (Ocelot's consciousness merged with Snake's dead clone in MGS2, if you'd forgotten) floating base to upload a virus into the Patriots' global AI network, thereby breaking Liquid's hold over the nanomachine-controlled army he plans to use for world domination. This being the end of the game, the objective, the base server room, is heavily guarded, and accessing it requires going through a long security hallway emitting microwave radiation. By this point in the game Snake is already worn to the bone, routinely stabbing himself in the neck with syringes of medicine to keep his encroaching illness at bay, the left side of his face horribly burned from an explosion earlier. He's been run ragged, to say the least.

Furthermore, cyborg Raiden, more stubborn than ever, has put himself in critical condition (he was crushed by blocking the physical force of Liquid's base—basically holding back an Arsenal Gear model with his bare hands—to save Snake), and Otacon's pint-sized Metal Gear Mk. III, the key to uploading the virus, is doomed to be ripped apart by drones if going in solo. With no other options, Snake must brave the emitters himself to protect the Mk. III.

This isn't suited to a cutscene, so Kojima makes you control Snake as the radiation eats through his smoking OctoCamo suit until he is reduced to crawling, inch by agonizing inch, through the blinding pain. The twist of the knife is when the screen splits in two, allowing you to simultaneously witness a montage of your allies being overwhelmed by Liquid's forces, including an armless Raiden valiantly taking on a host of elite soldiers. It's almost a let down when you learn in the game's epilogue that things are less grim than you've been led to believe, but by this point the damage has been done by one of the most profoundly upsetting incidents in game history. Good work, Koj.

When Geoff Keighley talked to a Fox Engine render – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Was Moby Dick Studios' fictitious CEO Joakim Mogren just a Fox Engine render? A lot of internet conspiracy theorists think so, adding more fuel to the raging fire of The Phantom Pain's public perception. In any case, Geoff Keighley allegedly interviewed him (or someone, or something), and whether the man was real or not is immaterial. Instead, focus on how crazy it is that Kojima could extend MGSV's influence beyond the game with a campaign carefully choreographed to twist fans' perception and expectations (see also: P.T.) until they were sure that everything was connected and had its own purpose.

Why was Mogren made with the Fox Engine? What was the meaning of the bandaged man mask seen in The Phantom Pain's hospital demo (and worn by Kojima)? Why would he conspire with a mad-scientist-like head transplant doctor? When would David Hayter reappear, letting you play as Snake? It's all been fodder for a grander conspiracy with unknown ends. Not even the split with Konami has been above suspicion by some.

None of this is strictly part of any game, and that's the point: any discussion of Metal Gear without considering the kind of fourth-wall bleed-through Kojima delights in is only getting half the story. For as insane as Metal Gear is within its own boundaries, it's much more than the sum of its parts, and Kojima has an established history of duping his fans, namely by capitalizing on the long-held expectation that games can only be products. In truth, the unspooling mystery behind MGSV is just the latest in a long line of puppet mastery that stretches back to the lead-up for MGS2.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/_3jF1ijPnPQ' width='560' height='315']

After the first MGS, the rabid anticipation for the inevitable sequel was insurmountable—a notion that Kojima used to play right into gamers' hands. Rather than giving fans the follow-up they so desperately wanted, a new action-packed chapter in the heroic shoes of Solid Snake (on the mind-blowing PS2, no less), Kojima deliberately altered pre-release material to completely hide the existence of Raiden, MGS2's actual protagonist: a brash, wet-behind-the-ears rookie who was the polar opposite of Snake in every conceivable way.

Of course, that this was who you'd be controlling was an absolute outrage. Fans had been promised more Snake—Konami had gone as far as showing videos of him heroically battling Dead Cell in the Big Shell chapter, which takes up the majority of the game. By misleading the public, Kojima played the ultimate game to prove the effectiveness of misinformation, coinciding with MGS2's primary theme. In forcing players to control a novice, VR-trained soldier that they instantly hated—someone not so very far removed from a gamer sitting on the couch with a controller—he made a game about playing video games. Anyone that felt MGS2 was simply supposed to be a product wasn't looking carefully enough.

Meta-narrative aside (it's nothing short of a miracle that Kojima was able to pull MGS2's long con off), you can trace that through-line all the way to The Phantom Pain. As of right now it's anyone's guess what Kojima is hoping to say with MGSV—it's just as likely something as evidently blatant as a Quiet figure with squeezable boobs could actually be Kojima's way of telling us to maybe think a little bit harder.

Related: VICE sits down with the director of 'Mad Mad: Fury Road,' George Miller

The End – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

With his constant napping, parrot, and bulging eye (for better aim, one assumes) the Cobra unit's The End is a notably bizarre character. Kojima actually envisioned Snake's battle with this 100-plus-year-old legendary sniper lasting up to two weeks of game time, with players finally defeating him through sheer attrition (an idea that was scrapped after MGS3's testing team informed Kojima it would be impossible). Furthering stacking the odds against you, and because this is MGS, where nothing can ever be normal, The End could also photosynthesize and "talk to the forest," ensuring the duel ahead would be as drawn-out as it was weird.

Normally, meetings with strong opponents like these give the OK signal to stand out in the open because your enemy has been alerted to your presence; but for the first time, being exposed for any significant amount of time meant you'd probably die. It didn't help that The End could be hiding anywhere across three dense, forested maps. It could take hours of using every trick in the book, from inching across the length of the forest canopy straining with your directional mic to spotting the glint of your enemy's rifle in the sun to discover where he was hiding. It was a fight that broke all the rules.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/aJRyyLvwIKo' width='560' height='315']

You could break the rules too, oddly enough, so that your engagement with The End never occurs. Hours before he blocks your passage to Groznyj Grad, you're given a (very tricky) one-time chance to kill him in his sleep as he rests in his wheelchair on an open dock. Similarly, you could let the passage of time take him by saving in the middle of the mission and waiting a week to touch the game again, which would result in a very puzzled Snake discovering his lifeless body. A proper encounter was best, though, if only to see him fumble his dying soliloquy by way of a slow-motion shot of false teeth flying toward the screen just before his body detonates in an explosion of leaves.

Ocelot steals Metal Gear RAY – Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Kojima loves to use heavy handed, theatrical speech to say in 15 minutes what could easily be explained in two, and with that in mind Ocelot's first major appearance in MGS2 is among the finest in series history. Appearing on Metal Gear RAY's loading platform just as Commandant Scott Dolph has finished his speech on the RAY and US Marines' new age of anti-Metal Gear deterrence, Snake's old adversary addresses the military assembly with some rhetoric of his own.

It's a trick, of course, meant to draw the marines' (and the player's) attention away from the reality of the situation. With Snake hidden across the room and all eyes on the enigmatic, duster-clad gunslinger, Ocelot's partner Colonel Gurlukovich is able to sneak up behind Dolph and quickly get him at gunpoint.

The expert direction here puts Ocelot in total control: Patric Zimmerman's performance takes on a freshly menacing tone as Ocelot assumes a more commanding poise, stepping in front of Dolph's security detail. He raises a hand above his head holding a detonator, revealing that the tanker has been wired with plastic explosives. The Marines in a bind, Gurlukovich's unit rappels down to detach RAY from its docked position—but Ocelot isn't through yet.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/JdTI1ueY4Ic' width='560' height='315']

In typical Metal Gear fashion, Gurlukovich goes on to briefly denounce the political realities of democratic foreign relations during the Cold War before Ocelot double-crosses him, disclosing his allegiance to the Patriots. I love the melodramatic shootout that follows—Ocelot goads his old comrade into an open provocation with Dolph in the crossfire, killing Gurlukovich, his unit and the Commandant in an instant while effortlessly tossing off his duster in one improbably stylish move.

There's a greater importance hinted here, too, in Dolph's alarmed reaction to the mention of the Patriots. It's the first inkling that players may not be getting the whole truth and almost as if confirming that notion, Liquid's consciousness then takes over Ocelot through his arm graft, showing that little in MGS2 (or with Kojima) is what it appears.

Time paradoxes – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

When MGS3 brought the series back to the Cold War, it gave Kojima the perfect excuse to play with the idea of time itself. Should Snake finds himself in an early grave in the game, the letters spelling out "Snake Is Dead" slowly flip over to say "Time Paradox," since his death in 1964 means you've changed history, erasing Big Boss and everything that comes after and effectively destroying the series timeline.

Other story-specific characters—Eva, Sokolov and Ocelot—can be killed with similar results, though instead of just getting the same screen, not hitting start for a few minutes causes Colonel Campbell to reach through time and yell at you for mucking around. (So, MGS3 takes place in VR?)

Despite how inconsequential this is, that Kojima put time paradoxes in just as a joke says a lot of Metal Gear's willingness as a series to acknowledge the player—another series trademark, and something games are loathe to do in an era where bullets are typically programmed to just pass harmlessly through most non-player characters. And, frankly, MGS3's time paradoxes are just really funny. Which brings us to...

Naked Raiden – Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

You knew it was coming. Raiden's adventure au natural through the bowels of Arsenal Gear might be my favorite part of the entire MGS series (not that you should count this list as appearing in any particular numbered order). It's rare that you get to see games fold in on themselves as spectacularly as MGS2 does in this surreal tableau, as a Skull Suit-less Raiden sneaks through an unfamiliar facility crawling with ninja-styled spec ops while he comically holds his unmentionables.

The game's sense of sanity is breaking down here in multiple ways. Colonel Campbell, actually an AI program that's been manipulating Raiden's every move throughout the mission, incessantly calls your Codec to spout increasingly erratic gibberish at you, even telling Raiden to turn off the game console (itself a nod to Big Boss in the original Metal Gear). Arsenal Gear's chilly sterility adds to effects with its otherworldly, anatomically inspired room descriptions like "stomach" and "ascending colon" a far cry from the Big Shell's mundane sediment pools and filtration chambers.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/oe2ZW4boNqE' width='560' height='315']

That's just it, though; the convergence of this stuff is designed to have an effect, just as Raiden's bare-bottomed escape through Arsenal Gear is the perfect encapsulation of Kojima's personality. It's silly, feverish, and nonsensical, yet deliberate and intricately constructed with the utmost care. At a time when MGS2's plot is about to take a nosedive off a cliff (hitting every gotcha moment and red herring imaginable on the way down, all part of Kojima's plan to demonstrate the power of misinformation), letting players feel that breakdown in the very marrow of MGS2's design as they're playing is an ingenious move. The fake-outs do become more intrusive (who can forget the Fission Mailed screen?) once Raiden gets his gear back and is at last properly joined by Snake—but if MGS2 is Kojima's grandest joke at our expense, there's no better way to measure it than by literally pranking our pants off. If that's not Metal Gear, probably nothing is.

Fictional tech's great and everything, but Motherboard has the latest on real-world science

Honorable mentions

Snake reflects on the cardboard box – MGS3
Raiden and Solidus' sword fight – MGS2
Senator Armstrong's speech – Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Vamp kills the Navy Seals – MGS2
Raiden's return – MGS4
Déjà vu mission – Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Johnny Sasaki – various

Follow Steve Haske on Twitter.