Image via Flickr user Wendy Harman

Alen "Aki" Šahović stood barefoot in the doorway, wearing a white T-shirt, linen pants, and a floor-length gunmetal apron that flared like a dervish's skirt when he turned in the September wind. "After the exhibition, you come. Come to the most exclusive place in Mostar," he said.

Several sweating tourists, including myself, had just stepped off the Stari Most bridge, one of Bosnia's UNESCO World Heritage Site, and headed up its tower to a room filled with black-and-white images taken by the photojournalist Wade Goddard. Twenty years prior, Goddard had embedded himself in this area of the country during the Croat-Bosniak War, an episode of the larger Bosnian War that consumed the country from 1992 to 1995. Now we were here at Caffe Čardak, which Šahović runs for the Mostarski Ikari, a club of local bridge divers.

For how long have people been jumping off the 16th-century bridge? "Four-hundred and fifty years—an old tradition," Šahović explained proudly. And why did they named themselves after Icarus, a Greek mythological figure known for falling to his death? Šahović blinked. "Because, see? It's dangerous." His patrons nodded. They were eyeballing a local with a sculpture-like body who had just swung himself over the wrought-iron guardrail. If he slipped and didn't ready his body, the impact upon hitting the water below could kill him.

The city of Mostar's name comes from the mostari, the keepers first stationed at the wooden bridge spanning the gorge carved by the Neretva River. That preceded the Stari Most, the great limestone footbridge that was destroyed by the war in 1993 and replaced by a reconstruction. The Stari Most was designed by a student of Mimar Sinân, a famed architect of the Ottoman Empire.

"It looks like the arch of a rainbow," the travel writer Evliya Çelebi remarked in the 1600s. To hear him tell it, he had passed through 16 kingdoms but "never beheld such a high bridge." Diving and other water sports became popular during Turkish rule: Mostarians were probably using the Stari Most as a springboard the same year it was built, in 1566. "Ya Allah!" (dear God!) they cried, and daringly pitched themselves into the blue-green, very strong and very cold current 80 feet below. Viziers and foreign visitors both watched from the čardak, an enclosed porch made of timber on the second floor of the bridge's castle.

"We are in the čardak now," Šahović said of the small space occupied by his café.

A photo of an Icari diver, hung in Šahović's cafe

The divers formalized their club after the final ceasefire marked the end of the war in 1995, but by then the famed bridge, linking the east bank's Muslim community to the west bank's Catholic one, had collapsed during the nine-month siege of Mostar in 1993. The Croat forces shelled the structure from the green mountains that loom over the basin, destroying the longtime symbol of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a multicultural ideal.

"They celebrated when the bridge fell down," Šahović said. He drew a finger to his graying temple and twirled it. Crazy.

In the wake of the war, Icari dove from a platform they installed beside the temporary UN-built suspension bridge. They restarted an annual diving competition held in July, which involves awesome pikes, twists, and somersaults and is graded by juries on questions of "posture at the bridge," "diving in the air," and "contact with the water."

Two schools of diving had emerged centuries before: the headfirst and the legsfirst. The best-known headfirst style is the Lasta ("Swallow"), modeled on the native bird's sharp wings and dramatic dives. "You must open the water with your hands. Otherwise"—Šahović snapped his neck backwards—"say hello to someone upstairs." Easily the most iconic style is the legsfirst style called the Let ("Flight"), where divers hook their legs beneath them, push out their chests, and hold back their arms, like the hood ornament on a Rolls-Royce. The pose pushes the Icari forward so they approach the water at an angle.

The river is 15 feet deep. You fall at a rate of 53 miles per hour for a period of three seconds. " A little bit less than three, actually," Šahović corrected.

Caffe Čardak's floor is carpeted with bright kilim rugs and laid with banquettes and hexagonal wooden tea tables surrounded by matching stools. These sets are carved with the club's logo, which looks just like the Nike swoosh with the addition of an unattached circle. The circle is understood to be the diver's head, whereas the checkmark embodies his arms, torso, and legs. The logo is used both right-side-up and upside-down, to represent the headfirst and legsfirst styles, respectively.

The cafe offers the best views of the bridge's activity and the riverscape; Šahović floats between the open windows (watching is "like TV," he remarked), the doorway, and the corner kitchenette, where the owner prepares the Bosnian coffee and fresh lemonade he serves with rose-flavored lokum and polyglot conversation—often play-by-play commentary on the dives. "Soon he 'll jump," he says about someone on the bridge he's watching from his perch. "Adrenaline, you know, it's the best drug."

Šahović cannot remember how many times he's jumped. He retired from bridge diving seven, maybe eight years ago. But Stari Most has been a part of his life for years. Below the bridge is where he learned to swim. When he was a child, some of the older men tossed him into the patina waters but made sure that he kept his head up. He tells me an altitude dive from one of the regional bridges is still a right of passage for boys in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"Most of us only do it once," another Bosian man told me. "I never jumped, don't tell anyone."

The Neretva is risky because of its whirlpools and rocks. The second time I went to see him, Šahović gestured at a red rescue dingy and squad of scuba men downstream: "They are searching for body of 19-year-old." What happened? Šahović leaned out a window and called down my questions to the divers working the bridge. "They say he was from north Bosnia."

"He was drinking."

"He went swimming at night."

"He was with his sister."

For more on unique, city-specific traditions, watch our doc on the Mexican town where residents fist fight to summon rain:

When the wind gusted, it blew a big hardback titled Mostarski Ikari off of a high shelf and onto the banquette. Šahović said the book is about "the old jumpers," and includes names, pictures, and biographical details of more than 300 Icari members, including a chapter about six women. (The club's 20-some members today are all men). It was published in 2004, when the Novi Stari Most, a perfect replica of the original bridge, was erected. "He died in the war," Šahović said of one face in the book. "He survived—he is an architect now." And another: "He also died." Šahović eyed the page and tapped another. "Dead. The father of my friend." Many of the names indexed at the back are noted with poginuo ("killed")—most often due to the war.

It's been 20 years since the war ended, but Mostar remains deeply troubled by its ethnic fault lines. The east side, in the oldest part of town, where the Stari Most is, where the buildings are scarred by gunshots, is mostly home to Bosniaks; the restored west side is almost entirely occupied by Croats. West Mostar's buses do not service East Mostar. Schools are segregated—sometimes they even share a building at different times of the day. But the Icari include both people. Šahović, a Bosniak, pointed out a diver on the bridge in a red Champion T-shirt: "Igor is Catholic. Hello, Igor!" A diver's religion didn't matter to the club, he said. "Has nobody learned nothing?"

These days, the divers, clad in Speedo-style swim briefs, use an embroidered fez as a collection bucket. They ask for donations from day-trippers who descend from the tour buses that increasingly spill over from the Dalmatian Coast, eager to visit an authentic ex-conflict site. Though some locals don't like their begging, in a limited economy, diving has become a job. "They risk their lives for the show," Šahović said of the Icari, adding: "More rush, more fun, more money."

Seven of the club's beautiful men rotate diving days. For every 25 euro they make, one member takes the plunge, and they know how to work an audience. When they near their quota, a diver, not necessarily the one due to jump, will bound over the guardrail. He will lean forward and sideways, stretching his tan physique. His face is unsmiling and he seems oblivious to the audience's gaze, but Icarus is teasing you. He knows the suspense incentivizes onlookers to open their wallets, that by the time he or a colleague jumps, traffic on the bridge will come to a standstill. He extends his arms and leans into thin air; and because he cannot fly, he falls. A little less than three seconds later there is the splash.

Foreigners are welcome to dive, pending approval from the club. First you perfect your form on the riverbank. Next you practice on a lower bridge that stands a few hundred feet downriver. The cost is ten euro for training with the Icari and another 25 euro for the privilege of jumping off the Stari Most. You must enter your name, birthdate, hometown, and jump date in a logbook kept in the Icari's clubhouse downstairs from the café. It is hung with enlarged snapshots of the divers caught in their marvelous free falls.

A photo of an Icari diver hung in Šahović's cafe

In the Icari clubhouse, I noticed a flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina , a first-aid kit, and towels, as well as a collection of brass artillery shell casings and pieces of 120 mm mortar bombs, the explosive type believed to have brought down the bridge. Some of these fragments, 22-year-old Edi Fink demonstrated, have found second lives as paperweights.

Fink, who resembles Justin Bieber, has been diving from the Stari Most since he was 14. He once jumped 16 times in one day. Last year, he had a portrait of the Stari Most tattooed over his heart. His father and uncle were bridge divers; their father was a diver; his father was a diver. Fink thinks his great-great-great-grandfather was probably a bridge diver, too. He hopes to become an electrician; the best jobs in the country are with electrical companies, the postal service, and hospitals, he said. In the meantime, he enjoys this.

But what do they do in wintertime? "We wait for spring," Šahović said—Herzegovina is beautiful in the spring and summer. The fertile region supports vineyards and apple, pomegranate, and fig orchards. Blue and purple glass insulators, on rusty transmission towers, glitter under the intense sun. Šahović likes to hike near and swim in one of the Neretva's tributaries, where he says multiple kinds of eagles fly overhead.

"You cannot go—there are still some mines. I know the way because I was on the frontline." He had been in mechanic school when the war started. "Shit happens," he said, and set down a copper tray of lemonade for his newly arrived guests. "Wait," the older woman asked, "is that man going to jump?" Her husband thought no, but Šahović set him straight. "Four-hundred and fifty years," he repeated once again. "An old tradition."

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Photo via Flickr user Jason Persse

In the fall of 2010, I had already resigned myself to a sophomore year of dinginess. My dorm building lied on the outskirts of the University at Buffalo campus, and it was the only one without full Wi-Fi capabilities. But forcing an ethernet cable through a mess of clothes and books was just a small annoyance. The public bathroom's tiles bled yellowish scum, and the showers were carpeted with black grime. My neighbors were Dungeons & Dragons players who embodied the fanbase's worst hygienic and social stereotypes. My roommate was a devout Christian who abstained from binge drinking and enjoyed Jesse McCartney like it was 2004. We couldn't relate. You live the struggle. You breathe the struggle. But you never learn to like it.

That whole academic year was a haze highlighted by two things: Being a competent-at-best sports writer at my college newspaper and the return of Kanye West. Although I'd rarely boast about prosing on cross country and volleyball, the former gave my life some direction. It beat following within my family's long line of nurses. The latter was a spectacle because it looked like he controlled the zeitgeist. The mission reached its pre-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy peak with Kanye and Pusha T's Funkmaster Flex freestyle. It was a combination of many things: The rhymes were tight before they were known as "Blow," "Alone in Vegas," and "Gorgeous"; Pusha T's face looked like it was in the middle of some sort of exorcism. And Kanye's suit. How the fuck do you roll up in Hot 97 with a crisp black-and-white suit? A reference to Rosewood, West and co. were literally wearing pieces of black history. This was more the promotion of an idea than an album.

It was a moment. With each G.O.O.D. Friday release, Yeezy created more and more anticipation for a record that felt like a classic even before the damn thing came out.

On Nov. 22, the record dropped and it did not disappoint. I bought a physical copy of MBDTF and rushed back to my dorm to pop that CD into my Sony Vaio. Sixty minutes later, I thought it was the best thing I ever heard. The critical community agreed, as well—Pitchfork gave it the four-leaf-clover-rare 10.0, The Source blessed it with the iconic five mics, and Rolling Stone gave it five stars. The album played out like some dream rendered in sonic hi-def. It was experimental but rarely abstract, vivid enough to bring the best of everybody—except Jay Z, who named so many dumb beasts and ghouls on "Monster" that he turned himself into a meme. (As a lifelong Jay Z fan, it was sad to see; imagine watching your daddy get slapped right in front of you.) Rick Ross spat the realest fantasy he ever had over Bink!'s Smokey Robinson flip "Devil in a New Dress." West modulated his voice through numerous studio effects, yet none of them touched the multitudes Nicki Minaj did on her "Monster" verse. That said, West's coked-out self-aggrandizing on "Power" and the gold-plated comedown of "Runaway" showed Yeezus Christ would never get outrapped on his own record.

Throughout the album, West rides a Murciélago, fucks porn stars, and dines five star, but the hedonism is anchored by a sense of urgency, as if Yeezy knows the world's on fire and is just trying to have some fun before it all turns to ash. MBDTF is bookended by "Gorgeous" and Gil-Scott Heron's "Comment #1," his 1970 poetic vivisection of the States, repurposed as "Who Will Survive In America." Following the excess of "Dark Fantasy," "Gorgeous" is an indictment of an America that allegedly created AIDS and would only accept West if he plays the game: "As long as I'm in Polo smiling, they think they got me/ But they would try to crack me if they ever see a black me." Scott-Heron's more abstract but visceral verse reminds us that there's never been an America that wasn't anti-black: "Two long centuries buried in the musty vault/ Hosed down daily with a gagging perfume." At first glance, "Who Will Survive in America" is the sobering note that closes the album. Sure, but a commentary on America is a bit disjointed after Yeezy "Fell in love with a porn star" on "Hell of a Life" just a few tracks ago, no? Consider the inverse: Instead being punctuated by Scott-Heron, the preceding fantasy itself is birthed from the rigged game he describes.

MBDTF is inseparable from the context that conceived it: West dissing Taylor Swift at the VMAs and his subsequent exile. West did deserve some of the public haranguing he took since this was indefensibly rude, but the fallout came with racial baggage. Swift would've never been lambasted the way West was if the roles were switched. This was a black creative stepping out of place, choosing honesty over innocuous humility. Barack Obama slamming him as a "jackass" gave racists a cover to point and ridicule West. (Thus, West's Rosewood Movement earns a disturbing significance: In 1923, the predominantly black town was razed by a white mob after a white girl claimed she was assaulted by a black man.)

West was blackballed even though he was a crossover star at the center of the pop culture after Graduation and the success of the Glow in the Dark tour. It took less than a minute for West to become a pariah. The centuries-old excuse for racial violence, the white woman, rose again to show that West was dispensable. What's white is the American norm, and what's black is an oddity.

In an interview with the New York Times, West called MBDTF his "long, backhanded apology," and I think part of that backhandedness is how he's telling America about itself in "Gorgeous" and "Who Will Survive in America."

MBDTF's maximalism was matched by impeccable songcraft. West's introspective lyrics doubled as infectious mantras, and his worldview never got lost within the production's exhausting ambition. He was showed high art's influence without getting lost in the weeds of high art itself, allowing the rest of us to slip into his headspace. The result was a package that allowed West to move right back into the cultural center while forcing America to look inward towards its corrupted core and self-hatred.

I had long left that depressing dorm by senior year and moved into a comparatively posh apartment with my own bathroom. My roommate Matt was a Caribbean descendant like myself and we both had an appreciation of Kanye and Caribbean food. I grew from a competent-at-best sports writer to a competent-at-least senior managing editor who wrote about music, mostly hip-hop.

In the newsroom, I was the hip-hop guy, the dude whose musings on the genre could be tolerated as long as they read coherently in print. The culture that I breathed before college was rarely taken seriously in the three years I worked there; it was a quirk that helped fill the room's diversity quota. I didn't care, though. I enjoyed writing and finally becoming a managing editor was an achievement. I had my name printed in bold blue font, and it hung proudly on the door of an editing room that I led.

This still wasn't my space. It was a winter day near the top of the year when I was looking at an article draft on one of the Mac desktop screens as three of my white co-editors sat across from me. They were discussing the novelist Walter Mosley, who spoke as a lecturer during a campus event that evening. The editor who attended recounted the events: the black women's "mmhmm" that reverberated when Mosley preached what they believed to be true, his matter-of-fact rhetoric, and overall activist bent.

Mosley used the term "nigger" at one point of the speech. I don't remember the context in which he said it, but when the editor uttered the word, I watched it spread like a virus. This epitaph became a plaything. The second editor repeated it and giggled, thrilled as the two-syllable word left his throat. The third did the same. They all stared at me through sheepish grins as they traded utterances. I stared back at them then I looked emotionlessly and pathetically back at the computer screen. I'd betrayed myself to think that I was going to become something more than an abnormal or punchline simply by working and playing the game. I was a disgrace.

After the incident, it was clearer that the fever dream of MBDTF was more than a pill inside a five-star fish fillet. In America, right is often correlated with white. Obversely, blackness is a glitch, and, at worst, inhuman. If the concept of being unrepentantly black while fitting into a white-worshipping society is an absurd task, MBDTF asks how absurd is it, then, to maximize our dreams and ambitions while indulging in them. That's what African-Americans held on to when Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" as he owned slaves. If America doesn't give us meaning despite being built off us, then we make meaning on our own terms. We dreamt and worked to affirm those visions.

America's core principles preaches that you can be anything you want to be. That's untrue—not everybody's a Cinderella. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's effect is more existential. Systemic oppression exists by ostracizing and dehumanizing pieces that don't fit. But what better proof is there of our humanity, that we're alive, than to dream? On MBDTF, West dreamed bigger than most.

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Steroid specialist Dave Crossland

Steroid use in Britain is on the rise. Up to 1 million people illicitly use steroids in the UK, and in certain areas needle exchanges have seen a 600 percent increase in steroid users in the last decade. But while we're all familiar with the stereotypes of steroid users—roid rage, shrunken testicles, exploding biceps—we're much less familiar with the concrete physical and psychological consequences of steroid abuse.

Anabolic steroids mimic the effects of testosterone, stimulating muscle growth and therefore enabling you to train harder and faster. However, they can also have serious side effects. These include everything from high blood pressure to heart problems, testicle shrinkage, erectile dysfunction, sterility, low libido, and aggression. Moreover, if you're young, steroids can irreversibly muck up body development and stunt growth.

But what is driving this rise in steroid use? The reasons are numerous, but some argue that certain cases are linked to muscle dysmorphia—or "bigorexia", as it has become routinely referred to in headlines—the fear of being too small and seeing oneself as weak, when in reality you are large and muscular. Hyper-vigilant to the smallest deviation from the perceived ideal, one is preoccupied with appearance and perceived defects.

According to the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation, the condition affects one in ten men who go to the gym in the UK.

Steroid specialist Dave Crossland argues that steroid use can go hand in hand with muscle dysmorphia. "Steroid usage can increase body image problems," he says. "If you improve the way you look and you've used chemical enhancements to do that, it's then difficult to go back to a physique that you're not happy with."

Crossland, 44, has first-hand experience of the dangers of steroids. "I was 19 when I first took them. I'd gone as far as I felt I could naturally. Before that I was actually quite anti-steroid," he tells me. "At 24 I completely detached my left chest muscle and I drifted away from training. But when I was 38 I started taking steroids again, and it was then that I saw how poorly educated people were and how widespread use was."

Although Crossland is not currently taking steroids, he has taken them for much of his life, and just six months ago he took a low-dose steroid cycle. "I'm 28.5 stone over my ideal weight. I am probably one of the biggest guys in Britain and possibly further afield. Now, that doesn't mean I have the same quality of muscle as a pro builder, but I definitely have the physical dimensions," he explains. "I have a 25-and-a-half-inch arm. I eat seven to eight meals a day. It's the only way I can maintain my mass. The last two meals of my day I force-feed, physically taking a mouthful and swallowing it down with water because it's the only way I can get it in."

Crossland says living life at his size isn't easy. "It controls everything I do. I can't get up in the morning and think, 'You know what? I can't be bothered.' I have to get up at six o'clock every day to eat," he tells me. "When I do a blood test, my sodium levels are OK for a normal person, but I need three or four times as much as that, and that's with everything I do."

At his size, Crossland says normal rules don't apply. "I don't fit in cars. I don't fit in buses. I don't fit in planes. I don't fit in toilet cubicles. I have to use disabled ones," he reflects. "I've had 'roidhead' and all sorts shouted at me in the street. People tend to view you as a bit of public property; they'll come up and start poking and squeezing your arms. You become a bit of a circus freak. People will literally stand next to me and take photos while I'm trying to eat out of my Tupperware because they think it's really weird."

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A Sky News investigation found that there could be up 1 million people illicitly using steroids in Britain, but Crossland reckons the number is far higher: "I'd say it's more like 2 million. Most of the official stats come from needle exchanges, but only about 30 or 40 percent of steroid users use those services."

After all, steroids are Class C drugs and are only legal if taken with a doctor's prescription. "I know one case where a steroid dealer went to prison for two years. You can't just walk into any gym and buy steroids," explains Crossland. In turn, he says, many users end up buying online. But it's not just specialist websites peddling steroids—a large proportion of dealers now operate on Facebook. "It's not hard to find when dealers have got a picture of steroids as their profile pic. There are also private groups on Facebook where you can request drugs," he tells me.

The growing ubiquity of the drug means the spectrum of growth is much broader than most would imagine. "An area of growth that people don't consider is affluent, well-established 40-something males who might not even go to the gym. They're getting old and their natural testosterone's dropping, so they're going online," says Crossland. "You come across a lot of people whose partners don't know they use, and they're trying to make excuses to the partner about why they're not performing in bed."

Crossland believes media representation has a large part to play in the rapid increase of steroid use in the UK. "There's a massive social pressure to look a certain way. I think males are struggling with it harder because it's new for them. Add that to a society that looks for a pill for every ill, and you can understand why people are turning to steroids," he argues. "But why have we got to the point where 17 or 18-year-olds are willing to take massive risks just to look good in a t-shirt? This isn't to achieve a world record. This isn't to be number one in their sport. This is just an average kid who wants social acceptance."

With anecdotal reports of boys as young as 13 turning to steroids, it is clear usage is no longer the domain of top-class athletes and body-builders. Public Health England admits steroid use is a growing problem and is urging local authorities to offer needle exchange services and health testing. After all, the HIV infection rate of steroid users (1.5 percent) is as high as it is for heroin users. What's more, steroid users are not just taking increasingly high doses; they are taking them for longer and longer periods of time. While it used to be common to do cycles of six to eight weeks, it is now more and more common to stay on them all the time.

Nevertheless, Gary Beeny, who works in a steroid clinic in Ancoats, Manchester, argues that most steroid users wouldn't dream of setting foot inside a clinic. "For every one person I see, there are plenty of other guys who would never come near because of the stigma," he explains. "They feel uncomfortable about being around heroin users and are wary of the legality of their use."

That said, the number of steroid users accessing clinics has grown hugely over the past couple of decades. "In the 90s, 5 percent of our users took steroids, but now it's roughly 50 percent of our client group. It's the same nationally," Beeny tells me. "We have two types of users—there are the body-builders, and then you have aesthetic users who train during the week and go out during the weekend. One of the workers I met at a conference described them as 'weekend warriors.' We're more concerned about them because they'll obviously drink alcohol and maybe use cocaine."

Read on MUNCHIES: Why Toast Could Be Even Worse for You Than Bacon

Like Crossland, Beeny argues that muscle dysmorphia has a role to play in the rise of steroid use. "I'll say to someone, 'You've got massive arms,' but they'll say, 'No, they're not big enough—I need to work out more.' That is the fundamental description of muscle dysmorphia," he explains. "If you're on the track of trying to get bigger, there's no end to it."

As well as distorted body image, the symptoms of muscle dysmorphia include working out obsessively, prioritising exercise over family and friends, disordered eating, compulsive checking of one's physique in the mirror and steroid use. The combination of the aesthetic fixation and excessive perfectionism, which characterises the disorder, can cause depression and anxiety. Although relatively little is known about the condition yet, the NHS believes the disorder could be genetic, or caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and might be more common in people who were bullied or abused while they were young.

Given a YouGov survey found that 31 percent of British men aren't happy with their body image, it's perhaps unsurprising that some turn to substances that can help them fast-track their goals.

Nevertheless, it goes without saying that the reasons behind steroid consumption are myriad, and as with anything, causation is complex. However, what's evident is that the increasing accessibility of steroids and the intensified cultural pressures around body image mean what was once an open secret within a close-knit body-building community has become a lifestyle choice for people from all walks of life.

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All photography courtesy of the author

A new, "real-life" Pokémon gym has opened up in Osaka, Japan as part of the new Expo City. It's the first of its kind, anywhere in the world. I went along on its opening day, November 19, to see what the attraction offers fans of the pocket monsters phenomenon.

The gym is actually a selection of paid games spread across two floors, rather than home to a selection of sweat-spilling, muscles-testing workout machines. Each one allows its player to digitally interact with a wide variety of Pokémon. Also on site is a Pokémon-themed café and a giant Pokémon store, while the walls are adorned with all manner of franchise-relevant murals.

The gym is in the north of Osaka, so if you're staying in the city center be aware that it will take you a while to get there. On entry, you buy a card for 500 yen (about $4) that you charge with credit in order to play the games. Each game varies in price from 400 to 600 yen. Right now, the gym features no smaller, cheaper arcade games or prize machines—in stores elsewhere you'd at least find a few options, like the Wii U-destined Pokkén Tournament or the popular Tretta games. But in Osaka, it's the seven larger interactive games or nothing.

The 600-yen attractions are more like shows than standard video games. Audience members sit down on benches while digital Pokémon and their trainers address the crowd. Volunteers are asked for, or a camera picks out participants for the show, be they originally willing or not. Once the cast is in place, these shows unfold in a display of dazzling lights and special effects, but while impressive they're hardly worth the asking price if you're one of the people left sitting down, merely an observer of the action.

The 400-yen games are either played individually or in pairs, and are more traditional in design—there's a bowling game, boxing, and an interactive space map game. Some of these allow levelling up, but you'll have to pay multiple times to reach the later stages of each.

A big problem with the Pokémon gym, if you're a visitor from abroad, is that all the games are in Japanese. It doesn't matter how big a Pokémon fan you are, if you don't have any Japanese language skills then a visit to the gym is going to be a confusing, disappointing experience. It's also not a destination that solo tourists should really bother with, as one of the 400-yen games is a pairs-only affair, and being cold-shouldered in the bigger parts of the gym, without anyone to sit there with, would be a fairly depressing situation.

To call this a gym makes sense in branding terms, but there's little here that really demands physical fitness. Don't expect to actually train a Pokémon, either—your interactions are only ever brief, assuming you're one of the visitors whose yen is rewarded with a call to the stage.

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I had time to try three of the gym's games—two of the more-expensive shows, and the aforementioned boxing game. The shows on offer, right now, include a Charizard battle show, a dancing show, one called Machamp's Counselling, and another called Zoroark's Slick Dojo.

The battle show didn't actually involve a battling at all, and just had a digital Charizard asking audience members various questions, albeit with lots of flashing lights and animations. The dojo show was a lot better; it had the entire audience trying a couple of very simple moves, so everyone could get involved. In the dojo game, I was picked on to try and copy what the digital character showed me on screen.

The boxing game was fun, and I can see it becoming addictive. Players can "level up," but to do so meant spending another 400 yen. It was more physical than the other games, and had me in a sweat by the end. The concept was very similar to a dance machine you still find in Western arcades: you follow instructions appearing on the screen, performing actions when the relevant icons reach a certain trigger point.

For big enough fans of the Pokémon franchise, even if you don't play any of the games, there is loads of merchandise to keep you entertained and your wallet open. The store is impressively stocked, and the café sells everything in Pikachu wrapping. Granted, it's mostly junk food, but still: Pikachu wrapping.

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The gym has a Universal Studios type of feel, with the audience participation element and staff dressed as characters from the Pokémon universe. It's worth a visit by any Pokémon fan, but do get some basic Japanese learned beforehand unless you want to feel truly lost. And it's worth mentioning, too, that there's plenty more at Expo City to keep you amused, even once you've polished off the café's menu and stuffed every Poké-plushie you can into your backpack.

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Bob Hamer infiltrating a cocaine ring—his friend on the right was arrested the next day. Photo courtesy Bob Hamer

Working as an undercover agent probably ranks as one of the most terrifying and dangerous things you could choose to do with your life. You're thrown into the deep end to infiltrate some of the world's most violent and paranoid criminal organizations and face immense pressure to extract intelligence while not getting brutally murdered. There's also the murky ethical ground you're constantly treading: the fine line between enticing criminals to reveal their most sordid plans and entrapment.

Bob Hamer spent 26 years doing just that while working for the FBI. In various disguises, he writes on his website, he "successfully posed as a drug dealer, contract killer, residential burglar, fence, pedophile, degenerate gambler, international weapons dealer, and white-collar criminal," and was involved in operations against everyone from the Mafia to the pro-pedophile group North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

I first spoke to Bob Hamer while I was working on a piece about North Korea's role in the international drug trade. The last case of his career was Operation Smoking Dragon, a sting operation that took down a cell of Chinese smugglers who were bringing weapons and counterfeit cigarettes into the United States. At one point during that gig, Hamer was propositioned to help fund a giant meth factory in North Korea.

Hamer's been busy since his retirement, writing books, including ghostwriting one for Oliver North (of Iran Contra fame—Hamer is fairly conservative). He's not what you'd necessarily expect from a grizzled undercover cop who's infiltrated the inner circles of drug cartels, pedophile rings, and weapons smuggling operations. He speaks with a friendly Midwestern twang that's more Fargo than Infernal Affairs, is a big-time Christian, and is generally a very affable guy.

I called him up for a chat to talk about the old days.

VICE: So how did you get into working as an undercover agent for the FBI?
Bob Hamer: I was looking for excitement, and while I was in training at the FBI academy, a couple of the instructors had done some undercover work, and I thought, That seems interesting and exciting. So I looked for those opportunities once I graduated. I gravitated toward individualism: I sought it out. I'd conduct interviews by myself, and I liked the idea of working undercover and posing as someone else.

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How do you begin to infiltrate an organization and work out how to make contact?
It varies with each assignment. In most, I had an informant who'd introduce me—typically, we had somebody that we had arrested and they were "working off a beef," they were cooperating with us in order to lessen their sentence, and they'd introduce me. That made it much easier than it was on several of the cases where I had to infiltrate a group on my own, without the introduction.

How did you get into the character?
As an undercover agent, you have to see the gray—you have to find some goodness in a person in order to be attracted to them. Criminals can smell fear, they can smell hatred, they know when you aren't accepting of their lifestyle. And as an undercover agent, you've gotta understand them in some way, be it the child molester, be it the drug dealer, be it the weapons dealer.

What do you think about the ethics involved in undercover work? There have been allegations of entrapment, particularly in terrorism cases, where defendants feel they have been led on. Do you think that's a problem?
To me, the undercover case is the best investigative tool to put a case together, because particularly when it's an undercover agent—not an informant but an undercover agent—you have a trained law-enforcement officer that knows what it takes to put a case together. There aren't a whole lot of defenses when the bad guy hands me the weapons, when he hands me the drugs, when he's on tape saying that he wants someone killed.

So you don't feel there have been situations where you felt there was a fine line between leading someone on and encouraging someone to do something?
Not in my case. There may have been in others, but I always tried to give them an out in some way. A good example: in Operation Smoking Dragon, we had a female and on more than one occasion I would tell her, "Why don't you go work for a living? If you put this much effort in, you could make money." And she'd say, "No no no, I don't wanna do that, it's more money making this." I think that the good undercover agents that you're gonna find, they give these people the opportunity to back out, because they want the argument that "I was entrapped" or that "He forced me into doing it."

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So how did you go about infiltrating NAMBLA?
The actual infiltration was initially very easy: I sent in my $35 and joined. I began doing an awful lot of research on what it's like to be a "boy lover," as they call themselves. How do they talk, how do they act, what their interests are, that kind of thing.

I started receiving emails from them asking me if I would participate in their pen pal program, where they would send cards and letters to incarcerated members. So I started doing that. I also started writing articles for their magazine, The Bulletin. They began to see me as a true believer.

It actually took a year and a half before they eventually invited me to a face to face meeting—they were very paranoid, the most paranoid group I had ever targeted. I went to my first meeting and then went to a second a year later and it was at the second meeting that things really took off. It took me a long time to even be in a position where they were willing to accept me.

So what happened at the second meeting?
We had gone into it a little more aggressive that we did the first. But within an hour of arriving in Miami, Florida, for the second meeting, I met an individual who was a part-time airline flight attendant and he started talking about—unsolicited—how he would fly overseas using his benefits with American Airlines to have sex with with little boys in Thailand, and he would fly down to Mexico and have sex with boys in Mexico, and starts saying to me, "We should go on a trip to do this."

How did that investigation pan out?
The NAMBLA case resulted in the convictions of eight members of the group's inner circle. Two were Steering Committee members—the group's governing body. We convicted a PhD psychologist, a dentist, an ordained minister, three special education teachers, a physical trainer, and a blue-collar worker.

What was it like readjusting to the world after an assignment like that?
It really was my most difficult case, but not from a safety standpoint—quite frankly, if they had jumped me, I could have taken care of myself. I think I could take on about ten NAMBLA members and probably survive.

But psychologically and emotionally it was hard, but at the same time I was in NAMBLA, I was working Operation Smoking Dragon, so when we took down the NAMBLA case and arrested the eight members of the inner circle, within two or three days I was back with my undercover meetings. They're really wasn't time to decompress.

It probably sounds silly, but it was cathartic to start dealing with an international weapons case after hanging around boy lovers. I only had one undercover cell phone, and so I used to joke, you know, when the phone rang I didn't know whether I loved eight-year-old pubescent boys or I was a macho international weapons dealer.

What was the most dangerous mission the FBI sent you on?
I don't mean to sound glib, but every investigation is dangerous, even the white-collar cases, because they're the ones that are most fearful of prison. But I worked gangs for five years in South Central Los Angeles, I was by myself at midnight in an old beat-up pickup truck purchasing rock cocaine from gang members, which obviously was dangerous.

When you think you got closest to being caught out?
I had friends of mine walk into a half-million dollar heroin deal when I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel. The target of our investigation had just told me minutes earlier that his partner had a gun and "if anything goes wrong, you're the first person we're gonna kill." Within a few minutes of that, this couple that I knew from Cincinnati, Ohio, several thousand miles away from where we were located, a couple that I had lived with for a semester when I was going to school, walked into the lobby of the hotel and saw me.

I kinda signaled to the woman that this wasn't the time for grips and grins, and she could tell by looking at me that this wasn't the ideal opportunity—she knew I was an FBI agent.

What's your impression of the portrayal of undercover cops in TV and movies?
The Departed was way over the top, but I think DiCaprio did a good job of mentally and emotionally what you're going through when you're undercover.

My biggest complaint about Hollywood is that they portray every undercover agent as a womanizer, an alcoholic—they're always going over the line, participating in crimes. In my experiences, the most successful agents I've seen are the ones that are wel- grounded in something: in their religious beliefs, in their moral beliefs, their family, you know? If you're trying to hide your alcohol abuse from your supervisor, if you're trying to hide your womanizing from your wife, you're having trouble focusing on the role you're trying to play.

What's it been like adjusting to civilian life?
I'm bored stiff. I've written five books, but I miss the adrenaline rush. I miss sitting down face to face with a bad guy and convincing him that I'm just as bad as he is, or getting him to admit to me what he wants done and engaging him in a criminal conversation—that's the greatest thrill. That's the hardest thing to overcome, knowing that I can't do this anymore.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow Oliver Hotham on Twitter.

Reading one of Ottessa Moshfegh's works is the literary equivalent of having someone hold your eyelids open and force you to stare at a battered, bloated corpse. Her writing is notable for its brutal and startling honesty, and her newest novel, Eileen, continues this tradition. It says to the reader: "Look at Eileen. Look at this woman. Look at how she has been abused and manipulated. Look what society has done to her. Look what you have done."

Since publishing her first story with VICE in 2007, about the time some crackheads stole the door to her roof, Moshfegh has been a staple of our annual fiction issue, a Plimpton Prize winner, a Stegner Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts grantee. Her first novel, McGlue, tracks the drunken innards of a 19th-century brain-injured sailor, and her stories, which are soon to appear in collection form, explore everything from Chinese brothels and dick-drawing New York Catholic schools to vain Malibu men with pimply-bad skin.

Last month, Moshfegh and I spoke in my Nashville home about her realization that she's neither rich nor white, and the fucked-up paradigm of a world divided between those who have won and those who have lost.

VICE: How do you understand people's love for your writing?
Ottessa Moshfegh: The affection many people have for my writing strikes me as similar to the affection they might have for cronuts—those ten-dollar donuts, or whatever the next low-brow meets high-brow fad food is. Eating cronuts makes us feel like we're slumming without actually having to eat like we're poor. It happens all the time. Like gourmet corn dogs, this obsession with bacon. My writing lets people scrape up against their own depravity, but at the same time it's very refined—the depth of it hides behind its sophistication. It's like seeing Kate Moss take a shit. People love that kind of stuff.

In McGlue there is a character, Johnson, who is very wealthy and uses his wealth to control the protagonist, McGlue. Similarly, in Eileen there is Rebecca, a wealthy, Harvard-educated, manipulative foil to your down-and-out Eileen. Do you see a connection between Johnson and Rebecca and the way they respectively hold power over McGlue and Eileen?
The story of privilege is one of the stories I am interested in. Until recently I was a complete asshole in regards to my perspective on the planet. I really felt that I was special because I was American, because I went to school. I couldn't see how judgmental and arrogant I had become about people. I had no sympathy for others. I would look at a person in trouble and think, If they were as smart as me they wouldn't be in that situation. And this was totally in response to feeling that if I didn't have that attitude I was going to be on the flip side and I was going to be a nobody. Either you were an asshole with power or you were a victim with none. Either you have privilege and power and you use it to abuse people to maintain your status or you are an abused person. My paradigm was so fucked up. And that's just not what reality is. There isn't one clear division between my life and somebody else's life in those terms. Focusing on those terms was the poison that I was contributing to the world and the poison I fed myself. It was an outward and an inward poisoning. I have had to recognize that.

The abused-abuser type of relationship that Eileen and Rebecca have is very common, where you are unsure about someone, and then because they validate you—they like what you do, how you look, and so on—you are led to conclude that you have misjudged them, because how could someone who recognizes your worth be in the wrong?
Well, sometimes it is true that you have misjudged someone. But I think we are all susceptible to seduction. We manipulate each other all the time to various degrees. Rebecca has an agenda. Her intentions come from a good place, but she is just so stupidly disorganized. And so naive. She's not a very believable character. She feels very fictional to me.

She feels very real to me. I have had many Rebeccas in my life.
I find it really hard to picture somebody being so phony.

Maybe I have just met very phony people? Rebecca is a character that spent the summer in South Africa and started a completely ineffective non-profit that sells scarves. She has a total savior complex about coming there and fixing the problems of X-ville [where Eileen lives], without knowing anything about X-ville. This "I'm gonna change the world" attitude was what was so familiar.
That is really interesting. I pictured Rebecca coming at her idealism much more ideologically. I imagined that when she was at Harvard she was studying with psychologist and psychedelic drug advocate Timothy Leary and others who were talking a lot about consciousness. That doesn't go into the book because obviously Rebecca isn't going to talk to Eileen about Timothy Leary. Rebecca has no respect for Eileen's consciousness. Rebecca treats Eileen like a child and relates to her like she is in a TV show.

So why does Rebecca go to X-ville?
Rebecca has had a paradigm shift, but she isn't evolved enough to start liberating people the way she envisions. This is the problem with enlightenment. Anyone who has had a really deep psychedelic experience has had this experience where you come back to material reality and you look around and have to question— how can I live in this dumb world with what I now know? How can I continue to exist in this same shitty reality? I just experienced what God is. How do I now go pay my taxes and walk the dog and have a conversation with my husband who knows nothing of what I know?

I think Rebecca has had an intense spiritual experience and has become inspired to change the world. But how do you change a world you don't come from? I think Rebecca's desire to change the prison and X-ville, places she doesn't understand, is violently flawed. It is very similar to the South Africa example.

VICE Meets Norwegian literary sensation Karl Ove Knausgaard:

In your forthcoming story collection, do you have a lot of these Johnson and Rebecca characters that either exert power or manipulate power over someone else through class privilege?
Yes, the theme is prevalent in the book, especially in the first half. In my childhood, it was a huge issue. My father's family had once been extremely wealthy but lost everything. My mother never had any money. Class has always felt complicated to me. My parents drove jalopies around one of the nicest suburbs of Boston. It always felt so shameful. And I really hated myself because of the way I felt. And I don't know if it was me vibing everybody else or me vibing my parents or just me, period. Probably a combination of all of them. Because of the shame I also struggled with how to identify. For a long time I was like, well, the best thing to identify with is rich white people, and so I totally aligned myself with rich white people. But I am not that, it turns out. Then again, it's all relative.

Do you think your work communicates disgust with class privilege?
I don't think it's really about disgust with privilege. I don't think it's that judgmental. It's just that I am embodying these voices of people who are in certain positions of power. I've been interested in these characters because they were part of my experience in learning about myself, my values, my intentions. My new work, I hope, moves on from these issues, or at least moves beyond the polarities I've set up in Eileen. Eileen is a very black-and-white story. And ultimately, polarity gets boring. These days I'd much rather hang out in the gray.

Follow Rita on Twitter.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh is out now from Penguin Press.

'Charcot' by Kirsty Stevens. MRI scan etched onto a bell jar

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is increasingly common in the UK, with over 100,000 reported cases and a growth rate of 2.4 percent every year. Worldwide, there are reportedly 2.3 million sufferers—though most diagnosed are given a "wait and see" policy of no drug therapy, which can often lead to the disease getting worse or relapsing. In September of this year, a leading charity called this out. Earlier this month, the MS Trust published a report expressing the vital importance of expert support staff, which sits shakily alongside the continuing crisis within the NHS.

"The first relapse was by far the scariest one I've had to date," says artist Kirsty Stevens. "I had optic neuritis in my left eye, which eventually caused me to lose sight in that eye for a short period, which was terrifying. My balance was off, I could barely walk in a straight line, which I tried to ignore at first and I remember being unbelievably tired and not really fully aware of what was going on. This all happened so quickly that, after an appointment with my GP and then an ophthalmologist, I was taken in to hospital. My time there was very hazy; I was in a kind of dream-like state of mind. Friends came to visit and I didn't even recognize them."

MS is a hidden disease—one that attacks the myelin coating of nerves around the spinal chord with unpredictable and damaging effect. Despite the diagnosis, it remains an enigma: symptoms shift undetected beneath the surface like water molecules held in an opaque balloon. No two people have the same experience and an individual's symptoms can alter daily. It's a world of uncertainty—one that can often be misunderstood by those who have no reference to understand it. In Earlier this month an Australian woman was abused for her condition.

With the threat of ignorance toward those suffering, artists like Hannah Laycock and Kirsty Stevens can make a real difference. Their work tackles the knowledge gap by creating art that is tangible and accessible. As MS sufferers, they have been using their craft to try and make the invisible visible. MS may be a difficult chameleon of a disease, but it is not the end: they're "trying to make it a universal thing," as Hannah says, to bring to life that "feeling of being consumed" and, ultimately, to find hope.

"I don't think, hmm, this is what I feel from multiple sclerosis, so I'm going to try and turn that into an image," says Hannah. "MS always changes. It never stays the same. I'm not trying to document. It's impossible to do that with MS. I have to engage with what I'm feeling."

A photo from Hannah Laycock's 'Awakenings' series

Hannah's work is visceral and immediate—her photos mix naturalism with artifice, the soft with the hard. There's a feeling, looking at her work, of confusion and submersion—as if the entire world was being viewed from behind a diluted bottle of milk. One of Hannah's photos is a portrait of her submerged in a bath.

"There's a haziness to the water that I'm submerged in," Hannah says. "It's representing the cognitive issues you get and the memory problems. It's a fogginess, a fatigue. Then there's the intangible nature of the future: whether you've got MS or not, you don't really know how your future is going to unfold. But MS adds another uncertainty; because you don't know what journey your MS will take."

Stevens's laser etched lesion print

One of the great misunderstandings of MS is that all those suffering from the disease are wheelchair bound or that, if they're not, then their disease is somehow less difficult. "Sometimes it's how people interact with you and react to you when you tell them you have MS," says Hannah, "A lot of people say 'Oh, but you look really well!' and that's very frustrating. Yeah, I probably do look well, but all the symptoms I'm actually dealing with you're not going to see, because they're all beneath the surface."

Kirsty Stevens agrees. When she was diagnosed with MS in 2007, she was "devastated" and "somewhat embarrassed." "One of the main fears and thoughts I had," she explains, "was that I would instantly end up in a wheelchair. Looking back I realize how silly I had been and how uneducated I was about MS."

Photo by Hannah Laycock

Kirsty's work, Charcot, uses her brain scans for inspiration. She found "damaging lesion shapes" visible on her MRI scans, which she played about with to create intricate patterns. Named after Jean Martin Charcot, who discovered MS in 1868, her work aims to "bring the hidden effects of MS to people's attention to help empower those affected by MS."

"People need to know what actually goes on inside the body and what that damage can result in," Kirsty adds. "I have medication that I need to inject three times a week in order to slow down the degenerative effect of my condition and I am affected by fatigue and cognitive issues from time to time, but it's also changed my life in a positive way. At first I was embarrassed and I would worry about the people I was telling because I didn't want to make them feel awkward, but now I am proud to be part of the strong MS community. I really wanted to show people that such an adverse situation can have a positive outcome."

Photo by Hannah Laycock

It's obvious that Kirsty and Hannah have found a real purpose in their work. While their disease causes real uncertainty in their daily lives, the work that they create provides purity and focus.

"I kept telling myself: whatever happens you must finish your work," says Hannah. "That it will all be worth it in the end. The image of the fabric covering my head illustrates suffocation. I feel that's a universal theme. But it's also a colorful image—there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel. I might be having a tough time, but there's always an end, something else to look forward to that's better."

Follow David Whelan on Twitter.

A house in Lower Klity Creek. All photos by author

Zhou Sen was the first one who approached me when I arrived in the village. The 13-year-old has an intellectual disability and studies at a special-needs school far from his home. He had just come back to spend the summer with his family. While we were talking, his mood changed and he touched his arm gingerly. "Don't worry," his parents told me. "He is doing that because he is in pain."

Zhou is one of the many victims affected by the lead contamination in Lower Klity Creek, a remote village in Thailand close to the Burma border. For more than 20 years its residents, who are mostly ethnic Karen, have been coping with the contamination caused by a nearby lead mine which has been dumping the wastewater into the main river flowing through the village. People dependent on the river for drinking and fishing have fallen sick; many have been diagnosed with lead poisoning. Although there are no medical reports recording many of these problems, villagers claim that more than ten people have died. The rest still suffer from symptoms such as aches, fatigue, dizziness, loss of memory, and numbness. Some children, like Zhou Sen, have been struck with developmental and mental disorders. Other villagers have been blinded.

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Ma Ong Seang lost her sight when she was 30 years old as a result of lead poisoning. "I am still angry. When I lost my sight, I wanted to commit suicide," she told me. "This damage was preventable. If I knew from the beginning, I would take precautions."

Although the mine shut down 17 years ago, the creek has never been restored and the concentration of lead in the sediment remains 20 times higher than normal, and the consequences for the village have been severe.

"In the past, people in Klity used to lead a self-sustainable life. They have had rice plantations or livestock. When they had to go to the hospital, for example, they would sell a buffalo," said human-rights lawyer Surapong Kongchantuk. "But after the contamination, their livestock could not drink water from the creek and many animals have died. Their life has changed. They cannot fish anymore, they have to buy the fish instead."

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In 1998, the mine ceased its activities following the orders of the state agencies, including the Pollution Control Department (PCD), which has found unacceptable levels of lead in the water of the creek. Following the agencies' guidelines, the company that owns the mine, Lead Concentrates, has dredged part of the contaminated sediment but hasn't taken any action comprehensive to restore the creek. In 2003, villagers with the help of Surapong, sued the company, which was owned by former MP Kongsak Kleeb-bua before his death. (The case is still pending.)

The residents also sued the government, and the court ordered the PCD to pay over $5,000 to each of the 22 plaintiffs and clean up the river—but the government agency hasn't fixed the contamination yet.

I asked Zhou's father if he believes that the government will eventually restore the site.

"It doesn't matter what I believe. We are poor and uneducated people living in the jungle. The only thing we can do is waiting" he replied.

"The government continues to say they're studying the problem. But they began studying lead contamination in 1998, so they already know how urgent it is to clean up the site," Richard Pearshouse, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said.

When reached for comment, a PCD spokesperson said that ten years ago the agency thought that the best way for cleaning up the river was the natural rehabilitation; it was also afraid that a dredging operation could have negative consequences for the surrounding environment.

"The problem is the water. We have to use the water from the mountain. But this isn't possible all the time. Whenever there is a big rain, the mountain water gets dirty," said Thanaphol Pengpraderm, the village schoolteacher.

The river

The 22 plaintiffs have donated part of their settlements to build a pipeline, which carries clean water from the mountain. But not all the households have access to it.

Chan Chi Ra falls into this category. The 28-year-old farmer invited me for lunch with two of her friends in her bamboo hut. She told me that she uses the water of the creek for drinking, cooking, and washing. "I have no other choice. I cannot have access to the pipe water."

I asked Chan whether she has done blood tests to check if she has been affected. She said she hadn't; she didn't' see the point. "Even if I had something, I couldn't do anything about it."

"There is no medical treatment for the villagers," Surapong explained. The nearest hospital has no specialized doctors or medicines for those who suffer from lead poisoning. Suraprong and his organization, Karen Studies and Development Centre, raised funds to give the severely afflicted some treatments at a hospital in Bangkok. But that was just a one-time thing, not a permanent fix.

"Five years ago, I have received some medicine from the doctors in Bangkok. But If I need it again, I don't know where to go. And I have heard that the medicine is expensive. I cannot pay for this," Ma Ong Seang, the blind woman, said.

Despite the contamination, there have been some discussion about reopening some of the mines in the area. Kamthorn, 48, is a villager who has testified in court and organizes the others when they have to defend their collective rights. He told me the villagers are reluctant to a new mine opening as long as the first problem has not been solved. Representatives of one mining company asked for a meeting with the villagers in order to listen to their opinions.

"The people cannot trust them even though they claim that they will not repeat the same mistakes again," Kamthorn explained, rolling his tobacco in a dry banana leaf. "After they saw the negative stance of the people, they have started to approach them individually, trying to convince them that their living standards will be improved, as the mine will give money to the district through taxation. They have also approached me personally and offered me money to stop protesting," he added. "I refused."

When I was getting ready to leave the small village, I recalled the words of Thanaphol, the teacher: "Before the mine, this used to be the purest and most beautiful creek in the whole area." Everywhere you look, there are different kinds of trees; tropical fruits and vegetables grow freely. Next to the river, the branches bend gently toward the water. It's hard to think of the river in such a place as being poisonous.

My last question to the residents was whether they have thought of leaving the place, especially after the government has allocated an area where they could move. "No way! This is our home!" one replied. "We cannot leave. No one has."

Michelangelo's David, the gold standard in ball beauty. Photo via Wikipedia

Earlier this year, the internet went wild over news of a vagina beauty pageant that saw women posting pictures of their labia online in hopes of winning the title of most beautiful vajayjay ever. While some disputed it as sexist, others saw it as a liberating exploration of female sexuality.

Now, it's dudes' turn to show off their genitals for the world to see. The "Balls Contest" started running last week and is structured in the same way as its female predecessor: sign up on the website, upload your picture including a name (it doesn't have to be real) and age, and then wait for the public to rate your goods based upon a number of appearance-based categories such as wrinkles, size, and dangle.

The creator of the contest, Brian Sloan, is offering up a total of $10,000 to those with the nicest sack and will be turning the winners' genitals into paperweights, doorstops and other doodads, according to an email VICE received from his publicist. Like the last contest, Sloan will also be producing a research paper off the contest's finding. The Vulva Paper can be found here.

Sloan's the creator of both the Autoblow 2—a Fleshlight-type machine that gives blowjobs on demand—and the 3 Fap—a three-hole sex toy that has perhaps the most absurd name in history, with both inventions being crowdfunded to great success. Strangely enough, the dude is actually a law school graduate—he just knew from the beginning that being a lawyer wasn't the path he was destined to be on. Instead, after graduating, he began flipping antiques on eBay and selling latex fetish wear online before moving to the sex toy market. To understand his strange career path a bit better, we spoke with him over the phone to figure out what makes a good ballsack and why he likes his job so much.

VICE: I've talked to porn stars and other sex workers in the past about this, but I'm wondering how your partner and/or parents feel about your profession being that of manufacturing sex toys.
Sloan: My girlfriend, of course, knows that I'm in the toy business. When people who don't know you hear you're making sex toys, they have all these ideas that it's, like, wild. It's actually very normal stuff. Like, you make things in China, and you deal with logistics, quality control, the website. It's not a very sexy thing.

One thing that was different for her was the vagina contest, because when I told her, she was like, "Oh, that's a really funny idea!" But then when I told her I was going to 3D scan them and all this stuff, she just kind of went, "Oh...." She didn't really fall in love with the idea, but then she forgot, and when she learned about it later Family? No, no. Not that I know of. I do know a friend who is participating, though.

Are all the submissions anonymous?
Yeah, you can write any name you want on there. A name and an age. We know who the people are via the email address they give us, but it's all anonymous to everybody else. The women who were on the vagina contest were also anonymous.

Are you going to join in, even for fun? I imagine you can't win your own contest.
Yeah, for sure! My partner who's helping me run the contest and is dealing with the technical side of thing won't know it's me, though. If I submitted it very early on, he'd probably figure it out, but now that it's already started, he won't know which one is me. I think he'll probably submit his and I won't know either! It's all a mystery.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

A counter protester at this weekend's Reclaim Australia rally in Perth. All photos by the author

For the most part, the Perth leg of the Reclaim Australia rally was shaping up to be fairly average, until the sudden and largely unexpected appearance of Blair Cottrell, leader of the United Patriots Front (UPF).

The UPF began life when the founders of Reclaim Australia, Shermon Burgess and Monika Evers, fell out and Burgess left to start the UPF. Then in October, a fellow UPF member posted a YouTube video claiming to be Burgess. "My name is Shermon Burgess, AKA the Great Australian Patriot," says the guy, who's wearing a baseball cap like Shermon's. "I'm filming live from my mom's basement." Burgess quit after that, claiming he was sick of taking shit from his own side.

Post-Burgess, a man who wants Mein Kampf taught at schools, Melbourne-based Blair Cottrell took over the UPF. Yesterday, he made the big trip west with a contingent of core personalities in matching T-shirts.

Why Cottrell came to Perth is unclear, but presumably it was to back up their man Dennis Huts and help build the UPF's presence in the state at a time when another anti-Islamic group, the Australian Liberty Alliance, was beginning to gain support.

Not that UPC's presence seemed to have a great effect. Among the ranks of Reclaim Australia, people whispered about how the UPF made them an easy target. For the average Reclaimer, the UPF are a bit militant.

Still, when Cottrell and friends turned up in numbers about half an hour before start time chanting "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie," they were met with applause.

Which is the thing with Reclaim Australia: No matter how hard the organizers try to frame it around a central platform, it's less a united movement so much as a loose coalition who happen to have converged on the single idea that Islam is terrible. One guy will talk New World Order and Barack Obama and another guy will quote the Bible. This also explains why there were at least two St. George flags doing the rounds and only one Peace for Paris placard.

Reclaim Australia, even at its best, is a free-for-all where the only other uniting traits, besides an overwhelming hatred of Islam, is the belief that no one involved is racist and the deeply-felt fear that Australia is changing.

"I do this because I want my daughter to grow up in a world that I did," Zayne Van Day says before the rally where he's scheduled to speak. Asked what world that is, he says "the 80s."

It's a similar story for Bev Fussell, 78, except she's never supported a political party and has never been to a rally before. This is her first time. She doesn't hate Muslims, she says, just radical Islam and Halal and Sharia. Most of all she is afraid the Australia she knew is changing.

By the time the rally kicked off at high noon outside parliament house, the temperature had climbed to about 95 degrees in the full sun and as the first speaker started, and the Reclaim Australia faithful moved out from the shade to watch.

It must be said that for the most part, the rally actually seemed half-decently organized, at least compared to the counter rally. The counter rally had started out at the bottom of the hill, but then relocated to higher ground to get a better line of site on their opposition. It failed when the police quickly set up lines at a bottleneck and boxed the protesters in. From that point on, they were basically invisible.

As for the United Patriots Front, the cadre clustered to the back corner of the rally, behind a marquee. Cottrell and a few others were scheduled to speak and they were waiting their turn at the microphone.

What none of them were expecting was the appearance of Muslim woman Rahila Haidary, 20, who walked right up, alone, to talk to them about Islam. It was a weird sight for a Reclaim Australia rally and a twist in the day's program which usually involves talking about Muslims, not to them.

So for a good 15 minutes the UPF took turns asking confronting questions as Haidary politely listened to them tell her how her religion was evil and oppressed her. It wasn't possible to hear everything they were saying over the background noise, just snippets about "Hizb ut-Tahrir" and "Hezbollah" and "Islam as an ideology" and "deviant multiculturalists." Then, at the end of the conversation, the UPF guys asked Haidary for a photo of them all together and she obliged. One guy gave her bunny ears.

That photo was later uploaded to Facebook where the UPF told the world they had "educated" her after she left the counter protest. It was a lie.

"I was just trying to make a point," Haidary told me at the time. "As a Muslim, I've come here to tell these people that not every Muslims is a strict Muslim. I'm not that person you think I am."

It wasn't the only photo the UPF posted to mark their big Perth trip. After the rally was over the guys went out for beers. Together they took a few selfies of themselves looking tough. Blair Cottrell even signed a woman's cleavage.

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Photo via Flickr user Glenn Halog

About a year ago, Charles Ramsey, the chief of police in Philadelphia, was at the bedside of a fallen officer who told him a chilling story. The cop had interrupted a robbery and stopped the suspects, but got shot in the process—a bullet grazed his temple. When Ramsey asked the officer exactly what happened, the cop said he saw the suspect's gun and, for a split second, thought of Ferguson and the unrest over police killings of people of color. He hesitated, and that's when he got shot.

Last month, FBI director James Coney argued in a speech at the University of Chicago Law School that criticism of police has led to a change in how cops perform their jobs, and he said that has contributed to a spike in crime. Comey said, "So the suggestion, the question that has been asked of me, is whether these kinds of things are changing police behavior all over the country. And the answer is, I don't know. I don't know whether this explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior."

At first blush, that struck me as bullshit. I refused to believe either part of Comey's assertion: that officers are policing differently and that that has led to a rise in crime. In reality, crime fluctuates in much more complex ways than that. The idea that the Black Lives Matter's critiques have made cops more, let's say, reticent to do their jobs seems to contradict thetough and unrelenting mentality I've always associated with police. Even Chief Ramsey questions whether the so-called " Ferguson effect" is real. "There's no data to support it, one way or another," the chief has said.

So I called two officers I know in two major cities who spoke to me anonymously. At first, both said that yes, in fact, the protests and the criticism of policing and the general media firestorm around it has had a significant impact on how officers feel and how they behave.

State of Emergency: Ferguson, Missouri

One of the officers I spoke with is a veteran in a major city and a leader in his department. I asked him if the Ferguson effect was real and right away he said, "Absolutely. It's in the back of their head," he added, referring to the protests and the consequences some cops have had to face. "Real cops who are used to doing the right thing and arresting the right people are now mindful of being caught on video doing something that they're supposed to be doing, but doesn't look good. That split second of should he do this or not, that could get him hurt." The officer added that he could see where some cops might view their job as too risky, and police less aggressively as a result. "If you were in a job where you're being crucified no matter what you do, why would you do it?" the officer said. "We're going to get paid the same, whether I put my hands on this guy or not. If I put my hands on this guy, I risk my career, I risk all kinda punishments, what's the point?"

I'm told many officers feel like they're constantly at risk of being virtually crucified because, they say, they just aren't supported in this current political environment. To them, cops have to do ugly-looking police work that makes sense in context, but a video that excludes said context is often what goes viral. And then the local mayor and police chief usually side with the victim because that makes good political sense. The officer might then get fired, embarrassed, and maybe even jailed—left out to dry so that #BlackLivesMatter can collect a scalp and a politician can look good by giving it to them.

I spoke with another veteran officer, one who's working in a mid-sized city and used to be in the military. "In law enforcement," he said, "when cops feel like the command has their back and they're supported, they tend to do more. But I think some cops feel like they may be thrown under the bus. They're waiting to be the one on channel five. They're like, 'What do you want me to do? I'm coming to work, I'm trying to do what's right, if I stop somebody, I automatically got 20 cameras on me, I'm being accused of being racist, especially if I'm white. So you're asking me to put my life on the line every day and if I make one mistake, I'm going to be all over the news and I'm gonna be fired and my family, my livelihood, everything could be taken away from me in a split second, all over a mistake? Cuz of a mistake I could lose everything.' I think that does stop people. It makes people pause. When I don't have support from my command staff, how can I go out and do my job to the fullest of my capacity? I might be the next one on the chopping block! I don't get paid enough to be bait. I don't get paid enough to worry about getting indicted. That's scary. The stronger Black Lives Matter gets as a unit, the more power they take away from the police."

Still, both officers insisted they have not seen officers shying away from duty. "The guys I work, with we go out and we do what we gotta do," one of the officers said. I keep hearing this over and over from officers and from people who work with them:
Officers are upset with the lack of political support they're getting and they feel under assault, but in spite of a very hostile climate, they continue to do their jobs. "It hasn't slowed us down and I think there are a lot of people like us."

Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Ciar

The Ferguson effect isn't real. Philip Goff, a UCLA professor who studies policing, echoed that finding in his research. "I was in Chicago recently talking to officers," Goff told me. "One said, 'A lot of us are worried that we're not gonna get union support or department support and we're going to get fired in order to respond to public criticism.' I said, 'OK, but are you not doing your job?' 'Oh no, I'm doing my job.' 'So you still respond to calls?' 'Yeah.' 'And you're being proactive in the community?' 'Of course, I do that. Oh yeah. It's harder. We signed up for a really difficult job and I'm not a little boy. I go and do my job and I do it well, but I have to say all the media makes it harder.'"

Goff says the idea that cops are de-policing, or having a work slowdown, is an old one. "This is not the first time a claim like this has been levied against law enforcement. Whenever law enforcement gets criticized in a national lens, this argument comes up. Studies have found no relationship between the concern that law enforcement feels and them not doing their job and that police behavior did not contribute to any uptick in violent crime. This is not a new argument and it's never been right ever before."

We need to police the police and the only ones who can truly do that are the people.

Goff pointed to a Harvard study that followed the LAPD as it was monitored by the Department of Justice while under a consent decree.

Officers told researchers that they were afraid to make stops for fear of being punished and that the changes instituted because of the consent decree were impeding their ability to do their job. Some suggested that de-policing might occur. The report found the opposite. "We must ask if the fear of punishment—whether or not connected to the consent decree—is holding the LAPD back from enforcing the law? The answer appears to be an emphatic no. When we turn to the actual use of police powers, we see that the LAPD has been increasing both the quantity and the quality of its enforcement activity. De-policing, in short, does not appear to be a problem in Los Angeles under the consent decree." Stops per officer increased 39 percent and there was little change in the racial distribution of stops, showing again that even though officers were reacting emotionally to being criticized and asked to change, they still went out and did their jobs.

The officers I spoke with said a lot of cops are stressed and anxious and feeling like they're trapped in a game they can't win. The ubiquity of cameras and the strength of Black Lives Matter has increased police accountability and raised the pressure on their already-difficult jobs. Citizens nowadays are more emboldened, they say, more disdainful and more disrespectful. "You have to look at the community and the police as being in a marriage," one of the officers told me. "But she cheats. I cheat. She doesn't support me. I come to work and put my life on the line, but i don't trust her and she don't trust me. Most of the time we're around each other it's on bad terms. And then my parents, the politicians, are takin' her side and not supporting me.

"So i'm in a marriage where my wife and my parents don't support me, and my wife is more boisterous than ever because she sees my parents don't support me," he continued. "So when I ask her for a meal, she throws food at me! And I can't leave this marriage. That's kinda what it feels like to a lot of cops."

Photo via Flickr user Blind Nomad

It seems natural and understandable that American police officers could be emotionally hurt by the critiques being thrown at them and could be stressed by the extra pressures being put on them. I buy that. But the police cannot be so sensitive that they are beyond criticism. And we see that the men and women who patrol the streets are not as hurt by the criticism as their leaders suggest. In spite of everything, the police are still vigorously policing. They tend to have a deep sense of duty and they know they signed up for a difficult and dangerous job, so making it more challenging does not phase them. But we also need to police the police and the only ones who can truly do that are the people. That is what Black Lives Matter is attempting to do. But if BLM has increased the sense of accountability that's laid on the police and thus shaved away a bit of their power, then you know power must fight back. And I can't help but wonder if the FBI director's comments were meant to make people believe that BLM, not police brutality, is the real problem; that they're the ones raising the temperature so much that cops are at risk, which puts citizens at risk. In reality, the Ferguson effect appears to be nothing more than ploy to delegitimize BLM and poison their message.

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Police on the streets of Paris. Photo by VICE News/Etienne Roullion

Not long after the body of a three-year-old Syrian boy named Aylan Kurdi was found washed up against a beach in Turkey, unleashing a vast tide of sympathy across Europe, strange stories started appearing in the press. The Islamic State, it was claimed, was using the mass movement of refugees to smuggle its fighters into Europe; those people struggling—and often dying—in the hope of reaching somewhere safe for themselves and their families were actually carrying with them a virulent evil, disguising itself as hopelessness. Any generosity from the people of Europe would only end up destroying them; we had to be callous, and close the gates, or we would die. For a long time, this could easily be dismissed as baseless and premature, or as a sick fantasy of the heartless Right. Now, it's not so easy. After last week's massacre in Paris, police found a Syrian passport near where a suicide bomber had detonated his vest by the Stade de France, identifying its holder as Ahmad al-Mohammad, born in Idlib. Not just that—someone holding an identical passport had been rescued from a capsized boat in the Aegean.

The response was swift, and no less dangerous for its utter incoherency. The German neo-fascist group Pegida began holding rallies of thousands rather than hundreds. The government of Poland announced that it would not be taking in any Syrian refugees under an EU quota system, without security guarantees. Several states in the US followed suit, with governors announcing that they are against accepting Syrian refugees—despite the fact that the federal government has the final say about this. It's easy to see why the idea that Syrian refugees were responsible for the atrocities in Paris is so attractive: it means we no longer have to think about what's happening within our own societies. We don't have to wonder why people who grew up in one of the most prosperous societies on Earth would choose fanaticism and death. Our only fault is our own softness, kindness, and generosity; if we believe this, then we have license to be cruel. But the story that's being told—a plot to sneak terrorists into Europe, unmasked by the discovery of that passport—isn't just almost certainly untrue. It doesn't even make any sense.

To begin with the passport itself: if we were to accept the anti-migrant narrative, we'd have to believe that a Syrian ISIS fighter posing as a refugee (who would, it must be assumed, want to keep the route he took into Europe concealed, so others could follow him) would have gone out to commit a terrorist attack, and accidentally slipped up by bringing his passport along with him. Maybe it was force of habit. Then there's the fact that the passport survived the blast almost entirely intact. Did he drop it by accident? Was he still a good citizen, who wanted to be helpful to the police and their enquiries even as he tried to murder the spectators at a soccer game? Weird coincidences can and do happen, but it all seems pretty implausible. It seems more likely that the reason that passport was found was because the attacker wanted it to be found—something which the German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere has suggested.

Related: Watch VICE News' Dispatch 'What's Next for Paris?'

There are plenty of reasons why ISIS might want Western governments to turn their hatred and violence on refugees. In Dabiq, the group's English-language online magazine, an article announces its intention to "bring division into the world and destroy the grey zone." Here they're in full agreement with George W Bush: you're either with us, or you're with the Crusaders. For Muslims to be seeking refuge in the West is unacceptable: not only does it reveal the lie of their propaganda of a utopian caliphate, it disturbs their binary division of the world. They write: "Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilafah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands." ISIS commanders and European racists are in full agreement: the movement of refugees must be stopped at all costs.

This doesn't mean that it's entirely impossible that ISIS would be smuggling fighters into Europe disguised as refugees, but it is unlikely. It's a strategy that stokes the fears of the right-wing, but it would serve no practical purpose whatsoever. All of the identified perpetrators of the attacks in Paris have been French or Belgian citizens: ISIS has a sizable pool of sympathizers in Western countries (although it is, it must be stressed, minuscule in comparison to the actual Muslim population), and it's more efficient to train European nationals in Syria and then send them home on their European passports than to bring Syrians into Europe on the slow and dangerous migrant routes. There's no advantage in importing Syrians: unlike European jihadis, they'd have no knowledge of the local terrain, and little understanding of the language. At a time when ISIS is steadily losing ground in the Middle East—to the Iraqi and Syrian governments, the Peshmerga, and the YPG—sacrificing its fighters on the ground for a symbolic attack in Europe is unlikely to be a worthwhile trade if any other option presents itself.

And what we know about the passport seems to bear this out. It was likely to be a forgery—other passports, bearing the exact same details but with different photographs, have been found in Serbia and Greece. Many Syrian refugees have reported the theft of their passports by European gangs, who can sell them on to other migrants hoping for a faster route to asylum. (There are also fairly legitimate reasons why a genuine Syrian refugee might be holding a forged passport—not everyone in the country had one to begin with, and many have children who were born in refugee camps outside the country.) It's entirely possible that the attacker could have bought or stolen the passport within Paris. There have been reports that fingerprints taken from the Stade de France match those recorded by Greek authorities on the island of Leros, but the trajectory is confused—Serbian records have the same individual crossing into their territory on October 7, while Greece reports that he was on a ferry to the mainland on that same day (it has also been reported that he was on the ferry on October 5). In any case, despite the fingerprints, the European Commission's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, Federica Mogherini, has insisted that all the attackers were European nationals, and "it is an issue of internal domestic security."

Of course, there's still a chance that the fearmongers are right, and ISIS fighters are indeed coming into Europe: simply crossing an international border doesn't confer any automatic moral virtue. But there's another possibility, slight but still present, that's even more horrifying. Immediately after the attacks, there were reports that an Egyptian passport had also been found near the Stade de France, prompting immediate speculation of an international Middle-Eastern conspiracy. In the end, the Egyptian embassy in France confirmed that one of its passports had been found, but it belonged to Waleed Abdel-Razzak, a football fan who had been lining up to buy tickets when a suicide bomb was detonated, and who was in critical condition at a hospital in Clichy. It might yet be the case that nativist fanatics are trying to victimize some of the most vulnerable people in Europe, not because one of the refugees perpetrated an atrocity, but because one of the refugees had the temerity to be a victim.

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Photo of another shipwreck by Richard Bartz via Wikicommons

Read: Facebook Is Making It Easier for Ex-Lovers to Mute Each Other

"What shall we do with the drunken sailor?" asks the age-old sea shanty. According to various versions the resolution is putting him in a longboat until he's sober, shaving his belly with a rusty razor (not sure how that would help), or—if you're into more esoteric nomenclature—"put him in the scuppers with the hosepipe on him," whatever that means.

The correct answer is none of the above: Fire him on the spot. And that's exactly what a shipping company did after it was discovered that a Russian sailor crashed a 7,000-ton, 432-foot cargo ship into a rocky foreshore in Scotland with half a liter of rum in his veins.

According to the Independent, in February this year a Lysblink Seaways vessel was on its way from Belfast to Skogn, Norway, carrying a cargo of paper when the sole officer on watch managed to run the ship into the foreshore at full speed. The ship was damaged so badly it had to be taken to the scrap heap, but not until it had sat in the sea for two days, spilling an approximate 25 tons of oil into the surrounding water.

The 36-year-old skipper had consumed over eight times the legal alcohol limit before falling asleep on duty and failing to correct the ship's course. A spokesman for DFDS said: "What happened on the ship was completely irresponsible. We have a very clear and very clearly communicated zero-tolerance alcohol policy which cannot be misunderstood."

According to the incident report, "Records showed that the bonded store was regularly replenished, and empty beer, wine, and spirit bottles and cartons found on board after the accident indicated significant levels of alcohol consumption by the crew."

As for the officer, it appears he was thrown overboard, figuratively speaking at least. A statement from the DFDS said that "the officer is no longer employed by DFDS" and they "hope this will not cast a shadow over our other officers who rightfully enjoy a very good reputation."

All screenshots courtesy of EA

Looking up at the crisp blue skies of Hoth, another X-Wing pilot inexplicably fucks it straight into a cliff. Four rebels sprint down a corridor, but sort of can't get past each other, and get a bit stuck. Luke Skywalker appears, everyone throws a grenade at him, and then Luke Skywalker decides to go home. It's like you're in the films!

Star Wars: Battlefront puts you in the shoes of either the Good Star Wars Men or the Bad Star Wars Men and allows you to fight large numbers of other human players online with spaceships, lasers, and cool space-grenades. It is either perfectly acceptable or a little bit shit, depending on how many panes of rose-tinted glass you've willingly smashed straight into your face. I'll get to the frankly terrifying cultural side of things shortly, but let's just get something simple straight early: Star Wars: Battlefront is not a very good game.

There's been clear marketing messaging from publishers EA that the game is aimed at Star Wars fans rather than gamers, drawing parallels to the classic cry of "it's for kids" with an extra dollop of condescension. This mentality feels crass—a shrugging implication that the game is little more than aesthetic content to be passively consumed, the chosen medium of a video game seen as something of only minor relevance.

To be blunt, this mentality shows. Huge amounts of care have been put into beautifully recreating the aesthetic tone of Star Wars. Explosions spray the wonderful lo-fi sparks that Lucasfilm used in the original trilogy, and lasers look and sound exactly like they did in the films. Darth Vader's voiceover is inexplicably off, but watching him slowly plod around doing lots of cool murder is evocative, exciting stuff—right up until the point where you actually try it yourself.

Being Darth Vader is rubbish. The way you attack and move is uncharacteristically mechanical (yes, yes, he's mostly a robot, but you know what I mean), and the fun of causing death to lesser minions is usually interrupted by a Jedi. Then you've pretty much got to have a lightsaber duel, which tends to have coherence and finesse of two drunk men trying to fight with their eyes closed. Again, fun to watch, but awful to actually be a part of.

Flying ships is even worse, offering the slow and floaty controls of an arcade-style game with none of the forgiveness that usually comes with that. Dogfights are a boring and sluggish chore, the maps are too small to give you any sense of the freedom of flight, and trying to pick off tiny ground units without smashing yourself into the ground simply isn't fun. The power-up tokens that let you fly ships are already being widely ignored by many players—a huge failing on the game's part.

This token system aims to democratize fun by scattering power-ups for anyone to pick up and enjoy, but this abstraction adds further disconnect between the environment and the player, making the worlds feel even more like dead, gorgeous dioramas. In the brief hours in which the game shines, the spectacle enough will satisfy most—the grand battles of Supremacy and Walker Assault mode feature all of the people, all of the guns, all of that rousing John Williams noise. But hop into most of the smaller modes, and Battlefront's shortcomings have nowhere to hide.

Article continues after the video below

Watch VICE's film on another kind of obsession, the mystical universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

First and foremost, the shooting is lame. They've 100 percent nailed the way that guns in Star Wars look and sound, but that doesn't translate into something that feels good whenever you aim and pull the trigger. Playing it as a third-person action game rather than an FPS makes the shooting feel a lot better, but for many that's hardly an acceptable fix.

The second big problem? There's fuck all else to do. Battlefront's miserly approach to unlocks means you have to actually play a match before you unlock the thermal detonator. I appreciate the value of easing-in less experienced players, but fucking hell guys, let me have a grenade.

Progression remains tediously slow, perhaps in a vain effort to disguise what little the game has to offer. You're looking at roughly five hours of play before you're allowed to use a jetpack, and I deeply resent anything in life that has the gall to tell me I'm not allowed a jetpack. Jokes aside it's a shoddy catch-22, with unlock-gating that expects players to invest large amounts of time to access the variety they fundamentally need to keep things fun for more than a short period.

You could easily argue that the game has been designed with brief and sporadic sessions in mind, but the game heavily rewards the opposite behavior. Those who play the most can afford superior versions of the items and perks, further widening the gap for those who just want to pop in for half an hour. Within a few days it's already frustrating to be constantly killed by toys you can't have—give it a week and it'll be even less fun.

Relying on incredibly simplified gameplay might mean that less-skilled players aren't confused, but it won't mean they'll have a better time. Removing any opportunity for tactics or nuance puts all of the focus on loadout and skill. Looking at the wider landscape of online shooters—many of which are now largely undecipherable from years of incremental features—it's safe to say that pure simplicity isn't a pointless ideal to aspire for.

But simplicity without elegance is merely regressive, and that's mostly where Battlefront's design seems to sit. Crikey-that's-Hoth visuals aside, this game feels immediately dated—full of old, bad ideas. The co-op missions encourage you to try and find five hidden tokens on each map, as if that's a fun way to fill a game in 2015.

'Star Wars: Battlefront', gameplay release trailer

Offline missions are basic but fun, giving you a better chance to soak in the atmosphere of the much-loved worlds while also getting to feel like you're actually in the films, i.e. running about like a mad laser-bastard while rarely getting into any kind of meaningful pickle. The AI is rubbish, but who cares? They're people who exist to be shot at, with lasers. That's the dictionary definition of what Stormtroopers are. It's thin, dull, repetitive stuff that's immediately more enjoyable if you add friends, but as that statement applies to life in general I don't think it really represents a free pass.

With only a handful of maps and guns to play around with, it's hard not to raise eyebrows at the luxury $50 price tag of Battlefront's Season Pass DLC—with the small quantity of repetitive content on offer drawing some parallels with 2014's Destiny. The key difference here is quality and timescale—Bungie's shooter nailed the gunplay so hard that doing the same thing over and over wasn't galling for many, but Battlefront loses most of its appeal after just one or two hours.

So what is this, then? It's gorgeous and far more fun to watch than play, so it's fantastic for anyone who wants to show off a new telly. Apart from that, it's fundamentally just a very expensive way to immerse yourself in Star Wars. The mileage on this magic will certainly vary, and when it fades you're in for a very boring ride.

Related, on Motherboard: These Ten Deleted 'Star Wars' Scenes Actually Fill in a Lot of Plot Holes

I can happily tell you that purely as a game it's not worth your time and money, but is it worth it as a Star Wars thing? Is it worth it if you love Star Wars? Well on that front, I've got no bloody clue. I love the original films, grew up reading spin-off books and playing most of the games, and I'm currently hooked to the brilliant Imperial Assault. So as someone who really likes Star Wars, it's been weird to watch as in 2015 a huge chunk of the planet has collectively lost exactly all of their shit. Geek culture's rise from underdog to consumer juggernaut has forged a number of mono-cultural obsessions, and Star Wars is undoubtedly the biggest of big dogs.

We're living in a reality where Hasbro is struggling to keep up with the demand for toys of characters in films that aren't out yet—characters that arguably might just be shit. The Star Wars universe remains fantastic, but Star Wars as a brand has become a terrifying entity—a means of endlessly serving up stuff to an audience that largely isn't willing to be critical, just grateful for new opportunities to consume. In sparser times this was understandable, but with Disney's new money-machine almost running on fumes, it's a mindset I increasingly struggle to relate to.

So if you really love games, it's not a great game. And if you really love Star Wars? I've got absolutely no idea. Maybe whack a cinnamon bun on either side of a bucket and wank into it while pretending you're a Wookie? After that, if dropping fifty quid on a couple of hours of disposable enjoyment doesn't seem like a momentary total loss of sanity, then fuck it, go ahead and treat yourself.

Star Wars: Battlefront is out now for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One.

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Lara Croft as she appears in 'Rise of the Tomb Raider'

To really understand Lara Croft, you have to get under her skin. Which, considering she's a computer-generated character controllable in a hugely popular video game series, means speaking to the very real humans who bring her to life.

Californian studio Crystal Dynamics' second title in its reimaging of the Tomb Raider franchise, Rise of the Tomb Raider, is out now, exclusive to Xbox consoles. The game sees Lara travel from Syria to Siberia in search of the Divine Source, a mystical object said to grant people eternal life. Naturally, the game's story isn't a straightforward tale of leaving airport A to arrive at destination B, picking up the treasure in question and then jetting back to London for last orders. There's plenty of treachery afoot, wickedly devious challenges to overcome, and a sinister organization by the name of Trinity for Lara to face off against. And that's all before she encounters some of the Divine Source's more, shall we say, veteran guardians.

The Lara Croft of Rise of the Tomb Raider is played by English actress Camilla Luddington, known to many for her television roles in Grey's Anatomy, Californication, and True Blood. It's her second time playing Lara, after 2013's Tomb Raider, and she not only contributes her voice to the game but also performed motion capture for the character. The story she finds herself a part of is primarily penned by acclaimed games writer Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of the late Discworld series author Terry Pratchett, whose past credits include the previous Tomb Raider, Mirror's Edge, and BioShock Infinite. We spoke to both of them about what it's like to be the lifeblood that flows through the digital veins of today's Lara Croft.

Camilla Luddington

VICE: What were your first thoughts when you landed the role of Lara, for the 2013 game? Obviously you must have been excited, but those are some intimidating boots you're slipping into.
Camilla Luddington: Of course I was excited, and then I felt really intimidated, because she's such an iconic character. All of the Laras that came before me were so loved by fans, so I wasn't sure if my Lara would be embraced. But the reboot, and the direction the character was being taken in, seemed exciting to me. I thought this Lara seemed a lot more fleshed out and grounded. But that weight of taking on someone so iconic was definitely there.

Did you study what previous voice actors in the role had achieved, or was your approach to pretty much start Lara from scratch?
I did look up what people had done before me, not in a way that would influence me, but because I felt I needed to respect my predecessors and look at what journey they'd taken the character on. This was a role that I knew I could take some artistic license with. It wasn't like stepping into someone else's shoes because it's a reboot. Crystal Dynamics really helped to inform me about the direction the character was going in, so I did acknowledge previous Laras, but that didn't affect how I approached the role, how I created my own character.

Rhianna, writing for a character like Lara Croft poses some fairly unique challenges: the need to progress the character, to find new facets to her, while also remaining "true" to some extent to her legacy. When you first approached the project for the 2013 reboot, how many "versions" of this Lara did you go through before landing at what we saw then, and now in Rise...?
Rhianna Pratchett: By the time I joined the team, the look of reboot Lara had already been established. In fact it was one of the things that attracted me to the project in the first place. Crystal Dynamics and I both had ideas of where we wanted to go with Lara and how we wanted to depict her. Luckily they gelled really well. There was definitely a shared desire to reveal the more human side of Lara, and show her at a time when she didn't have the guns, gadgets, and witty one-liners to deal with anything that life throws at her. We wanted to delve deeper than the Teflon-style Lara of previous incarnations, as fun as she was. We wanted to keep some of the traits that had made her a great character in the first place such as her resourcefulness, bravery, and tenacity, but also rewind them to a point where they would be truly tested, and really start bubbling to the surface.

And did you have any hesitation in getting involved with a character like Lara, and a franchise like Tomb Raider, given its high profile?
I had absolutely no hesitation. I'd already worked on two female protagonists—Nariko from Heavenly Sword and Faith from Mirror's Edge—so I felt well prepared for the challenge. Ultimately, I had to stop thinking of her as an icon and just think of her as a character.

Related: Watch VICE's new film on the 'Mobile Love Industries'

Camilla, what were your own experiences of Lara, prior to 2013? Did you play the original Tomb Raider, from 1996?
Luddington: I did. My older brother had the original games, when I was younger, and he played them, and I was allowed on them once in a while, which felt like never, basically. But I watched him play a lot. I'm fairly terrible at video games—so my introduction was the first game, on the PlayStation. Then I saw the movies, with Angelina Jolie, so I got to know her better through those. But I know her first and foremost as a video game character—that was my introduction to Lara. It's funny, because I can clearly remember what that first game was like, and seeing the difference in the game of then compared to the one we've made now, it's just absolutely mind blowing. It's so strange.

What sort of feedback have you had, personally, from fans of the Tomb Raider series?
The feedback that I love the most is what I get when I actually meet the fans at places like Comic-Con. People really seem to have embraced and fallen in love with new Lara. They can relate to her more than they could any previous version. I meet a lot of young girls who tell me that the mantras that Lara has, on pushing forward and on keeping going, throughout dire situations, have really spoken to them, and they've taken that on board and it's helped them in their own lives. So that's really touching feedback.

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Rhianna, this Lara is pretty savvy with guns, and seems to enjoy getting stuck into combat.
Pratchett: Lara's more confident and proactive now. She's really throwing herself in at the deep end. Rise... is about more than just survival. Although Lara doesn't openly admit it to herself, she's definitely getting a taste for adventure.

Camilla, you do the motion capture as well as the voice acting. Just what kind of shape does that require you to be in? Because both Rise of the Tomb Raider and its predecessor are pretty physical games.
Luddington: Physically, I have to say that I really wasn't aware, ahead of doing it, just how much work would go into the first game. We would be filming around nine hours of motion capture work every day, and I remember coming away from the first day, on the first game, just aching all over. It was obvious that I needed to be a bit more prepared. For some reason in my head I thought she'd just be killing the bad guys and that'd be it; I didn't realize just how much I'd also get beaten up! And whenever it gets tough on Lara, that means it has to be tough on me. So I did circuit training, and lots of running, and I did this thing in Los Angeles called SoulCycle, and they really helped keep me in shape, just in terms of pure stamina and endurance. Emotionally, I think you're going on a journey with the character, so you have to be present for each and every scene, and for me one thing I like to do is step away between takes, away from everyone else, listen to some music and just get into that place, to help me perform.

What sort of music were you listening to while shooting Rise of the Tomb Raider, then?
I listened to a lot of Muse, actually. I think, for me, the music can't be a love song, or a nice ballad—and everything on a Muse album sounds kind of apocalyptic, almost. So that tone of music, that helped me get into character.

Were there any funny things you had to do in the studio, during the mo-cap work?
The only thing that makes me laugh, sometimes, is when I describe myself as feeling like a fridge, with a bunch of fridge magnets stuck all over me, because all of the weapons have Velcro on them. People will come up to me while we're filming and just cover me in weapons. That was really funny. But the mo-cap suit is just like you see people use on TV, or in pictures; you have a camera attached to your head. It's definitely different to traditional acting, and the hardest thing, initially, is to get used to this camera being so close to your face. It's in your eye-line, and it takes a while to get used to that. But everything else, you quickly come to learn them.

Rhianna Pratchett

Rhianna, as your career in games writing has progressed, have you felt an industry shift towards the medium actively attempting to tell stories on a par with those found in the written word, films, and television? As console generations pass, it seems that designers are slowly but surely embracing this sweet spot between action and adventure and compelling narratives, that can sometimes go beyond Hollywood cliche or predictable character stereotypes.
Pratchett: Yes, stories are improving, especially in the rise of episodic games like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Life Is Strange. I still think there's a lot we can do in utilizing the unique interactive power of this medium to tell stories that only games can. We've come a long way over the last decade, but I think we're still only scratching the surface of what's possible. There are going to be some exciting times ahead.

Speaking of stereotypes, how important was it, at the very start of writing for Rise..., that this Lara again avoided any of gaming's somewhat-standard "roles" for its female leads. Sure, there are moments in the new game, brief though they are, when Lara seems helpless, but for the most part she's the driving force in her own fate.
I don't think there have been enough female protagonist in games for there to be a stereotypical female lead role yet. What was important for us was shaping the journey around Lara's character and her growth. The whole team treat her with respect and consideration. She's not an afterthought, or just a pretty avatar—she's central to the whole experience.

In general, what are the challenges of writing for a medium where your own script is, at points, a passenger with the player's own actions in the driving seat? A medium where the player could miss aspects of the story entirely? Is it fun, kind of, to hide facets of the fiction within collectibles?
What works for a fun, active gaming experience doesn't always flow well for narrative, which often needs to move at a different pace to the breakneck speed of action-orientated gameplay. The idea is to get gameplay and narrative synced up, rather than add odds with one another. There are similar challenges for big blockbuster movies.

As a writer on a big games like the Tomb Raider titles, you tend to write different levels of story for different types of players to discover. So there's the core golden path story, which every player will experience, then there's the off-the-beaten-path story that usually covers things like environmental storytelling and secondary narrative such as journals and letters, and then there's the story that the completionist players will experience from searching ever corner of the world. That will usually help flesh out a lot of detail about the characters, the background and add loads of extra color and detail.

Camilla, now that Rise of the Tomb Raider is out, what does the future hold for you and Lara Croft?
Luddington: I'm hoping that this game is a puzzle piece in a much bigger journey for Lara, so I want to complete that journey with her. I don't know if we'll ever manage that, but I'd like to have this sense of peace with the character, and feel proud of what she's accomplished. I don't know if she'll ever get that, because she has a personality that's constantly making her push herself, so she might not ever reach a place of peace. But I'd like to continue the journey. But who knows? I'm still very much attached to the character. I've played her for so long now—the first game took three years to make, and this one took two, so it's the character I've played for the longest time, and I feel there's a part of me in her, and her in me.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is out now for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Camilla Luddington interview conducted by Joe Goodman. Rhianna Pratchett interview by Mike Diver. Photographs supplied by the game's UK PR company.

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Photo of stun guns via Flickr user Christopher Smythers

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

His senior year of journalism school, Nick Berardini set out to make a movie about a young man, Stanley Harlan, who died after being Tased for 31 seconds during a contentious traffic stop in Moberly, Missouri. But Berardini's focus quickly shifted. "It became very clear that the way to understand what happened to Stanley Harlan was to understand the company," Berardini says.

The resulting documentary, Killing Them Safely, in theaters November 27, takes a close—and unabashedly critical—look at TASER International, Inc., a company that has sold electrical weapons to more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies and has more recently entered the body-camera market.

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In the film, Berardini alleges that the deaths of Harlan and others were partly due to the fact that TASER International failed to adequately warn police officers of the risks in using the weapon. The company's Vice President of Strategic Communication, Steve Tuttle, was interviewed for the documentary in 2010 but says he hasn't seen the final product ("I don't live in TriBeCa").

According to Tuttle, the number of Taser-related deaths is far fewer than the totals tallied by outside organizations, including Amnesty International and the Guardian. "It's the most-used, less-lethal weapon by officers, the safer option compared to all these other tools," he says. "There's a lot of dark conspiracy here. A lot of the claims being made are just off the charts." (Read Tuttle's full response here.)

Nick Berardini spoke with the Marshall Project about the film, the company, and the controversy.

The Marshall Project: TASER gave you a lot of access. You filmed in their headquarters and spent a day touring the facilities. How did that happen?
Nick Berardini: I went to them with a pitch that said, "I'm genuinely curious about your point of view." I didn't understand much about the company other than its pretty aggressive safety claim. Because I didn't have all the information about exactly what had gone on in the company, it did make it easier to be more empathetic to where they were coming from. I think the reason they granted me some of this access was because they were losing product liability lawsuits for the first time during this stretch. So it made them more eager to just speak, to just put it all out there.

When I left, I think Steve Tuttle could tell it didn't go the way he thought it was going to go. I was scheduled to talk to two doctors who had done a lot of research for TASER International the same weekend. Forty-five minutes after leaving TASER, they both called and canceled.

What has their response been since the film came out?
Uh, not sure yet.

Have you heard from them?
No. They want to move past all this controversy. They're in many cases as culpable or more culpable than police officers, at least when the officers are acting in good faith. Clearly some officers willfully abuse the weapon, but in a lot of cases, the people who die should never have been put in jeopardy. They are a weapons manufacturer. And as a weapons manufacturer, use of force is good for their bottom line. So what TASER did was fundamentally change the way police did their jobs by making them more apt to use force to solve a confrontation, as opposed to using de-escalation. De-escalation is very bad for business at TASER.

Are you saying that Tasers aren't being used just to replace guns in high-threat situations?
Exactly. What they did from the beginning was really sell the public on this being an alternative to use of force. This is a way to prevent the use of guns.Then in training, they're telling police officers the best way to do your job is to end confrontations quickly. [ Note: While TASER provides training materials on the technology and its effects, individual police departments are responsible for their own policies on when the weapon should be used. ]

A recent Guardian story found that police aren't following suggested national standards on how to use Tasers. Is that part of the problem?
You can have all the good guidelines in the world, but TASER, which actually controls the training, needs to be honest with law enforcement about the risks of the weapon and not talk outside of both sides of their mouth, , "we put these risks in the training because greedy lawyers want to sue us." No, you put the risks in the training because you've lost lawsuits. Because there's something legitimate to it. Until that happens, it doesn't matter what the might recommend.

You started this film long before Ferguson and Baltimore erupted in protest. What role have you seen Tasers play in the current conversation on policing?
A lot of departments are doubling down on Tasers to give the appearance that they're doing something about deadly force. Take New York, for example. They're spending $4.5 million now on more Tasers and body cameras from TASER International, and they're doing that to sort of satisfy the public's desire for action.

What the company is very smart at doing is pitching the body camera. Body cameras aren't weapons, but the rhetoric is the same. It's about the promise of this technology and only the best version of what this technology can bring, without thinking about the downside. For example, there is research that shows TASER is charging, like, 23 times what Amazon would charge for storage. What are we going to do about Freedom of Information requests? How do you handle video from a department on a day-to-day basis? There's a lot of practical questions that don't get answered, or don't get considered seriously enough because there's such a public cry for action.

Taser estimates they've saved 157,854 lives from death or "serious injury" by being deployed when an officer would have otherwise used deadly force.
There was a study that said that about 5 percent of all Taser uses are in a high-threat situation where deadly force seemed imminent; they just 5 percent of the total number of Taser uses [to get the number of instances where lethal force was avoided because a Taser was used instead]. It's a completely baseless and ludicrous claim, because the best estimates show that roughly 1,000 to 1,500 people a year are going to die in police custody — including shootings. That means that for the years that TASER wasn't in business and wasn't used en masse, we would have been looking at like 20,000 deaths a year.

What kind of data is available on Taser usage? Is it any better or worse than the numbers on police-involved shootings?
It's a little better. It's based off media reports, with medical examiners, it's unclear exactly whether being Tased contributed to those deaths.

What's really sad about this is the way that TASER has thrown police departments under the bus based on the fine-print warnings that they put in their training. While simultaneously saying the weapons aren't dangerous, it's often police departments that are the ones dealing with the consequences. The only thing that's changing behavior is the experience of being sued. Which inevitably means a number of people are going to die or be injured before anyone thinks about changing anything.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

This article was originally published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

On my way to meet Dapper Laughs I walked past one of those poster walls in Shoreditch and saw three ads for his new DVD, The Res-Erection. Dapper is back, is the thing. He has been resurrected. He has been resurrected for the sort of people who need a hyphen in the title "Res-Erection" to fully understand that hide-in-plain-sight erection joke. And a year on from his now iconic Newsnight seppuku, it's clear that Dapper still has his critics: Each Res-Erection poster—in a vista of otherwise undisturbed adverts—had been torn to bits, Dapper's thrusting crotch shredded and scattered to the wind. Someone had written "CUNT" on one with a Sharpie.

Ah, I thought. That's my poetic intro sorted, then.

Because dip a thermometer into the Dapper Laughs public opinion broth and it still comes out hot with outrage. The day after I met him, Dapper was monstered on Twitter after declaring himself a feminist in a video interview with campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez. A recent gig at a bar in Guildford was half-heartedly petitioned by a local activist group. An interview in July in which Dapper said he wanted to be educated to help teach his audience about gray-area topics like sexual consent and catcalling resulted in headlines like, "Dapper Laughs Blames His Critics For His Rape Jokes, Says They Should've 'Educated' Him." There's still a real dearth of moistness out there.

But there's also a loyal-through-it-all fanbase. And therein lies the duality of Dapper Laughs, a man trapped between two stones: placating critics who never consumed his comedy until it was a hot-button issue, while keeping the fans happy with his catchphrases. Lashing out at constructive feminist critique, but also putting on a somber turtleneck and saying, "Actually, women-hating banter is bad." Dapper Laughs is throwback comedy in a time of high-minded criticism, and it's already hurt him once.

So is The Res-Erection the start of a new wholesome, family-friendly Dapper, one who will finally win over his detractors? Haha, no. There's like a whole ten-minute bit about fingering, and he mimics a handjob for ages.

I went full immersionist for this meeting. I watched the entire hour of The Res-Erection, and the DVD extras. I followed Dapper Laughs on Snapchat for weeks. I re-watched the entirety of his ITV2 show, Dapper Laughs: On the Pull. I watched so many Vine compilations that YouTube now thinks I like Vine. I read think-piece after think-piece after think-piece.

Yet, I still couldn't take a pulse on the infamous rape joke that, ultimately, led to his demise:

Dapper's story, which he's reiterated over and over, is that he was parroting a girl in the front row who was asking that he heckle her friend, suggesting she was "gagging for a rape"—a line amplified infinitely when repeated contextless into a microphone by one of the UK's most divisive personalities. And suddenly, that was it: Dapper was painted as a rape apologist and the high priest of lad culture, his show taken away from him, his tour canceled, his management split. A banterous Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

"I was completely deemed as the pro-rape comedian for six or seven months," he says early into our interview. Dapper is nervous about meeting with VICE. Dapper's people are nervous about meeting with VICE. He gets me a pint and tells me he didn't like Clive Martin's piece about him, but that if he was reading it about anyone else he would be laughing his tits off.

There's still an underlying distrust of the media, a certain detectable bitterness, one that flows into The Res-Erection, a loose hour that leads with a 20-minute explainer about that Newsnight interview, Dapper explaining how he was pushed into it, Dapper explaining how his father's cancer diagnosis colored his decision to kill the character off, Dapper at pains to explain how he was misrepresented—that feels more like an attempt to plaster a wound inflicted on his fans than a bid to make them laugh, like the slow introduction of jokes at a wake. I mean, imagine making a joke at a wake. You can't just walk into a wake and start miming deep-throat right from the off, can you? You can't do your primo fingering material at the start of a wake. You've got to wait a good 20 minutes, get all the somber stuff out of the way first.

The Dapper that slowly starts to blossom into view during The Res-Erection is different to the man who was killed off a year ago; you sense he is deliberately sidestepping his own catchphrases in a pointed attempt to avoid turning into a Little Britain circa-series three self-caricature: just one "OI OI!," just a couple of "she knows" ("I'm trying to get away from them," he admits). Instead, what you get is a sort of universal dating-is-quite-tricky-isn't-it-and-what-about-those-handjobs-eh middle ground. It's lad-lite: not quite banter, not quite venom; two parts Jay from The Inbetweeners and one part Marbella club night warm-up act, the background noise to a thousand simultaneous lads-night-out pre-drinking sessions.

It's also a throwback to the Dapper Laughs who first made his name on Vine. As Dan (his actual name is Daniel O'Reilly; the church and state line between the actor and the character is exceptionally clear) explains, Dapper Laughs started as a way to lampoon the lads he grew up with—lads as the butt of the joke, a loving caricature rather than the dangerous, wolf-whistling pariah he became.

"When it all started was with lads saying how they all got tit pics and shagged loads of women," he says. "I find my friends very funny, I find myself at 15 and 16 very funny, so when I sat down and developed the character I decided to just amplify that—taking the piss out of lads, taking the piss out of how they're derogatory towards women."

Early Dapper builds on lads' inherent fears and insecurities; the same fraught self-doubt that makes them obsess over the size of their dick, the same need to be relevant that makes them shout out of moving cars.

Here's a good example:

But then:

But that was before. Now, in front of me, sits Dapper 2.0, and Dapper 2.0 is trying to move towards the "aren't lads dumb?" version of himself and away from the "take your bra off or I'll stab you with a knife" incarnation, which I think we can all agree is progress. But when considering the reformation of Dapper Laughs, the key question is: Did he really understand why jokes like "take your bra off or I'll stab you with a knife" might have been an issue?

"I think the only way to approach the drama and embarrassment of what I went through is to mock it, and go back to mocking Dapper Laughs," he says. "It all got a bit fucking tense towards the end, you know, and just being a little bit... you know, let's be honest, I wasn't very up to date. I never took the time before I was attacked—with feminism and sexual harassment and stuff like that—I never took the time to really understand it. And I didn't, at the time, really care. Whereas now, I'm like, if I can create a way to educate my male fans, maybe some of the people who really hated me before will be able to look at it and think, 'OK, he's made some mistakes, but he's back on the right path.'"

Dapper Laughs didn't tell me he was a feminist: He didn't utter the magic words "I am a feminist now," as though it was an incantation that can reverse all prior wrongs, as he did with Criado-Perez. But he did tell me he was interested in working with a charity; he's had preliminary conversations with the Self Esteem Team, a body image and mental health charity who work with schools (although a SET representative confirmed it's not gone much further than an earnest chat at a book launch party). And he seems to have a more nuanced than expected idea of how he can educate his legion of (diverse, but largely male) fans without the cod charitable-gesture-towards-the-homeless thing that YouTubers always do when they fuck up.

"You see a lot of people online, and they're like, 'Why don't you go and buy a McDonald's?' fucking outrageous video, and then the next video they go and buy a McDonald's and give it to a homeless person. I'm like: I treat my fans as my mates. So they know I'm not going to do something I'm not invested in and I don't believe in," he says.

"So now I've gone out of my way to work with people where I can help everyday sexual harassment and sexual consent—the grey lines between them. Because all my fanbase is uni lads, and it's not only women that are struggling with sexual consent—you know, if they're drunk and they don't know if they should do it—but some lads are struggling, too. They're thinking, 'Fucking hell, I don't want to fuck her, I don't want to try and pull her,'" he explains, inadvertently making an excellent case for the mass rolling-out of consent classes.

"What I'm working on doing at the moment is saying: 'Where's the line? Is it OK to flirt the same way in a supermarket as it is to flirt in a nightclub?' You know, I'd love to work with that, because I think that if I'd realized that I should've a bit more responsibility with the message I'd put out this time last year, maybe so much of this wouldn't have happened. But, you know: I was a bit immature."

If you're wondering how sincere this is—as though the new Dapper is some tightly rehearsed PR ruse, a dog taught how to bark "CONSENT CULTURE" by an incredibly expensive ad agency—then the only opinion I can offer you is my own, and my opinion is: Yeah, this seemed pretty sincere. Dapper Laughs is fundamentally a man who wants his career back, wants to shout "OI OI!" to the fans who want it. His only struggle is occupying the right space—somewhere floating a little bit below the full media glare, less flirting with ITV2 mainstream-ism and more speaking directly to his fans on Snapchat—where he can get on. It's a struggle he's sort of been through before.

There were shades of history repeating itself in last year's media pile-on. The original Dapper Laughs character came from O'Reilly—a successful family-friendly cruise liner comedian in a former life, before he could grow a little beard—trying to find a place for himself in an intellectual comedy circuit once he made it back to land.

"I was very family-friendly, entertaining kids and families and elderly people," he says. "When I came back to the UK and started doing the comedy clubs, you can't do that type of humor. It needs to be current affairs, it needs to be gritty. And I don't mind saying it, but I didn't feel like I was intelligent enough—or maybe it was my class—to do that. I struggled to create political satire or current affair-orientated stuff. I was struggling to hit with the audience."

"Jeremy Corbyn is proper moist over this cenotaph" isn't going to get a laugh, so he went lowbrow—dick jokes, basically; some tits jokes—and it worked, right up to when it didn't. But a post-cruise Daniel O'Reilly lost in a world of Jongleurs is similar to Dapper against the media: both times he was trying to appease a left wing intelligentsia who didn't really want him, both times he resorted to saying stuff about his dick a lot to get easy laughs.

Dapper and some fans

One of the criticisms that seems to have stung O'Reilly the most is a petition from 44 comedians branding his comedy sexist and degrading—"An open letter denouncing me from the comedy industry, saying I haven't earned my comedy stripes, even though I did the cruise ships"—which almost doubles as a slur on his fans. The core of Dapper's audience don't read think-pieces, and so were baffled when he turned up on Newsnight, half-sobbing and announcing the ride was over.

"They thought it was a joke," he says. "They thought at some point I was going to go 'OI OI, SHE KNOWS!' They were devastated. A lot of people were like, 'What the fuck are you doing, man—you're our idol.' Every time I do my stand-up shows there are people going, 'There's no comedy for us'—dick jokes, sex jokes, stupid stuff, banging birds. I know a lot of Guardian readers and people like that will go, 'It's not intelligent humor.' But, you know: my fans don't watch 8 Out of 10 Cats."

And he's right: there isn't much mainstream comedy for the young lager-in-a-plastic-glass audience. An audience that, if you tell them a joke, are just as likely to say the word "Woo!" as they are to actually laugh.

But having a loyal-if-dumb fanbase can come with a darker edge; at the height of Moistageddon, Dapper told his army of fans to take journalist Abi Wilkinson to task for criticizing his more problematic, more pro-street harassment material, and they did so in the language of the typical Twitter idiot: the rape- and death-threat. Dapper has since, finally, apologized for this. For her part, Abi says, "I'm happy to publicly say I support him getting rid of the dodgy bits and moving on with his career, if you want a quote like that or anything, particularly now he's finally fucking apologized to me."

And he has been getting rid of the dodgy bits and getting on with his career: his last tour sold 80 percent of the tickets on the day of release, and O'Reilly says he's played to 20,000 people live without a single complaint.

Here's my theory—and strap in, son, because it's a hot one: Dapper Laughs was a very curious victim of timing. If he broke into the mainstream five years ago he would have been clumped in with the Keith Lemon crowd, a sort of harmless nod-nod, wink-wink "ooh-me-gooch-hurts" ITV2 panel show staple. If he ascended now—as in right now—the think-piece 'n' backlash culture has cooled just slightly enough for him to safely paddle in. He would be allowed to be Dapper—albeit the new, caveated Dapper, Dapper back from his exile in the desert, Dapper Having Learned—in an unchallenged space.

However, the precise nature of November, 2014 meant he couldn't exist in it. It was a winter month coming back off a summer of reloaded laddism—university rugby clubs being banned and chastized; Magaluf girl; banter as a mantra—and suddenly, from nowhere, Dapper Laughs was the poster boy. He had to go away and change. All lads had to go away and change.

Dapper on stage

I thought meeting Dapper would be straightforward: a case of, "Oh, he has sufficiently changed," or, "No, actually he has not sufficiently changed, but he's still got a fanbase so what can you do?"—back to the office past the torn-up posters, fun little write-up, pub by lunch. Instead, it's more fine-grained than that. Dapper Laughs isn't reformed in a way his critics are exactly going to like, but he's altered his act to just creak under the limbo bar of censorship and he's making an effort to demonstrate learning and growth; he's aware of and respects his target audience, and (tentatively) wants to use his platform for good.

This might all be academic, anyway; Dapper might not even exist for much longer: O'Reilly is working on a comedy feature film, Fanged Up, that will introduce him to the world as a comic actor rather than a sad turtleneck wearer—set to be released next year.

But that, fundamentally, is it: is there anything so wrong with people laughing at a man saying how big his dick is and how much your girlfriend fancies him and his big dick? Is there anything so different between Dapper Laughs' primitive 15-year-old dickhead banter and a Keith Lemon, an Inbetweeners movie, your younger brother when he's being a prick? Is he, really, all that evil?

Ask your missus, mate. She knows.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

Bunny Friend Park, where the shooting occurred. Screenshot via Google Streetview

On Sunday night, about 500 people gathered in a New Orleans park to participate in the filming a music video at a block party. But what began as a peaceful gathering in the Upper Ninth Ward turned violent just after 6 PM, when gunfire broke out, injuring at least 17 people. While there are no reported deaths, ten victims have been hospitalized, and more people continue to report injuries, according to local CBS and NBC affiliates.

A nearby parade through the neighborhood was ending around that time, adding to the chaos.

"You had a number of different individuals who, through no thought of any other people, decided to take the fight in the middle of a whole bunch of people and start spraying bullets and that's just insane," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told WDSU. A witness told the station that the scene was "like a war."

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Police are asking the public for information. "This is a classic case where we need citizens' help," New Orleans Police Superintendent Michael S. Harrison told reporters. "What we need more than anything else is for witnesses to come forward and tell us what they saw." Gang violence has not been ruled out as a motive. The police have called a press conference to be held at 2 PM local time.

The mass shooting comes at a time when the New Orleans murder rate is falling, though some residents remain frustrated about the violence still plaguing African-American neighborhoods, and the murder rate is still high for a city of its size.

The Louisiana city was also rocked by another high-profile shooting that took place this week. On Friday, a 25-year-old Tulane medical student named Peter Gold was shot after he witnessed a woman being dragged from an SUV. After getting out of his vehicle and intervening, Euric Cain, who is 21, allegedly demanded money from him at gunpoint and then shot him in the stomach. Cain also tried to shoot Gold in the head, but the gun malfunctioned, according to the New York Times, which has a video of surveillance footage showing the attack. Gold remains in critical condition at a hospital.

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A table heavy with a Chuseok feast. Photo by Irene Yoo

During the Chuseok celebrations of my childhood, I'd skirt around the buffet table and take one bite from each of the songpyeon, little pockets of rice dough, trying to find the ones filled with the honey-sugar-sesame mixture. The cakes looked identical from the outside, but some were filled with sesame, others with chestnut paste, and others with sweet red bean paste, which I despised. So I nibbled each one to find the sesame-filled songpyeon I craved.

One year, when I was four, the pastor's wife caught me halfway through my little search-and-destroy mission. She told me that good little Korean girls don't try them all, but instead neatly take one, eat it studiously, and return for one more serving at most. It's the only thing I remember from that Chuseok: The Korean idiom that says, "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach."

Chuseok is the Korean equivalent to America's Thanksgiving. There's food and family, and the holiday nods to the seasonal change. The original Chuseok, some believe, was a celebration of the underdog Silla kingdom triumphing over the rival Baekje kingdom. As the legend goes, a turtle appeared to the king with markings on its shell that proclaimed that Baekje was the full moon, while Silla was the half moon. Baekje would soon wane, while Silla would wax. And so it came to pass in the fall, and the Silla Kingdom celebrated its victory with songpyeon, the half-moon rice cakes.

In modern times, Chuseok—which falls sometime between September and October—is a celebration of the harvest and a time to pay respect to your ancestors. You're supposed to clear the graves of your descendants and prepare a specific ancestral table, with the tops cut off the fruit to let the spirits in. The adults drink rice wine and kids have wrestling matches and play games like massive tug-of-wars.

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Growing up in the Midwest, Chuseok was one of the ways I learned about my Korean heritage. We had a tug-of-war in the church multipurpose room of the Korean-American church I grew up in, while our mothers steamed fresh songpyeon in the church kitchen. I remember thinking, while lined up yanking with 15 other kids, that if our side let go at just the right time, the other side would fall down all at once and we could run to the kitchen and grab all the food first.

American Thanksgiving was as much a part of my cultural framework as Chuseok. My godparents taught my parents the traditions of American Thanksgiving soon after they immigrated here, and I was raised with the traditions of yelling at the wide receiver to go for it, perfecting pecan-pear stuffing, and arguing with family at the dinner table. On Thanksgiving, I'm always the first one up in the morning cooking and checking the turkey—but I never learned how to make songpyeon on Chuseok, the holiday my parents and their parents and their parents had grown up celebrating, for generations.

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This year, I wanted to finally learn to make those half-moon cakes, as a way to more fully and understand my ancestors' lives before me. But with such a delicate, specialized food, I was hesitant to venture out on a limb on my own. So my friend Joo-Yeon and I enrolled in a Chuseok class with Korean-American chef Shin Kim of the cooking school Banchan Story.

Our class of eight cooked up a massive Korean harvest feast with fresh red peppers and zucchinis, garlic chives and squash. We made a savory braised short rib stew (kalbi ggim), glass noodles (japchae), radish kimchi, and a hearty stovetop rice with kabocha squash (danhobak bab).

Most symbolically, I finally got the chance to try my hand at folding songpyeon into those famous half-moon shapes, the way I'd watched my mother for years. There's a saying that those who fold the prettiest songpyeon will marry a nice, good-looking spouse and have beautiful babies, and given the gaping, misshapen songpyeon I produced, I'm fairly certain my future is doomed. But it was all forgotten when Chef Shin capped off the cooking class with Chuseok gifts for all of us and glasses of sujeonggwa, persimmon cinnamon punch, my absolute favorite Korean drink.

Photo by Irene Yoo

That night, I attended a Chuseok party at the house of my friend Irene Yoo, who runs Yooeating, a Korean pop-up food series. She'd laid a table heavy with the weight of rice cakes, jeon, yellow Korean melons, lotus root, soy sauce quail eggs, chive and spinach salads. We did shots of soju and as I became drunk, I became sentimental.

It's not just that Korean food tastes good—it's nourishing to the soul. When I was younger, I couldn't quite put my finger on it: Was it the familiarity, the well-worn grooves it has worn into our tongues over church potlucks, family dinners, backyard barbecues, and hiking picnics? Was it that it was our reward every time we did something right, or brought home a good grade? Was it that yelling "Eat your kimchi!" was the only way our hardworking immigrant parents knew how to show love?

Or was it the timeworn taste of our inherited culture? I know my ancestors had things harder than I do—no central air, no Netflix subscription—but they danced together, and made those half-moon rice cakes, year after year, for generations. I grew up too far from my ancestors' graves to pay proper respects on Chuseok, but my family found a church, Korean friends, and our own ways to make Chuseok in America—small things, like a game of sticks, a tug of war, and the making of half-moon rice cakes. We'll all celebrate American Thanksgiving this year, too—two cultures, two food-laden holidays.

When I think about those badly misshapen half-moons I made, I look forward to the ones I'll make in the future, with my Korean-American friends nearby, who will save the sugar-sesame songpyeon for me, naturally.

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Read more comics by Lauren Monger at her Tumblr and Twitter.