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Screen shots via Blizzard

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Thirty million people is a lot of people. Say that number to yourself: 30 million.

To put that into context, that's over three times the population of greater metropolitan London. That's more than the population of Australia. It's probably slightly less than the amount of people who were wiped out when the Death Star obliterated Alderaan, but it's still a lot of people. And that's roughly the number of people who are playing Blizzard's virtual card collecting game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

When it first emerged, Hearthstone seemed like a lightweight, casual game—something Blizzard was tossing off between installments of its main franchises: StarCraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft and now Heroes of the Storm (which is out today, June 2). But in the year since its release, not only has Hearthstone bagged a huge audience—helped in no small part by its release on tablets—but it's also become a massively watched eSport. Its popularity simply continues to grow.

It's now, according to Hearthstone's senior game designer Mike Donais, set to become even bigger. In April 2015 it made the jump onto iOS and Android phones, meaning that we're all just a pocket fumble away from a game of virtual cards.

"It's been really positive," he says. "We get tons of threads on our forums saying things like, 'Wow! It's on my phone now, I'm playing it at work and I'm playing it while I'm driving!"

"Er... never do that," he adds.

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The success of the game and its rise as a bona-fide eSports addition took Blizzard a little by surprise. The developers knew they'd made a good game, but from the sounds of things they weren't prepared for its runaway success.

"We were a really small team when we started," says Ben Thompson, the game's art director. "It took years to make one set [of cards]. Nowadays we're trying to bring out content fairly often, and we have to design with eSports in mind, too."

"That said, there's a balance," says Donais. "At its inception, Hearthstone was designed to be a game for everyone, so we want to be as fair as we can to the casual player and people who just want to play for free."

Watch: The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

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If you've never heard of it, Hearthstone is essentially Blizzard's take on Magic: The Gathering. Two players square off against each other, playing cards that are either creatures with attack and health scores or spells that befuddle, annoy, or hurt their opponent. Each player has a health score of their own and when their opponent manages to drop it to zero—dealing damage through creature attacks or spells—they've lost.

Perhaps the biggest aspect of Hearthstone's appeal is the ease with which one can play it. You don't need some high-end gaming rig PC to play the game, as is evident from the fact that it now fits on your phone, and it's incredibly easy to get your head round. Unlike a lot of eSports games, it doesn't demand that you're a tactical genius, or a drum-tight team player. It doesn't ever require you to program a bunch of hotkeys before you start, to shave off time between moves. If you've ever played Top Trumps growing up, you already have the basics.

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On top of that, you don't even need to buy the game—it's free, and while it does contain a boatload of in-app purchases (including card packs and a Solo Adventure mode where you can earn rare cards once you've beaten some levels) you don't really need to fork out any money to become a decent player. It's possible to grind away in the Arena mode and earn cards, in-game currency (with which you can buy more stuff), and Crafting Powder, which allows you build only the cards you want.

In fact, the only aspect of the game that may run new players up the wrong way is the behavior of a prominent section of its players. There have been reports that some players on Battle.Net—Blizzard's digital management platform—send messages to opponents who have beaten them that range from sarcastic to borderline psychotic.

The snarky behavior isn't even muted if you decide not to respond to chat requests on Battle.Net. In the game, players can "squelch" at their opponents—choose from a list of communication options that range from greetings to threats to apologies. That last option is almost always used by players just before they reduce their adversaries to dust.

There are few things more irritating than hearing an enemy say "I'm sorry" several times just before a gigantic fireball blows your minion apart. Has Blizzard thought of putting in a "Piss Off!" squelch option?

Prefer your play more physical? Visit VICE Sports.

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"We've talked about that," says Donais, "but we've found that it's really tough to find a communication option that isn't used sarcastically by our players. Even something like 'I'm sorry' is almost always used ironically."

"But we find that a British accent helps immensely," Thompson says. "That's just the ingenuity of gamers and people in general, isn't it? We can only do our best by offering the friendliest, most welcoming choices possible. What people do with them? We can't really control that!"

So there you go. If you can deal with sardonic so-and-sos—and there are a hell of a lot of them regularly playing Hearthstone—and you understand Snap and Trumps, the first lesson in your training to become an eSports champ is just a free download away. Just don't play it while you're driving, OK?

Blizzard's latest eSports-friendly MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, is out today, June 2.

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This article appears in the June Issue of VICE Magazine.

I first met David Sedaris about ten years ago, after he mentioned my Richard Yates biography on the Harvard Book Store website. I wouldn't have been more flattered if I'd discovered that Mark Twain had read and enjoyed my work, and I made a point of attending David's next reading in Gainesville, Florida, where I lived at the time. Later I moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and met David for a drink one night when his tour was in town—or, rather, I had a martini and David, as I recall, had seltzer. He sat across from me, alertly smiling, and sometimes he'd unobtrusively flip open a little steno pad and make a note. Which is to say, he's almost always working, even when he's picking up litter along the side of the road near his home in West Sussex, England (his diligence has been commended by the Queen).

On May 24, 2013, David's youngest sister, Tiffany, killed herself in Somerville, Massachusetts, and David wrote a poignant piece about this and other matters, "Now We Are Five," that appeared in the New Yorker. Tiffany had stipulated in her will that the family "could not have her body or attend her memorial service," and among her effects were a number of family photos that had been ripped to pieces. "Now We Are Five" recounts a family trip that summer to a beach house in Emerald Isle, North Carolina, where the surviving children and their 90-year-old father wonder who Tiffany really was and how things had gone so wrong. "Ours is the only club I've ever wanted to be a member of, so I couldn't imagine quitting," David writes of his family. "Backing off for a year or two was understandable, but to want out so badly that you'd take your own life?"

After reading the piece, I remarked to my wife that Tiffany reminded me a lot of my older brother, Scott, the main subject of a memoir I was about to publish, The Splendid Things We Planned. Growing up, Scott was the more promising one: better-looking, more athletic, and arguably smarter (he spoke German, our mother's first language, whereas I can hardly count to ten in anything but English). In many ways, both good and bad, he was more like me than anyone on Earth: He and only he would laugh at the same stupid shit that I did, and nowadays I often find myself laughing alone, and it will occur to me that Scott would have laughed just as hard. But Scott eventually killed himself, too, and by then it wasn't so surprising, though one always wondered to what extent the drugs and drink contributed to his mental illness or vice versa. As early as the age of ten or so, Scott would tell me he had a different family in another dimension (and no little brother) and that someday he'd disappear into their loving arms forever.

Before his local show on April 29, David and I met at the Skirvin Hilton in downtown Oklahoma City, across the street from where my father practiced law for almost 45 years. We candidly discussed our families, especially the "remarkable messes" that were Tiffany and Scott.

VICE: Though Scott and I had a certain affinity, for the most part it wasn't much fun growing up with him. Would you say that you had a relatively happy time growing up in your family?
David Sedaris: I had a happy time with my family. I always felt safe with them. I always felt a part of them. When I think back on my childhood, I think of my siblings and me sitting around a table laughing with my mother. And I mean long after dinner was finished. We did not leave the table the second we were done eating; my father would, and then we would all breathe a sigh of relief and talk for hours and hours. Elementary school, junior high school, high school, after high school—we just always really enjoyed one another's company.

That sounds great. My heart would kind of sink when it was time to sit down for dinner with my family—or with Scott, anyway.
One thing that I've been saying to people about your book is that, if you've had someone like Scott in your family, it's a grinding wheel. He fucks up majorly, and after he begs forgiveness, you let him back. Then he wrecks the car and goes to rehab. Then he gets out and starts taking drugs—it's the same story over and over and over. What saves a reader from feeling hopeless in your book is that you portray your brother as a remarkable person. A remarkable mess, but a remarkable person nonetheless. As a brother and an author you never lose sight of that. And I think a lot of times people do, especially because they cause you so much pain, these messes. It's the remarkable ones you want to write a book about.

Speaking of remarkable messes: Was Tiffany the difficult one even when she was small?
Yes. She was a lot like my mother. The physical resemblance was almost spooky, and they had a similar personality. Perhaps because of this, our mom never really liked Tiffany. Even as a child I looked at my sister and wondered what that would be like, not to feel the warmth of my mother's love. Tiffany didn't. There was always a nervous quality about her, a tentativeness, a desperate urge to be in your good graces. While the rest of us had eyes in the front of our heads, she had eyes on the sides, like a rabbit or a deer, like prey, always on the lookout for danger. Even when there wasn't any danger. You'd see her trembling and think, You want danger? I'll give you some danger...

So was she picked on?
She was picked on, though it would have been different if she were higher up in the birth order. Generally speaking, the older you are, the fewer people there are to fuck with you. I was talking to Zach Galifianakis a few weeks ago, and he told me that his older brother used to stuff his filthy underpants into Zach's mouth and say, "I'm serving you with a gag order." He said—and I thought it was very interesting—that his older brother had "formed" him. Zach is a hugely successful comedian and is grateful to have the family that he did. I think of my older sister, Lisa, and how she used to pin me to the ground and spit into my mouth. At the time it wasn't a whole lot of fun, but I certainly don't hold it against her. Tiffany, on the other hand, retained it all. I think it felt like betrayal to her to recall a happy moment. The narrative was that we were horrible to her and nothing we said or did could change it.

Did your younger siblings, Amy and Paul, connect a bit better with her?
Yes, but as Tiffany got older she couldn't hold that in her mind. She was diagnosed, we later learned, as bipolar II, though she preferred to say there was nothing wrong with her. When pressed she'd say that she was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and that the trauma was her childhood.

Front row, left to right: Amy, David, Gretchen, Paul, Lisa, and Tiffany

How did you find out about her bipolar diagnosis?
She had cleaned her room but left some papers amongst some trash in a plastic bag hanging on the back of her bedroom door. We never knew what was going on with Tiffany and thought, at one point, of hiring a private detective to find out what her life was like. Because of her secrecy we suspected the worst. I know that she had sex with people for money at certain points in her life.

How do you know that?
Tiffany came twice to visit me and Amy in New York. She went home to Raleigh a few times after moving to Boston, and on every occasion it would end badly. It's like it had to end that way. If there wasn't unpleasantness she'd manufacture it, just so she could leave on a bad note and keep to the narrative she'd fashioned.

There was a guy she knew in Queens who wasn't a boyfriend exactly, who'd buy her plane tickets and give her money. Maybe it's not fair of me, but I suspected it was in return for sex. There were other guys she referred to and situations she recounted in phone calls. Tiffany was very beautiful, and by 14 or so she knew how to use her looks to her advantage. There were a few exceptions, but for the most part, her relationships with men were, well... it always seemed like she was using them, playing them. There never seemed to be an innocent period with her, a period of dating or having a crush. She was sent away to a kind of reform school, a place called Élan [in Maine], when she was 14. Maybe she was innocent there and because we weren't allowed to visit we missed it. It's like she went in as a child and came out a hardened vamp.

We know that Tiffany complained about being in your work.
Tiffany told me I could never write about her, and I said "fine." Then she called one day in the year 2000 and said, "Everybody thinks you don't like me. Will you write a story about me?" I wrote "Put a Lid on It" and sent it to her with a note reading, "Is this OK with you?" She said, "My boyfriend and I read it, and we laughed so hard. You captured me perfectly." Then I took some things out, sent her the revised version, asking, again, "Is this OK?" "Love it," she told me. When the book it was included in came out in 2004, she gave an interview [to the Boston Globe] and said I had invaded her privacy and ruined her life. That was Tiffany in a nutshell. I should have kept it in mind and never written the story. She was always testing the wind and tailoring her reaction according to who she was talking to. Were someone to say, "I love the story your brother wrote," her response would be, "Yes, isn't it great?" And if somebody said, "I can't believe what your brother wrote about you," she'd say, "Yes, isn't it awful?"

How do your siblings react to their appearances in your work? Have there been conflicts with the others? Or do you have a policy of letting them see a given piece before?
I always let them see it first, or almost always. I was in Asheville, North Carolina, about ten days ago, and read a new story I had written about my sister Lisa, who is always willing to laugh at herself. She was in the audience that night, and rather than having her read it in advance, I wanted to surprise her with it. When people laugh at a story about one of my family members, they're laughing because the family member in question is funny. They're laughing, most often, at quotes. Lisa knows she's funny. She's not inclined to get up on stage and do what I do, but the laughs I get with that story are hers, and she earned every one of them.

Growing up, were you closer to some siblings than others? Or did alliances sort of form and dissolve over time?
I think it's like this for everyone in a big family. Relationships shift. When I was in junior high school and high school, I was best friends with my sister Gretchen. We were inseparable. When she went off to college, I started spending more time with Lisa. Then Amy and I moved to Chicago and became inseparable. In New York it was still me and Amy. Then I left the United States, and kind of moved back to Lisa, with short forays to Gretchen. I don't see Paul that often, but things shift, and who knows ten years from now? Amy and I go to Japan together, and she comes to Europe for Christmas, as do the others. I like them all.

Is there a sibling who's relatively conservative, or are you all a bunch of live wires?
Lisa's more—a bit more sober perhaps. I wouldn't use the word conservative. But the stories she tells are wild, and she delivers them beautifully. If you're looking from the outside in, she might appear a little more straitlaced than anybody else—the suburban house, etc.—but I don't know that she really is.

You mention how Paul would occasionally make "Rooster-ish" fun of your sexual orientation. What about your other siblings? Were you out as a gay man with them before you were out with your parents? How did that go down?
That's the great thing about a big family. All you have to do is tell one person, then by sunset everybody knows. I confided in Gretchen, and she did the rest of the work for me. Except for my father, and Paul when he was young, nobody seemed to care. That's probably pretty normal, though. When you're a kid, 13 or 14 years old, you don't want your older brother to be gay. It's embarrassing to you. As a young man Paul had a few bad experiences. Once, he was doing yard work at somebody's house, and this guy pulled over to ask for directions. Paul helped him out, and the guy said, "How about if I suck your dick?" My brother was shocked and went crazy with his rake. I think he thought that this was what being gay was like: You drive around and try to pick up teenagers with rakes and shovels in their hands.

Left to right: David, Lisa, and Gretchen

So was there any friction between you and Paul about it?
Not friction, no. He was, like I said, embarrassed for a while, but he got over it.

In an interview, Amy said something about the first time you brought a boyfriend to the seaside cottage or whatever. Everybody teased him.
When my sisters brought boyfriends home, my mother would make them sleep in separate rooms—this because they weren't married. With my boyfriends, though, there were no restrictions. Funny, but the only sex my mother allowed under her roof was gay sex, perhaps because it couldn't lead to pregnancy. I didn't have a serious boyfriend until I was 27. That was the first time my family saw me in a relationship.

Did your father try to talk you out of it?
Even as late as 2005 he tried to sell me on my friend Evelyne, who is ten years older than me and lives in Chicago. "She's a great gal! You ought to marry her." I'd been with Hugh for 15 years by that point, and I said, "What do you think it says about her that she'd want to marry a gay man?" It was just so weird to me.

He gets along with Hugh OK, right? Or...?
Yes, he does, amazingly well, especially given that he's 92 and Greek. When I started on the radio my father said, "Why do you have to talk about that stuff?" I thought he meant being gay, but he was talking about cleaning apartments. He didn't want people to know that I did that for a living. That, somehow, was more shameful to him than my sexuality, which was interesting.

In your latest story about the Rooster [his younger brother, Paul], you said something about how your mom became a mean drunk at the end.
When you're writing about somebody, whether they're dead or alive, there are things that they wouldn't want the world to know. So I never really addressed my mother's drinking. Writing that story about my brother, though, I wanted to talk about how he was formed, about how different his childhood was from mine. The mother I had would never have spoken to me the way she did to Paul, would never have acted the way she did in front of him, would never have lost control like that. It's hard to admit it, but toward the end of her life she was really an unhappy person, and it broke our hearts because we loved her. Worse still, we never confronted her about it. Instead it just sat there, seeping.

So it was sort of doubly sad?
I suppose we all sort of enabled her. She drank like an unhappy person, and that made it all the more troubling. Would our saying something have changed the situation? Who knows. My mom was the sort who really got a kick out of her children. She enjoyed spending time with us, and the feeling was mutual. Then we were gone and the darkness crept in. I was signing books one day, and this mother came up with her two children, aged maybe 18 and 20. They were in that golden period: the kids in college, both so beautiful and content with each other. And I just wanted to protect them. "Horrible, horrible things are coming," I wanted to say. "Remember this time! Cherish it!" I remember my dad boasting to a friend, "I've got the most beautiful daughters in the neighborhood!" And he did.

Speaking of your mom and dad, usually I find the humor about your father to be non-scathing. He's a character, and he's lovable. In "Ashes," though, about your mother's cancer, there's one part where he's berating her about smoking a cigarette, and you write something like, "He'd made a commitment to make her life miserable, and he would stick to that until the bitter end." Did that hurt your dad?
The only time my father got mad at me is when I wrote a story about my grandmother ["Get Your Ya-Ya's Out!"]. I remember when Naked came out, I called him to tell him that the book was on the best-seller list, and he hung up the phone on me. Ouch. Honestly, though, he could have been a lot angrier. I think about that story you mentioned, "Ashes," and cringe. After our mother died we were all mad at my father. We blamed him for making our mother unhappy. She had free will, though. She could have left and improved her life. She could have quit drinking. What did any of us know about marriage, about being with someone for 35 years? In retrospect, he was just an easy target. So when I look at that story it just seems bratty to me, and ignorant.

Was there much physical violence between you and your siblings? You said Lisa got on top of you and spit in your mouth.
As the older brother, it's your job to torment people, to tie your sisters up in a wheelbarrow, for instance, and roll it off a cliff into the ravine. But there was rarely serious violence, never throwing a brick at anybody. A person can really get hurt that way. I remember we had a butterfly chair. You know those canvas—

With the metal frame—
Exactly. So if you were all watching TV and you decided that you wanted to sit in the butterfly chair, you'd take a pin and stick it through the canvas into whichever ass was occupying it at the time. They'd run upstairs to tell on you, and voilà: The chair was yours. But there wasn't a lot of blood drawn. Tiffany stabbed me in the eye with a pencil once. I changed the channel while she was watching Bewitched and she just went ballistic. Blood was everywhere. I had to go to the hospital, but it wound up being nothing serious. She was pretty young, third grade or something, when that happened.

Left to right: David, Lisa, and Mom

Was she remorseful?
Sure, and I don't hold it against her.

I've gotten occasional hate mail about my memoir. Strangers who go to my website, they've read the memoir and they think I'm callous and having fun at Scott's expense. And I've noticed—though the overwhelming response to "Now We Are Five" is positive—there have been some snarky things written about it too. Do you take notice of that sort of thing?
No. I mean, I know that it exists, but I don't pay it any mind. I gave a reading last year in Mississippi, and during the Q&A this woman asked, "What do you say about the charge that you were responsible for your sister's suicide?"

You suggest in "Now We Are Five" that the suicide was, in some ways, a pointed gesture against the family. Do you think that?
Tiffany wrote a seven- or eight-page suicide note that was addressed to her lawyer and said, basically, "This is what led me to do what I did." It was mainly about friends she thought were stealing from her. The letter was so tangled and desperate-sounding. One of the things I noticed while reading it was that she capitalized all of her B's: But, Because, Barely. Everything else was lower case. I only received one letter from Tiffany, and she sent it to me long ago, in 1998, I think. I wasn't aware, then, of what her writing was like. I mean, who capitalizes all their B's?

She said she didn't want any family coming to her memorial service.
Yes. She also stated that we weren't allowed to have her body. Tiffany left all her belongings to a woman she once worked for who lives in New York State. Lisa called about maybe getting a cupful of ashes, and the woman said no. She was furious about this Dutch interview I gave. A couple months after Tiffany died, this Dutch film crew came to Sussex. They followed me around for several days, and toward the end of it, the interviewer kind of pulled up very close to me and said, "I know your sister recently committed suicide. So if you could say one thing to her, if she was here right now, what question would you ask?" And I said, "Can I have back that $6,000 that I loaned you?" I said it because the moment felt so cheesy: the lowered voice, the closeness. Certain people got bent out of shape over it, but come on. Tiffany was nothing if not funny. She would have been the first one to say something like that.

There's a YouTube video, about five minutes long, of Tiffany. And it was published in 2013, so it must have been toward the end of her life. She's kind of hilarious. She tells this story about Fred Astaire and Dick Cavett—
I saw that, and it made me sad, mainly because she was so much funnier than that. She could really make you laugh, Tiffany could. Most often, though, she'd go on too long. It was rare that she'd let the other person talk, and after a while it became oppressive, especially as she got older.

How would that happen? Can you give me an example of how an otherwise amiable gathering would deteriorate because of Tiffany?
I did a live This American Life show in Boston one year. Tiffany came with me and was getting high all evening, smoking pot, and talking nonstop. Ira Glass was there, a bunch of people, some I knew and some I didn't. At the end of the night, I put Tiffany in a cab, and Jonathan Goldstein said "wow." Because she was out of control that evening. Just would not stop talking. I know when I get nervous I talk a lot, but this was—

Do you think that was the mania?
Maybe. All I know is that I've never seen anything like it. You could set the phone down while talking to Tiffany, and when you picked it up again ten minutes later she'd still be going at it, never asking anything about you, never pausing. It was just this cascade of words. There was rarely any level of engagement, rarely a sense that you were actually conversing. Maybe she was different with her friends. I don't know. I hope it was different with them.

Do you think the Élan thing—I see it was a pretty rough place—do you think that was the most valid aspect of whatever overblown grievance Tiffany had against the family?
I can't remember a single conversation where she didn't talk about that place, I mean, ten, 20, 30 years after she left it.

David at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina

You said that you hadn't spoken to her in eight years before she died, because the last argument was so nasty. Was that argument because of the Boston Globe story, or just another argument with Tiffany?
It was that, yes, and then there were other things. There was never any resolution after an argument with Tiffany. She'd call you up six months after a fight and just pretend that nothing ever happened. I usually went along with it, but this time something stopped me. I just couldn't trust her anymore. She threatened to sell my letters after that and accused me of taking down her Myspace page. As if I'd ever seen it. She accused me of buying her name as a web address, all sorts of things. You don't want to be the brother who's not talking to his sister, but sometimes...

Back when we were talking I'd see her in Boston. Some visits were better than others, and the worse would take a heavy toll. My father, though, was always up for it. He never stopped talking to her, even after she'd berate him, saying the worst things you can imagine. "Things are looking up for Tiffany!" he'd tell us, always so positive. It's sort of beautiful that he believed she was capable of change. [Imitating his father:]

"What she needs to do is put out an album. She's got a beautiful voice! I talked to her and said, 'We gotta get you on the radio!' ... I talked to her and said, 'What you need to do is pull yourself up by the bootstraps!'" He supported her financially. And that's part of Dad's deal: If he's going to give you money, you're going to listen to all his suggestions about what to do with your life. That's probably every parent's deal. It's why you stand on your own two feet, because you think, If I have to listen to this for five more minutes, I'm going kill myself.

A few years before she died, she decided to move back to Raleigh. It didn't work out, and during the three weeks that she was there she caused some real problems. I'm told she had a knapsack with her. It was locked, and no one was allowed to go anywhere near it. We wonder if there wasn't a tape recorder in it. "Do you think I'm beautiful?" she kept asking my father. "Do you think I'm sexy?" After ten days, she left and moved in with a woman she knew from high school. That lasted a week, and she left claiming that the woman had made sexual advances toward her. This was always the story.

I suggested that my father buy Tiffany an apartment, someplace warm like Key West. There are a lot of people like her down there. In ten minutes she'd have carved out a place for herself, though it wouldn't have solved her greater problems.

Now that Tiffany is dead, or even if she weren't, do you think about writing a memoir—I mean a book-length thing rather than individual pieces? Is that something that tempts you at all?
I would love to find out who she was. But I don't have your skill, the skill to go out and talk to her friends, to hunt down people she went to Élan with and construct a concise portrait of her. We all wonder, my family and I. We talk about it all the time. We'd like to know how she survived. For close to 20 years Tiffany had a good deal on an apartment in Somerville. Her landlady was from China, Mrs. Yip, and for years my sister sang her praises. "Mrs. Yip, she's the greatest. She's teaching me tai chi!" Little by little Tiffany destroyed the apartment: pulled up the linoleum in the kitchen, overturned buckets of paint on the living-room floor, wrote on the walls. The tub was black, and the spare room was crowded floor to ceiling with junk. It became a complete wreck. This rental unit was Mrs. Yip's retirement account. Somerville is full of students, and instead of renting to Tiffany for $1,000 a month, she could have been getting at least twice that, and having tenants who didn't destroy the place. I don't know what happened between my sister and Mrs. Yip, but at some point she stopped paying rent and claimed she'd put $25,000 worth of work into the apartment. There was an eviction notice. Tiffany took out a restraining order. It got ugly, and eventually she moved into a single room in a much worse part of town, and then into another single room.

Can I ask you a question? When people write you ugly things about your book, what does that make you feel? Do you read that stuff?

Yeah. I'm not David Sedaris; I get pretty sparse reader mail, so when I do get it, I tend to respond to it. And most of it is kind. But when I get nasty stuff... OK. So there was this woman who wrote, "You should be ashamed of yourself, turning your brother out of your house at Christmas. What kind of a person are you? You're a monster." That sort of thing. So I reminded her that my brother, around that Christmas, had assaulted my mother and threatened to kill her, so I was just protecting my mother. And I really think we all did the best we could. So I told her, "Why don't you go pick on some other memoir author you don't like, or maybe you have better things to do? For your sake I certainly hope so." Something like that. And other people have said that I'm too detached from my brother's suffering, that I have a tacky sense of humor—things like that. Some people are pretty humorless, and if you don't have a sense of humor you tend to see things in a way I don't understand. It's almost as if they're talking to me in Swahili or something. I don't get it.
I never read anything about myself. No reviews, nothing.

Sometimes people tell me, "You didn't try hard enough with Scott. You didn't try hard enough to help him." Do you get that sort of thing?
In order for things to be different, Tiffany would have had to be a completely different person. I mean, why not say, "Well, if she were four inches tall, and her name were Thumbelina, everything would have been fine." I could not have saved Tiffany. If you don't want to take your medication, there's nothing anyone can do. There's not a single day that I don't think about her, though. She was a remarkable person.

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Illustration by Cel Willis.

In 2010, Anthony Elonis's life fell apart. His wife of seven years left him, and the Pennsylvania man changed his Facebook name to "Tone Dougie" on and began posting statuses containing violent language directed towards his ex. It would have been clear to anyone watching him on social media that he was spiraling; he got fired from his job at an amusement park for posting a picture of himself at the park with a knife to a female coworker's neck with the caption, "I wish."

His nasty posts about his former wife continued even after she got what amounted to a restraining order against him. He also appeared to muse about shooting up an elementary school, and when a female FBI agent came by to question him, he posted a status about slitting his throat. These were often formatted like rap lyrics, and he occasionally made references to the First Amendment. "Art is about pushing limits," he wrote at one point in yet another status in which he joked about threatening his wife. "I'm willing to go to jail for my Constitutional rights. Are you?"

That statement proved to be bizarrely prescient—he was arrested and sentenced to 44 months in prison for making threatening communications, but he appealed that verdict all the way to the Supreme Court, which on Monday decided 7-2 that his conviction should be overturned.

Elonis maintained that despite the ominous nature of the Facebook rantings, he never intended to actually harm anyone. The question before the court was whether his intent mattered more than whether a "reasonable person" would have viewed his posts as threats. It's the first time the court has considered what's known as the "true threat doctrine" (basically, the line that divides Constitutionally protected speech and nasty, no-good, illegal threats) when it comes to social media.

The ruling was of particular interest to free speech advocates because of its implications. One on side, online threats may very well hold as much weight as if they were delivered in another manner. If it's legal for someone like Elonis to say nasty things about his ex-wife like that, would that make it harder to protect people—particularly women—against vicious spam, taunts, and fake threats? On the other hand, Facebook is a public forum and Elonis did frame his messages as "rap lyrics"—doesn't that mean he was simply exercising his right to free speech, as ugly and hateful as that speech was?

As it turns out, the Supreme Court's decision won't end up moving the needle on the issue in either direction. Professor Clay Calvert, the director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida (who filed a friend of the court brief regarding the case), told VICE over the phone, "Overall the decision is disappointing because the Supreme Court dodged the First Amendment completely."

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Rather than tackle the issue head-on, Calvert explained, the Supreme Court adhered to the "doctrine of Constitutional Avoidance." He told VICE, "It completely ducked the First Amendment Issue and only addressed a very narrow statutory question about whether or not the court gave (the jury) the right instructions." In other words, the Court ruled that the jury in Elonis's trial had been incorrectly instructed to convict him on the assumption that a reasonable person would have felt threatened by Elonis's Facebook statuses, and not if Elonis had intended for the statuses to be taken as threats.

The court's opinion noted that Elonis's statuses were "often interspersed with disclaimers that the lyrics were 'fictitious,' with no intentional 'resemblance to real persons.'"

The decision provides little guidance with regards to the way online threats will be handled by law enforcement. "It's anticlimactic in a way," Calvert said. "The only relevance of this decision relates purely to how courts in the future are going to interpret this statute. Unfortunately, it doesn't affect the First Amendment rights, only this one statute under which Elonis was convicted." Calvert said that now, Elonis will be re-tried and a jury will be instructed to determine his intent with the statuses.

Defenders of free speech are pleased with the decision. In a press release, Steven R. Shapiro of the ACLU said:

Today's decision properly recognizes that the law has for centuries required the government to prove criminal intent before putting someone in jail. That principle is especially important when a prosecution is based on a defendant's words. The Internet does not change this long-standing rule. While today's decision insists on fairness, it is not a license to threaten, which remains illegal when properly proved.

Elonis himself doesn't appear to have issued a statement to anybody. In April, the Associated Press reports, he was arrested again, this time for hitting his girlfriend's mother in the head with a pot.

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

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All photos by Chris Bethell.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Saturday saw another anti-austerity protest in Central London. This time, it was a stunt by UK Uncut, who created a stir back in 2010 to 2011 by noisily demanding big companies pay the taxes that they're supposed to.

Several hundred people, including a guy with a giant "Didgeridoob" gathered outside Waterloo station, before following a guy with a "UK Uncut" banner to the then-undisclosed venue. People had been told to bring paintbrushes, but apart from a small cabal of organizers, nobody knew what they were going to do with them.

The location turned out to be Westminster Bridge. In the shadow of Big Ben, the assembled activists came to a halt, and someone with a loud speaker instructed them to paint on a banner, which had some letters outlined on it. The letters were filled in with black paint to read, "£12bn more cuts, £120bn tax dodged. AUSTERITY IS A LIE"

People cheered and let off flares. The banner swung there in the wind for a few minutes, before a police officer announced that it would be taken down because there was a risk of damage to the bridge.

Follow Chris Bethell on Twitter.

Few cultural symbols have as much heft as the "traditional" nuclear family. You know the one: two heterosexual parents, two kids, one dog, two tablespoons of white picket fence, whisk gently. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that—it's just not how I was raised.

My parents are polyamorous, a Greek/Latin mishmash word meaning romantic non-monogamy with the consent of everyone involved. As a kid, I lived with my dad, my mom, my mom's partner, and for a while, my mom's partner's partner. Mom might have up to four partners at a time. Dad had partners too. I was raised by an interconnected network of grownups whose relationships which weren't exclusive, but remained committed for years, even decades.

They first explained it to me when I was about eight. My four-year-old brother asked why James, my mom's partner, had been spending so much time with us.

"Because I love him," mom said, matter-of-factly.

"Well, that's good," my brother replied, "because I love him too."

It was never really any more complicated than that. Looking back, that's what I find most extraordinary about our situation: how mind-numbingly ordinary it all was. I almost wish it were more exciting than that—a wide-eyed kid, stumbling into amphetamine-fueled sexfests to find a gaggle of ass-naked circus mimes, nuns, and poultry—but we were just as run-of-the-mill-dysfunctional as every other family on the block.

I never resented my parents for hanging out with their partners. We all went on trips to the movies and narrow boat holidays together. Having more adults around the house meant there was more love and support, and more adults to look after us. Dad and James didn't get jealous or resent each other either, far from the alpha male antler clattering you might expect. They were good friends.

I do remember the first time James told me off. I was eight, and had almost toddled into traffic, when he pulled me to the pavement and shouted at me for not looking left and right. I remember thinking: Oh, this grownup is allowed to discipline me too? But it didn't take me long to realize that it also meant that another grownup had my back—and would keep me from being flattened by oncoming traffic—and that this was a good thing after all.

Watch: VICE's resident sexpert Karley Sciortino examines the logistics of being in a polyamorous relationship by meeting Crunc Tesla, a Facebook cult leader with over 250 wives.

It's fortunate I was living in relative familial bliss at home, because school was a living nightmare. I had a stutter and a penchant for 80s power ballads—telling anyone about my domestic situation would be to give myself a wedgie by proxy. I mean, one kid got picked on by (weirdly patriarchal) bullies just for having a stay-at-home dad—I wasn't about to profess that mom had four boyfriends. I only had one best friend (any more would've interfered with my spiritual path of devotedly studying Star Wars encyclopedias and reveling in epiphanic early masturbatory experiences). He was the only one who knew about my parents, and he just shrugged it off.

Our church community, on the other hand, did find out about my parents' arrangement. We were very close to our parish at a local Anglo-Catholic church in East London—my mom even taught at Sunday school. We never lied about our family dynamic, we just didn't want to broadcast it. James was called "a family friend," which worked for a while. Eventually though, we were outed. Someone trawled the web and tracked down my mom's LiveJournal page, and word got out that my family was poly.

Most people tried to understand, but not everyone could. One family was so condemning of our parents' lifestyle that they forbade their kids from playing with us. This later escalated into a particularly nasty phone call to social services, essentially conflating polyamorous parenting with child abuse, and sending a swarm of social workers into our home. I remember sitting on the living room floor with my Robot Wars toys, Hypno-Disc in one hand, Sir Killalot in the other, trying to convince them that my parents weren't hurting me.

Good parents are good parents, whether there are one or two or three or four of them. Fortunately, mine were incredible.

Nowadays, if I mention to people that I have poly parents, reactions oscillate between "that's so weird" and "that's so cool." Most people enjoy the novelty of it. Some feel threatened, but they're usually OK once I reassure them that it's not a criticism of their monogamy.

All in all, my upbringing shaped my personality for the better. I got to speak to adults from all manner of varying backgrounds, whether they were my parents' partners, or parents' partners' partners, or whoever. I lived with people who were straight, gay, bi, trans, writers, scientists, psychologists, adoptees, Bermudians, Hongkongers, people of wealth, and benefits claimants. Maturing in that melting pot really cultivated and broadened my worldview, and helped me become the guy I am today.

I never envied my friends with monogamous parents. I knew kids who lived with two parents or one, or stepparents, or grandparents, or aunts and uncles. So what I had didn't feel odd. I'd imagine there's very little variation between the ways monogamous and poly parents fuck up their kids. Good parents are good parents, whether there are one or two or three or four of them. Fortunately, mine were incredible.

I don't think polyamory is superior to monogamy in any way—it's just different. But I wish it wasn't so stigmatized. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous, the vast majority of human societies embrace a mix of marriage types. There is no traditional family. In his book Sex at Dawn, author Christopher Ryan argues that human monogamy only dates back as far as the agricultural revolution. Prior to this, we lived in small foraging communities and shared our property (food, shelter, wooden clubs, saber-tooth loincloths, etc). Then, post-agriculture, monogamy developed, out of concerns regarding paternity, and the inheritance of material goods. Ryan argues that our modern romantic attitudes are needlessly puritanical, "an outdated Victorian sense of human sexuality that conflates desire with property rights." Since the 20th century, many of us have begun to return to our polyamorous roots, following the sexual revolution, and feminism, and by extension the increased financial independence of women. This upward trend will only continue.

A lot of people ask me whether having poly parents has shaped the way I look at love as an adult, which is hard to answer. Growing up with polyamory as the norm, monogamy seemed alien and counterintuitive. We can love more than one friend or family member at the same time, so the idea that romantic love only worked linearly was befuddling. I'm in my 20s now, and I tend to have multiple partners (though that's more my libido than a philosophical conviction). I don't consider myself poly, but I am open to having either multiple partners or just one.

Life is mostly pain and struggle; the rest is love and deep dish pizza. For the cosmic blink of a moment we spend on this tiny dust speck of a planet, can we simply accept that love is love, including love that happens to be interracial, same-sex, or poly? Discrimination against love is a disease of the heart—and we get enough of that from the pizza.

Follow Benedict Smith on Twitter.

It seemed the only happy person in the Hotel Pennsylvania was a man who'd survived a genocide. The lobby of the Midtown hotel was crawling with tourists, all having apparently come to New York City with too many relatives and suitcases that were much too large. But the Cambodian musician Seang Tana—looking like an aging rock star, in dark jeans, black jacket, cowboy hat, and a shirt unbuttoned to a point worth mentioning—radiated good cheer.

I was there, in April, to have lunch with Seang, another Cambodian musician named Mol Kagnol, and the filmmaker who'd introduced me to their work, John Pirozzi. Pirozzi directed Don't Think I've Forgotten, a feature-length documentary now screening across the country. Mol and Seang were two key players in the vibrant rock scene that flourished in Phnom Penh before the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975.

Official trailer to 'Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll' (2015)

Although we were supposed to be talking about the very cool music that flourished in Cambodia during the reign of the undemocratic but nevertheless pro-culture Prince Sihanouk from the 1950s through the 70s, I had conceived of the meeting as being with "an American director and two men who have experienced incomprehensible suffering."

Nearly two million people died during the four-year communist regime, by execution or starvation or forced labor, including several members of the musicians' families. Artists were especially targeted as the Khmer Rouge attempted to enact its aggressive agrarian vision of society. Several major stars of the scene—like Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron—likely died this way, though, as one of the film's interview subjects states, "nothing was certain."

The PR manager for Film Forum, which screened Don't Think I've Forgotten's US premiere run, offered me some background information on the musicians before our lunch. Mol had played in the early teenage guitar band Baksey Cham Krong, which formed in the late 50s. He had been living in exile in the United States since 1975, and that Friday, April 24, he would be taking the stage with his brother, whom he'd presumed dead for decades, for the first time since 1967. Seang was in the later, heavier band Drakkar, and he "actually lived in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge era." Which means he actually lived in a prison camp.

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Sinn Sisamouth in the recording studio. Photo courtesy of DTIF Cambodia LLC

The stories in Don't Think I've Forgotten are personal and detailed, interwoven with political events that run in chronological order. To someone who doesn't know much about Cambodia, the names and dates and coups and allegiances and, ultimately, tragedies, can become overwhelming. Pirozzi wanted to introduce the culture to outsiders as accessibly as possible.

His interest in the country stems from the months he spent there in 2001, working as a camera operator on Matt Dillon's high-jinks-y thriller City of Ghosts.

"I certainly knew who the Khmer Rouge were, but I didn't know the particulars of how they came to power and what exactly had happened," he told me. "You could see that the city was very different from what it had been."

Both of their parents let them play music on one condition: They couldn't become professional musicians.

At first, he wanted to make a film about, simply, that: Cambodia's modern history. "It's like a Shakespearian tragedy, with all these great characters and all these great power struggles," he said. But then he heard the music.

"I wanted to show that this music would endure beyond everything it had been put through," Pirozzi told the New York Times. "The music is the one thing that has allowed the Cambodian people to access a time when their life wasn't about war and genocide."

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For a while, he funded the project himself, traveling back and forth from Los Angeles when he could and conducting research with help from a team that seems to have been as invested in the film as Pirozzi was. Pirozzi's wife LinDa Saphan, a sociologist, acted as an associate producer, researcher, and translator for the film. Nate Hun, a 28-year-old record collector, also associate-produced, mostly because his love of mid-century Cambodian rock music borders on the fanatic—it's the only thing he listens to.

"He knows every song," Pirozzi said of Hun. "I met his father, and I asked him, 'Your son's so obsessed with this music—why do you think that is?'" Hun's father replied, "The only thing I can figure is he was a musician back in the 60s who died and was reincarnated as Nate."

It's not hard to see why someone might be obsessed with this music, or this portion of history. There are the "Shakespearian" elements of the complicated pre-Khmer Rouge political situation, yes, but the music that emerged from it is just as dynamic. It hits a spot between fun and rich, easy to bop around to as well as kind of mesmerizing. For a Western listener, unfamiliar Khmer voices rise above familiar grooviness, and the lyrics, translated in subtitles in the film, are surprisingly progressive. (In a song by Huoy Meas, she sings "Please stop asking about your father/ He's a womanizer and an embarrassment.") Plus, like much of the surviving culture from the era, it all just looks so good—the colors, the patterns, the haircuts.

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While much of the Don't Think I've Forgotten soundtrack overlaps with the relatively well-known compilation album Cambodian Rocks (which Daniel Woolfson wrote about here for VICE), Pirozzi's extensive liner notes provide almost as much context as the documentary itself. They make it clear that this project was an extensive undertaking, not a casual discovery.

At times, though, the research was frustrating.

"One of the questions I asked pretty much everyone I interviewed was, 'Who was the first guitar band?'" Pirozzi said. "Consistently everyone said Baksey Cham Krong."

And that's where things stalled. Pirozzi couldn't find a Baksey Cham Krong record anywhere, yet it increasingly seemed like the film would be missing a hugely important and influential sound without them.

"I think with the war and the Khmer Rouge and everyone's lives being completely upended, there's been a fog that's enveloped the whole culture," Pirozzi said. "Trying to look behind it has been really difficult."

'I saw the cover of my album for the first time in almost 40 years,' Mol said. 'I thought it had been forgotten forever.'

The turning point came when Pirozzi got a call from a Khmer-American friend in Washington, DC. He'd just met a man named Mol Kagnol, who played guitar for a band called Baksey Cham Krong. Not only did Mol have original vinyl copies of his band's records, but he also had photographs.

A more subdued presence across our lunch table—though he perked up when the conversation turned to guitars—Mol had come upon the vinyl and photographs in a twist of fate not unlike the one that had graced Pirozzi. At a Cambodian embassy event in DC, Mol ran into a guy who mentioned he had three Baksey Cham Krong vinyls. He offered to give them to Mol on one condition: After they were remastered, he wanted some copies.

"I saw the cover of my album for the first time in almost 40 years," Mol said. "It was kind of... I was almost in tears."

He continued: "It's just amazing that John brings the story up. I'm kind of surprised. I thought it had been forgotten forever."

Seang, his voice growing scratchy, seemed to prove Pirozzi right. The music had endured, there was a time before war and genocide. Throughout our lunch, Seang was often laughing or exclaiming as he remembered details from his glory days: In high school, he used to see Mol driving around Phnom Penh, "very fancy in his Mustang car."

Meet Joshua Oppenheimer, director of 'The Act of Killing,' the stunning, award-winning documentary about genocide in Indonesia

Mol, it turns out, had been a sort of inspiration/mentor to Seang in their youth. Both men came from wealthy, fairly outward-looking families, which allowed them to play music, granting them both access and permission.

"The music scene [in Phnom Penh]—everybody knew everybody," Pirozzi said.

Mol told me about the time Sinn Sisamouth, who features prominently throughout Don't Think I've Forgotten as a forefather to Cambodian pop, came over to borrow a microphone from his father. After seeing how reverentially interview subjects talk about Sisamouth in the film, I was impressed—it would be like having Frank Sinatra over because he needed to use your washing machine.

On Munchies: I Ate Dinner in Pyongyang's Cambodian Outpost

Seang was similarly well off. After he scored well on his end-of-year exams, Seang's parents bought him his first guitar—a Yamaha—for a whopping 10,000 riel. "That's almost one motorcycle!" Seang said, his voice cracking in excitement. "I keep the guitar because [in] the whole city, no one [had] a good guitar like me."

Both of their parents let them play music on one condition: They couldn't become professional musicians. And the arrangement was, for the most part, fine with Seang and Mol—music was for play, not work.

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The Drakkar Band. Courtesy of the Drakkar Band

Many of the musicians featured in the documentary, including Mol and Seang, were influenced by records and films brought in by Western diplomats and the American military occupying Vietnam and, later, Cambodia itself. They taught themselves to play by listening to bands that ranged from the poppy British instrumental group the Shadows to the Beatles, to Carlos Santana.

It had been more than 40 years since Mol and Seang had seen each other, but stories came back to them easily, the details clear. After Baksey Cham Krong disbanded for college, Mol kept up his involvement in the music scene by offering guidance. He also produced the record for Seang's band, Drakkar, in a makeshift studio inside Mol's family's home. For soundproofing, Pirozzi explained, "They put carpet on the wall."

"I didn't expect to sing myself because my voice is unique. It's not like other singers," Seang said, gesturing to the old friend sitting across from him. "He was the one who said, 'No, your voice is unique. Keep it!'"

"I miss him," Seang said, energetic but sad, looking back at me. He turned to Mol. "Why don't you want to come back to Cambodia?" he asked, and Mol shrugged.

An epilogue to the documentary might include what Mol did after he left Cambodia, just a few months before Pol Pot led an army of communist guerrilla fighters into the capitol and drove its citizens out. Having given up the rock-star life, per his parents' wishes, to pursue structural engineering at university and then become a helicopter pilot for the (soon-to-fall) American-backed Cambodian government during the civil war, Mol arrived in San Antonio, Texas, in 1975.

He was in Fort Eustis, Virginia, for a test-pilot course, when the Khmer Rouge seized power. After completing the course, Mol was stuck in America with no way to contact his family, most of whom, he later found out, were "left behind and killed." With about $300 in his pocket, he turned to the thing he had promised to never do professionally in order to make a living.

"When I got out of the army base, nothing was valid anymore," Mol said. "I couldn't find any work. My skills, my diploma, my credentials weren't valid any more. The only thing valid was a guitar."

Don't Think I've Forgotten is playing in theaters now.

Lauren Oyler is an editor at Broadly. Follow her on Twitter.

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Via Flickr user dan paluska

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has traditionally been tight-lipped about whether they've ever thwarted any would-be terrorists. Maybe that's because a lot of people (including at least one former employee) think the agency is useless—or maybe that's because their critics are basically right. That's one takeaway, at least, from an embarrassing report that came out from ABC News on Monday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA, recently sent 70 so-called Red Agents to airports across America to test airport screening procedures, 67 of them made it through checkpoints carrying guns or fake bombs. That's a 95 percent success rate, or in other words a 95 percent failure rate on the TSA's part.

To be fair, the Red Team agents are experts who are then able to exploit loopholes in the TSA protocol. The whole point was to figure out what's wrong with the system so it could be made better. Also, the agency does routinely prevent dangerous items from making their way onto airplanes, even if their owners are just fake grenade hobbyists or throwing star enthusiasts.

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Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is frustrated over the investigation's findings, according to ABC News. The federal agency has a budget of over $7 billion.

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Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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All photos by Brittany Bentine, all rights reserved

Houston-based photographer Brittany Bentine makes a living turning children into zombies. Bentine is the owner of Locked Illusions, which bills itself as "America's First Goth/Alt and fantasy themed photographic art for maternity, babies, kids, families, and teens." At the photo studio-turned-fantasyland, kids are splattered with fake blood, smudged with dark makeup, and made to look like they've risen from the dead.

Her hauntingly gory photographs of children seem to have struck a nerve as of late. Several people have populated Bentine's Facebook page with nasty comments more or less likening what she does to child abuse. Her work has been called "very disturbing," "demonic," and "sick." One forum post succinctly remarked: "wtf Kill the parents." Even Telemundo did a story on the "controversy" surrounding Bentine's work. Despite the negative reactions, Bentine still has enough clients to make a livelihood. I reached out to find out a little more about her work and what inspires parents to commission these ghastly photoshoots.

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VICE: Where did the idea to combine macabre imagery with children originate?
Brittany Bentine: I started with shooting more of the "normal" stuff and grew bored kind of quickly with that. I always wanted to do darker imagery. I have my own children and they actually enjoyed it. So I started with them and I expanded out and shooting more of it. Honestly, I didn't think at first that people would pick up on it, but I figured it was worth a shot.

I have always been drawn to darker things, since childhood. Working with children is something I did with my previous work and thought I would continue with the darker looks. There wasn't much [darker photography with children], so I thought it would be an interesting spin.

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How long have you been doing it?
Three to four years of the darker stuff, and about six or seven years of photography in total. It's a full-time thing now.

Do the ideas come mostly from you or from the clients?
I do have a few clients that come to me with a basic idea and I'll expand on that and give ideas for clothing and makeup. Rarely, there's a client that comes up with an all-packed idea already. Nine times out of ten, I come up with the complete concept individualized to each person.

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How much manipulation do you do for your pictures?
If there's a prop that I just can't get a hold of, I would manipulate that in. But that's really rare. Usually the only major manipulations for the zombie looks especially are the eyes. Sometimes contacts won't look as good as the actual manipulations do for whatever reason. And sometimes the contacts are awesome. It really is case by case—but there's only so many contact choices out there anyway.

And the blood?
All the makeup and the blood and stuff we use is Blood Gel. There's this one called Bloody Scab—I like it because it's nice and thick in texture. It comes off very easily and it doesn't stain. Though I have used the liquid stuff as well.

On Motherboard: Why You Really Should Be Afraid of the Zombie Apocalypse

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Were you surprised by the negative reactions to your work?
I wasn't super surprised. I kind of expected some of it. I guess maybe in a photography forum it's different, but we've been dealing with zombie children for a very, very long time in the entertainment industry—in Hollywood movies and things like that. It's not something brand new in terms of the concept. We have The Omen, we have Children of the Corn, and these are horror films with children characters.

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What are your thoughts on the objections about children being models for this type of thing?
Everybody has a right to their opinion. Nobody is going to like the same two things. Some people like landscape paintings and some do not. It's really up in the air—everyone likes something different. The kids are having a lot of fun. No one's being tortured, nobody's being tormented. I've said this so many times: If a child [is] not having fun then that's it. And I have had this happen one time. If they are in distress, if it's not something they want to do, if they become frightened then that shoot would not be happening. I would cut the shoot short. We wouldn't do it. Usually the parents are really good with letting me know: "Hey, my kid's a little shy and a little timid" or "I'm not sure if this is right for my child and this is why." When they start talking to me about that sort of thing, that's when I proceed to tell them if this is not something you are certain about with your child, then it's probably not something you should pursue.

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What do the kids say when they see the pictures?
I've had a girl that shot with me a year ago and still to this day she loves it. She's very proud of it, she's very excited. Because they kind of look at it as helping create a piece of art. They know that it's fake, they know that it's fantasy, and whenever they see the final project they're very excited.

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Do you have a "typical" customer? I'm sure you have more clients during Halloween; what are other types of occasions you do shoots for?
I get some that come to me because it's Halloween season, but I book all year round. Some of them just really are horror fans and they want this for their living room. Simply stated, they love the look of it. They're very involved in the horror scene and it's a family tradition. One woman may decorate her house in ocean themes and daisies, but the next family may decorate with something more dark and macabre—and that's totally fine. Everybody has their right to preference.

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The original editions of many well-known fairy tales were much darker than their current popular versions, no doubt due to the concerns of many parents over exposing younger readers to this subject matter. Do you think people's objections to children participating in zombie or horror themed photo shoots is indicative of the same attitude?
Oh, most certainly. I've read about those things, too. I know that we are very sheltered as a society when it comes to death and the rituals of death. People in this day and age really shy away from that topic when death actually can become a very healthy topic to be had. I've had death in my life, I've lost family members and things. And we're not really prepared as a society for the talk. Back in the day in Victorian times that was something openly discussed. That was something that was not shied away from. And in some aspects, I kind of feel like they might've had a healthier outlook on everything as far as that goes. I've known people that have lost a loved one and it's very hard to talk about things that they really wish to discuss and they don't know who to turn to about certain matters because the discussion would be very taboo. So a lot of times they keep to themselves. But at the end of the day, we're all different and who's to say what's truly right and what's truly wrong?

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How do you respond to people who call your work sick or disturbing?
Just because something is not right for you, doesn't mean it's not right for somebody else. Nobody deserves to be treated badly for decisions that they make for their own families. I get people that have said bad things about me or my art. Fortunately for me, I have a thick skin, so it's not soul-crushing. But what does bother me is when people express love for my art and then you have people attacking them and their character. I don't find that very tactful or cool at all. But as far as my artwork goes, if somebody doesn't like it, they have a right to their opinion, and that's fine.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

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Vaquera was started last year by Alabama-born Patric DiCaprio. Dissatisfied with clothing options as a stylist, he taught himself how to sew through cosplay tutorials. His third collection started with the idea of Colonial America via a quote by Andre Walker from House of Style. He said, "These clothes are for the corny girl, are for the stale girl who wants to be gross (...) tomorrow's going to be grosser than today."

Following Vaquera's presentation at the Delancey / Essex subway station (which was covered by i-D), I had an idea to bring the collection to the country. Patric was kind enough to lend pieces for the editorial that week. I really admire the work he's doing—I think we share an affinity for things being grotesque, yet familiar.

As for the concept of the shoot, Sophia Grace once said, "You're my best friend forever, cross my heart and hope to die."

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Benjamin Barron is a recent graduate of Bard College's photography program and is available for editorial commissions. See more of his work on his website.

Find out more about Vaquera here.

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The puppy is not essential to the cooking of the cocaine, but is hella cute. All photos by the author.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"It's always the English," says Alberto* with a toothless grin, as I step onto the peeling linoleum floor of his kitchen and reveal my nationality. "And the Australians," he adds, nodding at my accomplice. "They love these classes."

In Alberto's classes, pupils are taught how to make cocaine. Chances are, most of the people who've gone to the trouble of getting here love his classes, because San Augustin—a tiny Colombian town 12 hours from the cloudy capital of Bogotá—has proved difficult to reach. Only one company seem to operate the route on a slow Sunday evening, so we boarded the last bus, eventually arriving in a dusty pueblo peppered with bakeries and tourist agencies.

Locals swarmed the bus when we arrived, looking to poach the only gringas (us) for business. We followed a Colombian lady called Dina to a deserted office and, after about five minutes of raised eyebrows, elongated vowels ("speeeciaaaal touuuur") and saying one thing but meaning another, she agreed to bring us to Alberto's house.

The two girls I came here with—the Australian, and another from Iceland—were charged 150,000 pesos [$60] each, which covers the class and 1g per person. I paid half to observe.

Related: Watch VICE News' documentary 'Cooking with Cocaine'

It was as we all shoveled shit on a volunteer placement last month that I'd first heard about the tours rumored to be available in Sierra Nevada, Medellín, and San Augustin—of backpackers being bundled into 4x4s covered in tarpaulin and taken to the mountains to cook up; of kidnappings and police bribery. But none of us had heard of tours taking place in anyone's back garden.

Although Peru replaced Colombia as the world's leading exporter of the white stuff a couple of years back, cocaturisma—the pursuit of the drug as a tourist attraction—is currently booming, and draws plenty of Western tourists to Colombia. Alberto is just one of the many cocaine producers capitalizing on this particular gold rush.

As Dina leads us up to his house, my chest grows increasingly tight. I catch sight of our distorted reflection in a car door. It's 10 AM: what the fuck are we doing?

Alberto's house is modest. Telenovelas blast out of a bulky TV on the shelf in the kitchen, and on a wooden table a new Samsung phone sits between a Ludo board and a bowl of fruit. Alberto and Dina speak in a slow, soporific kind of Spanish, with sweeping hand gestures and wide eyes. They're used to dealing with tourists.

"You want a banana?" Dina asks us, as she greets Alberto's teenage daughter, who's just back from school and doesn't give us even a cursory glance. We decline and perch awkwardly on the plastic stools, facing Alberto's garden as he preps his work space.

"Vamos!"

Beckoning us over to his tiny wooden shed, Alberto shoos away the chickens and puppies gathering around our feet and we get to work.

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The first step is cutting up the wet coca leaves on a tarpaulin sheet on the floor. I notice they've been prepped already. Still, Alberto lets us all have a go at playing Indy for a bit and we take turns to hack away with the machete.

"The cocaine plants in Colombia are the best; they grow in three months and they're cheap. We also get plants from Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia here," he says.

Yields (and profit) vary greatly according to the strain of plant, climate, and level of government intervention, and Alberto says he makes very little money from running these classes. "I make more from chicken farming," he assures me.

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He adds the finely chopped leaves to a big bucket, along with a sulphate ("from Germany"), ammonia, cement, and gasoline poured from a Coca-Cola bottle.

Alkaloid, the active ingredient in the coca leaves, must be extracted from the plant before being converted into its most recognizable powder form, and gasoline speeds up this process.

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We crane our necks as Alberto plunges his hands into what could be a really big tub of basil, swirling the ingredients until it becomes a dark, caustic-smelling paste.

Extraction takes around 20 minutes, so we return to the kitchen, coughing out the globules of spit gathered in our throats from holding our breath to block out the gas fumes. Alberto gestures to the Ludo board on the table (or Parqués, as they call it in Colombia).

"Vamos a jugar!" he enthuses.

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While we play, Alberto tells me that, for five years, he worked in a huge cocaine lab close to San Augustin, but left for his health and his freedom.

"If you work for the cartels they always have you doing stuff for them," he says. "You can never leave the game."

He moves his counter and tells us that the special tours here in San Augustin are being shut down after years of booming business.

Interested in travel? Watch our documentary 'Big Cats of the Gulf'

"Tourists get caught because they are so obvious," he tells me. "They are arrested after stepping off the buses. Other tour guides used to take people to factories and then informed police once they returned to their hostel. The police get a big cut. It's more dangerous now, so I'm doing my classes here. I don't work with the police, so the prices are less."

Alberto suddenly whips out his Samsung for a couple of selfies, and I lean in, baring my teeth—reluctantly at first, as my grinning face on the wall of a Colombian police station flashes into play. Then he pulls up the photos of the tourists before us who'd also agreed to feature in his album—there are hundreds. Everyone's beaming or sticking their thumbs up, and Alberto fondly recalls anecdotes for each group, each nationality. I ask him why so many people come for the classes.

"Mirar, aprender." To look, to learn.

I settle into the game a bit more and show Alberto my DSLR. He asks about our jobs and our home countries, and it's clear he's into a bit of cultural exchange. For a man operating such an illicit tour he's surprisingly chilled—but then again, it doesn't feel that illicit. Maybe it's the Ludo.

We finish our game and return to the shed.

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Alberto pours out the sticky leaves into a rag, squeezing tightly until a brown residue drips into a separate bucket. When he throws the rag into the bushes, I think he's made a mistake, but then remember that the leaves have now served their function. Next, he adds sodium bicarbonate and some household bleach as the girls wrinkle their noses in disgust. These are the legitimate ingredients, in cocaine of 100 percent purity.

Alberto covers this bowl with another rag and tells us that we'll return in 15 minutes. It's during this cocaine-making interval that the kitchen becomes a beauty parlor; Dina starts playing with our hair, Alberto's daughter starts talking about make-up and clubbing, and it all starts to feel a bit Clueless. We go with it anyway and one of us ends up with a fish-tail plait.

Back in the shed, a white almost-powder has separated itself from a brown pond-slime substance. Alberto scrapes the white out of the bowl, spooning it into a child's beaker and pouring away the excess liquid before placing it in foil wrap under a lightbulb in a wooden box.

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"This," he says, gesturing back down to the brown gloop in the bucket, "is crack cocaine."

I'm reminded of the conversation I had with a 22-year-old Colombian musician at the airport, who told me that crack cocaine is growing in popularity in South America and wreaking havoc among some of his friends. Suddenly things feel a lot more illicit.

"Very popular in Colombia, but very bad," says Alberto. He mixes the crack inside the bowl with water, chucking it out into the bushes. "Finished. No more."

Removing the foil from the light-box ten minutes later, Alberto reveals a snow-white talc that he pours into a plastic bag on the kitchen table. The coke game is complete, and it's barely taken us an hour.

"This is the purest stuff you'll ever have," he says to us. "In the factories they cut it with silicon and amphetamines, but you know this is pure."

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The girls rack up a line each and their noses wrinkle again, this time in uniform appreciation.

Before we leave, I ask Alberto a question that I'm sure he's used to hearing—did he know Pablo Escobar?

Related: VICE News' new documentary, 'Rebranding the AK-47'

"He was a bastard...a ruthless man," he starts. "He used to have sex with women then kill them afterwards. Bastard. But I did meet him once in 1983, and he shook my hand."

It's perhaps not that unusual that the embers of Escobar's legacy still warm Colombia's cocaine underbelly 22 years after the drug lord was killed in a police shoot-out. Across the country, his name still sparks heated conversations and inspires weird tours. For some backpackers, distilling myth from truth isn't important. Perhaps Alberto had met Escobar—perhaps he embellished the truth knowing full well it could bring him more business.

Although cocaine retains its appeal for many Western tourists here, nothing appeals more than the way in which it can now be marketed: the rumors, the thrill, the story. It seems today in Colombia, the potency of the powder is somewhat overshadowed by the overall experience.

Follow Georgina on Twitter.

*Names have been changed

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

Over the course of the last few years, there have been a ton of initiatives to make pornography more accessible to women. Sites like Dorcelle have been purpose-built for just that reason, and PornHub boasts categories like "Female Friendly." The porn for girls genre seems to be built around the notion that women are more sensitive when it comes to wanking material than men. But is it true?

According to a 2014 study conducted by Ifop, 41 percent of French women admitted to having visited a porn site, and PornHub survey of that year's data found that ladies made up 21 percent of the site's French traffic (another PornHub survey discovered that women really liked lesbian and gay porn). To get a better idea of how women actually consume porn in this day and age, we've asked eight of our regular contributors to tell us about their relationship with the porn industry.

Read: How to Not Break Your Dick During Sex

The first time I watched pornography was right after my first sexual experience—which, let me tell you, was a complete train wreck. I was 15 years old and terrified that I'd be incapable of ever being able to pleasure a guy, so I decided to try to pick up a few tricks from a clearly feminist DVD entitled All You Need to Know to Satisfy a Man. Far from being arousing, the experience was actually quite traumatizing, and my young mind quickly connected male arousal with outrageous manicures and leopard-print everything.

It took me years to work up the guts to watch another film. After finally convincing myself to get back into the adult entertainment game, I was delighted to find the experience was just as enlightening as it was effective. Since then, I've been watching porn about once a week—mostly pretty rowdy "guy" porn. I also have a real soft spot for Sasha Grey's films. All those movies that are made especially for women have never done anything for me. They're just so tame and tend to be about as exciting as Pride and Prejudice. —MICHELLE CAMARGO

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Covers of French erotic magazine ' Union'

I watch porn every once in a while. Usually, I only watch it when I haven't had sex for a while—especially in those periods when I'm completely overloaded with work. It's an easy way to relax and blow off some steam. It's definitely better than jogging.

Personally, I hate those badly shot gonzo movies full of disgusting men and tiny young girls faking it so hard. The movies I watch have to have some degree of production value. I'm mostly into lesbian and kink videos. Sometimes I can get into that HD porn that's on the verge of being a bit too girly and romantic, but is actually really well-cast. I've got a thing for beautiful actresses who aren't vulgar and guys who have really smooth faces. I don't like it when they're too skinny, though.

I always end up feeling a bit gross when I'm done—especially if I've watched a bunch of videos in a row. I guess it's pretty much the same way you feel after demolishing a McDonald's meal. — DOROTHÉE FABBRI

I have no idea why, but I actually watched quite a lot of porn as a teenager. I remember it all well—Ron Jeremy, loads of completely bald vaginas, and a rather distinct lack of any plot.

The older I got, the classier the videos I was into became. At some point, I started watching them at work. I've got the most boring job in the world: assistant manager for this woman who re-launched a perfume brand for rich old ladies. She is always traveling and keeps me at the office to deal with "urgent requests." Watching porn is a perfect way to procrastinate. One of the things that excites me the most was the fact that I could easily be caught by one of the accountants at any time. I've had a lot of orgasms in that office—some of them actually lasted longer than most of the orgasms my partners gave me.

When I was pregnant, my hormones went completely mental, and I needed to have sex like five times a day. My boyfriend had a job, so I spent my time scrolling through porn sites. Given that I was so obsessed with my clitoris, my searches started growing more and more varied. I've seen it all—big cocks, big jugs, mixed race, old people fucking young people, a MILF fucking anything, lesbian, you name it.

Porn made for girls has never really done anything for me. When I want to watch something, it's the sort of things that excite men that excite me. Female porn is just another marketing invention, and actually a vaguely anti-feminist concept. I absolutely despise girls like Erika Lust. – DOMINIQUE LOUDIÈRES

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Covers of French erotic magazine ' Newlook'

I was in my third year of high school when I watched porn for the first time. It was hard to grasp how I felt about it because my best friend was beside me laughing throughout the entire movie. Given that my first sexual emotions were for chaps like Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Vartan, I wasn't at all excited by these movies—the main guy looked like he had just been let out of prison and was constantly grunting like a pig. I was terrified that my parents—who were in bed upstairs—could hear it, so I kept flicking back and forth between channels. Which kind of confused my brain into thinking that whatever weird talk show I landed on was sexy.

I started watching porn on a more regular basis, after my first sexual experiences. At some point, I realized that my idea of sex was becoming completely warped and decided to lay off the wank vids for a bit. Lately, I've kind of reconciled with the genre but try to limit myself to two or three movies a month.

I'm not really into "female-friendly" porn. I'm mostly into hetero porn with some pretty actresses and a few sweet "boy next door" guys. That, or lesbian stuff. — TAMARA VARENNES

I guess I'm a bit of a virgin when it comes to porn—I never really got into it. When I was ten or so, my cousin and I watched [softcore erotica film] Goodbye Emmanuelle. That was pretty exciting, I suppose. We were both totally embarrassed by what was going on, but couldn't stop watching—we definitely didn't tell each other that it was making us horny, either.

Since then, I've watched a tiny bit of "real" porn too. More often than not, I've ended up watching it with friends. For some strange reason, the only porn that's actually ever worked for me has been lesbian. Which is odd because I'm straight. There's probably some really clever scientific explanation for this, but I haven't found it yet. — JULIETTE ASSELIN

I watched my first porn movie when I was nine. At that time, I was spending most of my time in the woods, building huts with my friends—who all happened to be boys. It was all quite innocent, really. But that innocence quickly came crashing to an end.

One day, instead of taking our bikes to the forest, we decided to stay at home in front of the television. We all huddled under this old sticky blanket. It quickly became obvious that this blanket was used to cover up the guys fiddling around in their underpants—which were about to end up sticky too. As a way to deal with the embarrassment, I just started laughing.

I actually thought the idea of masturbating to porn was pretty exciting, but I preferred doing it by myself and to movies that had a slightly more elaborate plot. Between the ages of ten and 15, I was a pro at masturbating. I'd spend hours watching every category of video there was: from your standard missionary videos all the way to massive orgies. And everything in between, too.

I'm not that much into it anymore, but in dry periods, I can resort to it. That said, in the age of Tinder, why would anyone be bothered to touch themselves, when, more often than not, there's someone who is game right down the street? — GIUSEPPINA CHEVIGNY

Watch: People Who Just Had Sex

Erotic movies aren't really my thing. But porn is different. There's something about the fact that I'm able to choose whatever I want that satisfies the voyeur in me. I was with my ex for six years, but I was never able to watch a movie like that with him. To me it's a really intimate experience. Also, I don't really like hetero porn.

When I was 17, I used to go on YouPorn and search for the most disgusting things I could but recently I've calmed down a bit and I'm much more into lesbian porn. I like the fact that it's a bit more sensual and the intercourse is far less, well, savage. To be honest, I really don't watch porn that much—like five or six times a month maybe. — SYLVIE HECQUET

I'm not really a porn or erotic movie enthusiast. It's never been my thing. That's probably why I've only ever had a really brief experience with it. After a high school party, I got home all drunk on Desperados. I emptied my parents fridge and flicked the TV on. After an hour of Pimp My Ride, I accidentally ended up watching porn. Puzzled, I kept watching to try and decipher the storyline behind all these enormous breasts and hard dicks. Honestly, the scenes did nothing for me but, to this day, I have a great admiration for the physical prowess of the "actors" in whatever it was that I watched. —CONSTANCE DORIVAL

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I'm willing to wager that every single person reading this has played Microsoft Solitaire at some point in their lives. It was made in 1989, and has been packaged with every Windows operating system since Windows 3.0 in 1990. (It does not come installed on Windows 8, but you can download the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, pictured above, from the Microsoft Store for free.) Hundreds of millions of copies of Windows have been sold in the past 25 years. When you think of it like that, then you have to imagine that whoever developed it must be absolutely loaded by now. You'd be wrong. Wes Cherry was merely an intern when he made MS Solitaire as part of his job. Since then, and as the game is technically free, he has not received a single penny for his work on it.

Right from the start, Cherry knew that Solitaire would be the source of countless wasted work hours. But this month presents an opportunity for those who've lost contracts and missed countless meetings to the game to show the world what they're made of, when Microsoft's own elite players will compete against members of the public in a 25th anniversary score chase thing.

The base game hasn't changed that much over the years. In 1990 you could choose between different card backs, select whether one or three cards were drawn at a time, and switch between Vegas, Standard, or no scoring at all. The Windows 2000 version added the ability to right click on an empty space to move all available cards to the top right "foundations." Finally, in Windows Vista, the game saved statistics and allowed you to pause games to come back to later.

Nearly everything was there from the start, then, but Microsoft wasn't content with basic Solitaire. Four more variants were added over the years: Spider Solitaire uses two decks and ten rows of cards; Pyramid has the cards set up in a pyramid, obviously, and you remove pairs of cards at a time; and TriPeaks has three pyramids which you have to clear.

Freecell is a notoriously difficult variant, and some of the hands you're dealt aren't actually solvable. My father took me to his work one day and sat me down at a colleague's computer while they were in a meeting. I started playing around with Freecell while not actually knowing the rules. Needless to say, I reached a game-ending state in moments. When the statistics screen came up, I noticed that prior to my game, this colleague of my father's had a win rate of 100 percent, with hundreds of games played. I hastily clicked "Clear," loaded up normal Solitaire, and never spoke of the incident again.

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Solitaire screen shots (including the lead image) via Arkadium.

Speaking of my dad, the only video game he was ever better than me at when I was growing up was 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet. The Space Cadet table came free with Windows 95 and stopped being packaged after Windows XP, and was actually only one of three that came with the full game, titled Full Tilt! Pinball, developed by Cinematronics and published by Maxis in 1995. I spent many an hour on 3D Pinball in the 1990s, marveling at its animation and physics models. The only real movement we were treated to on packaged Windows games previously was when you won a game of Solitaire and the cards started bouncing everywhere. Nowadays I'm pretty happy with the likes of Pinball FX 2 for my flipper-related needs, but I do yearn for the days of 3D Pinball every now and then. Kids these days have no idea of its wonders.

They probably do know about Minesweeper though, another Windows classic—although, in hindsight, a terrible game. The concept of a puzzle game involving clearing a board of mines has been around since the 1960s, well before Microsoft included a version of it in its operating system, so it was nothing new, for starters. And then, there was the difficulty: You could lose an entire game on your first turn. Nevertheless, it was there, so we played it, and some even grew to love it. Not everyone, mind, as in 2001, the International Campaign to Ban Winmine was created, saying the game was offensive to landmine victims. If you ever wondered why there was a "Flower" option in the Windows Vista version of Minesweeper, that's your reason.

Related: Tracing the History of Pinball from Illegal Gambling to Mac DeMarco

You may also enjoy our documentary on theMystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

Unlike Solitaire, Minesweeper has changed over the last 25 years. The Windows 8 version comes with an adventure mode in which you control an explorer who must avoid traps while digging for treasure. Additionally, both Minesweeper and Solitaire now have achievements. The original modes are there of course, but instead of monochrome visuals, the games are now snazzy and vibrant. Also, the little face with the sunglasses is gone from the top of the screen, making these new versions clearly inferior to their predecessors.

Let's get a bit more modern though. Windows Vista brought in a whole range of new games if you owned one of the premium editions of the operating system. Chess Titans brought a highly complicated game to rest beside the usual batch of relatively easy puzzlers. InkBall allowed you to draw on the screen with your mouse in order to bounce balls into their corresponding colored holes. Purble Place was a collection of kid-friendly games about making cakes, deduction, and matching pairs.

Do you like Windows? I mean, REALLY like Windows? Well, Windows 93 is real, and it's spectacular.

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'Chess Titans' screen shot via Wikipedia.

In Windows 7, things got even more interesting with the introduction of online play. Backgammon, Checkers, and Spades were all board and card games you could play against other people over the internet. Along with plenty of graphical upgrades for the old classics, there was never a better time to spend half an hour playing games on your computer while you were supposed to be filling in spreadsheets.

Which brings us to now. Depending on who you ask, 2015 could be considered the dark ages of Windows gaming. When you buy Windows 8, it doesn't come with any games pre-installed. Sure, everything you'd want to play is free to download on the Microsoft Store, but who has time to download anything these days? And who has time to actually find the store? When the operating system first released, most people had trouble even figuring out how to open its start menu.

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'Wordament,' screen shot via windowscentral.com.

It's a shame though, because now we have more choice than ever. A particular favorite of mine is Wordament, basically a game of Boggle that you play against hundreds of people at a time. At the end of each round you get to see how well you did compared to everyone else, but the joy for me is in trying to find the longest word available in each grid of 16 tiles. There are also games on the store that are hugely popular on mobile, such as Crossy Road and Cut the Rope, and a total of over 1,000 free games available. The majority are terrible, of course, just like with every other store with free stuff on it, but it's nice to have the variety.

So what about the future? Microsoft has said that it's bringing back Solitaire, Hearts, and Minesweeper in Windows 10, which suggests they'll be installed from the start. (Great news for workers everywhere; less brilliant, perhaps, for their bosses.) Candy Crush Saga will be coming to the operating system, too, which will no doubt go down well with those people on Facebook who still send me invitations all the time. The old Windows classics have certainly lost some of their minimalist charm over the years, but it's been a fascinating journey. To start with, there were a handful of games designed to introduce new users to the concept of a point-and-click-based operating system. Now, we've got thousands of way more complex titles to choose from, but my guess is that Solitaire and Minesweeper will remain mainstays for a long time to come.

Follow Matt Porter on Twitter.

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Actors Jasmine Blackborow and Daniel Donskoy during rehearsals for 'Now This Is Not The End.'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It's a question that's as old as the concept of philosophy itself: What makes us us? What exactly constitutes personal identity? Cells replace themselves constantly, meaning that you're physically not the same as you were a few years ago. We have memories and thoughts that keep us psychologically connected to ourselves, but what happens when these memories fade? If you suffer from dementia, for instance, are you no longer the same person?

These are the sort of questions that spring out from Rose Lewenstein's new play Now This Is Not The End—a story that follows the lives of three generations of women and delves into the idea that identity can be passed down through memory. The story is set in London and Berlin and the eldest character is a Holocaust survivor, but Lewenstein insists that this is not a "Holocaust play." Instead—she says—the story is universal, exploring concepts that she has often grappled with herself. I gave her a ring to chat about why every family has shit they need to deal with and what it means to come from a long line of "bad Jews."

VICE: Could you tell me a bit about the play in your own words?
Rose Lewenstein: It's about three generations of women in one family. The eldest has come to England from Germany as a child refugee before World War II, the youngest has now moved to Berlin to learn German and make a life for herself there, and then in the middle of this, there is the second generation who is both mother and daughter, and who is desperate to somehow connect with her roots and hear her mother's story before it's too late. It's all connected together by this need to hear these stories from this woman's mother, just at the point where her mother is starting to suffer from early signs of dementia.

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Rose Lewenstein. Photo courtesy of Rose Lewenstein.

What inspired you to write the play to begin with?
There was this article that I read, where they interviewed different people at this Jewish old people's home, who had either been on the Kindertransport or in the camps and this was the last chance for them to tell their story firsthand. Over the years, they'd been told to forget about it and now suddenly they're all dying, and everyone's telling them it's important to tell their stories in order to teach the next generations. And I agree—these stories need to be told. Especially in this political landscape where we're faced with [right-wing, anti-immigration groups like] the EDL, BNP, and UKIP. It's important to remind people what has happened and what can happen.

Another thing I wanted to look at was what happens when your memories fracture and fall apart—how that affects the stories that they're telling. This theme of identity, home and belonging is something I've been thinking about for a long time.

The play looks at the fact that you don't get to know much unless you ask for it. Which stories do we want to hear, which stories do we want to remember and which would we rather forget? In the play, there's this backdrop of the Holocaust that's never spoken about, but it's there. How much do you want to know when it's that horrific.

Related: Talking to the Star and Director of 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.'

I guess that's quite a particular situation.
It's very specific but I hope that anyone that's grappling with that sense of identity can relate to that in some way. It's not a "Holocaust play"—I don't think it would be fair for me to label it as that, and I don't think I could do it justice if it were. It's very much about the present and about what we're doing now because within ten years from now, all Holocaust survivors are going to be dead. There won't be any firsthand stories. We're at that crossover point.

The play asks what parts of our history are responsible for the present—the dysfunctional, damaging relationships that are something passed down through the generations. Every family is really complicated. I don't think you could find a family where there isn't some shit to deal with on some level, whether they know it or not.

Did you speak to any Holocaust survivors? What did your research entail?
When I was writing it, I read a lot of accounts and we also had a daughter of a survivor come into rehearsal a couple of weeks ago and give a talk to the cast. She told this incredible story about how her dad had escaped from various camps and made a life for himself in Britain. But as I said, it's not a play centered around the Holocaust.

Read: Gasper Noé's New Film, 'Love,' Comes at You in 3D

The main character is called "Rosie" and you're "Rose." Are there any personal elements to the play?
It's not autobiographical. The characters and events are completely fictional. But I think that every writer brings a piece of themselves into everything they write. You can't help it. The themes are definitely something I identify with. A lot of the characters in the play are non-practicing Jewish people and I come from a long line of "bad Jews." For generations, we haven't been celebrating any Jewish festivals or observing any Jewish traditions. I always found it strange that, because of my surname, people will ask whether I'm Jewish and I don't know how to respond. I'm still confused about what it is to be Jewish. That all ties in.

I find the themes behind your play quite philosophical. As in, if you lose your memories, are you the same person at all?
It's very philosophical. It's almost like that classic line, "If a tree falls down and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound?" You could say the same about memories. If someone can't remember something, did it actually happen? I don't know the answer, but it's an interesting thing to think about. It's something that no one will ever know.

Now This Is Not The End runs at London's Arcola Theatre from June 3 to June 27.

When Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas saw a black man's body hanging from a locust tree on the outskirts of Port Gibson, Mississippi, in March, the possibility of a lynching immediately came to mind.

Lucas, who is black, later said that he had no particular reason to believe 54-year-old Otis James Byrd had been lynched, and that he had personally never heard of a lynching in his county. But because black lynchings are seared into Mississippi's history, the thought was inescapable.

"It's still Mississippi," Lucas told VICE. "We've still got that shadow from the past."

The state holds the record for the largest number of lynchings in the United States—581—with the most recent documented case dating to 1959, when Mack Charles Parker, accused of raping a white woman in Pearl River County, was dragged from his jail cell by a mob, beaten and shot to death, according to the Mississippi Civil Rights Project.

The possibility that Byrd's death was just that sort of hate crime loomed over the investigation by local, state and federal law enforcement agents, led by the US Justice Department, which concluded on Friday that no crime was committed.

But closure isn't quite that simple. Early on, Lucas predicted that some would not be convinced even if the feds ruled out the possibility of murder. Indeed, in a place like Mississippi, racial profiling can go the other way: When a black man is found hanging from a tree, suspicion inevitably turns to whites.

Officials with the FBI and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) pursued every lead and regularly met with Byrd's family during the investigation, according to Don Alway, special agent in charge of the FBI in Mississippi, who told the Associated Press on April 8 that investigators had shared Byrd's autopsy results with his relatives. At that time Alway did not publicly disclose the results, and the family hired attorney Dennis Sweet, as well as their own investigator.

Sweet responded to Friday's DOJ announcement by telling VICE, "The family does not believe that it was a suicide. The family believes that Byrd was murdered. We will continue to do our own independent investigation."

Lucas, who undertook the initial investigation before bringing in state and federal authorities, said that if an independent probe produced new evidence that pointed to the possibility of a crime, he would support reopening the case. "Of course," he said. "Ain't no doubt. If there was something that was brought to light, we'd open it up in a heartbeat."

But the Sheriff added that based upon the information available, he did not believe a crime occurred. "There was no evidence of any kind of homicide, illegal activity, or that any law had been broken," he said. "There was no indication that any crime had been committed."

Still, rumors and conspiracy theories have abounded in Byrd's case. On comment sections in stories about his death and elsewhere, you can find speculation that he was killed by someone to whom he owed money, or in retribution—presumably by whites—for a murder he committed and was convicted of in 1980.

On VICE News: Motive Still a Mystery in Killing of Two Mississippi Police Officers

It's not surprising that such a sense of unease and distrust lingers in the air. Suspicions still hover over the death of black teenager Raynard Johnson, whose body was found hanging by a belt in the yard of his family's home in Kokomo, Mississippi, in June 2000. This despite the fact that two autopsies—one paid for by his family, who suspected lynching—concluded that his death was consistent with a suicide. Jesse Jackson even led a national protest over Johnson's death, and brought the mother of Mississippi's most infamous lynching victim, Emmett Till, along with him to Kokomo to make his point.

A similar scenario played out after Frederick Jermaine Carter, a 26-year-old black man with a history of mental illness, was found hanging from an oak tree in a predominantly white neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi, in 2010. Local law enforcement officials found no evidence that anyone else was involved.

Watch: Investigating an Unsolved KKK Murder in the Deep South

Byrd's own story is complex. The 54-year-old was an ex-convict who was convicted for shooting to death a rural Claiborne County storeowner named Lucille Trim, who was white, during a 1980 robbery in which he stole $101—money he later said he needed to settle a debt with his parole officer. Byrd served more than 25 years for the crime before being paroled in 2006. In the years since, he had apparently been a frequent gambler at area riverboat casinos, and, according to Lucas, disappeared after visiting a Vicksburg casino twice on March 2. He was reportedly behind on his rent and faced the possibility of having to move out of his home.

According to Lucas, authorities initially believed Byrd had gone missing at the casino, but later found that he had disappeared after his son drove him home.

Byrd's family filed a missing persons report six days after his disappearance, and Lucas and a wildlife conservation officer found his body a week later, on March 19, not far from his rented home. Byrd's family at the time said suicide was unlikely because he had started going to church again and seemed to be turning his life around.

Even for people who never knew Byrd, the specter of his body hanging from a tree with a bed sheet tied around his neck presented a disturbingly familiar historical tableau.

Lynching was once a frequent spectacle across the South, often attended by large crowds. The Jackson Daily News even ran a headline in 1919 announcing "John Hartfield Will Be Lynched By Ellisville Mob At 5 O'Clock This Afternoon" (a New Orleans States Item article about the same event proclaimed, "3,000 To Burn Negro"). Lynching is customarily defined as a premeditated killing, typically by hanging, by two or more people operating outside the law. Although it is most often associated in the US with white-on-black murders, it can theoretically involve anyone, for any reason.

Of course, even when murder is proved, racial killings do not always fall into the category of lynchings. Was it a lynching when white teens intentionally ran over James Craig Anderson, who is black, in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2011? What about the murders of voting rights activists Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County in the summer of 1964, when the men were shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan—an episode that formed the basis for the movie Mississippi Burning? Those cases are not typically included in the list.

Most notorious among past Mississippi lynchings was the case of Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who was brutally killed by white men while visiting family members in Money, Mississippi, in 1955, allegedly for whistling at a white woman. Till's murder sparked outrage across the US and beyond and helped fuel the nascent Civil Rights movement. His death was commemorated in a ceremony on March 21, 2015, at the newly restored courthouse in Sumner, where his killers went free in 1955. In reporting on the ceremony, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger noted that local residents had apologized to the Till family in 2007, saying, "We are profoundly sorry for what was done in this community to your loved one. We the citizens of Tallahatchie County acknowledge the horrific nature of this crime. Its legacy has haunted our community. We need to understand the system that encouraged these events and others like them to occur so that we can ensure that it never happens again."

White Mississippians often point to such attempts at reconciliation as evidence that the state has changed, and say media coverage typically portrays a dated racial paradigm. But cases like Byrd's raise questions about whether "it" could happen again. And, as if to confirm the possibility, a federal grand jury on March 27 indicted former University of Mississippi freshman Graeme Phillip Harris for hanging a noose and an old Georgia state flag with a Confederate emblem on a statue honoring James Meredith, the first black student to attend the university.

Estimates of the number of lynchings that have occurred in the US vary, but Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the LA Times after Byrd's death that the best numbers indicate there were 4,742 lynchings nationwide between 1882 and 1968. Of those, about 3,400 victims were black, and 1,297 white. Potok added that there have been cases similar to Byrd's in recent years, but that none have turned out to be racially motivated killings, despite what he described as "real fears through the black communities around these deaths."

"There have been rumors the men were dating white women, that police were covering up," Potok told the newspaper. "But there has never been a shred of evidence that these suicides were anything other than suicides."

With blacks comprising 84 percent of its population—the third-highest proportion of any county in America—Claiborne might not seem like a potential site for lynching. Nearly all the elected officials in the county and in the city of Port Gibson are black, and despite past episodes of racial tumult, including a long-running black boycott of white-owned stores during the civil rights era, lynching has historically not been part of the equation.

But the precedent for racially motivated violence is never far beneath the surface in Mississippi, and despite its black majority, Port Gibson is a town where old times linger. Leafy Church Street is lined with antebellum mansions, and a statue of a Confederate soldier stands sentinel before the county courthouse.

Lucas, the Sheriff, acknowledged that the hanging of a black man in Mississippi will inevitably evoke the specter of lynching for years to come.

"It'll take years—maybe 50 years, a couple of generation—to remove the shadow," he said. "But time will take care of that. The truth is, race is no longer a big issue with us. I go to church with whites. We don't have any problem at all. We have dinner together. Blacks and whites talk together here. I say, don't let what happened in the 40s and 50s overshadow that."

With additional reporting by Zachary Oren Smith

Alan Huffman is a freelance journalist and the author of five nonfiction books, most recently Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer. Follow him on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

For the last ten days, a pair of ravers have been squatting in a forest in Lincolnshire to protest against the police allegedly seizing all of their rave equipment. Gareth Davidson from the Homegrown Sounds crew, and his friend from Crank Sounds, claim that the cops confiscated thousands of pounds of equipment from them after a rave on the last May bank holiday weekend. They're refusing to move until they get it back, instead living in a shelter made out of rave-detritus, surviving off handouts from the party community, and washing in a nearby service station.

They're pretty much like the Brian Haw of rave.

When the dust had finally settled on the 2015 edition of UK Tek, 43 party-goers had been arrested and 21 cops had been injured. The rave turned into a riot when police showed up to shut it down. Videos show hundreds of heads squaring up to cops in full riot gear, throwing missiles and shouting, "Oi, fucking oiiii!" at them.

When everyone else had gone home, Gareth and his mate, who's from Wales, were stranded—the police had taken their equipment and van. Gareth has been posting videos and pictures on Facebook. These show how the pair have made themselves a makeshift camp using tarpaulins complete with a fire and beds. It's a bit like The Island with Bear Grylls , except they've been getting deliveries of weed and Burger King instead of heatstroke and severe dehydration.

"We're not going nowhere 'til we get our van and our rig back. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," says Gareth in one video.

"It's been over a week now. We're still up here, we're still strong, we're still loving it, we're still smiling and we want our fucking rig back—Homegrown and Crank," says Gareth in another. There used to be another friend with them, but he had to leave—"Roughneck went home, 'cos he's a jibber," explains Gareth.

Do you like raves and that sort of thing? Check out Thump.

I called Gareth to ask about the police's actions, whether they were having it large under the tarpaulin in the forest and why Roughneck is a jibber.

VICE: Hi Gareth. How did this start?
Gareth: Well, we were hired out by a group of DJs on Facebook to come up to this event last weekend. We couldn't get into the main site where everything else was being set up, so we set up in the farmer's field near to the woods and then the police came up on the Sunday afternoon and they as good as stole the generators and the van. They haven't left us with any paperwork or documentation. They just took it off us with brute force and came back early on the Monday morning, took the sound system off us, and pushed us all out onto the road.

There was about 20 of us camping around the fire, and they came up and gave us orders to leave the area in ten minutes. There were three of us from west Wales and they kicked us offsite with nothing, just the clothes we had on. So we doubled back on them and then came back and pitched up camp, and we're just going to wait around until they release our stuff.

A video showing the confrontations with the police at UK Tek.

Are you refusing to leave in protest, or is it that you can't go anywhere because you don't have your stuff?
It's both. The police left us with nothing, and there's nothing else we could have done to get back to Wales. We've had to fend for ourselves in the woods, and that is the truth of the matter.

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Gareth. Photo via Gareth Davidson/Facebook.

What's it been like?
To be honest, mate, we've made the best of a bad situation. We're from villages anyway—we do this for fun. It's a nasty situation to be left in if you're not prepared. If you haven't got the right spirit, you couldn't handle it. One of us had to go home because he has a job that he needs to go to.

So there are two of you left now?
Yeah, there are two of us left.

One of the videos you posted shows a few people staying in your camp. Who are they?
That's our friends from Lincoln. It was a friend's birthday so they camped out and joined us.

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The camp. Photo via Gareth Davidson/Facebook.

What are you doing to keep yourself entertained?
Collecting wood, going up to the services to get charge on my phone and get a wash in. The party people have been so helpful by getting us food every few days. Everyone's chipping in and really supporting us, to be honest.

So that's how you're surviving? With the help of the rave community?
Yeah, and we've kept the fire going for the last nine days, 24/7. We've got loads of tents and tarpaulins from the party site. We've got a tidy little camp up here. We're pretty safe, to be honest. But that isn't the point at all. The point is: We've been left stranded.

Do you know what the value of the stuff they took was?
Between me and the group from Stroud, there were two sound systems, so I would have said probably close to 20 grand's worth of kit. But the equipment isn't the important bit—it's the hire stuff. [I took] contracts out from hire companies for generators and vans, and my faith to them was to look after their equipment. Now it's all been stolen off me and I'm here standing my ground, waiting to get it back. I can't afford to pay all the excess on it. This is my way to show some effort, because thousands of people have left. I can't afford to do that. I have to wait for my equipment.

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Making coffee in the shelter. Photo via Facebook/Gareth Davidson.

Whose land are you on now?
I couldn't tell you, to be honest. We're on the outskirts of some woods.

Feasibly, how long can you stay there for?
I've explained to my boss and he's understanding, so we're both good to stay until we get the stuff back.

What do you do for work?
I'm a landscape gardener by trade.

Like raves in forests? You're in luck: here's a film about a psytrance rave in a forest:

OK. Maybe you could start another rave on the weekend as some kind of protest?
Possibly, but that might give our area away and the owners will kick us offsite.

So the owners don't know where you are?
No, we're deep in the woods away from the party site, and any communications with people are outside via phone.

And is that the same with the police?
Yeah.

Right. How are you going to convince the police to give your stuff back if you're not communicating with them and they don't know where you are?
My solicitor's in communication with them, and some people have been told to collect their sound system today, but they're from Stroud and they all have to work so they've missed the opening times for the compound. But as soon as they collect their stuff they're going to drop me the word and then I'll meet my driver to come back from Wales, and hopefully we can collect the stuff. But they're charging £590 [$900] to release the vehicle, so I don't know how we're going to pull that one off. Hopefully the fact we're in the woods and the whole situation might help us out a bit.

Would this kind of thing ever dissuade you from raving in the future?
No, of course not. I don't do as many raves as I used to, but we wanted to attend this one as it was going to be one of the biggest of the year in the UK. It was supposed to be a special occasion and [the police] ruined it. They created the violence. We're fun-loving people, we didn't want to create violence or have to fight with them. They didn't give us an opportunity. But I'm glad you heard our side of the story.

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VICE has reached out to Lincolnshire police for comment.

"HAND THING," uploaded to YouTube on July 13th, 2007, opens with a person in a wig and mask peering around a doorframe. "Shaye?" the character says. "Are you still doing that hand thing?"

Cut to Shaye Saint John, supermodel and starlet, in her standard mask and wig, her rigid mannequin arms tapping one atop the other, back and forth.

Shaye Saint John videos are the internet's answer to outsider art, and they've been flippantly relegated to just another thing in " that weird part of YouTube." There's no big artist reveal, no studio-backed film adaptation, no corporate sponsorship. She posted videos on YouTube, and then one day, she stopped. Her website looks like it was plucked from 2001, because it was. The "Meet Shaye" page, peppered with GIFs and an autoplaying MIDI, declares: "LONG STORY SHORT...I AM AN ENTERTAINER, I AM A MODEL, I AM A SINGER, I AM A MAGICIAN, I AM AN ACTOR. I AM SO MANY THINGS! I AM ALSO THE WORLDS RECORD HOLDER FOR HAVING THE MOST PROBLEMS!"

Absurd and surreal, the videos have been compared to the cult comedy duo Tim and Eric. Words are repeated and flashed across the screen, dolls are destroyed, mannequin legs tap and drag across the concrete. And there's so much of it! But a few themes repeat in the videos: obsession with beauty/perfection, obsession with celebrity, obsession with connecting with others (but an inability to ever really do it). Shaye is a woman of excess. She's on the internet 24/7, interacting with her fans and sharing autographs, she's seeking miracle cures, she's seeking riches. When you see her masked face in front of the palm trees and twinkling Hollywood horizon, and her strange figure slouching in front of the pink stucco houses, she simultaneously fits the scene and repulses the viewer. She's a manifestation of celebrity excess and obsession—she's an Indiana punk in LA exorcising her creator's demons.

That creator was Eric Fournier, an LA-based artist who passed away on February 25, 2010, from complications related to his alcohol abuse. He was 42 years old.

In this story, there are two Shaye Saint Johns. First, in myth, supermodel Shaye Saint John is disfigured in a freak accident and subjected to a series of horrific mind-control experiments by the CIA. Eric Fournier, shy and genius artist, takes her under his wing and helps her create art for a wider audience. Second, in reality, Shaye Saint John is a rubber mask and deflated costume draped over a wheelchair when not worn by Eric Fournier, shy and genius artist. Battling alcoholism and overflowing with ideas, he uses the Shaye character to create art while deflecting the spotlight away from himself.

"[I]t's really hard in LA to show people something they haven't seen before," LA art curator and personality Lenora Claire tells me. Her Instagram documents her shock of dyed red hair, curating projects, and pinup photoshoots. She's been contributing to the LA art scene for the past decade. Claire was a fellow artist and friend of Fournier's in the early 2000s, when the Shaye project was just beginning. "But he was able to create something that [...] if you saw it in person you're like—Holy shit, what is this? To be able to create something that really shocks people, and makes them freak out and question in a wonderful way is incredibly powerful."

In photos, Fournier is stocky and square-faced, with deep-set dark eyes and a full head of dark hair. When he smiles, it's bright, but a bit strained.

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Photos courtesy of Larry Wessel

Fournier grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, and in the mid 1980s he nourished the growing punk scene in bands like Blood Farmers and Skelegore. Before the interconnectivity of the online world, Fournier's friends in Bloomington relied on him to import the new punk trends from LA. "I distinctly remember the great feeling of anticipation whenever Eric returned from LA. What new gem would he have dug up?" recalls a friend on a memorial message board posted after his death. "And he rarely failed to deliver."

But despite his role as importer of hardcore culture, Fournier shied away from the spotlight. "I never had the impression he was at all comfortable being a singer in a band. It was not about ego or desire for attention," another friend recalls. "He'd sort of keep his back to the audience, pull faces or whatever—keep a bit of ironic distance from the whole 'singer in a band' thing." These posts were made five years ago on a message board started by Jim Faust, Fournier's partner in the 14 months before his death. Faust was seeking insight into Fournier's past.

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"He was somebody who I could talk to on the phone and just cry laughing," friend and Shaye collaborator Carl Crew tells me. Crew is a filmmaker and artist, with a background in theater and mortuary embalming. He owns and operates the nightclub and art venue California Institute of Abnormalarts [CIA] in Northern Hollywood.

"I set up this club, the CIA, and we've been open for 20 years," Crew says. "In the early days [...] an old friend who worked at a post-production facility dropped by one time and showed me a trigger of Shaye and Eric. I got [Fournier's] number and called him up and we just hit it off."

Crew explains the Shaye Saint John origin story like this: After being struck by a train, former model Shaye spent many months in the hospital and lost both arms and both legs. She uses a wheelchair and doll-like mannequin limbs. During her time in the hospital, the CIA [the Central Intelligence Agency, not the California Institute of Abnormalarts] performed mind-control experiments on her, until she was the "most implanted person in the world." As a result, her behavior is a bit odd.

In conversation, Crew won't even entertain the idea that Fournier was the artist inside the Shaye costume. Crew is a showman, a performance artist who never ends the performance. For Crew, the Shaye Saint John art demands a new reality, and so of course that new reality becomes truth. He tells me he and Fournier worked with Shaye to create the short videos, called " triggers." "The first couple times he brought her over [to the California Institute of Abnormalarts]," Crew recalls, "we just set up these little scenarios, props or something for her to play with, and we'd come up with a line and she would just go off on these pre-programmed words and things and sounds that would alter her memory. It was almost like an artistic minefield. No one's gonna get killed, you know, but you never know what's going to explode." When making the videos, "[Fournier and Shaye] were very intuitive in how they worked with each other. It was like they were speaking an inner language together that I didn't quite get."

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Spvmv6IP4Io' width='500' height='281']

Fournier and Crew arranged a showing of the Shaye Saint John short Turkey Day [above], which, according to Shaye's website, premiered at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles on Feb 1, 2002. "A lot of people were down there, a lot of lights and stuff, regular people just don't know what to think," Crew recalls. Lenora Claire was also in attendance: "It freaked everybody out, and it got banned from the Nuart. I was like, 'What is this weird puppet robot woman lady?'"

And that's the thing—she's clearly not a puppet, clearly not a robot. She's some sort of woman, who can form sentences and move about. There's a person manipulating the costume, but the videos never reveal the creator within. "Shaye's like a hot dog," Claire says. "It's awesome, but don't ask what's inside."

[body_image width='679' height='467' path='images/content-images/2015/06/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/01/' filename='shaye-st-john-tk-body-image-1433179743.png' id='61852']

In the early 2000s, when the Shaye Saint John videos were being produced at the California Institute of Abnormalarts, no one knew for sure who was in the Shaye costume. Many people assumed it was Crew, due to his inherent showmanship and connection to the California Institute of Abnormalarts. Thinking Crew was the person in the Costume, Claire asked Crew if he could get Shaye Saint John to attend her birthday party at the CIA.

Shaye and Claire hit it off after the party, and Claire began interacting with Shaye through her LiveJournal. "Every day I would come home from my shitty job, get on instant messenger, and talk to Shaye for hours. Hours! [...] Shaye would give me advice about everything, encourage my art, say 'Well, people don't get you, fuck them.' All those lovely things. Everyone wants a friend to do that."

Claire built a friendship with Shaye without ever knowing who was behind the character. "This is like, 2002, maybe 2003, and I'm standing there with Eric and Pam [Holland, another artist who frequented the club], and Eric's just like smiling at me. And I can't figure out why. He's kinda being weird. Then he goes, 'You know I'm Shaye.'" Claire didn't reveal Fournier's role in the Shaye project out of an artist's respect, and their strange, shared friendship. "We had this real confidence in each other about all the confessions online."

To Claire, Shaye Saint John is the skin she saw draped over a wheelchair when not in use, the deflated shell of the character without the artist. Fournier is the real Shaye—anonymously kind, quietly artistic, the tragedy of his death amplified by the depth of his talent.

Fournier's work has inspired a few disciples, such as filmmaker Larry Wessel, currently working on the documentary ERIC AND SHAYE. His goal in creating the documentary is bringing Fournier's Shaye Saint John work to a wider audience, with the goal of helping Fournier get recognition as a groundbreaking filmmaker. Wessel describes Fournier's work as "maximalist" art, or, "the diametric opposite of the extreme simplicity and ultra boredom inducing pretentiousness and elitism of minimalism." To Wessel, Fournier's films represent a complete freedom from convention.

As a figure of this maximalist movement, Shaye exists outside of Fournier himself, and her role in the mythos is tantamount to the art itself.

"When Eric died people made these videos saying ' Shaye Saint John is dead,' which is exactly what was supposed to happen. The conviction of them thinking that Eric was Shaye—it is really amusing for me. It really worked really well," Crew says. "That allowed her to escape."

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According to Crew, after Fournier's death, a few good people from the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency again) took Shaye into witness protection to keep her from being subjected to more mind control experiments. She's in hiding, but has contacted Crew once, just to let him know she's alive. That fact is solace enough, but Crew hopes that Shaye will reach out to start creating videos again. "It will be a dreadful thing without Eric, but life goes on, and we just do everything in his honor. And Shaye really loved him too."

Crew and Fournier worked together for ten years. Crew witnessed Fournier's descent into alcoholism, but it was fast-moving, and unstoppable. "You'll get that sometimes with really brilliantly talented people—really intense. I'll never ever ever forget working with him. He was such a dear friend. We had such an ease working together."

It is possible for Shaye to return though, even without Fournier to guide her. "Carl was so involved with the legend of Shaye," Claire tells me, "Is it the kind of thing where you pass the torch? I have weird feelings about that. Obviously, just from pure enjoyment I would love to see something from Shaye again.

"I don't know—it would be Shaye 2.0. Some alternate version of Shaye. Because Eric is gone."

But while Fournier is gone, his artist's hand was so carefully hidden underneath Shaye Saint John, and the character's personality so large, that Crew believes Shaye's identity can live on without him. "Shaye's still alive," Crew told me over the phone, in a hushed, excited whisper. "She's coming back."

Kate Davis Jones is on Twitter.