Tenement courtyard, Maryhill, 1971. Photo by Nick Hedges

In October, photos that had been embargoed for 45 years were finally released to the public. The images, taken by documentary photographer Nick Hedges for housing charity Shelter from 1969 to 1972, reveal the dangerous and filthy conditions people living in Scotland's slums were forced to contend with.

"A family who lived in the Gorbals in Glasgow woke up one morning and the husband heard this weird banging noise. They thought it was a gas explosion at first, and then he looked out of the window to find a demolition crew at the end of the block beginning to swing the demolition ball," Hedges told me. "The crew had no idea people lived there; someone could have been killed. But it's also an indication, I think, of the situation in which some families were forced to live. I mean, living in blocks which were semi-derelict."

For Hedges, revisiting the photos is personal; they were taken when he was a young man, and the harrowing conditions in which these people lived have stayed with him for over four decades. It was him who put the embargo on the work in the first place, out of a sense of responsibility for the subjects, keen to prevent their lives being invaded, to avoid making them emblems of poverty.

Mother takes her baby inside her condemned tenement block, Gorbals, 1970. Photo by Nick Hedges

One photo shows a young mother pushing a pram into a derelict tenement. The baby is looking at the camera. A caption tells us there was rainwater on the floor of their home and that rats ran freely around their beds. Sleeping with the lights on failed to keep them away. The young woman was expecting her second child.

Shelter is seeking to track down some of the people in the pictures, such as the baby in his pram, who would now be in his mid-40s.

"I think it would be wonderful if we were able to make contact with any of the families in the pictures," said Hedges. "It would be wonderful to find out how they got on in life—whether they were able to survive and escape from a life in poverty and bad housing. It would be interesting, just for personal reasons, but also I think Shelter would actually find it valuable toward putting together a housing history."

Thanks to coverage of the exhibition, Hedges is now in email contact with a child from one of the photographs. She hasn't agreed for her name to be shared, but she has posed for a picture next to the original photograph, where she is seen with her mother, brother, and sister. She has called the new photograph "Me and Me."

"She's had an adventurous and wonderful life," said Hedges

Sisters sharing a chair in a Gorbals slum tenement, 1970. Photo by Nick Hedges

Shelter Scotland was founded in 1968 and the photographs were commissioned in 1969. At the time, the charity thought they were responding to a short-term housing crisis. "We never imagined we'd still be here today," Adam Lang, of Shelter, told me. "I'd like to hope we don't need to be here in 50 years."

"Why exhibit these photos now?" I asked him.

"We wanted to show that this is part of our history, a part of our heritage. It's a reminder of both how far we've come—we've made some great strides in the last 40, 45 years—but also that there's still a big job to do. We hope that the images can kickstart a focus on home and housing."

Although unsuitable housing is no longer as visible as when Hedges took the photos, the housing crisis in 2015 is just as insidious. Current health and safety legislation wouldn't allow demolition teams to turn up at a tower block where people were still living, but at the end of last year Scottish Labour's former housing minister warned that Scotland is facing its largest housing crisis since the end of WWII, with the potential of a shortfall of 160,000 homes by 2035.

Lack of suitable housing could also leave gaping holes in the education of the 5,000 children in Scotland who live in temporary accommodation, as—statistically—they will miss an average of 55 days of school annually, or over a quarter of the school year. These children are also four times as likely to suffer from a mental health condition such as depression or anxiety.

A development in the Gorbals, Glasgow, 2015. Photo by Nick Dodd

After speaking to Nick, I visited the Gorbals and Maryhill—two of the sites in Glasgow where he took the original photographs—with VICE photographer Nick Dodd.

In the Gorbals, a condemned tower block looms over a new development that's currently in the process of being built by a firm called Laurieston. "It's due to get blown up in March," a worker on the site told us. "But where the people got decanted, I do not know."

Later, a spokesperson for Laurieston told me that "Laurieston Phase 1 properties have been built for New Gorbals Housing Association and tenants of the apartments will include those affected by the clearance and demolition processes of the former high rise blocks. The area is being developed into one of Glasgow city center's most desirable urban neighborhoods, providing high quality homes across a range of affordability levels."

A condemned building in the Gorbals, Glasgow, 2015. Photo by Nick Dodd

In a small park between the condemned tower and the new housing we met an elderly man on a park bench who introduced himself as Steve. He's lived in the area more or less all his life, he told us, and has seen plenty of changes over the years. "I lived in one of the tenements as a kid, had no toilet, but a privy outside," he said. "I chucked school at 14, though, went away with the show people."

"What do you think of the new houses?" I asked.

He shook his head. "They're 70 grand up."

I didn't tell him they'll cost a lot more than £70,000 and up.

Children at play in a Maryhill tenement, 1971. Photo by Nick Hedges

Next we moved on to Maryhill, where the buildings look new and strangely clinical. As we drove through we noticed a mish-mash of architectural styles, from the modern to Victorian.

One of Nick Hedges' pictures shows children playing in the stairwell of a Maryhill tenement. Hedges's caption for the picture states that Glasgow is a city noted for tragedy, and in 1972—the final year of Hedges's photography project—a tenement fire would rip through Maryhill Road, leaving two dead.

Maryhill, Glasgow, 2015. Photo by Nick Dodd

Glasgow's famous Red Road flats were destroyed publicly—although the demolition team managed to get it wrong, leaving one and a half towers still standing—but other housing has been destroyed without fanfare or audience. The blowing up of old buildings became almost routine as Glasgow was regenerated, rebuilt, and turned into a new city, one with upgraded housing—housing that is safe, secure, and described as affordable.

On November 18, Scotland's Housing Minister Margaret Burgess pledged to spend £3 billion building 50,000 more affordable homes, with 70 percent of these designated as social housing and safeguarded for those who need it.

Sadly, for many, these new houses and apartments have come too late, and to others they will never seem within reach. A safe, clean home of their own is something that the 150,000 people in temporary accommodation throughout Scotland can, for now, only dream of.

Follow Hope on Twitter.

The author.

Enough time has passed since the world was at Peak Hipster for us to look back at it as a movement, or a craze, or a meme, or whatever the fuck it was and try to take stock of what it all meant, if anything. So this week we're doing exactly that in a short collection of stories.

In the weeks after 9/11, I remember having a conversation with William Harvey, the primordial Williamsburg hipster and style icon who plays bass in Lord Calverts. Harvey saw the tragedy as the death knell of irony. Even by then, ironic distance from life had already become something of a cliche in New York, maybe dating back to, I don't know, Warhol? There have been so many decades of kids (artists, writers, and painters, but still essentially kids) who tried their damnedest to live ironically, because to do so earnestly was either too stupid or to frightening.

Harvey's theory was that such an attempt requires a distance from reality that is only possible if reality cooperates by keeping its distance from you. In other words, you can only live as though everything is bullshit if only bullshit things are happening to you. This is why hipsterism, and its driving rhetorical concept, irony, is entirely reserved for people to whom nothing bad ever happens. Things that feel bad might happen. (You might not get a girl you wanted, or you might not make a soccer team when you're 13, or your parents might get divorced and your dad might move one town over and you might have to eat cereal for dinner out of plastic bowls and sleep on the couch when you go to his one bedroom apartment...) But nothing actually bad—like, really bad—happens to you.

Really bad things make the world real. If your world is devoid of global-level bad, than it is not entirely real and therefore, irony makes perfect sense to you. This is what Harvey was talking about. Standing, as he described it, in the middle of the street in Greenpoint holding two squirming toddlers, watching smoke filling the sky, knowing that multiple thousands were dying right in front of them, it occurred to him that the thing happening was so bad, so real, to so many people all at once, that it would no longer be possible for people to keep an ironic distance from reality. Thus, he predicted that Sept 11, 2001 would be the beginning of the end of the hipster.

The author at a Spandex party in 2003.

I came into adulthood in Williamsburg and Bushwick in the 1990s. I really tried to be a hipster. I bought all the things you were supposed to: fixies, chemexes, typewriters, records, air plants, reclaimed wood, granddad sweaters, installation taxidermy art, knit blankets, accordions. All of it. I was the black dude in the game for 20 years. And the only thing I think I learned for sure is that no matter how you're dressed, to be black and to be a hipster are completely incompatible.

First of all, hipsterism was about appropriating stuff. Everything, to be precise. Your grandfather's facial hair, 70s albums, and remote neighborhoods that are still close to downtown. Whether it's in music, style, or actual land—stealing, reclaiming, re-using, settling, gentrifying, or whatever else you want to call it is at the core of hipstering. You must find something that already existed, that is completely uncool, and then you must announce that it's cool and then all your friends must come there and set up shop, and then you must walk around it like you own it. And then you've gotta find something else that was already there. And repeat.

The second key thing you must do to hipster is maintain a proper distance from reality. This is why irony was hipsterism's trusty co-pilot. You dressed like a nerd but, surprise, you were actually very cool and popular. You wore a trucker hat, but, surprise, you're actually an erudite world music connoisseur living in a five-story walk up. You had a child molester mustache but, surprise, you actually disagree with raping kids. Nothing was as it seemed. No person was real. Life was elsewhere. People were ideas. Reality was theory.

Photo by Sheila Menezes.

The thing about trying to do this while black, though, is that it gives you a fucking headache. While being a hipster means that you're always looking to the past for some quaint discovery to re-purpose, being black means that you look to the past and think, Damn, my ass would have been lynched. While being a hipster means that you think your parents' music is hilarious, being black means your parents' music moves you to tears because it is connected to your very own spiritual and personal struggle for humanity. While being a hipster means that nothing matters, being black means that you have a concerted movement to remind the world that your life does matter. If you're black, the rubber is always on the road. Your face is always to the Earth. But not just if you're black, but also if you're poor or if you are the victim of oppression, violence, murders, systemic destruction. If you're a refugee. If you don't have running water. If you don't have shoes. If your family is in prison. If you're a veteran. If you don't know where you're going to sleep tonight. If you might get killed for saying no. If you're struggling to live—not struggling to make meaning of life, but struggling to live, like, bottom-level Maslow shit. If, in other words, you're most people on the planet, then yeah, hipsterism was never for you. And it's not the fanciful ideas that exclude you. It's the space it takes to have them. Being a hipster means you struggle for meaning in life. Being anything else means that your struggle is for life itself.

The author, post hipster

And the thing is that everyone, even hipsters, are becoming anything else. This piece was supposed to run in November, but it got pushed back because 130 people were killed in Paris. While I was working on revisions, 20 more people were shot at a holiday party for goddamn developmentally disabled adults. And that was the second mass shooting of that day. 9/11, which was supposed to be the worst thing that could ever happen, was 15 years ago. And we still haven't stopped pretending shit doesn't matter. Since then, more women have been killed by their domestic partners than all the American soldiers who have died in the ensuing Wars on Terror. There have been more American mass shootings in 2015 than there have been days in 2015. No one even knows how many unarmed American citizens have been killed by police in the last 15 years, but here's 70 just to get you started counting. Really bad things are coming for everyone. No matter who you are.

In short, shit is real and it's getting more real for more people all the time. It's time for pretty much everyone to cut back on distance and irony and snark and ramp up on earnestness, love, anguish, passion, courage, hand-holding, heart-beating. It's time to do away with whatever part of you thinks that last sentence was stupid. It's time for Harvey's prediction to come to pass. It's time for irony to rest. And then maybe the very last thing hipsterism will appropriate form the rest of the world, before fading into darkness, will be our total refusal to treat our lives as a theoretical joke.

Follow Carvell on Twitter.

Artwork from 'League of Legends', via

Not all that many activities that begin with an e turn out brilliantly for everyone involved, and so it goes for eSports. While 2015 has seen the competitive gaming scene channel more money through its globe-encircling veins than ever before, with prize pots running into the many millions, and audience figures skyrocket, it's also had its fair share of controversies.

The summer just gone saw governing bodies in the field declare their intent to drug-test participants for performance-enhancing substances; a Philippines-based league had intended to limit gay and transgender players before U-turning on the decision after the entirely expected protests; and then at the end of November an eSports journalist came to blows with a Dota pro at DreamHack Winter.

But here's something more positive: This sort of shit is on the slide, and 2016 is set to be another significant year for eSports, with its arenas filling and online viewers multiplying. At least that's the opinion of veteran eSports journalist and broadcaster Rod "Slasher" Breslau, formerly the co-founding editor of GameSpot eSports and ex-senior writer at theScore eSports. VICE's Motherboard channel spoke to Rod earlier in 2015 about that whole Adderall thing, and since he's a man who knows a few things about headshotting the opposition for cool cash, I wanted to ask him for his thoughts on the eSports scene to come.

VICE: eSports has quite obviously grown in 2015, in terms of viewers, live attendances and prize money. Some of the statistics make for impressive reading, but what sort of a ceiling is there for this?
Rod Breslau: I have tried to stay cautious during the enormous growth and success of competitive gaming in the last five to six years, trying to keep that optimism in check to lower the expectation rate for not just the industry, fans, and myself. But every year following, gamers and the industry has not only matched but surpassed the predicted trajectory for the sport.

More stadiums, theaters, and event halls were full of eSports fans than ever before this year, and the League of Legends World Championships in Berlin had its largest-ever audience, even with an unfavorable finals match-up. So while 2015 may have been another big jump up from 2014, I see no reason based on past examples that 2016 won't be on another level. People watching other people play video games professionally has no ceiling in sight.

The eSports scene up until now has done a great job of self-sustaining itself with limited support from developers themselves, but they are arguably the most important piece of the puzzle for continuing success. So now with folks like EA, Microsoft and Activision finally stepping up their worldwide efforts to support competitive gaming, and heavyweights like Riot, Valve, Blizzard and HiRez continuing to raise their game, things look good for 2016.

The Evil Genius 'Dota 2' team wins The International 2015, via

Do you think that other disciplines need to compete, financially, with Dota 2's the International and its multimillion prize pool, in order for the "mainstream media" to pay attention?
The beast that is the International and its $18 million dollar prize pool has made it difficult for other games to match, but the plateau hasn't been hit yet. More important than the prize purse or even fluctuating viewership is that things as a whole are more stable and consistent for leagues, teams, players and the sponsors involved. The money will not only continue to come in but will likely be here faster than ever in 2016.

But I don't think money is paramount in attracting the mainstream media, and Riot's League Championship Series is a perfect example. The prize money for winning the LoL World Championship is "small" compared to the prize pool at TI and other Dota events combined, but LCS and their World Championship has gained the most amount of "mainstream media" attention in eSports. CS:GO has had a "Major" event system supported by Valve with only $250,000 in prize money, but the events still had more than a million people watching at once. In 2016, CS:GO will be on mainstream US TV more because of the fandom than the prize money.

The money and viewership are still turning heads, yes. But there's also a large influx of venture capital and traditional sports moguls investing into the space. Some of the new ideas won't be hits, but eSports has been given a certain vote of confidence by new investors such as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former NBA commissioner David Stern.

More than anything though, it's the incredibly compelling games that are played at the highest level between the best in the world, and the vocal community that has been created around them, that will continue to engage new viewers.

Article continues after the video below

Watch VICE's own documentary on eSports

In terms of the games themselves, do you think we'll see one or two really reach a new level of prominence in 2016? We've seen Rocket League do incredibly well critically in 2015—is that the eSport in waiting for 2016, or could something else be waiting in the wings to be a competitive game that we all click with, both to play and watch?
2016 will be the year of the FPS. CS:GO had a great 2015, but next year will be pinnacle of all the success the game and community has gone through over several years. Competitive Call of Duty's return to Twitch has been a big boom for their community, and the large-scale circuits for both CoD and Halo have energized the console FPS crowd going into next year.

There's a multitude of first- and third-person "Hero" or "MOBA" shooters coming next year, and into 2017, that have similarities to Team Fortress 2, such as Overwatch, Paladins, Paragon, Law Breakers, Battleborn and Battlecry. As Valve never really took care of the competitive TF2 community, and deathmatch giants of old such as Quake and Unreal Tournament have not been able to recover, there's a large swathe of gamers out there who would rather play an arcade-y FPS game than a realistic shooter.

I played Blizzard's Overwatch on a high competitive level throughout its closed beta period, and I think the game and the genre in general has quite a lot of potential to be the next big eSports game, or game-mode. Several prominent Europe-based organizations have already picked up teams, and community-run tournaments have taken place. Overwatch still needs a lot of work done to make it viable to play competitively, let alone easy to spectate, but the potential is there. With so many similar games coming, my hope is that the competition will drive the different teams to take each other's good ideas and trim the fat more swiftly. I believe the Hero FPS will be the next big eSport.

I expect Street Fighter V to usher in a new era for the fighting game community as Street Fighter IV did in 2009, and for Hearthstone to have another big year. With EA and Peter Moore launching a "Competitive Gaming" division, the biggest leap may actually come from the sports game side of things. FIFA, Madden, NHL and NBA all have large, active, vibrant player bases that also have some experience in eSports, especially FIFA. Given the right support both in the games and for the community, they can have such massive appeal with traditional sports fans and gamers alike. Just like many did and have done with fighting games: Don't sleep on it.

Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, via

I've had several conversations with people about what eSports "needs" in the personality department, and it always comes back to that breakout star who transcends the scene—someone like David Beckham, or Kobe Bryant. Any clues as to who that could be, going forward?
With StarCraft's Lee "Flash" Young Ho now retired, I would say that there's a good argument to be made for Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok to be the current star. He's now won his second League of Legends world championship, has been voted MVP and player of the year, and re-signed to SK Telecom for an unknown sum but likely in the high six figures, making him one of the highest paid eSports players in the world—and that's before revenue from endorsements, sponsorships and streams.

On the Western front it's trickier as there simply aren't enough winners amongst all the games, no matter how much personality there may be to go around. The Evil Geniuses Dota team is a shining beacon of hope for North American eSports. In the last two years it has earned more top international titles than all other North American eSports League of Legends, CS:GO, StarCraft 2 and Street Fighter IV players and teams combined. EG midlaner Sumail Hassan—who's made almost $2 million in prize money at only 16—and teammate Artour "Arteezy" Babaev are the two to look out for here.

Related, on Motherboard: What Will It Take for 'Netrunner' to be Played Like Professional eSports?

Will we see less burnout amongst players in the coming years? I feel that we have to ease the pressure on some of these guys, if eSports is going to stay healthy. What else needs to change in the "culture" of eSports, for it to be a welcoming place for newcomers?
I believe so, and hope so for the players' sake. There's a lot of players quitting, retiring at young ages, in their mid 20s, right now. Much of that has been due to not being able to make a sizable amount of money from playing professionally. As the industry continues to bring in outside sponsorship and the leagues and teams become more stable, I expect free agency to raise player salaries. This combined with an increase in prize money and endorsement potential alongside streaming and YouTube should make playing games professionally a longer career than what we see today. I think it's not so far-fetched to see many compete into their 30s, if they can hold up.

And what about getting more women into eSports? It's a massively male-dominated scene, at the top level.
Nearly all competitive games within eSports have a heavily skewed male to female player base, so when you have a trickledown affect to the .000001 percent of people who will become professional players, there's a very slim chance that there will be many women. Even when a highly skilled women's player moves up the ranks, she can face obstacles such as male players not being confident in her skills simply because she's a woman, or the griefing that all competitive gamers get online, but that women receive especially harshly and usually with sexual undertones. These issues can be overcome, but the fact that there simply aren't enough women proportionally playing eSports games compared to men makes it tough.

Morgan "Morgz" Ashurst, pictured right, is one of Europe's top women Call of Duty competitors. Photo via Broadly

Above all, game developers need to do what they can to increase the overall female player base of eSports games. That's a tall order and I don't offer any solutions there. But while I've had doubts in the past, I do believe women-only tournaments will benefit everyone involved. ESWC, while no longer one of the premier eSports events, still runs a yearly women's Counter-Strike tournament. That one event plus a few others have kept a stable and active women's CS scene afloat, and those events have been used to develop new talent. None of the women's CS players have gone on to compete in a professional team alongside men, and the all women's teams have placed poorly at the main open events. But that doesn't mean it won't happen, and developing that talent initially in women's leagues has been shown to work.

Top women's teams and players will of course need to compete in the main tournaments in their respective games to be considered the best in the world. I don't think that creating women-only leagues or tournaments should or would take away from prizing that would go towards open events. While traditional sports are different, and much of the reason for an argument to not have segregated leagues in eSports is because of the lack of physical activity, there are countless examples of women-only leagues and tournaments benefiting the sport as a whole. You don't have to look much further than Ronda Rousey and what she's done for not just women fighters but for all of UFC and its brand in the last year. Women's events create champions and new stars, and luckily in our sport they can go on to compete with the men.

What other trends do you foresee coming into eSports, in 2016 or beyond?
We're probably a few years away but by late 2016 or 2017/2018, I'd like to see what VR developers can do in creating an in-game stadium-like viewing experience. Oculus' John Carmack has already spoken about it this year. Or a Microsoft HoloLens match viewer experience. Boy, would I love to be in a virtual arena, watching these games. Make it happen, folks.

Follow Rod on Twitter here, and VICE Gaming here

More from VICE Gaming:

'Yakuza 5' Is the Reason To Turn Your PlayStation 3 On Again

British 'Street Fighter IV' Pro Problem X Wants To Push the Scene Forward

The Top 20 Video Games of 2015, According To VICE

The author and his baby

Babies are the real MVPs of the holiday season. They step in the function like "ALL EYEZ ON ME" and everybody's all "Yasss, betch. It's fuckin' lit. Turn up."

A baby on Xmas—or on any of the eight days of Chanukah or seven days of Kwanzaa or eight days of Las Posadas, or on el Día de los Tres Reyes or Krampusnacht, if you a real freak—is like the centerpiece, a cornucopia of distraction that allows a young player such as yourself to chill in the cut hella stoned watching Die Hard while your whole fam ogles the lil monkey. The baby will pass through more hands than coke money. It'll be off making the rounds, glad-handing, kissing other babies. Meanwhile, you'll be twisted off the nog, lampin. I mean, yeah, a baby is a joyous celestial blessing but sometimes your boy need to take a lil swim in lake me.

But for real, babies around the holidays are hella wavy. They fuck with all the adornments and decorations—colored lights, elves, all the people filled with cheer and what have you. Babies eat it up, mane. They're hella confused as to why this isn't all year round. And frankly, I am too. Christmas carols are garbage and the color scheme is foul as hell but the general vibe of the season is pretty groovy. I would be content to ride that wave for a mighty long time indeed.

I'm not into that sitting on Santa's lap mess, though. That's some creepy white people shit. The elves can stay, though. An industrious people, strong work ethic. You put that kind of manpower into green energy and a lot of our ecological and socioeconomic problems would be solved, but that's neither here nor there.

The real "reason for the season," as they say, is cosmic in nature. The rotation of the earth, the changing of the seasons, the transformation of the hours, the passage of time, the completion of the sun cycle, etc. It's a time of harvest, reflection, change, new beginnings, natural shit, pagan thangs. Babies, being creatures especially in tune with nature, feel these vibes and reflect them prismatically.

Babies don't really care about the whole Jesus thing, or the historically problematic timing of his "birthday" celebration. They're just here for the lights, large family gatherings, wrapping paper, toys, and sweets. In short, they're party animals and that's what's up. I'm with that program.

The holidays are also good for introducing your baby to gambling, a good life skill. Give it a dreidel and some of those little chocolate gold coins. Smackin. L'chaim, feel me? I mean boycott Israel, but still, l'chaim, happy Chanukah. It's the festival of lights, mane. What's not to love?

Don't get it twisted, babies love Kwanzaa, too. If there's anything that gets a baby going it's tradition and reason. Just playing, but they do fuck with candles. Kwanzaa is a regular festival of lights in its own right. If you need to teach your kid more facts about Kwanzaa, please refer to the below informational music video I shot with the New York homies a few years back.

Follow KOOL A.D. on Twitter

All photos of Gatecrasher Ball parties by the author

Three decades ago, you couldn't go anywhere in West London without hearing the name Eddie Davenport. The cool-kid millionaire who wore Armani suits and drove the latest BMW, Davenport wasn't like the other rich kids in town. Though he came from a respectable, upper-middle class background, he wasn't a chinless sloan with a trust fund. Davenport was a self-made success in the new economy, a Thatcherite enigma, and social icon who epitomized the entrepreneurial spirit of the 1980s. What's not to like about that?

He started very young. Educated at Frensham Heights, a boarding school in the English countryside, Davenport failed his exams and crammed for his retakes at Mander Portman Woodward (MPW) in South Kensington, a tutorial college for wealthy students cramming for retakes. It was here that he spotted an exclusive gap in the market: rich kids looking to party.

At 20 years old, Davenport started a company, Gatecrasher Ltd, with friend Jeremy Taylor and began to organize lavish black tie functions for wealthy teenagers called the Gatecrasher Balls.

I first heard about them in 1986. Davenport was staging an event at one of London's most beautiful venues, the Kensington Roof Gardens, and lots of would-be rich kids from my school, Holland Park Comprehensive, had bought tickets. They turned up in black ties and ball gowns, only to be turned away. The venue was full to capacity. Davenport had sold too many tickets. The cops busted the event and shut it down. Lots of drunken teens were left crying in taffeta and tuxes on the cold paving stones of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

I finally met him in 1987 when I was working as a teenage correspondent for Punch magazine (where, full disclosure, my dad was the arts editor). I saw him walking along Kings Road one sunny day. He was thin, very thin. Light gray double-breasted suit, gelled back hair, smile like a Halloween skull. I knew the guy he was with and homed in for an introduction. He gave me a part-time job, taking photos at the Gatecrasher Balls. At age 17, I thought the gig would be one big, long, Gatsby mansion romance where simplicity of heart would be its own ticket of admission. Boy, was I wrong.

The Terror Ball. The Pimm's Ball. The Country Ball. The Maniac Ball. The Pumpkin Ball. The Titanic Ball. The Snowman Ball. The Valentine's Ball. Gatecrasher functions were classy affairs, chock-full of bodies boozing, making out, fucking, snorting, puking. Being a paparazzo at these events was tough; while snapping photos of the bright young things, you were always at risk of being tackled at any point by Jono and the rest of the Eton rugby team.

Pop music and chart toppers came via "Alexander's Discotheque"—a fat, posh DJ shouting down the mic, "Step those toes and clap those hands!" Not exactly Studio 54. Meanwhile, the Ruperts and Georginas, the Tamsins and Rorys were murdering the dance floor with two left feet on a purple carpet of snakebite puke and Marlboro cigarette butts. Wealthy English people are said to be repressed; not at a Gatecrasher Ball.

Related: Watch the trailer for 'The Wolf of the West End,' our new documentary about Eddie Davenport

I'd been tasked to shoot Tatler-style party portraits: round-faced girls and their barbered partners showing dimples to the lens. Some hope. Even if I could find a couple sober enough to smile for the camera I would have to step over hundreds of teenagers dry humping and making out on the carpeted floors. What photographer could resist that underfoot temptation?

Pretty soon the Gatecrasher Balls became a £250,000 ($375,000) per annum money train. But Eddie, always the center of attention, presumably had a motive for staging them other than profit. The girls from the most notable families in the land were at every party, and despite all those 1980s fears about AIDS and dying of ignorance in a cesspit of your own making, people weren't anywhere near as restrained as they were told they should be.

Of course, all good things come to an end. For me, it was the Country Ball held at Littlecote House one week after the Hungerford Massacre—one of the worst shooting atrocities in English history, when Michael Ryan went on a rampage and shot dead 16 people—in 1987. The turnout there was the lowest of the season.

Every season, however, brought a fresh crop of venturesome, hormonally-raging boarding school kids, and the Gatecrasher parties limped along for another couple of years. Then the taxman came to talk to Davenport about not paying VAT on ticket sales. Davenport said it was just a misunderstanding and he was a kid who didn't know what he was doing. The jury didn't buy it. The judge sent him down for nine months in November of 1990, before an appeal led to a suspended sentence. At 24, this was Eddie's first custodial sentence for fraud. The second would come 21 years later, in 2011, after he was found guilty of advance fee fraud and sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison, before being released in May of 2014 on grounds of ill health.

That's the rise and fall of the Gatecrasher Balls. Fantastic. Fun. Unprecedented. Still remembered with affectionate shock and awe. Will Eddie Davenport make another comeback? In the years between the Gatecrasher heyday and now, he has been a property magnate and sex party host, but he hasn't lost that eagle eye for an opportunity. As for the people in these pictures, they are probably all parents by now. If Davenport were to reboot the Gatecrasher Balls, they would be advised to lock up their daughters. And their sons, too.

See more photos from the Gatecrasher Balls below:

You probably won't find it on any best of 2015 lists, but one of my favorite gaming experiences of this year was the unashamed nostalgia fest of Transformers: Devastation. After years of waiting for a modern video game that matched exacting action with the old-school shape-shifting robots that were such a massive part of my childhood—and I know I wasn't alone in quietly hungering for such a release—PlatinumGames, via publisher Activision, finally delivered the goods.

And Devastation wasn't just fan-service game-making to generate a few quick bucks for its publisher courtesy of eager old-timers who want Optimus Prime to look like Optimus Prime—it's a more than competent brawler employing melee mechanics not unlike those found in Platinum's rightly lauded witches-punching-angels work of 2009, Bayonetta (albeit with excellently incorporated alternate-mode attacks). The Osaka-based studio has carried over that game's timed combos and motion-slowing dodges—"witch time"—to Devastation, and matched this tried-and-tested formula to art (and a bunch of original voice actors) that really does sit the player right back in front of mid-1980s Saturday morning TV.

"PlatinumGames weren't just interested—they were champing at the bit," Activision producer Robert Conkey tells me, when I ask him about how the monolithic publisher came to work with the celebrated team behind not just Bayonetta and its sequel, but also the breathlessly kinetic Vanquish, The Wonderful 101, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. (They're currently working on the next Star Fox game for Nintendo, and new exclusives for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. To say the studio is in demand is an understatement.)

"PlatinumGames is one of the best action developers out there," Conkey continues, "and have some really cool cel-shading tech, that they demonstrated in (the Activision-published) The Legend of Korra, so we asked them if they'd be interested in working on Transformers, making use of that style of visuals."

Activision has been producing Transformers-related video games for years, with War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron, both by San Diego studio High Noon, the standout titles. "For several years we'd done games that were tied to movies or the War for Cybertron series," says Conkey, "and they had a gritty, realistic art style. But we wanted to see if we could take the Transformers video games in a different direction, to try something that we'd never done before."

Platinum's enthusiasm for the project was there from day one. "Kenji Saito, the director of Metal Gear Rising, has been a huge fan of Transformers since he was a kid, and much of the studio's staff was the same way," Conkey explains. "Several were the hardest of hardcore fans, who would go as far as to import Botcon-exclusive figures and other limited editions just to ensure they had every existing iteration of every figure. They dived into the concept process with gusto, and said they wanted to go classic for the Transformers' looks, which sounded pretty cool to us.

"We spoke with (Transformers IP holders) Hasbro and everyone was on the same page: we were looking at making a Generations-based game that pays homage to the rich history of the Transformers brand and also had Platinum's unique spectacle action and flair. How could anyone pass that up?"

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'Wolf of the West End'

I know I couldn't—but while Devastation is fantastic fun, it's all over pretty quickly. The characters on both sides of the battle, the five playable Autobots and army of Decepticons, look incredible, but the environments are bland and repetitive. Replay value is fairly thin, then, unless you're the kind of super Transformers fan who wants to complete the game with all five characters—Prime, Sideswipe, Wheeljack, Bumblebee, and Grimlock (although not all are useable from the very beginning). Review scores were strong, but not in the high 80s that all publishers look for, and I have no idea on units shifted but it's certainly not amongst 2015's very best sellers. Which leaves the question of follow-up content for Devastation rather up in the air.

"Unfortunately, I'm unable to discuss future plans at this point," is all Conkey will give me on what comes next for Devastation. But he is pleased with how the game's gone down with the Transformers faithful.

"People loved the classic look, the over-the-top action, and the feel of revisiting characters they hadn't seen in action—at least like this—for many years. The Transformers fanbase is one of the most passionate I've seen, and it's no small task to make a game that will gain their acceptance and approval. And while the game was by no means flawless, it certainly seems to have struck the right chord with the fanbase, which, I can tell you, warms the developers' hearts.

"Platinum's passion for the game is there to see on the screen—every bit of art, from city signs to idle animations, was created with painstaking reverence for the classic Transformers. The majority of signs in the city are little lore references. Relatively esoteric Easter eggs, like Kremzeeks, abound. Each character's transformation is a recreation of how the toys actually transform. The characters' attitudes and idle animations will make fans of the show smile, the visuals for how the robots shine and move were iterated on religiously. All of the weapons in the game are based on actual Transformers lore. I could go on. It was truly a game for fans, by fans, and I think the fanbase really understood that.

"As for what we're doing on Transformers games, going forward, we know that while Devastation succeeded in a lot of aspects, it certainly wasn't perfect and there are a lot of areas where we received valuable feedback for improvement. It's never possible to make everyone happy, but we do take that feedback very seriously when planning for future titles."

I'd love to see Activision announce significant DLC for Devastation, rather than mere reskins, perhaps allowing players to control some key Decepticons—Megatron, Soundwave, and Shockwave are all here, so why not let us play with them? The War for Cybertron games allowed control of both factions, and it'd be sweet to see the same here. The difference is that the current, vanilla game's structure is exclusively Autobot in perspective—I won't go into the plot, as it's both wafer thin and every bit as cheesy as a Generation 1 episode—so perhaps Platinum would need to be on board to build 'Con stages from the ground up, which given their schedule is something I can't imagine happening.

Future plans, then, should be kept on the backburner—but if you're a child of the 1980s, be that in body or mind, Devastation is an afternoon's entertainment that evokes the spirit of the original Transformers like no video game before it. Also, it's cheaper than a round at the bar, so if you get some Amazon vouchers from your aunt this Christmas, it's a better bet than most other licensed games of late.

Transformers: Devastation is out now for a variety of platforms.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

Mariah Carey performs at the Mariah Carey Second Annual 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' Concert at Beacon Theatre on December 8, 2015, in New York City. Photo by Dave Kotinsky

There are things I come across during this time of year that can take me right back to the Christmases of my youth—a time when everything felt so special and light and perfect. When I smell the sweet caramelized goop that seeps out of baking sweet potatoes, I can see a younger version of my mother, with her nails long and Rudolph red, preparing the holiday feast from scratch. When I have my first glass of eggnog of the season, I can picture my dad in his pajamas and his drippy-ass do-rag, struggling to put together some new gadget toy for me on Christmas Day. But the biggest catalyst for a trip down Christmas memory lane for me has always been the sound of Mariah Carey's voice.

The twinkling melody that kicks off "All I Want for Christmas" is like a flux capacitor, yanking me from the closet I call an apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, back to my family's suburban home in Northeast Ohio in the mid 90s. By the time Mariah is pining for her wayward lover to come back, I can see all of my family, soulfully swaying under the flickering halos of red and green flashing lights. Of course there are other great Christmas tunes—Luther Vandross's "Mistletoe Jam," Run-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis," and Aaron Neville's "Please Come Home for Christmas"—but it's Mariah's holiday trills paired with that Phil Spector-indebted Wall of Sound that makes me feel, if only for a moment, like I'm still sitting across from my grandfather, who now suffers from extreme dementia, judiciously negotiating on how we're going to split an entire apple pie just between the two of us.

I'm clearly not the only one who has a reverence for the song. Although it was written quickly during a 15-minute jam session between Carey and songwriter Walter Afanaseiff, and the backing music is all computer-programmed, the tune has made an undeniable impact on pop culture. It's been more than 20 years since its 1994 release, and the track still tops Billboard's Holiday 100 chart every year. It's the best-selling download of Carey's entire catalogue, racking up 2.8 million digital sales since Nielsen began tracking them in the 2000s and it has over 145 million views on YouTube and 80 million streams on Spotify.

Merry Christmas, the album that "All I Want" hails from, is such a fixture in my family that we've had it on almost every format: on cassette to play in the car, on compact disc to rock in the ole 60-CD changer, on MP3 for those brick iPods. And now, we bump it via the cloud, streaming it through the Spotify app on the smart TV. And considering Carey has just hopped on the hipster trend and released a special edition red-vinyl version, Merry Christmas will probably be making its first appearance on me and my girlfriend's turntable this Christmas.

Of course a big part of the appeal of "All I Want" and the Merry Christmas album is Carey's uncanny voice, which lulls you with a low register and then climbs to some of highest octaves humanly possible. Recorded back in 1994, when her pitch was at its pinnacle, you'd be forgiven for mistaking her runs for a dolphin whistle, especially on the climax of her gospel-indebted rendition of "O Holy Night," where she approaches glass-shattering range. Not to mention the songs go beyond kiddie Christmas themes and religion to evoke more adult concerns of longing and love. And beyond the music, it's just fucking Mariah Carey—a force that is larger than life, pop music's elusive chanteuse. With all those elements at play, it's easy to see why it's hailed as a holiday classic.

But despite how great Merry Christmas and "All I Want" may be, there's more to it all than dope tunes. If it was just about Carey's artistry, than her second Christmas album (yes, she has two Christmas albums) and other Christmas albums by renowned artists would be getting record numbers of streams on Spotify, too. No, Merry Christmas represents more in our collective consciousness. It just soared to the top of the holiday charts this season for the first time in 17 years thanks in large part to the generation of millennials out there for whom this music is the soundtrack to their holiday memories.

My girlfriend, for instance, has often told me that this album is the record she played on repeat at her mother's new home the first Christmas after her parents got divorced. It's a bittersweet reflection, but there's something comforting to her about it all and I can see it in her eyes when she sings along to "All I Want," trying to hit Carey's crazy notes. And honestly, I find it comforting too, because it reminds me of everything that was and gives me a bit of distance from everything that is.

I witnessed this phenomenon of widespread nostalgia around Carey's Christmas music firsthand this past weekend, when the two of us went to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You performance at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. It was Carey's second annual residency there during the holidays performing yuletide music. At the sold-out show, I expected to see mostly children and aging Boomer tourists. Instead, the crowd was peppered with lots of people our age dressed in cool, dark downtown palettes, replete with all the signifiers of "creative" jobs. They too looked as if they'd lurched their way uptown from their Brooklyn hovels to get a Mariah-guided trip back through their youth.

Of course, as much I love the music, I know that too much nostalgia can be a problem. Intellectually, I'm well aware that the past always looks better in reflection than it actually was IRL, especially if you were a child who didn't have the faculties to see the world for the insane and violent and depressing place it always has been and probably always will be. Living in the glorious glow of yesterday feels nice for a moment, but it can keep you from addressing the things that need to be reckoned with today, such as the staggering number of displaced, innocent people fleeing their war-torn countries looking for somewhere safe to live; blacks in this country living in terror of the very people charged with protecting them; or the mass murders that happen at the rate of more than one per day. As we took our seats, I wondered where'd we be if all the young people there—me and my girl included—who chase their salad days through the warm embrace of entertainment and commerce, applied that same passion to fixing some of our world's major problems.

On a personal level, as much as I loved Merry Christmas, I wasn't even sure I could get into the spirit of it all. Christmas has long lost that ethereal glow it had when I was young. I'm grown enough to know now that virgins don't give birth to babies with superpowers and the only thing that fat white guys in uniforms give blacks boys is 25-to-life. And the memories that I have of my childhood Christmas time are further away than they've ever been, if only because so many of the people I made them with are no longer here. Some of my loved ones have died, others might as well be dead considering they have no idea who I am or what is even going on anymore, and others don't come around anymore for petty differences and misunderstandings. Life keeps creeping on, and I suppose many smart people would argue that you've got to creep on with it and come to terms with what you have to leave behind. I'm not a follower of Jesus, but his whole bit about giving up childish things when you become an adult makes a lot of sense. Hanging on to your youth for too long can be a dangerous proposition.

And so it was with these mixed feelings of despondency and guilt-ridden nostalgia that me and my girl waited for Carey to take the stage. On one hand, I really wanted to give myself over to Mariah's magical Christmas dream; on the other hand, I kind of hated myself for being so damn sentimental. Not to mention I was worried that I had so much emotional investment in this music that there was actually no way Carey's performance could ever live up to what I'd created in my mind—I mean, her disastrous December 2014 performance of "All I Want" at Rockefeller Center, has been hailed by critics as a prime examples that nothing, not even her superlative voice, lasts forever.

On Broadly: 'Shooting Guns With Ann Coulter':

When the swelling plush red curtain in the Beacon Theatre was finally lifted to reveal an elegant and voluptuous Carey in a stunning white dress with a gargantuan Christmas tree towering behind her, the crowd quickly came to their feet, whooping and clapping. They didn't sit back down for the next hour and 15 minutes. And I couldn't help but join them. Just hearing her voice and the sweet holiday melodies behind her was too infectious to resist. But what was really cool was that I wasn't exactly taken back into the past this time, thinking of my deceased loved ones or the all the lost time. Instead, I was firmly planted in the now, sharing a new Christmas moment with my girl. We danced and sang every word to each other like it was fucking karaoke. I didn't even know I knew the words to "Gloria (in Excelcis Deo)."

As great as it was, I can't say my mind didn't wander to dark places. About midway through the show, I started to wonder what it would mean if a terrorist maniac—whether it be of the ISIS or Dylann Roof variety—came barging into the theater just as Carey hit the climax of "Joy to the World" and put into motion the kind of tragedy we've seen play out so often over the past few years. I wondered how, in such a world of immense suffering, did I deserve to be there having a good time. But then again, perhaps it's the possibility that something really fucked up could happen to any of us—or even the probability that something at least kind of fucked up will happen to us at some point that demands that we actually cherish our rare moments of happiness with a manic of abandon.

It's important for me to say to you that the Carey we saw that night was not the Carey who hit those insane high notes on the recorded version of "O Holy Night" or frolicked around in the snow in a red snowsuit in the "All I Want" music video more than 20 years ago. Her range was by no-means limited, but it was tastefully restrained. She wasn't R&B's Marilyn Monroe anymore—rather, she was an elegant Christmas Queen Diva.

After three outfit changes and a few jokes about dreidels and Ol' Dirty Bastard, I looked around and realized that not only was she different, but out in the audience, we were different, too. And that was what I think made the concert a kind of unlikely transformative experience for me. It wasn't a rehash of past memories for me, but the beginning of an entirely new one. One that I shared with my girlfriend and I won't soon forget. It's crazy when you realize that you can still get that special feeling of connection and elation that you had when you were a child as an adult, albeit from a different place. I know I'll never get the Christmases of my youth back, but that doesn't mean that I can't create something even better with the people who are still in my life.

Follow Wilbert on Twitter.

Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas tour continues tonight and Friday, December 17 and 18, at the Beacon Theatre in New York.

Charlie (not his real name), age 22, before he started taking GHB to treat his narcolepsy/cataplexy

Every month, 24-year-old Charlie* goes to his local FedEx office in Chattanooga, Tennessee to pick up a package. The box is always shipped from the same pharmacy, in St. Louis, Missouri, and it always has the same contents: 270 grams of high-grade GHB.

By a strange quirk of chemical fate, Charlie's monthly stash of FDA-approved GHB—a drug usually associated with date rape, gay clubbing, and now chemsex—also happens to be the best known treatment for the serious sleep disorders narcolepsy and cataplexy. GHB's dual stimulant-sedative properties enable sufferers to sleep at night and stay awake in the day. For most people, swallowing a load of G every night would be a bad idea. But for Charlie, who's suffered from sleep disorders since he was a teenager, it's given him his life back.

Narcolepsy, a rare neurological condition that plays havoc with the body's sleep function, commonly makes people crash into a string of deep, short-lasting sleeps in the day. At night, sleep is fractured and fitful. More often than not it is accompanied by cataplexy, sudden, involuntary physical collapses triggered by strong emotion or laughter. Charlie was diagnosed with both conditions when he was 21.

In August, Charlie got his first prescription of Xyrem, GHB's Big Pharma brother. Because of its potential for illegal use, it's one of the most tightly controlled drugs in America. It's also one of the most expensive, meaning only a small percentage of the world's narcolepsy sufferers can get hold of it. I gave Charlie a call to ask him about living with narcolepsy and what it's like to treat it with a load of government-approved G.

VICE: You were diagnosed with narcolepsy at 21. When did you first notice things weren't quite right?
Charlie: My symptoms started when I was about 15. I kept on falling asleep in lessons, like in every lesson, for about half an hour. Throughout the day there was always this background tiredness, but then I would feel this intense tiredness, put my head down on the desk and I was deep asleep in less than 60 seconds.

And then things began to get worse?
I went to study bioengineering at university in Atlanta, but my friends were always finding me passed out somewhere. During fraternity rush I was being found asleep on other people's lawns, where I had been chatting to them. It was embarrassing and my friends were concerned about me. I started going out less because I knew I was going to fall asleep. I always wore a zip-up fleece because it was easy to take off and use as a quick pillow.

Three years ago it became a real problem. I started getting cataplexy, which is much more severe than narcolepsy. Whenever I had strong emotion, like laughing, I would lose muscle control in my body, a bit like having a seizure. I was conscious, but unable to move.

What was it like living with that?
Imagine how you feel after two days and nights without sleep. Your eyes are swollen and rimmed by dark circles. Everyone around you looks fresh and rested, ready to start their day. You try to speak a coherent sentence, but you lose your train of thought half way through.

Read on Motherboard: Sleep Paralysis Is an Inescapable Waking Nightmare

That is how I felt within a few hours of waking up every day. The desire to sleep was intense. The option to return to sleep was always there, but I knew I was sleeping my job, my relationships, and my life away. Narcolepsy is not a disease often associated with loss of life, but it is, in a sense. It's the slow loss of hours, days, and eventually years of your life to sleep. So I struggled against it. When I eventually gave in, the sleep I returned to wasn't restful.

Did you end up in any dangerous situations?
The most dangerous thing was having cataplexy attacks in bars. I've spilled drinks all over people in many places. One time I had an attack and spilled my drink on a 6'5" guy. He wanted to fight me; he was very angry. I told him I had a medical condition, said sorry and bought him and his girlfriend a drink. Luckily she calmed him down, because he really wanted to fight me. I had to be careful driving. I had a girlfriend who lived a four-hour drive away on the coast, so I took pit stops at gas stations. I would just put the seat back and sleep.

What steps did you take to deal with it initially?
I researched narcolepsy and cataplexy on the web and I knew it was what I had. Some people with narcolepsy were using Adderall, so I got it from my friends who had it prescribed for ADHD. I ended up using 30mg a day, mainly to get me through lab classes at university, which were very important for my degree. When I went for sleep tests and got officially diagnosed, the doctors said I went into deep REM sleep very rapidly, in five minutes, compared to 90 minutes for most people. It explained why I would have 20-minute naps with vivid dreams.

My doctor prescribed me Modafinil, which was good. It allowed me to stay awake for much of the day and complete my degree. Like with Adderall, my tolerance grew and I had to take double the dose. It caused brain fog, it totally messed with my night sleeping and did nothing for cataplexy. It was around then that I laughed at something my mom said in her kitchen, collapsed, and ended up in hospital with a badly bust lip.

So despite the Modafinil, things got worse?
By the time I graduated at 23 I was living a non-functional, non-existent life. I was sleeping for an hour, then waking up for 10 minutes in a repeat pattern through the day. Sleep in the night was badly fractured. I had very realistic, vivid cinematic dreams, which happened to be quite mundane, so it was hard to tell what was real and what was not.

I was also getting sleep paralysis every night, where your brain wakes up but your body doesn't. You can't move, apart from your eyeballs. You can't talk. It's terrifying. In the Middle Ages people used to call sleep paralysis being "hag-ridden," because it felt like a creature was holding you down.

I felt isolated, I had no friends, and relationships were impossible. It was hard to eat, so I got skinny, I got depression. Even normal things like taking a shower or cleaning my room became so difficult. Getting a job was out of the question.

Related: Watch our new documentary 'Wolf of the West End,' about infamous socialite and fraudster Eddie Davenport.

When did you find out about GHB/Xyrem?
I actually knew about GHB and that it was used to treat narcolepsy before I had any idea that I had the disease. I remember reading about it on Erowid and thinking that it was strange that a sedative was used to treat an illness where people slept too much. I was actually interested in trying it recreationally, but I figured I would never come across it, since it had the stigma of sexual exploitation attached to it. I guess I found some, though not in the way I was expecting.

What effect did it have on your life?
I was lucky. I could get Xyrem prescribed because I'd already done the sleep studies and I had health insurance. I stopped having vivid dreams and now I stay wide awake until the nighttime, which I've not done since I was a kid. I take my first dose at 10 PM and I'm asleep by 10:30 PM. The next dose is at 2AM and I'm out until I wake at 6 AM. I was overjoyed the first time I realized that I hadn't fallen over from cataplexy just for laughing. It's amazing how such an intrinsic part of being human can become so devastating. It allowed me to work for several months, at an animal shelter, after I got on it. Basically, it's completely changed my life.

You take nine grams a night, which is a lot of G. What's the buzz like?
I look forward to taking it every night because the first 20 minutes before I fall asleep are amazing. I started on two doses a night of 2.25 grams each . It felt extremely recreational, a bit like a cross between how it feels on ecstasy and feeling drunk. Basically, I felt pretty good. Then I titrated up to nine grams a night. Luckily GHB has a very short half-life—it metabolizes into CO2 and water in the body—so by the time I take it each evening, there's none left in my body.

Are there any side effects?
Increased anxiety. And it also gives me a hangover kind of feeling. I can't drink alcohol any more, because if I mess up the timing it can kill me, so that's difficult.

How does the future look for you now?
All these years of narcolepsy have left my memory and focus pretty shot; I have no recollection of dates. I have a goldfish memory. Xyrem is no cure—I have to keep taking it for rest of my life—but it's such a relief to feel normal again. Others are not so lucky, and what I have just described will be their reality for the rest of their lives.

GHB for therapeutic use. Photo by La Cara Salma via Wikipedia

Charlie's got a point. At around $20 per ml, Xyrem is far more expensive than its illegal equivalent, so it remains beyond the reach of narcolepsy or cataplexy sufferers with no health insurance or a secret fortune stashed away. A monthly Xyrem prescription costs between $10,000 and $15,000. Xyrem's manufacturer, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, has patented the drug's use for sleeping disorders, so it can charge what it likes.

Consequently, only one in six—12,000—of America's estimated 200,000 narcolepsy sufferers are benefitting from Xyrem. In the UK, the drug is even more beyond people's reach: The NHS funds only 1 percent of the 25,000 people with narcolepsy or cataplexy in the UK. Last month a judge granted a judicial review to the parents of a teenage narcolepsy sufferer who had been refused funding for Xyrem by NHS England.

That the vast majority of the world's 3 million narcolepsy sufferers are priced out of the best treatment on Earth, when that same drug is available illegally for a fraction of the price online, sets up a dangerous situation. Inevitably, people desperate to get hold of Xyrem will be tempted to hot-wire themselves medication by buying its illicit replica.

The use of illegal drugs for DIY medical treatment is a route well trodden, for example, by those who have dodged the law for decades to obtain cannabis to treat their MS. Or even those thousands of American opiate addicts who've now resorted to buying street heroin after the oxycodone pills to which they had become dependent were made unsuitable for crushing and snorting.

It wouldn't be a surprise to find that there are a number of dark web GHB dealers out there who are unwittingly making narcolepsy sufferers' lives easier. But with GHB's inherent risks, especially its toxic nature when used with alcohol, desperate people attempting to bypass Big Pharma to take matters into their own hands not only risk jail, but a lethal overdose.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.

All photos courtesy of Hannah Wilde

Enough time has passed since the world was at Peak Hipster for us to look back at it as a movement, or a craze, or a meme, or whatever the fuck it was and try to take stock of what it all meant, if anything. So this week we're doing exactly that in a short collection of stories.

In most artistic pursuits, it's impossible to objectively declare one person "the best" at what they do. Who's to say if van Gogh was superior to Monet, or if Zayn is hotter than Justin? There is, however, an unparalleled champion in the genre of hipster erotica. Her name is Hannah Wilde, and she is the creator ofThe Complete Hipster Gangbangs (now available as audiobooks, if that's your thing).

The ten-part compendium turns every hipster stereotype into an opportunity for a gangbang: There's the story of Amy, the hipster barista who has an orgy in her coffee shop; Danielle, the goth hipster who gets pounded by ten men at once; Lauren, a hipster gamer who "finds herself in the middle of the hottest multi-player action she could've ever imagined," and many, many more. As far as I can tell, there is no other collection of hipster erotica as expansive.

Who is Hannah Wilde, I wondered, and how does she know so much about hipster sex? Was she writing from experience, or were these her recurring fantasies? Was she more of a grad-school MFA hipster, or, say, the type who traipsed around music festivals wearing feathers on her head? I tracked her down, and to my surprise, Hannah Wilde is not much of a hipster at all—just an enterprising erotica writer in Los Angeles who set out to write books that would sell. I spoke to her about the origin of the series, how she develops her characters beyond the superficial stereotypes, and why one book of hipster erotica just wasn't enough.

VICE: You have nine books in The Complete Hipster Gangbangs series. Why focus on hipsters?
Hannah Wilde: I was trying to come up with my own spin to stand out from the pack, something that I personally thought was sexy and hadn't been done to death. I also wanted to target younger, college-aged people instead of the housewife market that usually eats up those shirtless-guy-on-horseback paperbacks. Hipsters just seemed to make sense.

I also knew that I wanted to do a series of books, because I'm always drawn to collectible things and I figured my audience might be too. I remember being young and being obsessed with Goosebumps books, how I would just go to the book store and buy the next one that came out because I liked the way the whole group of them looked sitting on my shelf. The reason the collectible thing matters is because there are so many different kinds of hipsters. It seemed really cute to try and come up with every different subcategory that I could think of and somehow turn it into a gangbang: gangbang at a music festival, barista gangbang at the coffee shop, gamer guys gangbanging a gamer girl... It's really just an endless well. Just thinking about it now, I'm a little disappointed that there are only nine books in the series.

If you were to write a tenth book, what kind of hipster would it be about?
I was thinking about doing a tattoo shop one. Also, even though there was a gamer book, I never got around to a programmer type—like, computers instead of consoles and some sort of hacking element. There were thoughts of a punk book as well, since my definition of hipster was essentially just counterculture, but I suppose the other ideas just roll themselves out faster.

So how did you decide which hipsters to write about?
To be honest, sometimes the ones that make the cut just depend on if I find a really great cover photo that works for one idea over the other. Yoga Hipster Gangbang kind of came together just like that. I had the idea, but what really got things rolling was when I found a really great cover girl photo.

Also, short-form erotica is so much more about the action than anything else. You pretty much have 5,000 words to get in, get dirty, and get out, so there is a huge element of stereotyping to everything. I suppose that applies to porn in general: You're taking a persona or a fantasy and just exaggerating the elements to these epic sexualized proportions. Mostly, the voice of the characters is just mine, and there is a natural sarcasm and youth to it, which I think fits the hipster aesthetic well. Maybe they are all just different aspects of my own personality.

Is there an autobiographical element to the books? Do you yourself identify as a hipster?
I think it depends on your definition of a hipster. When you're taking broad strokes and looking for every different type of counterculture persona, then I definitely fall in there somewhere. But if we're talking about the traditional riding-fixie-bikes-in-Portland-to-the-Wes-Anderson-film-festival hipster, then that's not really me. The first book, Graduate Hipster Gangbang, is actually much more autobiographical than it should have been. But so far nobody who was involved in those events has traced things back to this pen name, so it seems my anonymity is safe for now.

"Most people would rather look at a guy or girl and see tattoos and instantly think, I relate to that, instead of having a 20-minute intro where the porn star talks about how much they love Jack Kerouac."

What makes "hipster sex" different from, say, the erotica you write about paranormal characters?
The paranormal erotica that I write is much more about the action than anything else. The stories are short, and they need to move along because there is usually some kind of scary monster or adventure aspect that has nothing to do with the sex. There's just way more to make happen on every page. Hipster erotica is more about setting the mood and, especially, creating dialogue that seemed young and fun. If someone is reading one of my Hipster Gangbang books, they're doing it because they want to hear about the bands these guys and girls like, or what kind of sarcastic quip the character might have when put into a pretty absurd, porny situation. There's a lot of comedy in the Hipster Gangbang books that comes directly from having the characters react the way that I personally would in these over-the-top sexual situations.

It sounds like you focus a lot on developing these hipster characters. What do you think about hipster-themed porn, which is basically just mainstream porn plus black-framed glasses?
Personally, I don't really mind that, because a vast majority of hipsters are doing that in reality—just putting on glasses or growing a beard and playing a banjo, whatever. It's an aesthetic choice that people are making and that could reflect a lot of what is going on inside of them, or nothing at all. The vast majority of porn, especially if we're just talking about pictures and videos, is only supposed to be a short little vacation into fantasy; you get in, you get out, you move on. That means that most people would rather look at a guy or girl and see tattoos and instantly think, I relate to that, instead of having a 20-minute intro where the porn star talks about how much they love Jack Kerouac. That's just not the way most people treat their porn, and I think that's totally fine.

Erotica, however, is going to have a different kind of audience, people who are looking for more of that slow burn where they get to know the character internally and get off to this type of hipster personality type in a slightly more real feeling way. Really, erotica is perfect for hipster porn because it's one of the only subsections of pornography that is focused on revealing the personality of the participants, and what is going on inside their heads.

So what do hipsters think about during sex?
I think that there's a certain amount of posturing that comes with the hipster aesthetic, for better or worse, so I imagine that that there might be an issue of too much thinking about yourself instead of enjoying the moment. Obsessing on how you look, or what you're wearing, or not wearing. In the erotica fantasy world there's none of that, thankfully, because that is the nature of fantasy worlds, but the situations are things that hipsters would find themselves in: fucking to get VIP passes for a music festival, for instance, or to expand your mind at the yoga studio, or to impress your boss at the coffee shop.

Do you plan to continue writing hipster-themed erotica?
I've learned over time to direct my efforts into what sells, and while hipster gangbangs did well, monster gangbangs did even better. It's so fascinating to me that there are more people out there who are more interested in fucking the Loch Ness Monster—or at least laughing about fucking the Loch Ness Monster?—than fucking a cute barista or something.

Yeah, on that note, I noticed that you wrote a book about fucking a pack of Chupacabras. How did you come up with that?
There was an X-Files episode about Chupacabra that, if I remember correctly, never really showed it and I think I've been disappointed by that ever since. Maybe this book was making up for that in my own subconscious, I don't know. That book is part of the Violated By Monsters series, which I just finished and ended up being 60 books long with a different monster in every one. At this point, I think it would be very difficult to come up with a type of monster that I haven't written about fucking.

You can find all of Hannah Wilde's erotica here.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Illustrations by Dan Evans

Google image search "Edward Davenport" and you'll see a mosaic of celebrity selfies featuring everyone from the Prince of Monaco to 50 Cent. "Welcome to the website of Edward Davenport," the website of Edward Davenport proclaims, "one of London's most flamboyant and best-known entrepreneurs, as well as a true English gentleman from an established British family."

But this public persona—that of the aristocratic socialite—is Eddie's trick. It's how, in the past, he gained people's trust and got what he wanted. The man behind that selfie smile—the subject of the new VICE documentary Wolf of the West End—has bankrupted business partners and made an estimated £34.5 million through fraudulent activity, according to the Serious Fraud Office (Davenport says the figure wasn't anywhere near that much).

The 2000s were good to Eddie. After buying Sierra Leone's London embassy—the Central London mansion, 33 Portland Place—for just £50,000 in 1999, he turned it into an arena for decadent sex parties, spending the next ten years entertaining celebrities and aristocracy. However, in 2011, "Fast Eddie" was convicted of engineering a multi-million pound fraud and sentenced to nearly eight years in prison, before being released in 2014 as an "act of mercy" because of ill health due to one of his kidneys failing.

So what was it like to go from a life of luxury to a South London cell? How would a serial partier cope with life between the sexless walls of Wandsworth Prison? What's life in jail like for a wealthy white-collar criminal? I spent a fair amount of time with Eddie during the filming of Wolf of the West End, so I got back in touch to find out.

VICE: What's your worst memory from prison?
Edward Davenport: There were occasions where there was a staff shortage or things would get canceled. So when you normally play badminton on, you know, a Saturday afternoon or something, and then suddenly it gets canceled due to staff shortages, it's not like you've got a lot of other things you can arrange at short notice.

So your worst memory from being in prison was having to reschedule badminton?
I've been raided in the middle of the night before.

Why did they raid you?
I think they were looking for illegal contraband items.

What about, like, the solitary nature of it—the boredom and the lack of intimate company. Did that not get to you?
Well, it was a bit like being a virgin again when I got out. I think I had plenty of women before I went in. I mean, maybe if you've been into prison and you haven't done anything before with your life, but I had a bloody busy 45 years where I had had, you know, I suppose you could say, more than anyone could ever dream of and ever want. I had been out most nights—I'd done everything, you know.

The staff are almost up to the standards of politeness and friendliness and professional-ness as hotels. They call you by your name, you know.

OK, but there must have been some bad bits about prison.
Well, having a kidney transplant wasn't exactly ideal. This is supposed to be a very civilized country, a very sophisticated country, yet here I am for a white-collar crime being taken to do dialysis and, during the whole of the dialysis, left in handcuffs.

The kidney story does sound quite bad, but what about the rest of it? I mean, prison can really get to some people. Are you telling me you experienced none of that?
I've seen none of that. I think you might have been doing articles on prisons in different countries.

OK. In that case, what was good about prison?
Well, I became quite good at badminton. There wasn't much else there except playing badminton that was quite good.

Is the rumor true that you used to somehow get the prison guards to give you lobster for dinner?
Well, of course I'd have my own food, yeah.

How did you manage to sort that out?
This is a very official conversation, and I know it's being recorded. You're right about the rumor, you're right about that being publicized somewhere, but I'm just giving you a kind of slightly tongue-in-cheek answer for it, if you like. Between your door, you get a menu every week. And I don't know why, but on my menu they used to have lobster on it. Regularly. So I would just tick the box.

I see. What was your social circle like in prison?
When I was in prison in London it was like a celebrity hangout. People would take a picture of somebody like Chris Huhne and then use the prison payphone to try and sell it to The Sun. I think there was one picture that some crazy lifer took of me with the Credit Suisse rogue trader, Kweku Adoboli. Even I was like, "You've gotta delete that." You've got two high profile prisoners, an illegal mobile phone in a prison, I was on a laptop... I mean, it was just a crazy picture. And so I think that got deleted.

I met Chris Huhne, who was a politician, I met Lord Taylor, another politician. I guess people socially stick together, so the group of people who are well-known—who might be a bit more wealthy or vulnerable—tend to kind of congregate in one area and have their coffee, and the other people who are into another type of game, like drug dealing, might hang out in another corner.

I think Max Clifford was pretty much segregated from day one because, one: he's well known, and two: his offense is too delicate for any of the other prisoners to accept. If you go there for people will pick on you, take the piss out of you, and give you a hard time.

Related: Watch the trailer for 'Wolf of the West End,' our new documentary about Eddie Davenport

Were you in a clique with these other well-to-do people in prison?
No, not at all. I used to play badminton with this complete nutter who I absolutely saw as an amazing fellow, called John Slavin. In fact, he was even acting as my secretary at some stage, which I think is quite funny, because he would sound so convincing and charming to everyone he'd talk to. You'd get people saying, "Oh my god, you're so lucky to have that guy working for you or picking up your phone."

He was a great person if you wanted to hog the badminton court; he knew how to get his way. In prison, he who shouts loudest can book the badminton court.

I met a lot of interesting characters. I suppose, you know, probably the people I thought were really interesting were the guys who were from a hacking group, Anonymous. And I met another hacker, he was called Black Dragon. And I think now he's actually doing quite well for himself: he's out of prison, and he stayed in touch.

Do you think your experience of prison differed from the majority of other prisoners because you're a white-collar criminal and a member of the upper class?
Well, in theory, being a member of the upper class and the fact I have a very smart—or, I hope, a smart—English accent would make the experience of prison worse, not better.

Were you intimidated by the other prisoners?
Well, the Wolf of the West End is not going to be afraid of an intimidating, violent criminal, is he? Wolves, we can protect ourselves, you know?

I know you have influence and power in the outside world, but surely it's a whole different ball game in prison?
When I went in there, they took me aside and said, "Look, you're obviously from a very privileged background, your case is going to get a lot of publicity, and the amount of money you're talking about is astronomical, especially to a lot of the people in here, so perhaps you should go on the more vulnerable side." Which is basically for MPs and politicians. And I think it took me less than ten seconds to think 'Mmm, OK, well, I'm here, I'll just go in the deep end it'll be more fun.'

But, knowing you, I would have thought you'd have wanted to hang around and work on your sphere of influence among the affluent.
Yeah, but if you go on that side it's—you don't get, like, leather furnishing, in which case I might have thought about it. I think also you're going to have a lot of sex offenders there.

Would you say that having money makes prison a lot better?
Having money generally anywhere in the world makes life better. But you still have to be fundamentally happy underneath. And prison is no exception to that rule.

So, prison: overall not that bad, then.
Well, actually, it's just an experience. Not the best one and not the worst one.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

Follow Dan on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Communitech Photos

Two senior staffers who worked for former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty are facing criminal charges tied to the 2011 gas plant scandal.

McGuinty's former chief of staff David Livingston, 63, and Laura Miller, 36, former deputy chief of staff, have been charged with one count each of breach of trust; mischief; and misuse of a computer system to commit the offense of mischief, according to the Ontario Provincial Police.

The pair are accused of erasing data relating to the government's contentious decision to cancel two GTA gas plants right before the October 2011 election at a cost of $1.1 billion to taxpayers.

According to the police investigation, Miller's partner Peter Faist, an IT expert, was paid $10,000 to "to wipe off personal data on approximately 20 desktop computers in the premier's office."

Miller, who moved to Vancouver to work for the BC Liberals, another government that's struggled with secrecy-related issuesas of late, released a statement via Twitter Thursday indicating that she's quit her job and intends to fight the charges.

"Every Canadian expects and deserves impartiality and fairness in police charging decisions. I do not believe that to be the case here," she wrote.

She has reportedly filed a complaint against the OPP through the police watchdog the Ontario Independent Police Review Director.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne also released a statement Thursday saying that the events in question took place before her time in office and that she's not going to comment.

Livingston and Miller and scheduled to appear at the Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto Jan. 27, 2016.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Elliot Johnson. Photo via Twitter/ @ElliotAJohnson

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Not long before Elliott Johnson, the young activist at the center of the Conservative bullying scandal, killed himself, he invited his friend Paul* over for dinner at his house in Tooting. Elliott had recently been made redundant from his job at Conservative Way Forward (CWF), a right-of-center Tory pressure group, but seemed in good spirits overall. Paul laughs as he remembers the meal Elliott prepared. "Really, the food was absolutely appalling, it was basically inedible. But it was still great fun, because Elliott was such good company. He was funny; he was kind; he was always impeccably turned out. A terrible cook, though."

Paul goes quiet. "I found a picture the other day, actually, of the Camembert he made that evening. It was such a disaster! It made me laugh, though, looking at it." He lapses into silence.

Johnson killed himself in September this year. Shortly before his death, he'd reportedly made an official complaint to the Conservative Party alleging bullying behavior at the hands of Mark Clarke, the so-called "Tatler Tory." In August, the pair had had an altercation at the Marquis of Granby pub in Westminster because Clarke was frustrated that Johnson wouldn't run a story on the CWF website.

The bullying scandal cost Cabinet Minister Grant Shapps his job and threatens to take down other high-profile Tories, such as Chairman Lord Feldman. Johnson's parents have now boycotted the party's official inquiry into the affair, believing it to be biased.

To give me an idea of the culture of bullying that many say pervaded Conservative Future, Paul showed me a copy of a letter he sent to Lord Feldman, who is running the investigation into the allegations.

Paul claims that Clarke gave a 30-minute "presentation" at a conference in which he "smeared and denounced" a young female activist who was not present, at one point playing a "humiliating" video of the woman in question to the assembled guests.

"[He described her as] as a self-obsessed careerist who put her own personal gratification above the welfare of Conservative Future and the ideological purity of Thatcherism," writes Paul. "At the time myself and many others felt appalled but unable to speak out. Naively, many of us present, mostly young students, more or less accepted that this was the cutthroat way in which politics is conducted."

This is far from the worst example of bullying to be alleged against Clarke. There's a young Tory who believes Clarke was behind a blackmail plot in which he was duped into performing a sex act online . When he refused to pay a ransom, the video was leaked online. An unnamed 22-year-old woman who claims she woke up in an MP's bed with no memory of getting undressed. There are also allegations of assault, and sexual harassment, and a blackmail plot including Tory minister Robert Halfon. And of course, the circumstances that led up to Johnson's death.

Clarke has adamantly denied all the allegations made against him, and has said he is not commenting on Johnson's death. He told VICE: " I have repeatedly denied any allegations of bullying, sexual harassment, or blackmail. I continue to deny this in respect of your new allegations."

Mark Clarke. Photo via Conservative Home

One sentence from Paul's letter stands out: "Just before he committed suicide, Elliott Johnson sent me a message on Facebook that read, 'I miss you xxx.' I have spent many long hours regretting that I did not ring Elliott at that moment and ask him what he was doing, and that I did not dissuade him from committing suicide. However, it is not I, but Mark Clarke, that is responsible for Elliott's tragic death."

Whether or not Paul's opinion is justified to any extent will become clear in the course of the party's investigation. But the events surrounding that death have thrown up evidence of a poisonous culture within the party's young wing. While many say that Clarke was at the epicenter of the rot, some activists pointed the finger at other figures within the party. One told me that since the revelations emerged, "I don't really know who to trust any more."

Becky*, 20, joined the party when she was 15. "I'd go leafleting, telephone canvassing, particularly around the election. My fellow activists vary a lot—you get the really lovely down-to-earth people who want to make a difference, and the careerists and toffs who are in it for personal gain."

She'd heard about Mark Clarke before she encountered him—as I learn, Clarke's alleged behavior was apparently common knowledge among the party grassroots—but this didn't prepare her for what happened when they met.

"At an event Mark groped me and asked my boyfriend if he could borrow me for the night," says Becky. "I guess it might have the alcohol talking, but it made me really uncomfortable."

Paul attended the annual Young Briton Foundation conference last December. Held at Churchill College, Cambridge, it attracts hard-right Conservatives with links to the influential backbench 1922 committee—the kind of people who raise a toast to Margaret Thatcher before supper—and until his downfall, Clarke was influential within the organization. "We were staying there, and one person who at the time was a Cabinet Minister got up on stage and made a joke about leaving before everyone started hooking up. There was an atmosphere of everyone sleeping with each other—a really seedy vibe. It made me feel uncomfortable."

Consenting adults acting in a "seedy" way is one thing, and probably wouldn't have made national newspaper headlines. But it appears that what was happening may have gone much further.

At the epicenter of Clarke's alleged activities was Road Trip 2015, in which Clarke bussed in activists to campaign in marginal seats during the General Election. Some suggest that Clarke may have been able to get away with dubious behavior for so long because of his near-magical ability to get activists out campaigning in target seats.

Over on Noisey: Out and Bad – London's LGBT Dancehall Scene

Tom Hulme* has campaigned for the Conservatives since he was 11. "After a few Road Trips I got the impression that it was all a bit of an excuse for people to go back to the hotel afterwards and inebriate yourself until you wake up in someone's bed the next morning." Tom mentions a toe-curling maxim that was used: "Isolate, Inebriate, and Penetrate."

Paul agrees there was a "huge culture of casual sex," pointing out that the problem wasn't "the casual sex per se, but the half joking, half serious way that people were being told to keep their eyes on certain MPs."

The culture of bullying permeated the young Conservatives' political activity as well. A number of activists I spoke to told me of being put under huge amounts of pressure to deliver a certain number of campaigners for an event, particularly around the General Election period. When individuals complained about Clarke, their emails were forwarded directly to him—with predictable consequences. According to Becky, "You report it to CCHQ and someone passes it over to him and then he gets bullying tactics to get you to withdraw it."

Harry*, 17, shows me screenshots of a Facebook conversation in which Alexandra Paterson, then chairman of the party's Youth Wing, attempts to pressure him into "unliking" a comment on Facebook that Clarke didn't approve of. "MC [Mark Clarke] watches everything," she warns. Paterson was 30 years old at the time, nearly twice his age.

Mark Clarke shakes David Cameron's hand

Another activist, Nathan*, showed me a Facebook conversation in which Clarke uses bullying to drum up attendees for an event. Nathan is head of a university small-c "conservative" society that is not officially affiliated to the party, and when he says he won't be able to bring 50 supporters to an event, Clarke threatens legal action over use of the word "conservative" in the society's name.

Threats of action seem to have been part of Clarke's armory. Paul told me: "I don't want to get sued for defamation. Because that's always what Clarke used to say about people. There was this atmosphere of, 'if you complain, you will get sued.'"

All the activists I spoke to for this piece were angry that a few individuals' actions had dragged their party's name through the mud. Interestingly, however, the bullying allegations had not shaken their essential confidence in conservative politics and the Conservative Party. Becky told me although she couldn't understand "why more people didn't stand up to Clarke and stop him," she's still confident that senior Tories have her best interests at heart: "I just can't imagine them not caring."

Others are less forgiving, although not enough to leave the party. Hulme says, "as someone who's had mental health problems and anxiety issues, I know that if happened to me I wouldn't be able to speak out." He tells me that when out canvassing for the Oldham by-election, people mentioned the bullying scandal to him on the doorstep.

"Tory activists are nice people, and then this group come along, and ruin everything for us... It makes me angry. They've put a massive shit-stain on our party's name, and I think that's really sad."

*Party activists with an asterisk by their name talked to VICE under an assumed name to protect their identities.

Follow Sirin on Twitter.

By most accounts, Morgan's Tavern in Riverside, California, is a typical dive bar. A dingy, pirate-themed hole in the wall, the place has mixed service and offers cheap domestic beer, according to Yelp reviews. Dollar bills are stapled to its ceiling, and on Thursdays, five bucks will buy you into a singles' beer pong tournament.

24-year-old Enrique Marquez, a former security guard who got fired from Walmart earlier this year, worked at the bar doing odd jobs until quite recently. He refreshed ice sinks, manned the door, took out the trash, mopped floors, and cleaned the restrooms, as the New York Times reported. Tavern owner Jerry Morgan hired him three years ago, and Marquez often kicked back at the spot for a few drinks on his days off, sometimes coming directly from praying at his mosque.

But when Marquez—who converted to Islam several years back—drank, he was prone to chatter, occasionally talking about terrorism, and even speaking vaguely of sleeper cells. No one seemed to give the man and his bloviating a second thought—until the terrorist attack in nearby San Bernardino that killed 14 and injured 22 early this month. Now the feds are poised to file criminal charges against Marquez, a neighbor and friend to the Muslim couple that carried out the murderous rampage at the Inland Regional Center. Marquez was arrested Thursday, the Washington Post reported, and the charges would be the first in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack since September 11, 2001—one that has roiled the country and lent a dose of toxicity to the presidential campaign.

Hours after the shooting in San Bernardino, a cryptic message emerged on Marquez's Facebook page: "I'm. Very sorry sguys (sic). It was a pleasure."

According to Reuters, Marquez has admitted to supplying the two assault rifles to terrorist couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who were killed in a shootout with police. Marquez was friends with Farook during their teenage years, and checked himself into a Los Angeles-area psychiatric facility not long after the attack. He has since become the key lead in the FBI's investigation into the massacre, waiving his right to silence and self incrimination, and reportedly cooperating fully with authorities. He's given the feds so much information, in fact, they've begun to wonder how reliable the narrative he's providing is, and fear he may be "grandstanding," as the Washington Post reported.

According to law enforcement officials, Marquez told the FBI that he and Farook had discussed launching an attack as far back as 2012. But they got cold feet when a nearby terrorism investigation resulted in the arrest of multiple men allegedly plotting to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

Marquez also indicated that he bought the two guns on Farook's behalf, when the latter believed he wouldn't pass a background check—a federal crime that carries a stiff penalty. Officials do not believe Marquez had knowledge of the attack before they took place, however.

In addition to being close childhood friends, as the Associated Press reported, Marquez and Farook were listed as witnesses on a marriage license when the latter's brother, Raheel, wed in 2011. A few years later, Raheel Farook and his bride Tatiana, returned the favor for Marquez, acting as witnesses in his marriage to Tatiana's Russian sister Manya Chernykh, according to Riverside County records.

For their part, Marquez's family has declined many an interview request from the media since the December 2 attack, but last week, his mother Armida Chacon spoke briefly to reporters, calling her son "a good person."

A news conference was scheduled later Thursday in San Bernardino concerning the charges—the precise nature of which remained unclear—but was reportedly postponed. On Friday, President Barack Obama is due to travel to San Bernardino to meet privately with victims' families for the first time since the tragedy.

Follow Brian McManus on Twitter.

Franklin Ave in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 2007 (left image) and 2015 (right image). Screencaps via Google Maps

Enough time has passed since the world was at Peak Hipster for us to look back at it as a movement, or a craze, or a meme, or whatever the fuck it was and try to take stock of what it all meant, if anything. So this week we're doing exactly that in a short collection of stories.

On any given night, Franklin Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights is bustling. Folks are teeming out of the subway and onto the street. Its several restaurants and boutique, boujie grocery stores are filled with people paying way too much for "artisan" pizza and organic produce and frozen Amy's burritos. In just a few short blocks, there are several coffee shops, each packed with young people tapping away on laptops and nursing tiny cups of fancy pour over. A line forms at a taco truck that's parked just outside newly built condominiums next to a newly built Starbucks. Young, upwardly mobile drunks spill out of trivia nights at various new bars designed to look the same, all tin ceilings and Edison bulbs.

Ten years ago, none of this was here. Hell, just three years ago, people looking for, say, Asian fusion tacos or even a bagel shop would be fresh out of luck. Now all those things are in abundance in just a few short blocks. Crown Heights is changing. Quickly. And it's happening right now. Crown Heights has officially become hip.

Over the last year, rents in the neighborhood have risen faster than any other in New York City. Articles about what that means—gentrification, displacement—are starting to roll out of New York's various media outlets. Developers are noticing, and construction of new, sleek glass and steel condos are starting to rise up where empty lots or buildings previously stood for decades. Of course, none of this is a mark of hip, just of now. Of people with money who want more of it recognizing trends in the market and seizing upon them.

But what caused the explosion in Crown Heights cool—or of any neighborhood that experiences it, for that matter? How does it happen? Is it by design? Marketing? Close proximity to a gourmet cheese shop?

"The academic answer to your question is something called central place theory," says Jeffrey Barg, the current urban planner at the Philadelphia Horticultural Society. "Everyone learns about it in planning school, and it goes like this: If you have a boardwalk along the beach, and you're going to place two ice cream shops on the boardwalk, where's the optimal place to put them? At either end? One-third of the way down and two-thirds of the way down? One in the middle and one at an end?"

The answer, it turns out, is none of the above. Both will do the most business if you put them right next to each other, right in the center, says Barg and central place theory. "Intuitively, this makes sense: You create a sort of ice cream district. Everyone knows that the center of the boardwalk is where you go for ice cream," says Barg, who cautions that city planners are great people to talk to about what makes a neighborhood good, but not necessarily the best people for what makes a neighborhood hip. "There's some overlap, but not 100 percent," he says.

Barg's boardwalk example can be extrapolated to neighborhoods. One cool restaurant might not do it on its own, but a handful of similarly spirited places can push a neighborhood past a tipping point, where real estate agents start to take notice. Inevitably, activity begets activity.

"Occasionally you can get there through planning, but that kind of planning is typically done by developers, not planners," says Barg. "Planners are great at coming up with the ideas, but they need the developers to actually execute them."

Powers Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2007 (left image) and 2014 (right image). Screencaps via Google Maps

Williamsburg, Brooklyn is, of course, the quintessentially hip neighborhood, and one that meets the criteria Barg speaks of. It's so hip, in fact, it's been declared unhip several times. Its many warehouses have been converted into high end lofts. Film and TV shoots happen on its streets on the reg. On an unseasonably warm November day in that neighborhood, the Saturday just after Thanksgiving, Toby's Estate Coffee Shop on North 6th Street is bulging at the seams. There's nearly a line out the door. Creatives get their caffeine fix and bang away at the next big something on their computers. Listen carefully, and you can hear it: Influencers gathering to strategize about how to influence. You've never seen so many well manicured beards.

Among them is Moiz Malik, the Chief Technology Officer of Nooklyn. Nooklyn is a real estate company first and foremost. But it's also much more. Slowly, steadily—and because of Malik's work for the company, where he's also a partner—it's become a lifestyle brand and content creator. On its website and app you'll find gorgeous photo essays and articles of neighborhood hot spots—Izakayas, old timey ice cream shops that employ soda jerks, coffee shops, etc—that rival something you might see on Apartment Therapy, Design Sponge or Domino.

Malik takes a break from coding his latest project for the company—basically a Yelp that doesn't suck, pointing residents of various neighborhoods to the cool bars, places to get good grub, and other hot spots—to flip his computer around to show off unedited video footage the company has taken so potential renters can see exactly what their regular day-to-day walks in the neighborhood will look like should they choose to rent there. Think Google street view, but one designed to show what the walk to your train looks like.

Nooklyn has offices in three distinctly hip Brooklyn neighborhoods—Bushwick, Greenpoint, and their newest, Crown Heights—and have listings across the entire borough. This year the company will expand into Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company's well-curated Instagram account features pictures, not of the insides of barren apartments, but of gluten free cupcakes, "Wu Tang Forever" graffiti spray painted on a wall, and a pumpkin carved with the band logo for SLAYER.

Nooklyn, and Malik in particular, have set out to approach real estate almost like a tech company. Rather than just throw up listings on their site, they started asking the same basic questions renters do before finding a place. "Can I afford it? Is it safe? What is there to do ?," says Malik. Nooklyn can provide the answer to all three, but has recently made the last question their point of focus. People want to live where the action is if they can afford to, and feel like they can walk around at night free of too much fear. Those three things swirling together can certainly create the perfect storm for a neighborhood's chance at cool, the criteria required to attract people to a neighborhood to begin with.

Remove any one of them, and it doesn't work out. Cheap but supremely dangerous isn't cool. Lots to do, but only Finance Bros can afford to live there? Not cool. Ditto if there's nothing to do.

"I don't think it's marketing or planning," says Jonathan Williamson, director of marketing and design at the Houston, Texas, based real estate agency Refuge. "Big developers do that and big developers can't do hip," he says. Williamson is also a licensed realtor. In his time on the job he's seen a cycle familiar to anyone who's seen a neighborhood go from hidden-secret-only-inhabited-by-artists-and-the-fringe to next-hot-place-feasted-upon-by-realtors. In Houston that cycle is happening right now, longtime hip neighborhoods like Montrose and The Heights are no longer affordable, and the same early adopters who have been priced out are seeking new, affordable (and hip) places to live. As a result, Williamson is placing lots of them in Houston's now-hot East End, which was decidedly not cool a decade ago.

"I think the people come first," Williamson says of the East End's new growth and cool. "They start saying, 'Man, I wish we had a coffee shop!' and somebody opens one. Then their friends visit and think, 'Hey! This isn't so bad! It's affordable and they have that new coffee shop and those few DIY venues' and they move there. And it snowballs. The more cool people move there, the more cool businesses open. The more cool businesses open, the more attractive it is to live there. And eventually, people aren't coming because it's affordable at all. They're coming because it's the most desirable location."

Williamson says geography also plays a role, and that it's no accident that "hip" neighborhoods don't develop too far from where all the action is located. "In most cities, you're going to find in a central location," he says. "Ferndale in Detroit is basically the only exception I can think of to this rule. But leave it to Detroit to have the hip part of town be in the suburbs. They can't get anything right over there."

Follow Brian on Twitter.

Activists lock themselves in part of the Enbridge pipeline. Still via subMedia.tv on Vimeo.

"Shutting down pipelines is way easier than anyone thought," wrote "Will," one of three experienced activists who temporarily halted the flow of Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline near the Quebec-Ontario border. On the morning of December 7, they broke into a fenced-off area to attempt to manually close a valve of the Enbridge pipeline, and two people locked themselves to the valve with u-locks around their necks.

A demonstrator protests Bill C-51 on Parliament Hill. Photo courtesy The Canadian Press/Justin Tang.

A Toronto woman in hijab picking up her kids from school is kicked, punched, and robbed; a Peterborough mosque gets deliberately set on fire; a Montreal man in a Joker mask threatens to "shoot an Arab in the head, once each week."

All (recent) examples of hatred and bigotry, these are also coordinates on an extremely depressing map. The map, created by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, is called Tracking Anti-Muslim Incidents Reported Across Canada. It lists a synopsis of each altercation and where it took place, along with a colour coded legend that corresponds with the following categories: physical, verbal, hate propaganda, vandalism, threats, and online.

It sucks that the need for such a tool exists, but let's be real, racism has always been a thing, even in Canada where we are supposedly colour blind, and it's not going anywhere. But, in part thanks to media coverage and social media, people are paying more attention than before and they're using various platforms document and denounce discrimination, from systemic to casual. On the flip side, racists are using those same soapboxes to spew malicious rhetoric and rally their ignorant troops. Such is the conundrum of race relations in Canada in 2015. Here's a look on some of the major issues that cropped up this year:

Islamophobia

There's unfortunately no shortage of material on this front (see above). But let's start right at the top with the (former) federal government. Ousted prime minister Stephen Harper invoked divisive wedge politics even before the federal election campaign officially kicked off. Earlier in the year, he unveiled Bill C-51, aka the Great Anti-Terrorism Act, which gave police and the government greater authority to spy on Canadians and detain terrorism suspects and add them to a "no fly list," as well as jail people who were caught promoting terrorism. The laws were panned by many as overly broad with the potential for abuse and stereotyping. The Harper government also banned Muslim women who wear a niqab to do so while taking their citizenship oaths, an issue that, for a period seemed poised to decide the entire election, and during the campaign even floated a "barbaric cultural practices" hotline for people to report things like honour killings and forced marriage (aka things that are already illegal and that people could just call the regular ol' police about).

Terrorist strikes such as the Charlie Hebdo shootings and the more recent Paris attacks stoked Islamophobia in Canada. We've seen violence, places of worship burned (and banned), anti-Muslim rhetoric both online and sprayed in graffiti in our cities, and recently, a pushback toward Canada's plan of accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees for fears there might be ISIS agents lurking among them.

Being shitty to Indigenous communities

During the federal election, VICE boarded a campaign plane with Harper to ask him a question—would his government support an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women in this country? According to the RCMP, 1,107 Aboriginal women were murdered and another 164 went missing between 1980 and 2012. As of June 2015, 106 murder and 98 missing cases remained unsolved. Despite the fact that these numbers are a national shame, slammed by the UN human rights committee, Harper's response was dismissive.

"Most of these murders, sad as they are, are in fact solved," he said. "We are way past the time for further study."

In a case that caught rare national attention, the body of Tina Fontaine, 15, of the Sagkeeng First Nation turned up wrapped in plastic in Winnipeg's Red River last year. But cops there refuse to search the river for bodies, despite it being a known dumping ground. VICE embedded a group of volunteer searchers who "drag the red", looking for bodies there because the police won't.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Assembly of First Nations last week, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson admitted that "there are racists in my police force" and that dealing with them would be key to the MMIW inquiry.

This year also saw Winnipeg earn the dubious title Canada's most racist city, according to Maclean's. The magazine reported one-third of those living on the prairies feel racial stereotypes are accurate and Saskatchewan and Manitoba have the highest rates of racially motivated incidents.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, released in installments throughout 2015, detailed the sexual, physical and emotional abuse Aboriginal children faced in the residential school system. It described Canada's treatment of its Indigenous population as "cultural genocide." The Commission makes 94 calls to action in the areas of child welfare, education, health, justice and others.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said his government will implement all of them and that this will provide a path to "true reconciliation."

Carding

A few weeks back, a mob of people tried to stop a white police officer from arresting a young black man who was allegedly acting "fidgety" outside a Toronto liquor store. They felt the cop's actions were without cause and racially motivated. In responding, Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash told VICE it's "extremely dangerous behaviour to interfere with a police officer when they are making an arrest" and that claims of racism were "unsubstantiated."

We can't say for sure whether or not the cop in this instance was guilty of racial profiling. What's undeniable, however, is the public's faith in police is at a low, in part because the narrative of law enforcement abusing positions of power to target people of colour is one with which we've become very familiar. Carding, practice of stopping civilians to gather and store their information, is a particularly contentious issue that disproportionately targets visible minorities. In Brampton and Mississauga, Ontario, black people are three times more likely to be carded, according to a Toronto Star investigation. The Ontario government recently proposed a series of restrictions that would put an end to arbitrary stops. Whether or not law enforcement officers actually abide by them remains to be seen.

White students unions

Flyers and Facebook groups endorsing these popped up at a number of Canadian post-secondaries including University of British Columbia, Western, McMaster, University of Victoria and University of Toronto. The Students for Western Civilization says its goals are to "organize for and advance the interests of Western peoples." Most of the groups appear to be hoaxes, and the universities targeted have denied that they have any official status, but the trend is troubling no less.

There's no getting around it, shit is bleak. But it's refreshing that the racism in this country is getting called out, not just by the ones being targeted and their allies, but by those in positions of power. For far too long it seems we've been telling ourselves we're multicultural and diverse and that racism is something that mostly exists south of the border. Clearly, that's not true. We have different incarnations of the same problems and we're not going to solve them without first acknowledging that they exist.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Illustrations by George Heaven

When Emily Durant (not her real name) was eight, her relationship with her mother began to deteriorate. "Something just snapped in her one day, I guess," Emily said. Her once-caring mother suddenly stopped doing dishes, taking out the trash, or even putting trash into the trashcan. Dirty plates piled up in the sink, and then all around the kitchen. By the time eight-year-old Emily realized she had to be the one to clean up, flies and maggots had invaded their kitchen.

An only child living alone with her mother, Emily told me she would come home from school every day to find the living room floor covered with new trash and dirty dishes. If Emily didn't pick them up, that's where they stayed. If she didn't do the laundry, there were no clean clothes. If she didn't heat up microwave dinners, they didn't eat.

The first few times Emily asked for help, she says her mother called her lazy, stupid, and worthless. "I learned within a few months to just stop asking," Emily said. Her mother warned her that if she told anyone about their living conditions, she would be put in foster care with a family that didn't love her, and that her cats would be put to sleep.

The family struggled financially: There were eviction warnings at least every other month, and her mother shared every agonizing detail of the family's bills and debts with her daughter. Emily says her mother withheld dinner and wouldn't let her sleep until her chores were done. Dissatisfied with a cleaning job, she once told Emily to strip naked and lie on the couch. She proceeded to beat her with a plastic hanger.

Living under these conditions wasn't just stressful—it left Emily deeply traumatized, constantly fearing her own safety under her mother's abuse, but without anywhere else to go. She began to develop symptoms of what she now recognizes as trauma.

"Lots of nights, I couldn't fall asleep for hours," she said. "I started having panic attacks pretty frequently at school—at least one a month—and I'd have to ask to go to the restroom or nurse because I thought I was going to pass out or have a stroke or something every time."

She was prescribed antidepressants by eighth grade, but the prescription was never filled (her mother said they couldn't afford it). Although she didn't know it at the time, Emily was developing what many psychiatrists, psychologists, and trauma experts are now calling Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or C-PTSD.

Unlike formally recognized PTSD diagnoses, C-PTSD doesn't stem from a singular event, but is instead the result of sustained abuse and powerlessness, from which the victim has little hope of escape.

"C-PTSD occurs when the hyper-vigilance of PTSD is accompanied by a breakdown in the ability to self-regulate," said Julian Ford, a psychology and law professor who heads the Center for Trauma Recovery at the University of Connecticut. "Intense emotions or emotional deadness will overwhelm the person's ability to cope. Mentally, they will suffer lapses in consciousness or in problem solving or judgment. And interpersonally, they will have extreme conflict in or withdraw from relationships."

The distinction between PTSD and C-PTSDwas first introduced by Harvard Medical School professor Judith Herman in her 1992 book Trauma & Recovery. Her research found that the effects of chronic neglect, stress, and subjugation were creating an entire class of people—including survivors of sexual abuse and domestic abuse; persecuted racial, religious, and ethnic groups; and former hostages—whose trauma didn't fit the profile for PTSD diagnoses because it had been sustained over time.

Though Herman introduced the idea of C-PTSD more than 20 years ago, the psychiatric community has been slow to recognize the distinction. C-PTSD was not included in the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published in 2013. (PTSD, by comparison, has been listed in the DSM since 1980.) The term is only now being added to the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, which is still under revision and won't be finalized until 2018.

A lack of clear and consistent diagnostic criteria mean clinicians are liable to mischaracterize the symptoms of C-PTSD as borderline, dependent, or masochistic personality disorders. And the lack of awareness about C-PTSD means that those who have it, like Emily, often assume they are simply anxious or depressed. The fact that complex trauma often involves children who grew up in abusive households can make the symptoms of C-PTSD seem like a child's personality, rather than the signs of psychological distress.

Watch: VICE on HBO Reports on PTSD Among American Veterans

When Emily was 18, she went to see a therapist. "I was severely depressed," she told me, "to the point of feeling suicidal at times. I had extreme general and social anxiety. Uncontrollable intrusive memories of things that have happened to me over the years would lead to me feeling even more depressed and anxious. I finally realized I needed help."

After a conversation about her childhood, the therapist quickly deduced that depression and anxiety were only part of a larger problem, and told her about C-PTSD. She was lucky—C-PTSD is commonly misdiagnosed, and the symptoms are frequently confused with depression or anxiety, which Emily had been diagnosed with since middle school.

On VICE News: Inside the PTSD Epidemic Ravaging American Cities

But once she was diagnosed, Emily felt awkward telling people about it. "I don't think most millennials are very familiar with PTSD," Emily said. "It's pretty much only known as 'that thing soldiers get,' and that's about the extent to which most people my age know about it. Complex PTSD is even more unknown."

Because of this lack of awareness, Emily has been reluctant to share her experience. "If anyone asks, I generally just tell them I have depression and anxiety, just because it's too hard to explain what C-PTSD entails."

Ford, the University of Connecticut psychologist, agrees that C-PTSD, like many mental illnesses, is often minimized, which can be frustrating for those dealing with the aftermath of trauma.

"It is a popular misconception that simply learning to relax, meditate, think rationally, or have a healthy, active lifestyle will reverse the stress reactivity caused by C-PTSD," he said. "Those positive psychology approaches are only beneficial for people with C-PTSD after they have first mastered the skill of shifting their brain and body from survival mode to a state of calm confidence."

For Emily, that shift has already begun. Since she moved out of her mother's house two years ago at the age of 18, she's used therapy to work through her trauma and hopes that as C-PTSD becomes more widely accepted, others won't have to suffer in silence for as long as she did.

Follow Elizabeth Nicholas on Twitter.

Imagery from 'Fallout 3'

I'm comfortably into my early 30s, yet even at this considerable age I've so far managed to avoid a full-blown nuclear apocalypse. So have you, actually. Well done, us. But while some people grew up with Nintendo's Mario games holding their hand, when I really think about it, my life's been running parallel with the irradiated, flaky-skinned adventures found in the Fallout series.

Frankly, it's a little amazing just how many of my experiences with the post-nuclear role-playing series have echoed what was happening in my real life at the time I was playing the individual games. Don't believe me? Allow me to explain.

A screenshot from 'Fallout'

'Fallout' reflected how little I knew about life, and how to cope with that

In 1997 I hadn't really played an RPG properly. I didn't understand them, or care much about them. Fallout only really fell into my lap because a friend knew I had a thing for Mad Max. As such, when I did start playing this weird, isometric, turn-based-battles-but-real-time-everything-else game, with loads of numbers and dialogue, and a wall of difficulty to it, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

Similarly, at age 14, I had just as little clue as to what I was supposed to be... I don't know, about? How to just get by was the main question—one that fit both my life at the time and my sessions with Fallout—and in both areas it was answered in the same way: trial and error, make your mistakes and figure it out from there. Shoot the radscorpion a couple of times and then run away. Get a haircut, you utter scumbag.

Just as life was revealing itself to be a bit more than just Saturday morning cartoons and piss-easy schoolwork, games started showing themselves to be deeper than merely mashing B to pummel your brother's face off. They both had something beyond the superficial, it turned out. Who knew?

A screenshot from 'Fallout 2'

'Fallout 2' echoed the way I was learning to be a real person, albeit very slowly

By the time Fallout 2 came out in 1998—yes, only a year passed between the first game and its sequel's release, something which the internet would have a meltdown over these days—I had gotten to grips with the game's demands, to a degree. Without the likes of Wikipedia and in-depth forum debates, I was lacking the nous when it came to things like how to tackle an army of supermutants without taking heavy losses—but the same could be said about talking to girls without shitting my pants. I had figured these things out by myself. Just about.

That Fallout 2 was very similar to its predecessor helped me click quickly with its mechanics. I'd almost settled into a rhythm with the first, just as life had become something I was almost used to, and the familiarity I found washing over me when I started my search for Vault 13 was a welcome feeling I won't soon forget. Although, while Fallout 2 introduced the ability to push companions out of the way, I hadn't learned how to physically impose myself on anything bigger than a particularly small fly at that point.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'Wolf of the West End'

'Fallout 3' resonated with my discovery of a whole new way of being, living, and experiencing the world around me

Ten years later, Fallout 3 arrived, and by 2008 both I, and the games around me, had done a lot of growing up. Oddly we'd both done it in the same way: by not getting any more complex, but instead just getting bigger, more predictable, and a bit prettier. But when Fallout 3 did hit, it changed things up totally—yes, just as life was doing to me.

The game became a first-person, open-world epic, having moved from Black Isles Studios to the team behind the Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda. I had finished university and had to be a Real Person now. Fallout 3 took on a more sober, less whimsical view of the apocalypse. I took on a less sober, more whimsical view of life as I landed a job at a second-hand games shop.

The iconic moment from Fallout 3 was when you emerged from Vault 101, the brightness temporarily blinding you to the world out in front of you—a world that stretches on seemingly forever. And you can go everywhere. It might not have been exactly the same for me, as I was a young British man in the north of the country and not in a US teen comedy, but there was something delightfully symbolic about that moment: the journey was just beginning, and I could go anywhere. Y'know. If I really wanted to.

A screenshot from 'Fallout: New Vegas'

'Fallout: New Vegas' seemingly confirmed that, in fact, the past was a foreign country

It only takes a couple of years to lose a fair bit of faith in your hopes and dreams, though, and by the release of Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas in 2010 I was wandering dangerously close to the "everything was better in the past" way of thinking. Life was progressing too slowly for me; things weren't changing enough; a girlfriend wasn't the solution to all my problems as I had envisaged; and the once-upon-a-time dream job I worked in was showing its toxic roots.

New Vegas promised a return to something not seen since 1998—more of the tabletop RPG influence, more of the whimsy, more of the choice and consequence (without prior warning that Bad Shit would go down). It delivered, and I still love it to this day. But it stood out as a product of two very different eras—the tech of the time with the ideas of the past, and it didn't go down as well with the games-playing public as I wanted it to. As I still think it should have.

Just as I was realizing that daydreaming of more innocent past-times was a waste of then-times, it hit me right in the face that the Fallout series would never again be what it once was.

Related, on Motherboard: I Just Said Yes to All the Drugs in 'Fallout 4'

A screenshot from 'Fallout 4'

'Fallout 4' hammered home the feeling that I am, officially, set in my ways now

And so we hit space year 2015 and Fallout 4, which returned to the hands of Bethesda and re-established the oh-so-serious face of the third numbered game. It came as something of a shock to the system that a game I would have absolutely adored 10 years ago—something I think I literally dreamed about being able to play back then—would leave me feeling somewhat let down. But that's what Fallout 4 did to me.

It's not just the companions getting in the way again, the neutered dialogue, the lack of choice, or the endless combat with little in the way of creative solutions (that's just my opinion, anyway—the VICE review feels rather differently)—it's the feeling that, after switching things up so much, trying different things, and generally being an exciting series, Fallout has now decided on a formula. And so have I.

"I'll never be boring," said an idiotic younger version of me, probably as he stuffed fried chicken into his thin face. PUT DOWN THE CHICKEN, FATTY. You will be boring. We all will be, unless we're monumentally fucking weird or rich. Routine is comfortable, change is difficult, being set in your ways—even if it involves ignoring most of the strides made by a spin-off of the post-apocalyptic RPG series you invented—is the better way to do things. War, and routine, never changes.

Oh, and 'Fallout (Tactics): Brotherhood of Steel' acted as analogies for my teen sex life

Nobody played these games, nobody really liked them, and they were ultimately forgotten.

Follow Ian on Twitter.

All illustrations by Meaghan Garvey

A IS FOR A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY

It doesn't matter how much English is spoken in vague aristocratic accents or how many aliens look like anthropomorphized Earth creatures, everything that happens in the movies happened way back in the past in a planetary system light years away from us. The similarities are just coincidence.

Think of it like this: The universe is infinite and constantly expanding, and there are a finite amount of elemental particles to arrange themselves into permutations to become worlds and people and shit, so it is entirely plausible that really, really, really far away a bunch of humanoid creatures evolved and created a language that approximates English and drink milk (but it's blue because not everything is exactly like Earth), you know? It's all just math and probabilities.

Honorable Mentions: Ahmad Best; Adam Driver's Weird Face

B IS FOR BLAST!

Whenever someone in the Star Wars universe wants to swear, they just say "blast." This is by far the most unrealistic part of Star Wars. Like, it's not unreasonable to presume that millions of years ago in a galaxy not unlike our own that life developed the technology that would allow them to go around from planet to planet fighting with laser swords and shooting each other with laser guns.

On top of that, we're supposed to buy that a good 60 percent of these life forms are human, and that most of them are at least vaguely human-shaped, and that the vast majority of everyone speaks English. But of all the similarities to our own reality and language, they don't yell out "motherfucker!" when somebody's shooting a goddamn laser at their face? Fuck that, dude.

Honorable Mentions: Billy Dee Williams; "Basic" Is the Language that People Speak in Star Wars

C IS FOR CRAP THAT DISNEY WANTS YOU TO BUY

That iPhone-controlled BB-8 is the Turbo Man of Christmas 2015. Star Wars is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly it's a delivery system for adorable droid merchandise.

Honorable Mentions: C-3PO; Capes (Lots of People in Star Wars Wear Them); Cloud City

D IS FOR DADS

One of the reasons (I think) that The Force Awakens is being released over Christmas is so millions of nerdy boys the world over can go see the movie with their equally nerdy dads. Just think of this as a bonding experience with ol' pop, and not a Disney-mandated Bataan Death March to the nearest movie theater so you can take part in the last great shared cultural experience before the internet fully fractures whatever semblance of monoculture our once-great nation still clings to.

Honorable Mentions: Dark Side; Darths in General; Death Sticks a.k.a. the Drugs of Star Wars; Dexter Jettster; Droids

E IS FOR EXPECTATIONS

There is no way Star Wars is going to be as good as you want it to be. If The Force Awakens ends up being a standard space-action flick, you'll be mad it didn't have enough byzantine crap about treaty negotiations. If there's too much space bureaucracy, all you nerds will just be mad that it was too much like The Clone Wars, which fucking sucked. There will either be too much Luke Skywalker or not enough Luke Skywalker. The lightsaber battles will either be too boring or Kylo Ren's technique will deviate too far from the seven accepted forms of lightsaber combat. JJ Abrams will ruin Star Wars while also saving it. The Force Awakens will eat shit but also shit gold.

Honorable Mentions: Ewoks; The Empire; Everyone Will See This Movie

F IS FOR FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

George Lucas just wanted to make modest little movies, guys. He didn't expect Star Wars to skyrocket him to fame and fortune. He wanted to make weird shit like THX 1138 or nostalgia pieces about his teenage years hot-rodding around and verbally harassing women out or car windows.

Lucas's buddy and pseudo-mentor Francis Ford Coppola recently said it was a "pity" that his pal George "got lost" in the Star Wars franchise. Well, worry not, FFC: Maybe now that Disney's bought the rights to the Star Wars universe, Lucas can go back to making movies that no one actually gives a shit about.

Honorable Mentions: Force (The); Fuck Star Trek

G IS FOR GROSS, BOX OFFICE

The amount of money this movie will bring in on opening weekend is more than a lot of small island nations can claim as their GDP.

Honorable Mentions: George Lucas; Greedo; Graflex Flash

H IS FOR 'HAMILTON,' THE BROADWAY MUSICAL

Hamilton is Lin-Manuel Miranda's rap history lesson for adults with a lot of money to burn. Miranda also wrote new cantina music for TFA because John Williams didn't feel like it. Get ready for the Modal Nodes to drop bars about the man who revolutionized the Galactic Credit financial system.

Honorable Mentions: Han Solo, Hoth; Hux, General

I IS FOR I'VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS

This is the most-repeated phrase in the Star Wars movies. It's also what I would probably say right after taking ayahuasca, because it seems like one of those things that I would really need to be in the right mind state for, and if I wasn't or even if I thought I wasn't and then it hit at the wrong time I might end up disassociating or some shit and never totally come back in like a bad way and—wait, what were we talking about?

Honorable Mentions: It's a Traaaaaaaaaaaap; Imperial March; Incest

J IS FOR JAKKU

One of the reasons it's projected that The Force Awakens will make Disney $25 billion in the next five years is they realized if you want to make more money, you just need to take an old thing, slap a different name on it, then tell everybody it's brand spankin' new. Which is to say, Jakku is Tatooine and don't let JJ Abrams say any different. Nerds: The comments section is below. You know what to do.

Honorable Mentions: JJ Abrams; Jabba the Hutt; Jango Fett; Jizz

K IS FOR KASDAN, LAWRENCE

Lawrence Kasdan is a god among men. The man wrote The Empire Strikes Back, the best Star Wars movie according to anyone who isn't a dumbass or a troll, and then he fucking penned Raiders of the Lost Ark immediately afterwards and went on to slay the screenplay game through the 1980s. Body Heat? Him. Silverado? Yup. The Big Chill is the best indictment of the Hippie movement since "Slouching Through Bethlehem." The man knows his way around a movie script, alright? If The Force Awakens sucks, blame it on JJ for his co-writing duties. Kasdan is fuego.

Honorable Mentions: Kessel Run; Knights of Ren; Kathleen Kennedy

L IS FOR LUKE SKYWALKER

Remember how Luke Skywalker looked real different in Empire Strikes Back because Mark Hamill got in a bad car accident and they worked in that whole Wampa attack in the first Act to explain it away? Well, Luke Skywalker's going to look a whole lot different this time around, since he's now old as the hills and sporting an Obi-Wan beard.

Is that his robot hand touching R2 in the trailer? Is he Sith now? Is he only going to appear in the last few minutes? Shut up and just watch it and find out.

Honorable Mentions: Lucasfilm; Life Day; Lloyd, Jake

M IS FOR MAZ KANATA

Maz Kanata is one of the only CGI characters in the new movie, which means she's probably worthy of a TW/CW after the abuse we suffered at the hands of General Grievous and that floppy-eared Gungan fuck, but Maz might actually be kinda tight. She's played by Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o and will probably be the new Yoda or something. Someone also said that she's a Jawa without a cloak on, but probably not.

Honorable Mentions: Midichlorians; McCool, Droopy; Millions of Dollars

N IS FOR NAMES

Why are all the new Star Wars names so goddamn complicated? "Maz Kanata" sounds like some made-up bullcrap your uncle tries to play in Scrabble for like a billion points on a triple-word tile. Kylo Ren? That sounds so Irish I'm pretty sure James Joyce made it up.

Honorable Mentions: Nein Nunb; Nerfherder; Nerds

O IS FOR ORGASM

While no one has had an orgasm on-camera in a Star Wars movie (unless a Storm Trooper was secretly creaming his pants in some scene?), somewhere, in a stiff gymsock-stuffed bedroom not-so-far away, a teen is planning to give or receive an ill-advised handjob in the back of a theater during The Force Awakens.

Honorable Mentions: Obi-Wan; Opening Crawl

P IS FOR 'POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE'

Carrie Fisher should write a Star Wars Anthology film about a down-and-out Oola from Jabba's palace hooked on Death Sticks having to come to terms with her mother who was once a hot-shit dancer for a Hutt in 30 BBY.

Honorable Mentions: Padawan Learner Braid; Poo-doo

Q IS FOR QUI-GON JINN

As an actor, Liam Neesom has a very particular set of skills, and zero of them include waving a laser sword around. Qui-Gon was a garbage Jedi. He disobeyed the Council to raise Anakin, he didn't sense the Trade Federation's trap or trust Obi-Wan's intuition, and cheating at dice can't be in keeping with the Jedi Code of Honor. A sizable portion of the blame for the fall of Jedi/rise of the Galactic Empire can fall directly on Qui-Gon's shoulders. Fuck him.

Honorable Mentions: Queen Amidala; Quests

R IS FOR REGRETTABLE CHARACTERS

Jar Jar Binks. Ewoks. Nute Gunray. Count Dooku. General Grievous. Slave Leia. The "It's a trap" guy. All of these characters were the fucking worst, for one reason or another. But you have to love them, because part of loving Star Wars is hating Star Wars.

Honorable Mentions: Ridley, Daisy; Republicans Who Like the Empire; Return of the Jedi Was Almost Directed by David Lynch

S IS FOR 'SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE'

Shadows of the Empire was a book and comic and N64 game based on story of some stuff that happened between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It covers Leia's search for Han trapped in carbonite, and has a surrogate smuggler named Dash Rendar who is pretty much Han but isn't Han because Han is out of commission. It's better than any of the prequel movies, even though its most realized form was a children's book sold in grocery store check-out lines.

Honorable Mentions: Star Wars (Duh); Slash Fiction (Also Duh)

T IS FOR THIS

"This" is the first word spoken in The Force Awakens, according to JJ. Fucking spoilers ruin everything.

Honorable Mentions: Tarkin, Grand Moff; Tauntaun; Theories

U IS FOR UNIVERSE, EXPANDED

Only the canon matters now. Move along.

Honorable Mentions: Uncle Owen; Utinni

V IS FOR VAPING

Look pal, you're probably gonna want to see The Force Awakens high. If you're going with your dad, well, you should get your dad high, too.

Honorable Mentions: Chancellor Valorum; Episode V; "Vader" Means "Father" in Dutch

W IS FOR WOOKIEEPEDIA

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy of the Star Wars universe. Like the book inside the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. No, not like an actual little book inserted into The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the book they're always reading in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that's also called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Fuck. Anyways, I guess more obviously this is just Star Wars's version of Wikipedia, and if you've ever wanted to find out which kind of space-chlamydia Han Solo caught in the post-Battle-of-Yavin orgy, I suggest you head on over there.

Honorable Mentions: Wedge Antilles; Whills, Journal of the; Why Do They Call Them Episodes, Anyways?

X IS FOR X-RATED

There are many high-quality Star Wars porn parodies. While we unequivocally support pornography, we do not support piracy. Which is to say you should really just buy the DVD instead of looking it up a supercut of all its money shots on PornHub.

Honorable Mentions: X-Wings, eX-Girlfriends of Han Solo Who Got Upset About His Space-Chlamydia

Y IS FOR YADDLE

Yaddle is a girl version of Yoda. She has a braid. She will not be in the new movie.

Honorable Mentions: Yavin, You Always Let the Wookiee Win

Z IS FOR ZABRAK

As previously explored in this guide, aliens in the Star Wars canon share more than passing resemblances with Earth creatures, regardless of the fact that they live in a galaxy far-as-fuck away. Admiral Ackbar is a koi in a white crew neck, Jabba's some kind of slug, and Max Rebo looks like a Winnie the Pooh mescaline hallucination.

In keeping with this trend towards exceedingly on-the-nose alien species, Darth Maul, a Zabrak, has horns and pointed teeth like George Lucas probably sent his design team a clipart image of the devil and said "he's evil so do him like this." Come on, Industrial Light & Magic. The cast of Ahh! Real Monsters looks more original than half the crowd at Mos Eisley.

Honorable Mentions: Zahn, Timothy; Zuckuss

Follow Drew and River on Twitter.