Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled today that Dutee Chand, a 19-year-old Indian sprinter, could continue to race despite her higher-than-normal levels of testosterone. It's a critical case for female athletes like Chand, who have been subjected to various forms of "gender testing" to verify that they are woman enough to compete.

Chand was a national champion by the time she was 16, when she became the country's 18-and-under champion for the 100-meter race in 2012. But then, in 2014, Chand was banned from competing because of her hyperandrogenism—a high level of naturally-occurring testosterone in women.

Hyperandrogenism can render an athlete ineligible if her testosterone levels are too high; by the International Association of Athletics Federations' standards, it's 10 nanomoles of testosterone per liter. That's because higher testosterone levels are believed to give female competitors an unfair advantage, the same way taking steroids would. The problem is that hyperandrogenism occurs naturally, sometimes from conditions like polycystic ovarian symdrome, which skews the balance of hormones in women and affects as many as one in ten women.

Issues like this have spurred the debate over sex hormones in athletics, which revolve around the idea of creating clear boundaries between male athletes and female athletes. Olympic runner Caster Semenya was famously subjected to "gender testing" in 2009, when it was discovered that she had both male and female sex organs (the IAAF later cleared her to compete, after she took hormone supplements to "normalize" her androgen levels). At the 2012 London Olympics, four women were forced to have their internal testes removed in order to compete (they were genetically female, but had male sex organs).

But Chand wasn't interested in taking hormonal supplements or surgically altering her body, so she petitioned her disqualification.

After today's ruling, the New York Times reported that the panel "was unable to conclude that hyperandrogenic female athletes may benefit from such a significant performance advantage that it is necessary to exclude them from competing in the female category." The court gave the International Association of Athletics Federations two years to come up with persuasive evidence that hyerandrogenism does affect athletic performance, and if they can't, then the ruling will stand.

For Chand, and other female athletes like her, this is a major win. "I was humiliated for something that I can't be blamed for," said Chand, in a statement released today. "I am glad that no other female athlete will have to face what I have faced, thanks to this verdict."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Outside the Hound Pits, from 'Dishonored.'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The bars in video games are surprisingly nuanced. Beyond the customary brawls and rows of shelved glass placed there only to be shot and shattered, there are memorable characters, conversations, and defining atmospheres. Everyday spaces are just as important to virtual world building as the extraordinary, and you can't get much more familiar than a pub or bar. Toilets maybe, but that's another article.

Bars are, like humans, mainly liquid. Liquid pours out from taps, gets put in specifically built containers, and then finally drunk. Similarly, games are all about fluids. Think of the amount of virtual blood spilled over the years, as well as all those damned water levels and dungeons you've been forced to swim through. This is obviously why bars and video games fit so well together. It's also the jumping off point for compiling a completely serious, meticulously researched, and non-arbitrary list of video gaming's best virtual pubs and bars.

The Underworld Tavern via YouTube

Grittiest Dive Bar

The word gritty has become a bit of a cliché. Just consider how many games in recent years have decided to set a level in a strip bar to quickly get across just how thematically rough and mature it is. It's a cheap and dirty trick that bypasses the altogether more difficult craft of storytelling. The original Deus Ex on the other hand is a game that deliberately builds up a world of urban decay and societal collapse from the very beginning. Embedded in an environment involving constant terror attacks, drug-addled sub cultures, and tramps huddled around flaming bins, lies the Underworld Tavern.

Tucked away down an alley in future Manhattan neighborhood Hell's Kitchen, the Underworld Tavern feels genuinely gritty. Deus Ex earns its vice and crime aesthetic the hard way—by caring about the themes and not wanting to simply skip past a discussion. The tavern's old mechanized bartender eyes you suspiciously because of your role as an anti-terrorist agent. In the corner of the bar a drug dealer sells "Ambrosia," an Illuminati-manufactured vaccine that has nothing to do with the rice pudding, but is instead the answer to the (also Illuminati-made) disease called the "Gray Death." Everyone's forced to buy into Ambrosia to stay alive. Unless you're poor, in which case you just die.

The Scumm Bar

Jolliest Bar

Cheer up. Remember when LucasArts made games? (If not, try reading this.) One of their most beloved adventure series was Monkey Island, which followed Guybrush Threepwood on his journey to become the world's greatest pirate. The Secret of Monkey Island's Scumm Bar, named after LucasArt's bespoke game engine (an in-joke nobody but old, now very old, people got), was charming, spirited, and memorable. The Scumm Bar is a great example of the mood you can create and the stories you can tell using just two dimensions. You don't have to be able to navigate bars in 3D for them to evoke a believable sense of space and time.

Other jolly pirate bars I quite liked were the numerous beach establishments in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. The Caribbean setting is fantastic, and alongside the booze and the sun, every bar comes with its own brawl: you're a Welsh pirate sailing the seas collecting bar fights and shanties. If only Ubisoft would sober up and do more with the pirate setting.

Related: Watch a VICE film about drinking a shit load of cocktails in New Orleans

The Golden Kane shootout—now that is going to be sore in the morning. Image via YouTube

Best Asian Bar

Bars are social hubs that are great for quiet chats between friends. However, as video games are all inherently frenetic and solely revolve around chaotic violence, obviously, we'll have to settle for a giant shoot-out. Stranglehold was a third-person shooter made in loose collaboration with legendary Hong Kong director John Woo. One of the game's first big set pieces takes place in The Golden Kane bar/restaurant, and is a real throwback to many of Woo's classic films, most notably Hard Boiled and its opening scene.

Woo's influence on the action genre can't be overstated. He was fast-cutting, cranking, and keeping his camera mobile at a time when Hollywood had settled into a deep malaise. Stranglehold's bar scene is an admirable recreation of Woo's work in Hong Kong. All the important props: the tiny wooden tables and stools, crockery, light fixture, and tiled walls can be smashed to pieces. There's even a banister for virtual Chow Yun-fat to slide down. Shenmue also had a pretty memorable, fairly funny bar fight.

Outside the Drunken Huntsman

Best ye olde fantasy tavern

Inns and taverns in fantasy games are quite unlike other bars and pubs. As opposed to being designed to evoke a specific atmosphere or stage a violent shootout, fantasy taverns are all about sneaking upstairs and rifling through drawers to steal stuff. The Witcher series has some great pubs where you can partake in a good spread of activities. There's fisticuffs, the card game Gwent, alcohol that turns your vision blurry, and of course the customary looting when nobody's looking.

In Planescape: Torment there's the Smoldering Corpse Bar, a fiery establishment named after an eternally burning prisoner who once tried to torch the city. The pyromaniac Ignus can later be recruited into your party, which is troublesome, as he's the only thing going for the bar. But my favorite fantasy tavern is probably The Drunken Huntsman from Skyrim. It's got a great Norse vibe. There's a giant fire-pit in the center of the room, loads of those spirally Celtic patterns on the walls, and even a bard in the corner strumming away. It's also where you can begin the "A Night to Remember" quest, where you black out from drunkenness and then retrace your steps, slowly revealing your debauched antics in the process. Most importantly, Skyrim's taverns allow you the option of theft via bucket.

The Citadel's Purgatory bar-cum-club

Best bar in space

There are a couple of glitzy deep space bars that stick out for me. Mass Effect 2 has the Afterlife Club, set aboard the mercenary-controlled Omega space station. There's also Purgatory on the Citadel in Mass Effect 3. My memory of both is a little blurred—from what I can recall, one comes in vibrant space purple, the other bright neon pink. Mass Effect's bars more closely resemble the drinking spots in Star Trek (the vibrancy of Quark, and the glassy minimalism of the Enterprise's own Ten Forward) than the dusty low-tech cantinas of Tatooine.

The famous cantina in Mos Eisley has been recreated in games countless times, but to my mind it has always paled in comparison to the cinematic equivalent—it's often empty (Star Wars Galaxies) or just obnoxiously blocky (LEGO Star Wars). One of the most memorable things about the place was the music, a band of egg-headed musicians playing a form of future-jazz called "jizz." (Not even joking.) Suddenly I feel less annoyed that Disney nuked the Expanded Universe. Instead of hosting live music, Mass Effect's bars are, along with The Hive from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, mostly soundtracked by DJs spinning dance music.

The Big Bug Fun Club

Best night club

Remember how awesome Rare used to be? Somewhere between making GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Perfect Dark, the British studio produced Jet Force Gemini. It was a fantastic little adventure featuring a dog with a jet pack, collectible Ewok things, and a final boss that could not be beaten (by me). It also had the Big Bug Fun Club, the enemy drones' very own chill-out spot. It had a great atmosphere and a ton of character, with disco lights, outrageously groovy dancing, a suitably bulky barman, and a DJ to drop the fire.

Another great video game nightclub can be seen in the cult classic Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines. The Asylum in Bloodline's Santa Monica reminds me of a few grubby night clubs I've been to. More interestingly, it's a place where unlucky clientele are lured so that a core group of predatory vampires can get their blood fix. It's dark, exploitative and more than a little depraved. Nothing at all like real-world night clubs.

Thirsty? Fix yourself a cannabis cocktail with a little Munchies help.

Inside the Hound Pits, pre-smoking ban

Best pub

One of the worst video game pubs is the one from the opening of Uncharted 3. The Pelican Inn is supposed to be set somewhere in London, but it's a hodgepodge of terrible stereotypes and seems to have more in common visually with the Irish pub the Baltimore police department holds wakes in. The bar brawl set piece isn't terrible—it's just really difficult to get over the sheer amount of flat caps on display. The Pelican just looks like the kind of bar I'd avoid in real life.

Now, The Hound Pits from Dishonored is by far the more interesting locale. It's your safehouse in Dunwall, the game's Dickensian dystopia roamed by corrupt bobbies and plague-riddled rats. Both Dunwall and its pub, which once hosted dog fighting in the basement, have a real sense of history. The booths, chalked food menus, lighting, and even brickwork on the outside of the building just look and feel right. I've been to the Hounds Pit, or somewhere like it, before. I think we all have, and it's that rare exception to the video game boozer rule of being fantastical for the sake of it. You can practically smell this place's stale beer stains from the other side of the screen.

Follow Ewan Wilson on Twitter.

What do you think? Fonder of 7th Heaven from Final Fantasy VII? Partial to a pint at Liberty City's Steinway Beer Garden? Bayonetta's The Gates of Hell has a certain charm to it, no? Perhaps Tapper's bars keep you coming back for more? You can tweet VICE Gaming your drinking holes of choice, if you're sober enough to fit a recommendation into 140 characters.

A military parade in North Korea (Photo by babeltravel via)

Read: 'I Realized I'd Been Brainwashed': The North Korean Defector Living in London

Yesterday marked the 62nd anniversary of the end of the Korean War—or, as it's known in North Korea, The Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War. In absolutely unsurprising news, a North Korean army general said that, should there be another war on the Korean peninsula, no Americans would be left alive to sign the surrender document.

Backing up the general's remarks, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un then told the nation: "Gone forever is the era when the United States blackmailed us with nukes; now the United States is no longer a source of threat and fear for us, and we are the very source of fear for it."

Various international bodies have estimated that North Korea has between six and 27 small nuclear warheads, though consensus is that it has a maximum of ten useable warheads.

Though no peace treaty was ever signed, the Korean armistice of 1953 marked, in the eyes of North Korea, a victory against the United States.

"It is more than 60 years since the ceasefire on [the] land, but peace has not yet settled on it," said Kim Jong-un in his address. "The past Korean War brought about the beginning of the downhill turn for the US, but the second Korean war will bring the final ruin to US imperialism."

The celebrations came a day after the newly renovated Sinchon Museum was reopened. The museum depicts the alleged massacre of 30,000 people in Sinchon County, a third of its population, by US soldiers during the Korean War. The exhibitions are extremely graphic, showing American troops smashing meat cleavers into civilian heads and abusing women tied to trees.

Image by Flickr user wsilver

I met Angelo on a film set in Berlin. We'd both been booked for a German TV commercial. The producers were worried that the all blonde-haired, blue-eyed cast would send out the wrong message, so they'd done a last minute search of out-of-work non-German actors in the city and found Angelo, a black Canadian, and me, a ginger Paddy.

There was a lot of downtime on the shoot, so Angelo and I got to talking. But our conversations kept getting interrupted by the ongoing text message argument I was having with my girlfriend at the time, who I'll call Sara.

"We need to talk," she wrote to me.

"Let's wait until I'm home."

"Now or never."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"You call me ridiculous one more time and I'll rip your head out."

Sara was German. She sometimes got the phrases wrong.

Angelo sat patiently as I continually broke off mid-sentence to address whatever new attack was coming at me through the cracked screen of my phone.

"That's a live one," Angelo said.

"You don't even know," I said. "The girl shouts at me in her sleep."

That was putting it lightly. Not only did Sara shout at me in the sleep, she stole from me—booze, cigarettes, money, bicycles, clothes, whatever. She stole from my neighbors, too. I was constantly returning plants that she'd taken from their windowsills. She would hit me with little slaps that got harder and harder as we got drunker. One time, I remember she hit me so hard across the ear that for three days everything anyone said to me sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a mine shaft. I once left her in the bar after a fight and went home only for her to follow me back and rain stones at the window. When I still wouldn't get out of bed to let her in, she took off her boots, one by one, and fired them through the panes. When Sara wanted attention, she got it. The very laptop I'm writing this on has a huge fork-lightning shape crack across the screen from when she pushed it off my desk when I said to her, "Just give me one more minute please, baby."

Sara wasn't the first abusive relationship I'd been in. I was attracted to that kind of girl: ones who drank too much, sought out drama, had ex-boyfriends round every corner, tempers that would put a dictator to shame. But Sara was probably the toughest. When we fought, we'd say things that most couples could never walk away from. She called me a faggot, a coward, and one time I won't forget, in the best English her German accent could muster, she called me a worthless sack of sheep.

When we fought, she'd end up slapping and kicking me and I'd just stand there in an awkward brace position, not because I'd always been taught not to hit a girl, but because I was really afraid of this one.

Every time Angelo mentioned Sara, I'd blurt out something like anxiety, pain, or the woman who's ruining my life.

On set that day, our scene was simple: Nine of us—the seven Aryans, me, and Angelo—had to run at the camera with big smiles on our faces. We had to do it for over two hours before the director was happy. When we finally nailed it, there was a round of applause and a check for $550. Cheers!

After the shooting was over, Angelo asked me what I was doing that night.

"Probably fighting with my girlfriend," I said.

"Fuck that," Angelo said, "come do a session with me."

"A session of what?"

"Psychodrama therapy. I took an online course last week and I bet it will help."

Angelo explained that psychodrama therapy was a process by which you acted out experiences you might have, or those you already did have, in order to either rehearse for an argument or rewrite your own history. The technique was invented by a man named Jacob L. Moreno, who argued that by reenacting situations from their own lives, people could come up with creative, spontaneous solutions to their own problems.

I had done a little bit of therapy when my dad was in rehab, but apart from that I'd never touched the stuff. Poor people don't do therapy—instead we drink, we smoke weed, and we don't sleep. But I was feeling desperate about my situation with Sara, so I told Angelo I'd give it a try.

From Motherboard: DIY brain-shocking, the futuristic frontier of therapy.

Angelo lived in a basement apartment in the gay district of Berlin. When we arrived, he brought me into his living room.

"Don't be afraid about making noise," Angelo said.

"Why would I make noise?" I asked.

"You'll see," he said.

We began on our feet walking circles around each other in the room. Angelo asked me to close my eyes and we got into a simple word association game. Angelo would say something and then I would reply with the first thing that came into my head.

Ice cream — vanilla
Summer — lakes
Sara — unmitigated stress
Home — my mother
Beer — good times
Sara — a pain in my gut

We played around with this game for a while and every time Angelo brought it back to Sara, I'd blurt out something like anxiety, pain, or the woman who's ruining my life.

Then Angelo asked me to close my eyes, and keep them closed, while he stepped out of the room. I heard something awkward and metallic dragged across the floor and then a couple of joints snapping into place, and finally Angelo said, "OK, you can open your eyes now."

The first thing I saw was Angelo, who had taken his shirt off. He had thick rolls of fat around his belly and his nipples were pierced with tiny metal bolts. In both his hands were plastic baseball bats; there was an ironing board with a floral print cover and pink legs in front of him.

"Don't be upset that I took my top off," Angelo said. "It's better this way. More honest."

He passed me a baseball bat. For a minute I thought we were going to fight, but then he told me to channel all the anger I had toward my girlfriend toward beating the shit out of the ironing board. It felt silly, but I gave the board a tap with the tip of the bat anyway. "Harder," Angelo shouted, and I went a little harder. "Harder like this," he said, as he leapt into the air and brought the full force of the bat down on the ironing board.

I watched him go, the loose cargo pants, the rolls of fat, the nipple bolts glinting in the light, and then because it felt dumb to just watch the guy, I got into it too.

For the next ten minutes that ironing board took it. We pounded it from one end of the living room to the next. We showed it no mercy, and when our arms were too sore to hit anymore, we both collapsed on the couch and stared at the twisted shape we'd made. I couldn't understand any of it, but I had to admit I felt good.

Angelo said that from what he'd seen, all I'd need is a few sessions to be cured.

"Cured of what?" I said.

"Your inability to get angry," he said. "Somehow, somewhere along the line, you were told that getting angry was bad and now whenever you should get mad, something prevents you. You're still angry, it's just instead of coming out, that anger just worms its way into your stomach."

"And what's that got to do with Sara?"

"You chose her deliberately so you could resolve this problem in your character," he said.

I'm not sure if that's really why people end up in abusive relationships, but even still, I had to admit that I felt a lot better when we ended our session.

Read: Alice Glass speaks out about her abusive relationship.

I went home and I didn't see Sara that night. I called her around midnight to see where she was but she didn't answer. That was her way—a barrage of relentless communication or complete radio silence.

The next session at Angelo's house, he didn't even bother to wear trousers. He answered the door in a pair of Y-front briefs.

"That honest?" I said to him.

Angelo nodded his head. He sat me down and asked me why I thought Sara and I fought as much as we did.

"We both want to be artists," I said.

"So there's competition?"

"Whenever one does well, the other feels like there's less chance of them doing well. Like we're drawing from a finite source."

"That's hard," Angelo said.

"It doesn't help that we're both drinkers," I said. We'd been seeing each other for over a month before we had our first sober conversation.

Angelo asked me to close my eyes and then imagine that I was an animal. I pictured a fox. He asked me to describe my life as a fox. I told him about my little burrow, which I'd dug myself, and my wife fox and the baby foxes and how we enjoyed lying out in the meadow in summer or playing in the stream. As I talked, I got deeper and deeper into the life of the fox—so deep that I could imagine the hair on my back, the long teeth in my mouth, my tiny little fox dick brushing between my bushy legs. I loved being a fox. Foxes have the life. Nothing but frolicking all day long. I'd come back to the burrow and get licked all over by tiny fox tongues.

"But are you worried about anything, Mr. Fox?" Angelo asked me.

I thought a while, and then realized that on top of all that frolicking there were some underlying stress. "Yes, I am," I said. "I'm worried that if I don't bring enough chickens home every evening, my wife is going to leave me and take the cubs too."

"Why would she leave you when she loves you?" Angelo asked.

"Because that's what they do," I said. "A fox wife always leaves you in the end."

I felt a wave of sadness roll over me and I was no longer the fox—just me, in my early 20s, underweight, and sorely lacking in essential vitamins and iron. I started to cry.

Angelo came over and touched my arm. "If Mrs. Fox loves you, she won't leave you," he said.

Related: VICE meets the women of the men's rights movement.

Angelo left the room and when he came back, I heard the ironing board being flipped into place. I got onto my feet, took the plastic bat from his pudgy hand and we beat that floral ironing board until it was nothing more than a sad heap.

I looked down at my body. I'd removed my T-shirt. I looked at Angelo, who was out of breath.

"You're becoming honest," he said.

That night Sara called me at around 11 PM. She was wasted and wanted me to come out and meet her. I pictured my little fox world—the warm meadow, the tiny cubs bundled up in the burrow, the smell of their breath mixing with the earth, my good wife with her pretty claws. I said no. And then Sara started to shout at me and I did something I didn't know I was capable of: I hung up on her.

But that kind of thing never worked on Sara. She called me back at least ten times before I turned the phone off. Around half an hour later, I heard the buzzer on the door. I didn't answer. And then I heard every other buzzer in the building going off. The sound was like a Nokia 3210 ringtone. Eventually she was at my door, beating on it with both her fists. If I could have climbed inside my wardrobe and bundled up beneath the coats and ride out the storm undetected, I would have—but I knew that if I didn't answer the door, she would just stand there beating at the timber all night.

Sara had a way of talking (shouting) that brought me back to locker rooms and toilet booths and a childhood getting chased by older boys who, when they caught you, would give you the option of either getting a kick in the nuts or eating dog shit. I always chose dog shit. To this day, I can travel in India, Thailand, and Morocco, and eat all kinds of street food without getting sick.

I opened the door. Sara took one swing at me then fell on the floor, drunkenly. I carried her to bed. In the morning, I crept out from under her arm and went to see Angelo. It was supposed to be our last session.

By this stage, I'd got very used to Angelo not wearing any clothes apart from his underwear. He sat me down and placed two chairs in the middle of the room facing each other.

"Which one is you?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Pick one and sit in it."

I got up and sat in the better of the two chairs. Angelo threw a red cushion on the empty chair.

"That's Sara," he said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The cushion on the chair is Sara, he said, and you're going to have an argument with her."

"What type of argument?" I said.

"You're going to split up with her," he said.

"I'm not," I said.

"You are."

"But she'll go mad."

"She's a fucking cushion," Angelo said. He was right.

'I'm sorry but I can't do this anymore,' I told the cushion. The cushion sat there in silence.

I looked at the cushion. It didn't look like much. It didn't look like it could bang down a door in the middle of the night or scream until all the neighbors and their neighbors were awake. Even if you'd driven razor blades through its seams and set the thing on fire it still wouldn't have looked close to as scary as I imagined Sara to be. So I started to talk to it.

"Sara, I'm sorry but I can't do this anymore," I told the cushion. "You're great but you're just too much for me."

The cushion sat there in silence. I felt Angelo's hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him. He nodded.

"Do we get to beat the ironing board now?"

"No," he said. "Now it's all about talking."

I didn't split up with Sara that evening, but I did the following afternoon. I set it up so that she'd have an idea and wouldn't be blindsided. I told her that I wanted to talk and I picked a park between our houses, a neutral space. It was a busy park: kids playing in sandpits, junkies throwing frisbees, a couple of bums going around asking for change. I came straight out with it.

"I think we should split up," I said.

"We are not splitting up," Sara said.

"I am," I said.

"You're not," Sara said.

"Goodbye," I said, and stood up and walked away. The last thing I heard was the sound of a bottle skimming my ear and then smashing into the ground on front of me.

I don't know why I got into a relationship with someone who treated me like shit. I don't think it was to solve some flaw in my character, but I do think that I became a tougher person for surviving it. There was something familiar in Sara's bullying that I could relate to from my childhood as a punching bag, and as fucked-up as it sounds, I got off on it.

Sara didn't quite disappear. I ran into her one night, and she chased after me with one of those Kryptonite courier bike locks. Another time she tried to smash my window with a rock, but she was so drunk that she hit the wrong window on the wrong street. The last time I saw her was in a bar. She was drunk and her English had gotten worse.

"I want to tell you something," she said. "You're fucking prophetic."

I looked at her. She seemed smaller now.

"Thanks," I said and turned away.

I don't know what happened to her or Angelo for that matter. He got booked as a featured extra in an Italian colonial drama and never came back. But I do know that learning to stand up to an ironing board taught me to stand up to people, and that's something I'll never unlearn. Just as the picture in my head of Angelo, in the harsh light of his basement apartment with sweat dribbling down his rolls and through the seams of his Y-fronts, is something I'll never unsee.

Follow Conor Creighton on Twitter.

Abusive relationships are very serious and can get progressively more dangerous. If you need help leaving an abusive relationship, contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Sofa snuggling in 'The Darkness'—make the most of this moment of calm, because the game's about to get real nasty.

Ask someone who's not seen one for several years to describe an average video game and chances are there'll be guns, explosions, and non-stop action involved. It's an understandable conclusion to come to: Watch any sitcom or movie scene in which someone plays a game and you'll see them frantically jabbing away at a nondescript controller while bleepy-bloopy sound effects from the 80s ring out.

As any regular gamer will tell you, though, whatever their platform of preference or dedication to the cause, the world of video games offers a hell of a lot more than mindless shooty-bang-bang action. For decades this constantly growing medium has also delivered some truly memorable moments that stick with us long after the credits have rolled. Here are some of the most beautiful moments—some visually stunning, some heartwarming—in gaming history.

A complete playthrough of 'Out Run'

'Out Run': Blue Skies

It's often said that too many games these days tend to be too gritty, too realistic and too gray. While it isn't the case across the board, it has to be agreed that moody concrete environments are so often the order of the day. It wasn't always like this, and Out Run is the perfect example. Every stage in SEGA's immortal arcade racer had a gorgeous landscape all of its own—sandy dunes, snowy roads, you name it—and yes, even its concrete stages were lovely, with massive tunnels made of countless stone archways. But nothing sticks in the mind more than its opening section, with those endless palm trees and deep blue skies that were so iconic people often refer to "SEGA skies" when trying to pinpoint what gaming is missing these days.

'Elite Beat Agents' episode 12: A Christmas Gift

'Elite Beat Agents': A Christmas Gift

There is nothing more beautiful than the love between a little girl and her dad, and nothing more heartbreaking when that tie is cut short due to the father's death. A rhythm action game starring motivational cheerleaders may be the last place you'd expect evidence of this but the Christmas Gift stage in Nintendo's Elite Beat Agents offers just that, telling the story of young Lucy and her mom trying to cope with their first Christmas alone. Seven-year-old Lucy, too young to understand, is adamant her dad will be back home for Christmas with a present for her, so it's up to the player to use the Elite Beat Agents' power to ensure—get this—his ghost can get to her. Cue a tearful reunion.

Rosalina's storybook

'Super Mario Galaxy': Rosalina's Storybook

Nintendo's outstanding platformer is filled with so many beautiful moments that we could have filled this entire article with them alone, but if pressed for just one then it has to be the storybook that slowly reveals itself as you play through the main game. As you unlock new chapters and read more of the tale, it eventually becomes clear that it's actually Rosalina's backstory, telling how as a young girl she was separated from her mother and was left all alone. The story of how she met Luma and soon gained a new family is one of the loveliest things you'll ever find in gaming.

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'Gitaroo Man', the acoustic "Legendary Theme"

'Gitaroo Man': The "Legendary Theme"

Long before it gave us Elite Beat Agents, developer iNiS released this fantastic PlayStation 2 rhythm action game about a young lad with a super-powered guitar that can destroy enemies. Each stage has its own musical style, and while there are plenty of toe-tapping and head-banging tracks on there it's the gentle "Legendary Theme" that has stayed with every Gitaroo Man player all these years later. Saving the world from elaborately-designed space villains is all well and good, but the greatest achievement our hero pulls off in the game is winning the heart of the girl he loves in this touching moment, set against a seaside sunset and a roaring campfire.

Squall and Rinoa hit the dancefloor

'Final Fantasy VIII': The Ballroom Scene

Square Enix's epic RPG series certainly isn't lacking in emotional moments, but often they're more depressing than beautiful: that death in Final Fantasy VII being a perfect example. The ballroom scene in FFVIII, however, is one of the loveliest moments in the series, as quiet and moody Squall is charmed by the outgoing Rinoa and dragged onto the dance floor against his will. What starts off as horribly awkward as the pair bump into other dancers soon becomes a thing of beauty as they adapt to each other and finally connect: not only in terms of their dancing, but emotionally.

A birthday treat, a moment's pause, before everything goes to shit

'The Darkness': Spending a Night In

It's odd, but one of the most memorable gaming moments of the last generation involved no gaming whatsoever. In fact, you could have easily laid the controller down and still enjoyed a cozy feeling as protagonist Jackie sat on the couch with his girlfriend Jenny watching the TV. There are actually a number of full-length movies tucked away in The Darkness, meaning in theory you could spend the entire night cuddled up to your virtual partner, watching To Kill a Mockingbird instead of progressing with the game's main story. There's something wonderful about a game that lets you experience your character's downtime, and it makes what happens to your girlfriend later in the game even more powerful.

On Noisey: Vin Diesel's Greatest Musical Moments

Meeting the giraffes in 'The Last of Us'

'The Last of Us': The Giraffes

Us modern folk take an awful lot for granted, and The Last of Us does a cracking job of explaining this by showing us what it would be like if the world suffered a mass epidemic and most of what we knew died out. As Joel and Ellie explore their surroundings in the game, it's explained that since Ellie was born after the outbreak there's so much of the world she never got to see. So when the pair encounters a herd of giraffes in Utah, it's a beautiful thing to see Ellie's reaction to it. The need to fight for survival in the world she lives in has forced her to grow up earlier than she should have, but when she sees the giraffes her childlike wonder returns.

The launch trailer for the PS4 version of 'Journey'

'Journey': An Unspoken Bond

It goes without saying that Journey is a visually beautiful game: You only need to take one look at it to see that. What isn't immediately clear to those who haven't played it, though, is that there's something even more special hiding underneath. As you play, assuming you do so with an internet connection, you'll eventually encounter another character. This character never speaks to you: All either of you can do is make a musical chime that affects the landscape. It soon becomes clear that this other character isn't some AI bot, it's another Journey player experiencing the same thing as you are. Silently, you both play through the game, helping each other out and ensuring as you do that each player doesn't have to go on this Journey alone. Having previously been a PS3-exclusive title, it's out on PS4 now, so if you haven't enjoyed this one yet there's no better time.

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Ralkina Jones. Photo via her family/WSMV-TV

On Sunday, 37-year-old Ralkina Jones was found dead in a Cleveland Heights, Ohio, jail cell. A Cleveland NBC affiliate reports that Jones had a violent altercation with her ex-husband before being arrested on Friday, and that a Monday autopsy by the county medical examiner found nothing suspicious about her death. Northeast Ohio Media Group adds that Jones seemed fine when her sister visited on Saturday before being hospitalized due to concerns about her blood sugar and blood pressure on the day she died. But even without a full accounting of exactly what happened, the story of a person of colour dying behind bars is becoming increasingly familiar—a sort of a horrific epilogue to a year defined by police killings of unarmed black men.

In fact, Jones—whose uncle Craig Bickerstaff was shot to death in a confrontation with Cleveland police in 2003—is at least the fourth person of colour to die in an American jail this month. Although the deaths that came toward the beginning of July did not garner national attention, they are under renewed scrutiny since Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman, died in a Texas jail on July 13 after a confrontation with a police officer who pulled her over for allegedly failing to use her turn signal. Since people all over the country started asking #WhatHappenedToSandraBland—authorities are maintaining her death was a suicide—each subsequent death has begged the broader question: Why does this keep happening?

On July 9, Rexdale Henry was picked up by police for failing to pay a fine. As the Jackson Free Press reported, the 53-year-old was a member of the Choctaw tribe in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and a prominent community activist. Five days after he was taken into custody, Henry was found dead in his cell at the county jail, inviting comparisons to three civil-rights activists who were held in Neshoba and then turned up dead in 1964—as well as much more recent events.

Two law professors at Syracuse University in New York are helping Henry's family conduct an independent probe into his death. "At a time when the nation is focused on the terrible circumstances of the brutal death of Sandra Bland, it is critical to expose the many ways in which Black Americans, Native Americans and other minorities are being arrested for minor charges and end up dead in jail cells," one of them, Janis McDonald, said in a statement.

On July 14—the same day Henry died—an 18-year-old black girl named Kindra Chapman was found hanging by a bedsheet at a jail in Homewood, Alabama. She had been arrested earlier in the evening for stealing a cell phone.

In Rolling Stone on Friday, Matt Taibbi argued that even if Sandra Bland technically committed suicide, she was effectively murdered. The headline might be incendiary, but the piece itself makes several valid points, mostly about how Bland was arrested for essentially no reason and threatened with violence for daring to disagree with an officer of the law. She died during what most observers seem to agree was an illegal detention, arguably a crime in its own right.

As absurd it is to die over the crime of failing to use a turn signal, it's really just as preposterous that someone should die days earlier for failing to own up to a debt. No sane person would argue that a human life is worth the same as a cell phone, either.

And as Taibbi pointed out, what happened to Sandra Bland is "not just happening in a few well-publicized cases a year, but routinely, in hundreds of thousands or even millions of incidents we never hear of." So if four people of colour in one month seems like a lot, it's worth asking if this is really a new development, or just something the public never paid all that much attention to until the activism and rage that emerged around this time last year forced us to start asking some hard questions.

This post has been updated.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

A screenshot from 'Quadrilateral Cowboy.' All screens via the Blendo Games website

A "single player cooperative game" probably sounds like an oxymoron, but chances are you've played one at some point. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons has you playing—well, working—with yourself to achieve a goal by allowing you to control two characters independently of each other. The Talos Principle has a time-bending mechanic where you create a clone and perform tasks to help your future self. Even a certain little game named Grand Theft Auto V allows you to swap between characters on the fly in order to best suit your current situation.

It's a fascinating concept, and one that has brought about many cool ideas. However, it also has its fair share of design issues that are tough to solve. Brendon Chung is a solo indie game developer working under the name Blendo Games. He is currently working on a game called Quadrilateral Cowboy, announced back in 2013, which incorporates some of these single player co-op ideas. After a quick chat about how awesome Cities: Skylines is (very), we talked about his new game and how his own single-player co-op ideas have come to fruition.

A 2013 trailer for 'Quadrilateral Cowboy'

VICE: First of all, just give me a rundown of what Quadribal... Quadrilateral Cowboy is. Ugh, it's still hard to say quickly, even after two years.
Brendon Chung: [Laughs] Quadrilateral Cowboy is a cyberpunk game set in an alternate-future 1980s where you and your crew are hired to plan out heists and do corporate sabotage—steal contracts, break into servers... things like that.

And it's a single player co-op game?
Yeah, it's a single-player game and it does have co-op elements to it. It begins as a fairly traditional single-player campaign where you're tasked to do an objective, and then you're kind of let loose into this world. At some point your crew gains technology to do heists together. So basically you have three people and you plan out all three of them moving in tandem.

So it starts off with you controlling one character at a time until you've got their mechanics down, and then they come together later on?
Right, exactly. The game is built on this idea of programming fundamentals where you have to do some scripting in a command terminal. Basically I wanted the game to be played by people who don't have any background in that field. And so I wanted the learning curve to be as shallow as possible to bring them up to speed. So I figured the co-op stuff was best saved until later until they got a footing in the game.

Is there a worry that it'll be too hard for people without that knowledge?
It was a concern of mine for a bit, but then I took the game to a few expos and conventions and shows and had random people play it, and it was really cool! I brought it to a few PAX shows and inevitably there comes a moment where a ten-year-old kid will jump on the keyboard and start playing it... and they just got through the missions. It was really heartening to see that, because typically my experience has been when I give my spiel to different players, the reaction I get is "Ahh, this game's not really for me, I don't have any programming knowledge, so this isn't gonna be a good fit for me." But I find that when they do sit down and play it, they kinda just get it, and there's something empowering about that.

Would you agree that single player co-op is a concept that has only properly emerged in the past few years?
Umm... no. I mean there have certainly been high-profile titles recently that have used that, but if you look back you find games that have played with these ideas. When we were trying to figure out how to do the co-op stuff for this game we looked at some older titles, like The Lost Vikings.

Oh yeah, of course.
It [single-player co-op] has definitely gained prominence recently, though.

Especially when it comes to "time bending." Swapping between characters and having them do stuff independently of you. Do you put that down to advances in technology, or something else?
I'd say "not really," but only because I, myself... I'm a self-taught programmer, and I do all the programming for my games, but programming is definitely not my strong point! So even as someone who's not a mega-amazing programmer, I'm still able to get away with doing this implementation of co-op stuff. As for why we're seeing a lot of it lately, I have this theory that ideas come in waves. Like when I started Quadrilateral Cowboy I was excited because there were not really many cyberpunk-themed titles at that time. And now we have a handful of them. I'm not saying we all copied each other; we just started at the same time. For some reason there was something in the air, and you see the exact same thing with the space-sim genre. A buddy of mine started working on his because there were none at that time, and now there's like 20 of them.

Did you always have this concept, or has it changed over time? Because last time I spoke to you about Quadrilateral Cowboy, you said you were hoping to release in 2013. It's still not out. Have you increased the game's scope, or have you just been taking your time?
The concept has been very... fluid. The game kinda decides what it wants to be. I know that sounds kinda flighty, but it just chooses its own direction and I'm just trying to follow where it goes.

Whatever you feel like on the day.
Yeah, exactly. First-person games are very greedy for content, and this game is considerably larger in scope than my other first-person stuff, Thirty Flights of Loving and Gravity Bone. So it has taken a bit of time.

This one will take a bit longer than Thirty Flights of Loving's 13-or-something minutes to complete, I imagine?
[Laughs] I'd say so.

Related: Watch VICE's new documentary on legal highs, 'Spice Boys'

What drew you to the single-player co-op idea in the first place?
The premise of the game is that your crew runs these heists on corporations, and the thing that kept nagging me was that you are a crew of three ladies, but you're always doing a single-person job. There was just a bit of a disconnect there, so at the very beginning of the project I was thinking that maybe there can be some sort of weird simultaneous co-op thing between all the characters. Then I immediately shelved that idea, because it's way too technically demanding and beyond my skillset. So I banished it to a little text file and it just sat there for a long time. But then last year I started working with a level designer, Tynan Wales, and he worked with me for about six months or so. He's now working with Fullbright on Tacoma.

Every morning he would come in with new ideas, and one morning he said, "Hey Brendon, wouldn't it be interesting if there were some sort of co-op thing where three characters could work together?" And what he described was exactly what I had in mind, so I figured that was a sign that there was something juicy there. We tried a really quick prototype and it was incredibly satisfying to see your teammates move through the world while you were doing your job. The thing that surprised me the most when we got it going is that there was something really wonderful about watching the characters move around the screen. They had this very human quality to them. You see yourself looking at paintings and the titles of books on the bookshelf. There's something wonderful about watching you watch someone else that really appealed to me.

I think the main problem with single-player co-op is that period where you have to wait for everything to happen or catch up with you. How have you overcome that?
We have a solution. Right now, one of your inventory items is a bottle of pills, and they speed up time, so instead of waiting around you can fast-forward to the time you want.

You say that's one solution you've got, so have you got other ideas?
[Laughs] The idea is getting a better programmer than me to do it. Right now I'm trying to find a better way of doing it, it's not the most elegant solution, it's more of a Band-Aid than anything. It's a very challenging problem, and it's brought to light for me why this idea has not been that well explored. It has very specific design issues that are tough to solve.

I guess the only real way is to design a level so everything happens exactly in time with each other, but then you can't account for the player not doing everything fast enough.
Yeah... This kind of design opens the door for all sorts of weird time paradoxes, and things that should not be physically possible. The folks (Capybara Games) who did Super Time Force, they did a really wonderful talk at the Game Developers Conference about how they handled these issues. Their talk was really amazing because I wanna say it delved into some quantum theory, which is kinda awesome.

You've been talking about how you're not an amazing programmer, but your career has been pretty good so far. And you were doing some development live streams for a while, too—what was your reasoning behind doing that? Just to reveal some of the process?
Yeah! Part of it is when I was growing up in school and interested in game development, this is something I wish was available to me at that stage. So I hope this is a nice little something for people who are in that same position. And another reason is that I find when I live stream it's helpful for myself. There's an audience I can bounce ideas off of, and during streams I've gotten a lot of advice and tips from people about the things I was doing. Plus, it really keeps you on the ball in terms of not being lazy.

On Motherboard: Indie Developers Say That Ouya Owes Them Thousands of Dollars

The audience probably helps deter you from procrastination.
Yes, definitely. There's a performance quality to it where you're on stage and have to perform at the best of your abilities.

I imagine many developers would be wary of releasing their work like that to the public.
For sure, but I guess for me I have no shame in my development process. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at, so I'm comfortable in my own skin. When I release the game, it will be open source, so the code itself isn't precious to me.

Do you have a solid release date for Quadrilateral Cowboy?
I am aiming for this year. It's shaping up, it's getting pretty complete at this point.

Find more information about Brendon's work, including Quadrilateral Cowboy, at the Blendo Games website.

Follow Matt Porter on Twitter.

Celia Peachey's mum feeding her as a baby (All photos courtesy of Celia Peachey)

Celia Peachey, 35, lost her mom, Maria Stubbings, at the hands of an ex-partner and previously convicted murderer in 2008. Determined to overcome the tragedy, she has been searching for mental and emotional release from her anguish ever since. Meditation and campaigning for change has helped, but a profound experience with the psychedelic substance ayahuasca at an Ayahuasca Internacional retreat in Spain has been particularly beneficial.

Ayahuasca is a DMT-laden plant mixture from the Amazon that induces altered states of consciousness, lasting around four to eight hours after ingestion. It has been used by shamans in the jungle for thousands of years for its physical and emotional healing properties, but remains of dubious legality in the West. Below, Celia gives her account of how the trip allowed her to process what had happened to her mother.

It was like something was breathing for me. My hands were completely relaxed and I just lay there surrendering while primordial laughter and hysterical screams of grief came out of me. To anyone else it would look like I was possessed and in some horrible torment, but it was rather as if I was being released of possession. I was not going mad, but, instead, coming to my senses.

It was the first night that we drank ayahuasca together, lying in a circle under blankets in the Spanish villa's ornately-decorated lounge. Vivid and stunning images graced the screen of my consciousness. Cascading colors seemed to amplify my feelings.

With the last remnants of the feeling running through my body, I had thought it was over. I started to laugh as I looked around the room at all of us. Vomiting, diarrhea, rolling around on the floor. 'What am I doing? This is a mad house,' I said to myself.

Suddenly, I was taken by the ayahuasca again. That's when the eruption of emotions hit and the intense release happened. I was overcome with a sense of being absolutely terrified of love. My mom and her story coursed through my mind.

Because of abuse she had suffered as a child, love scared her. Healthy relationships didn't last; her low self worth made her both vulnerable to and more receptive of people who were likely to hurt her. In that moment, the ayahuasca showed me how this, in turn, had become such a big fear of mine—that if I fall in love, I could destroy it, go mad, or attract the wrong person.

A close-up of ayahuasca being brewed

During the second night's ayahuasca ceremony, I felt a profound connection to the universe and celebrated all the people I love in my mind's eye, especially my brother. I'm lucky he's alive today, because the man who murdered my mom then followed him around the house to stop him from finding her body. My mom was dead in the bathroom, and had my brother found her, he'd be dead too.

It was 15 minutes after leaving a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in Hereford that I discovered my mom had been murdered. I was standing in a field and I just screamed. I had the thought, This either breaks me or makes me, and quickly decided on the latter. I felt that something cosmic was addressing the balance. I knew I was going to be OK.

My mom was murdered in the most degrading and horrific way. She was sexually abused, beaten, strangled with a dog leash, and left in the downstairs toilet. The killer emptied her bank accounts, sold our Christmas presents, sold all her clothes and my brother's toys, and lived in that house for a week, as she lay dead.

I had met the man who took my mom's life. He seemed nice enough the first time we met, but I soon realized something was not right, as my mom became increasingly nervous and confused.

Celia (right) and her mom

The last time I saw her, I remember telling her I'd take her out for her birthday when I got back from the meditation retreat. She was standing in the lounge and I felt like she wanted to tell me something, but she couldn't. I think he might have been hiding in the house. As we drove to the station she said to me: "I love it when you're around, Celia, I feel so much stronger." That was the last time I saw her. She had hugged me so tightly.

An inquest into her death concluded nine months ago and found that there were numerous failings on the part of the Essex police, including misconduct and negligence. While we received an unprecedented apology, I am now campaigning with charity Refuge to bring about sustained change for future victims of domestic violence.

READ ON VICE NEWS: Domestic Abusers Have Gone Unpunished in Native American Country – Until Now

We have two thirds of the signatures we need to lobby parliament for a public inquiry into state failure. If we get to the required 75,000, the way the system is operating at the moment will be re-evaluated so that victims of domestic violence get the protection they deserve. Challenging the system at large through this campaigning gave me some relief, but I still felt a need to look at my own internal system.

I had read about ayahuasca, and it initially scared me, as there's a certain amount of letting go of control required. Then a friend of mine discovered this retreat where people took ayahuasca psychotherapeutically, and we decided to do it.

Watch our documentary 'The Sapo Diaries' about another naturally occurring psychedelic: the venom of the Amazonian Sapo frog:

During the ceremony, I could feel a gripping, squeezing sensation and utter surrender, as if all of my fears and self-doubts were being wrung out of me. When I had a vision of bringing people I usually kept a distance from closer to me, I could feel myself about to be sick at the thought. I vomited. You can name the things you are purging, and it was clear to me that I was releasing the fear of intimacy that I so crave.

Due to my life experience, I have felt fear in relation to everything. So much so that I couldn't leave the house; I couldn't eat. Ayahuasca really helped me to transcend this fear.

There's a lot of skepticism around ayahuasca, but that's probably because there is currently not enough familiarity around it. It hasn't been advertised, so we haven't yet had the conditioning to accept it, though the increase of information on the internet is changing that. Also, a lot of us are operating from a place of fear in our lives. Ayahuasca makes you face your fears and face yourself. Not many of us are willing to do that.

It's now been about two weeks since my return and I feel safe. I haven't felt safe for such a long time. I have cleared my sadness and freed myself from a lot of grief. It's weird not feeling attached to my sadness anymore; I almost miss it. But at the same time, I feel really grateful. And strangely free.

Image via the Melbourne International Film Festival

In the 1980s, Troy Davies was an Australian artist and performer who hung out with INXS and U2, and collaborated with some of the most famous people on the planet. What his friends and family didn't realize was that almost everything Troy said and did were part of a series of lies and deception that started in childhood. Born Peter Davies, he was a chameleon who shifted genders, names, and personalities over the years.

Directors Lynn-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein were friends with Troy during this period, and up till his death of AIDS in the early 2000. Their new film Ecco Homo attempts to unravel their friend's spiral of lies. The results were far more macabre than they expected.

VICE spoke to them before Ecco Homo's debut at the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival to ask how they pieced together his story.

VICE: Troy Davies is such a shifting central figure, how do you even begin to form a portrait of someone like that?
Lynn-Maree Milburn: I think that's what the attraction was. After knowing him, and hearing different stories from other people, the disparity about his story became more clear. Whatever was there, was a juggling of truth that was intrinsic within that Troy. One of the questions the film asks—without answering it—is: Was there a cause for that? Was it his experience, or was it intrinsically in his nature, which made him play with identity and truth?

Richard Lowenstein: Initially, it was all about the story. We got glimpses of the epic story behind him, but it was only instinct. We didn't realize how big it was until we made the film.

The film is about discovering the breadth of his lies. To what extent did you feel like you knew him?
Milburn: We've both had very different experiences of Troy, he did really behave differently to different people. We all felt that there was an authentic "inner" Troy who didn't change, but then there was this other part of him who could just adapt and change depending on who he was with at the time.

Lowenstein: We knew him, but we didn't really know him as well as we know him now. As I went through my 20s, I heard these stories and you took them seriously—but you were left wondering what was the truth and what wasn't. You didn't quite feel like you knew him, because he wouldn't have allowed you to anyway.

Aside from the lies, there were dark truths uncovered during the making of the film, right? Like his childhood abuse?
There're people who've experienced what Troy had experienced and would internalize it. He was one of those people who would bring it out early on in your connection to him, with a sense of humor. He'd take the core of the truth and turn it almost into a Monty Python sketch. He'd play the characters of his abuser, or his mother.

One of the byproducts of that was that a lot of people thought these were wacky stories he'd made up. But throughout the film, everybody acknowledged their concerns that it wasn't just a funny story. He's obviously taken those events and turned it into something that became part of what made him Troy—he avoided victimhood and didn't recede into a hole. It's an incredibly important part of his story, and how these sorts of events actually affect you in later life. That's why he was never really able to sustain what you'd call a "conventional relationship" over a period of time. As the other brother—who was also a victim—says, "he didn't have relationships, he took hostages."

Both Troy and his brother, Simon, accuse their eldest brother of sexual abuse. You actually spoke to the older brother, how did you manage that?
Initially, going into the film, we thought the eldest would never talk. We made a very gentle approach after he had approached us through an intermediary and he actually was fine about everything. He wanted to go on record and talk about it.

But with regard to the allegations, you have to go and watch the interview and make up your own mind really. He doesn't necessarily give it away. That's what's intriguing about the film, as there's no easy answer

Now that the film's done, has this process changed your opinion on whether someone actually can have a fixed identity? Troy certainly makes a case for the otherwise.
Milburn: I don't believe in it. When you knew him, you really did feel there was a true Troy, but there were all these other things. One time, he was really sick and he said he'd been able to complete ten identities in his lifetime. He named them all, but the only one he felt he didn't design was the person with AIDS.

Lowenstein: I think an interesting part of this was that you could go back to the very beginning of the horror that had happened to him—you couldn't just laugh off his death as the wacky death of a wacky character. But he always dealt with the horror of whatever he had to go through with a sense of humor. He'd take incest and make a joke out of it. So by the time AIDS took hold, he knew how to deal with it and not be a breathing corpse in a bed. He let the world know he'd be doing things in a uniquely Troy way. But it's also got to do with how you defined a fixed self. If your definition can be very broad and fit into multiple personalities, then I think he was a fixed self.

Ecco Homo will be showing as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. VICE is giving away tickets to our favorite films at MIFF, grab one here.

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Just another day at the office for Canada's chillest weird Twitter politician! Photo via Twitter

Only two weeks after attracting worldwide media attention with his tweets about a shrine to a dead raccoon in the streets of Toronto, former deputy Toronto mayor turned social media jester Norm Kelly was in the middle of another online firestorm. Kelly found himself ringside at the birth of a hip-hop beef between former friends and co-performers Drake and Meek Mill. Mill, motivated by God knows what, took to Twitter on the night of July 21 to claim that Drake does not write his own verses and is not real, the most derisive thing one can say in the hip-hop game.

Kelly, who is a huge Toronto booster on Twitter as well as our comic-in-residence at City Hall, did not take this lying down, tweeting at Meek Mill that he was no longer welcome in Toronto.

You're no longer welcome in Toronto, @MeekMill.
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 22, 2015

Mill returned online fire and all of sudden we were watching one of the strangest interactions that the internet has produced—it was like your grandpa showing up at a friend's house party coincidentally.

"Grandpa, what are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here? I've been friends with Rachel for years."

Kelly threatening rappers like he was Suge Knight should come as no surprise, especially if someone is digitally stepping to Drake. Kelly's Twitter feed in the past year has become quite a hit sensation amongst Toronto's Twitterati. With over 30,000 followers, Kelly is more popular than any counsellor who isn't a) the mayor or b) the most famous crack cocaine user since Rick James.

But what is driving a 73-year-old grandfather to become a verified Twitter god?

Before conquering social media, Kelly's professional career was spent honing to a razor's edge the art of being boring. This is a man who is so boring, so diligent in his ability to not step out of line in any way, that he was able to serve on the Executive Committees for Mayors Mel Lastman, David Miller, and Rob Ford. A man so boring that he was able to return normalcy to City Hall after the reality TV-meets-Mad Max circus of Ford. If you can put out the internet fire that was Rob Ford, that is a Bruce Lee level of boringness. I mean just try to keep your interest alive while watching this.

Kelly, who got a Masters in history from Queens, won the Governor General's Award for his work as a researcher on Pierre Berton's histories of the Canadian railroad. Let's repeat that. a researcher, not even a writer on this thing. This is a man who spent a huge chunk of his youth taking notes on dusty records about railroads and he wasn't even the one gaining the glory and fame from it, he was just happy to be there, a phrase that would describe much of his history on council. A conciliator—a man who was happy to just be part of the process. Now, however, this soothing balm of an old man is involving himself in hip-hop beefs. What happened?

I decided dive deep into Kelly's Twitter history to find out.

First off, I would say roughly 60 percent of his tweets match his personal history of ultra MOR-dom. There are This Day In History Tweets:

On this day in 1944, Operation Spring started - one of the bloodiest days for Canadians during WWII. #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/zS4rsn1H3v
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 25, 2015

His traffic update tweets:

Full list of road closures in #Toronto this weekend: http://t.co/WgDzTDSEoZ #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/j8PsCUZw98
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 17, 2015

And his pothole-filling update tweets:

POTHOLE UPDATE: 15,900 potholes were filled over the last 2 weeks. 165,184 potholes have been filled to date this year. #Toronto #TOpoli
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 20, 2015

This is all perfectly reasonable stuff for a 73-year-old civil servant to be tweeting. Most of his fellow councillors traffic in this sort of harmless pap. But of course, if that's all it was, he'd be hovering around the 2,000 follower mark like those fameless losers and not making me and fellow people trying to write for a living feeling insecure about our middling abilities.

Then there are these tweets though:

Please don't be available in Canada. pic.twitter.com/pxoP9pOdGG
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 7, 2015

The difference between his steady, responsible tweets and the ones that read like those of an aspiring comedian is striking. It's not only that they are funny—that's not surprising. Kelly is clearly a sharp guy. By his account, he reads up to four newspapers a day. That's like, every newspaper in business, pretty much. In many of his interviews, I see a sort of impish charm in his eyes. Despite the dullness of his appearance and voice, I can believe that there is a goofball somewhere in the recesses of his Dracula-hosting-a-kid's-show visage.

It's the tone and style of his tweets that raises my eyebrow. This is a man who has become fluent in the medium. HIs tweets read like he took a course. HIs rhythm and sense of timing are thoroughly of the internet. It's not clunky. Sometimes the material of the jokes is clunky and old-mannish; but the delivery, the way he lets references go unsaid, they way they are steeped in irony and self-depreciation, is very skilled.

So what, right? So he's good at Twitter? Yet he's also a man who in every interview since his newfound infamy has kept his lovable-old-man, Harper-Lee-side-character demeanour. I mean, look at this shit. He literally claims that he was unaware that "sick" could now also mean a good thing. And you're telling me that a guy who is so on his social media/pop culture game that he could drop this visual pun

pic.twitter.com/HFNKudbany
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 26, 2015

less than 24 hours after Drake dropped a response track to Meek Mill called "Charged Up"? I smell bullshit: You can't tweet like you have Worldstar as your homepage and then claim to not know "sick" can mean "good."

Which brings me to the uncomfortable appropriation angle. Smarter, more appropriate people could speak to this better than me, but I thought it was particularly glaring that, on July 22nd, the same day the police who killed Jermaine Carby were exonerated despite their very questionable behaviour, Kelly was sucking up all the media attention with his hacky, I'm an old white man hilariously getting involved in a hip-hop beef BS. His jokes remind me of when this was considered a good idea:

Kelly claims that he writes all his tweets. A friend of mine who works in City Hall told me she asked his staffers and they confirmed he writes his own tweets. He does ask them for help with Photoshop, but he's admitted that. I'm inclined to believe him due to the aforementioned hokey nature of some jokes. Ultimately, much like the question of does Drake have a ghostwriter, whether or not he writes his own tweets is less important to me than the motivation behind the material. Whether he writes them or not, Kelly clearly wants to be noticed.

There is a desperation and shamelessness to Kelly's tweeting. The way he'll bury a joke into the ground, like his hatred of Mondays (If you hate Mondays so much just retire, Norm. You're 73 years old doing a job where you have to be elected. Quit complaining about Mondays, you obviously want to be there.) I recognize it as the comedian's desperation, I've felt it before too. Once the laughs start, it's hard not to get addicted to it, and then you start chasing the laughs. They become the only thing you are thinking about, the thing you need above anything else. Kelly even admitted as much, stating,

"I do, but I've told everyone that I steal shamelessly from everybody. If you say something to me that gets me thinking, or you're close to me and I throw them at you and listen to your response, I might use that."

Using personal conversations as a testing ground for material? That's a comedian talking right there. Look at this tweet.

Good thing this sign is here. Wouldn't have known what these devices are. pic.twitter.com/17sjWxftBT
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 8, 2015

Not a bad tweet, but what I'm interested in is its creation. It's existence suggests that Kelly is thinking of the jokes now, he's looking for them. This is not a man who accidentally stumbled upon a fun new game for his spare time—the way he likes to portray himself in interviews. No, this tweet to me suggests that Kelly is focused on becoming Twitter famous, that he's working very hard at it.

John Tory's election must have been tough for Norm. A man who had literally spent decades on the (political) sidelines had finally been thrust into the spotlight. And not just any spotlight! This was the media-frenzied, outsized spotlight that Rob Ford created. Norm had gotten a taste of what it feels like to be at the centre of it all. He was the one with the answers for the questions everyone was asking, all the microphones were finally in his face, and I think Kelly found that he liked it, like really liked it. When Tory was elected and Kelly was expected to retake his position as a sensible man in a room full of insensible people he must have felt panic, must have wanted to grab at whatever passing star could keep him out of the Earth's orbit. In Toronto, there is only one man other than Ford whose fame is so big and grand that it can make others famous. Only one other man whose spotlight is so big there's room to be in it:

Who wore it better? Me in the 1980's or @Drake at last night's @Raptors game. pic.twitter.com/XSWBgJJxML
— Norm Kelly (@norm) November 10, 2014

In interviews, Kelly describes a Toronto in transition from being a sleepy provincial capital to the sleek, sexy centre of the universe. Kelly, though, found himself both part of that transition and, I think, inspired by it. I wonder if he thinks to himself, Hey, if Toronto can be this cool, then why can't I? His Twitter account then is evidence that Toronto is changing, that the eyes of the world and it's accompanying fame and attention are here. It shows what the effect of that can be, that it can turn even the most sensible of men into fame-hungry, hack comedians.

But maybe I'm not the only one who thinks it's all getting a bit much...

Need to charge up. Taking a break from Twitter. Be back in 2 weeks.
— Norm Kelly (@norm) July 27, 2015

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An inmate in California works on an essay for a GED class. Photo via AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

President Barack Obama has been rolling out some desperately-needed criminal justice and prison reforms, but releasing a few dozen nonviolent drug offenders early is just the first step. Last year, drawing on data from 30 state prisons, the national Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that within three years of release, about two-thirds of former inmates get rearrested. It's one thing to recognize the limits of a lock-them-up mentality and the futility of the war on drugs, and quite another to take the steps needed to permanently reduce the number of people ensnared in our prison-industrial complex.

Former prisoners and experts agree that by far, the most effective tool to combat recidivism is education. And with numerous outlets reporting that the Obama administration is planning to restore Pell grants—thousands of dollars in direct federal tuition assistance—for many state and federal prisoners, possibly as soon as this week, we're clearly entering a new era when it comes to mass incarceration in America.

When I first entered federal prison in 1993, Pell grants were available for federal Bureau of Prison (BOP) inmates. I was incarcerated at FCI Manchester, a medium-to-high-security facility in Kentucky, and they offered college courses through Eastern Kentucky University. The college professors used to come into the prison compound and teach classes at night during the fall, winter, and summer semesters. I was only 22 and had a 25-year sentence for an LSD distribution conviction in front of me; I needed something to grab and hold onto so I didn't fall by the wayside, and I immersed myself in the college program, taking a full course load of 12 credits. Going to the classes, doing the homework, and earning college credits toward a degree kept me out of trouble, gave me a sense of self-worth, and occupied me as I got acclimated to prison life.

But Pell grants were blocked for prisoners about a year later. It was the tough-on-crime era and politicians didn't want prisoners using federal money to get a college education. Luckily, my parents were able to afford to pay for correspondence courses, and I continued my studies through Penn State, the University of Iowa, and California State University, earning multiple degrees along the way. This was essential to my success today, as I'm out of prison now and thriving as a writer.

Watch our documentary about a prisoner trying to put his life back together:

Michael Santos is another long-term prisoner who enjoyed success with college courses behind bars.

"In 1988, I was locked up inside the high walls of the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta," Santos says. "I was 23, beginning a term that would keep me confined for 26 years. Fortunately, Pell grants were available. With a Pell grant, I could work toward completing an undergraduate degree. Education would change my life. I walked into prison without any vision of how I would emerge. In 1992, Mercer University awarded my bachelor's degree. Then I embarked upon a graduate program. Hofstra University awarded my master 's degree in 1995. As a consequence of those degrees, numerous opportunities opened that would contribute to my success upon release."

Santos is now a published author, an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, a business owner, and a regular speaking guest at corporations like Microsoft, where he outlines the strategies he used to succeed and prepare for his future while incarcerated.

"My successful adjustment through prison, and my successful return to society, would not have materialized if I had not had access to the Pell grant," Santos says. "Many citizens failed to understand the value of offering a Pell grant to people in prison. Yet prisoners who educate themselves leave prison to become contributing citizens, paying taxes from their legitimate earnings. Pell grants are a great investment. It's a shame that Congress denies them to people in prison."

Now more prisoners should have the opportunity to get an education like Santos and I did. I know my own reentry has been much easier because of the work I put in preparing myself for release. In prison, it's a survival process, but if you don't think about the future and only think about today—as the majority of prisoners do—your future will consist of a return to the belly of the beast. Getting an education is about the importance of working toward a goal and accomplishing it, something, as opposed to crime, which is all about instant gratification.

President Obama's planned restoration of Pell grants reinforce this. After all, why let prisoners out if you're not giving them the tools to succeed?

Professor Stephen C. Richards at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh completed a bachelor's degree while in federal prison. Upon getting out, he earned a PhD in 1992. Richards tells me, "As an ex-convict, now a professor, I have spent the past 20 years helping prisoners to get college degrees. There are numerous academic studies to prove that college prison programs dramatically reduce recidivism. Prisoners with some college course work completed are less likely to ever return to prison. College prison programs are the one sure way to help prisoners become law abiding citizens. All prisons should have federally supported college programs. The idea is that prisoners begin their struggle to change themselves by taking college courses, and then finish their education and complete degrees when they get out of prison. Some people say poverty and bad schools are a pipeline to prison. I say good prisons could be a pipeline to college. The federal government could help tens of thousands of state and federal prisons by simply paying for new college prison programs."

And educating those stuck behind bars is cost effective, too.

As the nonpartisan Rand Corporation estimated in 2013, "The direct costs of providing education are estimated to be from $1,400 to $1,744 per inmate, with re-incarceration costs being $8,700 to $9,700 less for each inmate who received correctional education as compared to those who did not." Inmates who participated in prison-sponsored education programs had a 43 percent lower chance of returning to prison than those who didn't. When you're talking about 700,000 people being released each year, this stuff matters.

A 2005 analysis by the Institute for Higher Education Policy cited research showing that prisoners who took college courses while incarcerated had recidivism rates 46 percent lower than those who didn't get at least some education while behind bars. The numbers don't lie, so it's a tragedy that we haven't invested more in rehabilitation as opposed to old-school punishment for those willing to make a change in their lives.

For many in the federal Bureau of Prisons, it's been a struggle to get an education since Pell grants dried up in the 90s.

"I am currently serving a 36-month violation for selling drugs," Elijah Fisher, a 34-year-old doing time at FCI Terre Haute in Indiana and poised for release next year, tells me. "During the first seven years (2004-2011), I tried to get an associate's degree in accounting, but fell short because the funds that my family were sending went dry due to the recession. I believe that if I would of had a Pell grant to assist me, I wouldn't be in prison again today! I think education is the way to financial freedom, which a lot of inmates including myself have been ignorant to, because of our parents' lack of education, which causes generational curses. That has landed me and my five brothers in prison numerous times.

"Pell grants can change the way felons are viewed upon release, as well as how we are view ourselves," Fisher continues. "This new mindset will reduce the recidivism rates and boost the American economy. A lot of inmates come to prison before the age of 25. Studies have proven that the human brain is still developing at that age... If being in federal prison is supposed to help rehabilitate felons, why not institute beneficial programs that will ensure productive development of the young adult American citizens?"

In the hierarchy of prisons, the federal BOP is supposed to be the top of the line, but due to the war on drugs, the system is bloated, corrupt, overcrowded and under-financed. Many prisoners think they are lucky to go to the feds, but then they find out the truth—no programs, no college classes, no rehabilitation.

"When I was in county and found out that I was going to the feds, everyone was telling me that I would have it made—good food, TVs in our cells, weights, and college courses," Derek Davenport, another Terre Haute inmate serving seven and a half years for pot distribution, tells me. "How disappointed I was: From talking to old-timers, federal prison is a shell of its former self, as budget cuts have taken away funding for college courses, recreation and the food is horrendous. In regards to education, the scheme most people on the outside don't know about is Adult Continuing Education courses (ACE). These are classes taught by inmates with no supervision. In fact, one inmate who I know that is teaching an ACE class doesn't even have a high school diploma or GED. How do people in society really expect inmates to have a successful chance at reentry if we are being taught ACE classes by people who have no formal training, teaching experience or even high school diplomas?

"The fact is taxpayers are being made to believe that their money is going to help us, it's all bullshit," Davenport goes on. "We need Pell grants big time."

With the sweeping changes that President Obama and members of Congress are poised to implement, education opportunities are back at the forefront. America is the land of second chances, and if someone wants to change their life in prison, they should be able to have the opportunity to do so through college courses, vocational training, or other educational pursuits. Dr. Richards, Michael Santos, and I were afforded that opportunity and we're doing just fine. But what about all the rest of the two million people incarcerated in prisons nationwide today? What opportunity have they been afforded?

Clark says her organization is funded by grants from the government—grants that should soon be available for prisoners nationwide.

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Morag Padel showing her LBU neck tattoo. Photo by Jake Krushell

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Back in the day, we used to go up and down the country causing fucking chaos," says Pierre from London hardcore band Knuckledust, pulling on a joint. "We were crazy. People would just leave the venues and shit."

I'm sitting in a hazy north London house, the headquarters of hardcore label Rucktion Records, as members of Idle Hands record the vocals for their next release. Surrounding me are a few members of London Black-Up ("LBU," a name that, somewhat confusingly, has nothing to do with race). They're an informal crew of friends and musicians who, between them, have played a huge role in London's hardcore scene over the past 20 years—whether that means writing and performing the music, putting on shows, or just being down in the front, swinging their arms around and screaming until their throats give way.

The crew picked up its name in 1996, when bands like Madball, 25 ta Life, and No Redeeming Social Value were tearing up clubs in New York as part of the city's thriving hardcore scene.

"There wasn't much going on for hardcore in the UK at the time. There were a few good bands, like FLS, but not much of a 'scene.' We'd order Madball CDs from the US and look at the 'thanks' lists in the booklets just to find new bands," laughs Pierre. "I met these guys in east London, we formed Knuckledust, some other guys we knew started Ninebar, and that was it. People used to know us as the 'black-up boys,' always smoking a lot of weed and getting drunk. [The name] just kind of stuck."

Soon, disciples of acts associated with LBU began to start bands of their own. Louis Gino from Proven was one of these kids. "I randomly went to see [LBU hardcore band] Taking Names," he remembers, "and it just felt different to other shows I'd been to. It was real."

This sentiment is echoed by Tom Barry, drummer in Kartel and author of Balance: European Hardcore. "I was a white rude boy, carrying knives, getting into loads of shit—and I wanted something bigger," he says, explaining that he felt misplaced at his school in south London. "I was wearing tracksuits and had stuff shaved into the side of my head at the time. Then, when I went to see Knuckledust, they were dressed the same way I was, but they were playing rock music. That was really important for me. I could identify with them."

The video for "Perucho's Tale" by LBU hardcore band Bun Dem Out

Moving to London a few years ago, I was struck not only by the attendance at hardcore shows, but also the music bands were playing. This was the period in which the Guardian was trying to wrap its head around TRC, an LBU hardcore band with grime and hip-hop influences, which may help to illustrate my feelings at the time: the London scene seemed something out-of-towners might not entirely "get."

However, after living here a while, I've come to realize that the hardcore you'll hear at the Camden Underworld or the New Cross Inn or The Dome in Tufnell Park—rich with hip hop, grime, and metal influences—could only come from somewhere as culturally diverse as London. This sound is deeply rooted in the LBU's beginnings: the violent, urban music that Knuckledust and Ninebar were creating in the late-90s was a product of the working-class London landscape in which they had grown up.

An archive photo of Knuckledust, from left to right: Ray, Pierre, Nic, and Wema

Pierre and a couple of friends started the short-lived Black-Up Records in 1997 as a way to release the first Knuckledust/Area Effect split 7," and then—with the help of a Marseille-born friend and LBU member, Popi—Rucktion Records in 2000. Rucktion has been an integral part of the UK hardcore scene ever since, continuously releasing albums by bands from London and around the world, and putting on monthly shows.

The ethos behind the label is simple: bands funnel their fury into a collection of tracks, they approach Popi and the crew, and, if they like it, they'll release it. No contracts, no suits, no bullshit.

"We're open-minded guys. We've been into hardcore since before all the genre categories came about," says Fat Tom from Ninebar. "It's not just a beatdown [hardcore sub-genre] thing—we've put stuff like Deathskulls and Injury Time out, because punk, punk rock, and hardcore is all the same for us."

The video for "Read These Boks" by Ninebar

The internet is an ungovernable force when it comes to file sharing and trash-talking—every musician from every genre experiences it, and hardcore is no exception. Pierre and Popi admitted that they've found it hard to adapt at times, saying Rucktion might need to expand into downloads and vinyls in order to keep up with the buying habits of young fans.

Online beef, however, doesn't seem like something they're particularly onboard with—understandably, given it's inherently pointless. For its part, LBU has been on the receiving end of a number of online jibes, including claims on forums that members are overly violent at gigs (something I've never encountered during recent LBU shows), and the LBU Urban Dictionary entry, which states that the crew was formed by "Neo Nazi skinhead factions"—unlikely, given the fact it's always been welcoming of any race or creed.

"People get real brave online, man, but when you see them in the flesh, they don't say shit," says Pierre. "We don't pay attention to what gets written about us online any more—we've got albums to put out."

These feelings are expressed in Knuckledust's diatribe against online tough-guys, "FaceCrook," which features the lyrics: "I've never seen you at a show in your life! / Log off your profile and go get some life!"

READ ON NOISEY: The Best of Ugly UK Hardcore

Talking to the LBU guys, it's clear the hardcore scene is as much a part of them as they are a part of the scene. DBS, the vocalist in Kartel, brings up memories of how they used to "crowd kill [a style of hardcore dancing] on the school bus," and Matty from Ninebar tells me he'd designed the Rucktion Records logo 15 years ago on his bedroom window.

Everybody I meet speaks passionately about how the music means the same to them now as when they were teens. "This music gave me strength when I was young, and it helped me be who I am," explains 39-year-old Pierre. "By continuing to put out these bands and put on the shows, I hope to inspire other people in the same way."

From the fans I speak to, it sounds like Pierre's achieving what he set out to do. Growing up in London, Morag Padel gravitated towards the hardcore scene after being "spat on" by other girls at metal gigs when she was a teenager. For the past eight years, she's proudly represented LBU. "There's a sense of family, no doubt," she says. "My mom died when I was 16, and the day after she died I went to a show. That's sounds so callous and harsh, but at that time I didn't have anything else. I needed to be with the people I cared about and the people that cared about me."

Ninebar on tour in front of some LBU graffiti

After catching wind of a clash between the LBU and a group of neo-Nazis at a recent gig by the American band Terror, I ask Pierre about violence in the scene. "We police ourselves and avoid violence at shows," he says. "The dancing is violent enough—who needs to have a fight?"

Morag elaborates, saying the horror stories are mostly bullshit: "There are always Chinese whispers going on—stories of violence and stuff—but anyone who's been to one of our shows knows that it's a friendly and welcoming thing." She adds that any violence among European crews is usually down to people trying to prove themselves and put their town on the map. But, as she points out: "London's already on the map, so we don't need that tough-guy shit."

The only real ideology the members of LBU seem to share is zero tolerance towards racism and xenophobia. "We just want to have fun and express ourselves, innit. As long as you're not a Nazi or anything stupid, then you're welcome," says Popi.

Related: Watch our film, 'London BikeLife'

Despite looking like they'd fit in with almost any clique of hardcore fans, the LBU members seem a world away from the notoriously militant crews you hear about in the States and mainland Europe, such as Boston's FSU, which is classified as a "street gang" by the FBI and was involved in a machete brawl last year.

Pierre maintains that LBU is about "nothing but love"—an inclusiveness I experience firsthand when I'm asked to step in and shout some backing vocals over the track they're recording.

The crew and its members are also a good example of those who stay true to themselves in the ever-changing world of hardcore, refusing to jump on any bandwagon, with Rucktion keeping afloat the same way it always has: through CD sales and the money made from tickets at the label's monthly gigs. "My family and a lot of people my age don't understand it—they're like, 'Are you still doing that shit?' says Popi. "I've got no wife, I've got no kids, but hardcore is what makes sense to me."

A London Black-Up arm tattoo. Photo by Jake Krushell

It's inspiring that the same stalwarts who sculpted the London hardcore sound and scene nearly 20 years ago are still carrying the torch today. Although the flame might flicker from time to time, both the herds of kids at the shows and the fact that LBU elders are regularly asked to feature on new music by young bands are testament to its continued relevance. The outlook and ethos of the London Black-Up crew harks back to a time when hardcore was more about family, raw energy, and putting on great shows, and less about expensive clothes and bickering online about sub-genres.

"The music keeps us together. If people like it, they like it; if they don't, then they don't," shrugs Louis Gino.

Whether you believe that what they do is dumb or inspiring, clichéd, or authentic, essentially it doesn't matter: the LBU will still be there, making the music they know and love, packing out venues and keeping the scene alive in the capital.

At the Rucktion headquarters, it's almost time for me to leave. As Louis rolls another joint, Popi pours himself a whiskey, and they both listen back to what they've just recorded, Pierre sits smiling on the couch. "It's what we've always done and it's what we'll always do," he says, looking around the room. "It's a way of life."

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In The Martian, Matt Damon is forced to walk around Mars without Ben Affleck (or sweet Casey) and he is very sad. Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox.

This September will be the 40th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival but organizers were not overtly interested in the festival's modest roots on Tuesday as they revealed a line-up of audience-friendly movies that will likely be competing for Oscars in six months.

Of the roughly 50 movies revealed today (including a number of trailers that kiss-ass journalists actually clapped for afterwards), ones you'll actually care about include the world premieres of: Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next (which is a funny title and good question); Ridley Scott's The Martian (which has Matt Damon already infamously saying "I'm going to science the shit out of it"); Jay Roach's Bryan Cranston-starring Trumbo; and Stephen Frears' Lance Armstrong movie The Program (which looks like it could be terrific thanks to Ben Foster's crazy eyes.)

However, the film that seemed best received among the 100-plus journos at the TIFF headquarters in Toronto Tuesday morning was Peter Scollett's Freeheld, which stars Ellen Page and Julianne Moore in the true-life story of Laurel Hester, a Jersey detective fighting to leave her pension to her domestic partner. Adapted by the writer of Philadelphia and co-starring Michael Shannon and Steve Carell, Freeheld appears to have the potential to be the rare commercially successful film about gay rights.

The opening night film (always the most overhyped/criticized portion of TIFF) will be Quebec indie director turned Hollywood auteur Jean-Marc Vallee's Demolition, starring a not terrifying-looking Jake Gyllenhaal playing a sad banker.

So there's one person who you can chase around Toronto to see them getting into the back of a black SUV.

Oh, also Johnny Depp has a movie where he likely will have some weird hair. His wig will be playing a gangster in Scott Cooper's Black Mass.

For CanCon, this year's festival is heavy (again/of course/come on) on Paul Gross, who is directing and starring in the war film Hyena Road and appearing as a gangster (I think) in Deepa Metha's Beeba Boys, a Sikh crime saga set in Vancouver, where everyone is amazingly dressed and the tone is more scattered than a AK-drive by.

Other interesting tidbits dropped Tuesday from Piers Handling, the CEO of TIFF, and Cameron Bailey, the artistic director/man about town, include the fact that King Street will be shut down for the first few days of the festival and there will be program devoted to "Longform Television" (i.e. HBO is very good).

TIFF runs September 10-20 and will have about 300 films.

For more on TIFF, here's their website to click around on.

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More on bikers:

-Looking Back at Danny Lyon's Iconic 1960s Photos of Bikers
-California's Best Biker Bartender Thinks Bikers Are Pussies
-Dutch Motorcycle Gang Members Fight the Islamic State in Iraq

Debra Granik's documentary Stray Dog is a keeper, one of those films people will be watching in school and for personal satisfaction in 30 years. Title character Ron "Stray Dog" Hall is a Vietnam veteran and biker who attends military funerals and rides with the Rolling Thunder motorcycle club when he's not at home managing his RV Park, which is aspirationally named Life at Ease. Decorated in a constellation of badges, patches, and tattoos which honor the Vietnam War, motorcycles, the American and Confederate flags, and death itself, Ron Hall manages his pain by talking to and serving others, in particular the families of fallen soldiers.

"I walked around pissed off for a whole lot of years," says Ron. "A whole lot of years." Among other things, Stray Dog is a film about the things a person may do with a life once he is through with being violently pissed off. As Ron slowly divulges his traumas, crimes, and past misdeeds, we come to understand that his life now is the product of tremendous work in trying to better understand himself.

Ron exists at the center of a diverse network of family, friends, neighbors, and strangers who look to him in one way or another. The most profound development in his life is a recent marriage to Alicia, a cheerful and religious Mexican woman who is just beginning to learn her way around Ron's home at the beginning of the film as Ron makes a go of learning Spanish from a computer program. He fantasizes about retiring to the Yucatan while she dreams of bringing her pair of teenage sons from Mexico City to live with them in rural Missouri. What these newlyweds lack in a common verbal language they more than make up for in attentiveness and a willingness to adapt and respond to one another. Without settling on any single political issue, Stray Dog's cameras capture Ron in full, presenting a portrait of an American man who is painfully conscious of the past and doing his best to be open to the future in ways wonderful and strange.

Director Debra Granik met Ron Hall on the set of her previous film Winter's Bone, on which Ron worked as an extra, playing a member of a motorcycle gang. That film was nominated for an armful of Academy Awards and launched the Hollywood career of Jennifer Lawrence. In her role as Ree Dolly, Lawrence portrayed a sort of mythic folk hero girl, determined to find a missing father who vanishes after some bad business in the Ozarks meth trade. A grittier, less fantastic take on meth than its contemporary Breaking Bad, Winter's Bone is a relentlessly bleak film propelled by the force of Ree's determination and strength of character. By tapping into Ron Hall's intense empathy for the people around him and going along for the ride, director Debra Granik gives us images that challenge popular preconceptions about rural poverty, trailer parks, Mexican immigrants, Vietnam vets, and angry old men.

Earlier this month I spoke to Debra Granik in New York City over the phone. We talked about her powerful attraction to Ron "Stray Dog" Hall and his surroundings, and the impulse to follow up one of the most celebrated narrative films of the decade with an intimate, observational documentary about life in America's changing heartland.

VICE: Stray Dog is your first film since Winter's Bone in 2011, which was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Picture, and earned Jennifer Lawrence a Best Actress nomination for her role as Ree. What made you want to follow up this major narrative film with a documentary?
Debra Granik: The documentary stuck to us as we tried to extricate ourselves from Southern Missouri after filming Winter's Bone. When I met Ron for the first time, I was sitting in South Missouri in a pew in a church, and I saw the word "Vietnam" on this large, hairy arm next to me. I was loaded with curiosity and wonderment about him. My producing partner and I went to take a look at Ron in his own real-life setting in the RV park. I could see this man that I cast to be a very stern and intimidating person standing there with his small dogs in his arms with his neighbors all around, and I saw the setting in which he really lived and the care with which he was trying to make that RV park kind of survive. He was standing in a setting with texture beyond belief. The metal of the RVs, the gravel of his driveway, the saplings that are trying to grow, the furry dogs, the big, bikes—it was just this kind of buffet. Any anthropologist and filmmaker who has those bents as I do would take this on. There was just a sort of aura of care and complicatedness around his life.

At that juncture Ron told me about his pilgrimage to the Vietnam memorial in DC. The anthropologist in me said, "I've never really filmed a pilgrimage. I would like to see what that's like." It was never a decision that instead of making a narrative right now, we should make a documentary. I said to Ann, my producer, could we not just to be filming something right now? Without waiting and being belabored, can we just go back to Missouri and do a test-shoot with Ron, see him mount his bike with a lot of brothers and go on a ride, just to see what that's about?

Ron's particular charisma lies in the fact that he is on a daily mission to make up for violence he committed as a younger man. He manages his personal pain by constantly drawing people in and listening and relating and doing what he can for them. He has this aura about him of welcoming everyone and making them a friend.
Yeah, and he would never say this himself, but he would agree that he feels this gnashing hunger to be helpful and to be needed. One way that Ron finds self-worth is in being able to help solve smaller problems, which he calls "situations." A problem is something that is really hard to solve, but a situation is something where if we put our minds together, and pull out our wrenches, we can probably fix, you know? His kin and his children live in a very kind of suppressing and confining poverty. He feels quite helpless, and it can bring him into a very dark place because he's not sure what could be done. It was quite intense to watch him hit walls where solutions are much harder to facilitate or push for.

What was involved in getting Ron to trust you and open up to the idea of being a character in a film?
That is the essential question of all documentary practice, where that trust can come from and how it develops and how much if it is there. As much as I might wonder about Ron, Ron definitely wondered about us as outsiders. Ron wonders how people in other regions form their ideas, their opinions, and what drives them. Through the questions that I asked him, Ron figured out everything about what I was interested in. He knew what I was trying to pick up.

It's something very basic, which is why many people are interested or touched or intrigued when a stranger comes and says, "I'm interested in your life for whatever reason. I'm attracted to your survival skills. I'm attracted to the ways that you are building your life and trying to make your life feel worthy and interesting to yourself." Ron responded to that and said, "If this is sincere, if you want to enter into a long-term dialogue, I am willing." From there you learn trust. You pick up people's cues.

There were times when we asked questions that hurt really bad, and Ron didn't want to go to those places sometimes. But maybe another day he'd be very willing. So I had to take a cue and be able to live with that. Yes, I had my agenda and I get very determined, but I also have to say, "My God, this is a person who's agreed to talk with me. He hasn't agreed to let me hurt him."

Like, I couldn't write that shit. I can't write what it's like for a man to take his neighbor to see if they can get him some teeth, you know? –Debra Granik

Stray Dog becomes a whole other kind of beast once the focus shifts from Ron to his wife Alicia and her dreams. A single film almost isn't enough. How did you stop filming? Where do you hit a point when you realize that the film is done?
It's beyond me how Ron decided that he was going to make the move to fall in love with someone in Mexico and complicate his life immeasurably, but he did, and that's narrative. I'm a sucker for an old-fashioned love story of two oddly matched people making a go of it, you know? And then in come her two sort of emo, metrosexual sons from Mexico City. Like, I couldn't write that shit. I can't write what it's like for a man to take his neighbor to see if they can get him some teeth, you know? Right then, and now, Ron's life produced scenes that were making me love filmmaking. We actually filmed six months after the ending of the film, when Alicia's boys had gotten their first job working as very elegant busboys at some of the resorts in Branson. We filmed Alicia, and by then she had gotten her driver's license. There were scenes where Ron was teaching her how to drive that were amazing for me. They were just this real, lyrical comedy, like this American stuff that I would have watched in anybody's TV show.

There was a collective decision where we agreed that, as much as we would like to keep going, we didn't actually have a contract to make a TV show. We do need some other stories, and to be honest, there was no ending. People's lives keep galloping forward, so there's never an easy stop point.

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How do you prepare for a documentary project like Stray Dog, which is so much about capturing the small details of life?
Ron was very willing to have conversations with me and Tory, on the phone and in very wonderful emails, where I would maybe ask a simple question, and he would then write back and I would learn more about his activities. I would learn more about the pressures he felt about tenants who couldn't pay, about new arrivals at the RV park. I would write in my notebook with triple circles and a highlighter when Ron would say something like, "I have to go, I'm having a lot of trouble bringing my dogs to the vet to get them fixed. It's become a really big issue with me and Alicia. It's almost like their testicles are related to mine." And I'm like, "Oh my God, Ron, can you wait to bring them to the vet until we get down there?" But life takes its course and there was a spaying program that paid a subsidy and whatnot, so he had to go on that day. Some scenes you can prep for, some you can't. He told me that he had to give CPR to one of the dogs.

Director Debra Granik. Photo by Victoria Stevens

Oh, my God.
And I was like, OK, this huge person giving CPR to this small dog—I'd never seen the likes of that. I'm like, "Are you trying to torture me dude? Are you trying to give me these shots that any greedy filmmaker would give a pinkie for?" You have to live with the fact that you will miss many moments of someone's existence. You can't prepare for a lot of things, like that an offshore Viagra salesman is going to call Ron's phone 60 times.

On film sets, there's a lot of Murphy's Law in play. Whatever can go funny and be a mess will be a mess. And simultaneously, gems will just hail down and overwhelm you, you know? You have to stay malleable with prepping for documentary because you could get broken easily by disappointment.

Stray Dog is now playing in Los Angeles at Laemmle Music Hall.

Follow Matthew Caron on Twitter.

Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

More on the Dannemora Prison Break:
Everything We Know So Far About the Two Murderers Who Escaped from Prison In New York
Cops Hope Dirty Underwear, Bloody Socks, and Peanut Butter Will Lead Them To The Escaped Convicts
Was There a Corrupt Heroin Ring Inside The Prison Richard Matt and David Sweat Escaped From?

There might never be tabloid fodder as juicy as last month's prison break in Dannemora, New York. Although it was obviously a little nerve-wracking when two convicted murderers—Richard Matt and David Sweat—broke loose on June 6, the backstory proved to be stranger than fiction and only a little less ridiculous than the typical episode of Jerry Springer.

Joyce Mitchell, a 51-year-old employee at the Clinton Correctional Facility, was reportedly seduced by Sweat and then by Matt—who turned out to have both an artist's soul and a mondo dick. After Matt apparently said he'd help murder Mitchell's husband and run away with her, she decided to sneak the men blades, chisels, and other tools in hamburger meat. When she backed out last-minute from her planned role as the duo's getaway driver, a wild manhunt ensued that ultimately ended with Matt going out in a blaze of drunken glory.

Now that Matt is dead (and has solidified himself as a candidate for the most interesting man in the world) and Sweat has been recaptured, Mitchell has pleaded guilty to a first-degree charge of promoting prison contraband and fourth-degree criminal facilitation, which means she faces up to seven years behind bars herself.

The escape's fallout will envelop more than the middle-aged woman who's been branded "Shaw-skank" by the New York Post. Last month, state officials suggested that Mitchell's collusion with the killers hinted at more widespread corruption within the maximum-security prison. Twelve people—including Clinton's superintendent—were placed on leave as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) looked into the possibility of a heroin-trafficking ring there.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.