The Yukon's Slims River (photo via Wikimedia)

Today it looks like a few scattered puddles, but the Yukon's Slims River was once a sizeable waterway that required a 200-metre bridge to cross. In just one season, it went from a place hikers occasionally drowned to a dried-up valley prone to dust storms.

All photos courtesy of 'We Are Twisted F***ing Sister'

These days Twisted Sister is remembered, if it's remembered at all, as a rock footnote, a shard of outlandish 80s MTV fodder that came and went in a flash of dry-ice-conjured smoke. The band's most famous moment arguably came in 1985, when it became one of the poster children for evil, youth-corrupting rockers—but by then, its peak had already passed.

Those who were raised in the late 70s and early 80s in New York's tristate area know Twisted Sister as the most popular, hardest working, and garish bar band in all the land.

"That's the thing people don't understand—we're not an 80s hair metal band," declared the group's founder and longstanding guitarist Jay Jay French. "We're a 70s bar band that made it in the 80s, which is a big difference in my mind."

It didn't matter whether you were a cigarette-chomping dirtbag in the thick of a sticky dance floor or a ten-year-old boy like myself bouncing around in the back of my mother's coffee-stained station wagon driving past the nightclubs that littered the New Jersey highways. Twisted Sister—or "Twisted 5ister," as the name was often stylized on marquees—was a self-made phenomenon you couldn't escape.

The story of the band is chronicled in the new doc We Are Twisted F**ing Sister, which gives the band members the kind of props they've deserved for a long time but never really received from rock historians. Their early sound has been captured, too, in Rock 'N' Roll Saviors—The Early Years, a compilation of recordings from the band's pre-fame era.

French conjured up the concept for Twisted Sister after seeing the New York Dolls multiple times in his native Manhattan, but it was more the band's' stylistic flair than their admittedly rather shitty sound.

"I had a weird infatuation with them," admits French. "I loved watching how bad they were. Now, the New York Dolls have said this about themselves over the years and any musician who went to see the Dolls at the time would say the same thing about how awful they were. Back then, if you were a fan of David Bowie or the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd or any of these bands who worked hard to be really good and then saw a band like the New York Dolls come out who could barely play three chords but looked great, you weren't going to stand there and say, 'I love the New York Dolls' just to be cool. At least I wasn't going to do that."

The Dolls inspired French—as they inspired countless other musicians back then—and he worked to create a band that looked like women, talked like men, and played like motherfuckers. He connected with a crew of New Jersey guys and secured a residency at the Mad Hatter Club in Suffolk County, Long Island, for the summer of 1973. They might have looked out of place in their dog collars and women's clothing, but it was the common ground the men in Sister shared with the crowd that got them through.

"We were blue-collar glam rock." insists French. "That's why these places in the Hamptons worked for us... My first singer in the band, Michael O'Neill, could be up onstage dressed like a girl and yell out, 'Hey fuck-O! Pass me a beer!' and people loved it because all these kids talked that way. We knew the language. The familiarity made it easy for these kids to like us."

Jay Jay French

From 1973 to 1976, the band played six nights a week, five sets a night, through numerous lineup changes. Some members were kicked out due to alcohol and drug dependency issues while others were asked to leave due to a lack of musical prowess. They finally acquired a vocalist with the requisite chops when, at the suggestion of their manager, they hooked up with a singer named Danny Snider, later known as Dee Snider.

In the early 80s, Twisted Sister continued to dominate the Long Island club scene, developing a grassroots following by printing up its own T-shirts and pressing up 45s on its own dime. The band was every bit as DIY as any hardcore punk band, and was actually signed by the British Punk label Secret Records, home to second-wave UK heavies like the Exploited and Infa-Riot. "I think the English perceived us a punk band," says French. Sister was basically unknown in Manhattan, but had a British fan base—after its 1982 debut LP Under the Blade, it went on UK TV, and scored a contract with Atlantic.

The Atlantic deal led to its popularity crossing back over the ocean. Its 1984 album, Stay Hungry, sold more than 3 million copies and contained the huge MTV hit "We're Not Gonna Take It," and it seemed after slugging it out for ten years in the shit-hole clubs of the east coast, French and company's sticktoitiveness had paid off.

Dee Snider

But by that point the success rang somewhat hollow to French. "I never felt we won anything, frankly," he said. "Stay Hungry went platinum the week my father died, which neutralized any big celebration on my part. By the time it got to double platinum, I was already tired of the band. There was no point during that time where I sat back and said, 'We made it' because when the records went double platinum, I figured out how much I was being paid, and it came out to something like twenty-five cents an hour. It wasn't worth what we were putting ourselves through. It was different from anything I thought it was supposed to be and honestly, it hit a point where I didn't even know what 'it' was supposed to be anymore."

In the summer of 1985, the band became one of the most prominent whipping boys for the Parents Music Resource Center, a committee formed by group of Washington, DC, wives out to bring back the moral fiber of the country by condemning artists as diverse as Prince, King Diamond, and Twisted Sister for making supposedly obscene music. But even the controversy stirred by these busybodies and Snider speaking at the resulting hearings couldn't help the band's popularity from drying up.

"I was hoping the PMRC thing would legitimize us, but everyone just thought we were a big joke at that point. We couldn't even be saved by a scandal. That sucked!" chuckles French. Later that year, the band's follow-up to Stay Hungry, Come Out and Play was released to crickets. The lead single, a cover of the Shangri-La's 60s girl-group hit "Leader of the Pack" didn't match the success of "We're Not Gonna Take It," to put it mildly.

"People didn't understand that we used to play that in the bars back in the day." explains French. "We thought it was a funny thing, and everyone else thought it was this total wimp-out, sellout move." A few months after the ultra-vapid Love Is for Suckers (which was more or less a Dee Snider solo record) was issued in 1988, the band officially imploded. (It reformed in the early 2000s and is currently on its final tour after the death of drummer A. J. Perro.)

Viewed one way, Twisted Sister is a massive success story, a hardworking glam rock group who busted its asses to get the kind of fame few can achieve. But that ass-busting took a decade, and the fame flamed out in a couple short years. So I had to ask French—to paraphrase a Motörhead song title—was the chase better than the catch?

"I have looked upon the forty-some odd years of the band, and there's certainly been some great moments of joy and incredible moments of frustration and downers." he says. "Going through all the ex-members because of drugs and alcohol and firing and hiring, that was stressful. All the rejections from record labels was stressful too. We've come back in a very unique way where a lot of bands from our era didn't, and I feel lucky. In last ten years, we've played some huge festivals in Europe, and I've felt those were incredible experiences. Sometimes, the great experiences and the horrible ones all get wrapped up together. But life is just a combination of that kind of stuff. Playing the game of "what if?" is a waste of time. What happens happens... I mean, even lottery winners get depressed, right?"

We Are Twisted F**ing Sister—a documentary about the band's' early days is available for streaming on Netflix.

The dates for Twisted Sister's "Forty and Fuck It" summer tour can be found here.

Warning: Spoilers from season six, episode nine abound.

Happy Shitting

Last night's Game of Thrones was the big one: A spendy set piece waged between warriors and cavaliers (did you know there was a basketball game on last night too?) in which the few of us who still pay for HBO were rewarded with a special-effect bonanza that punished the cape-swirlers, the baby-stabbers, the dick-choppers, and rewarded our cast of a thousand beards with the battle royale we've been waiting for. Is this the stuff of television legend? Maggie Simpson saying "Daddy," J. R. in the shower, that guy from M.A.S.H. seeing that chicken?

For sure, then, if there's one episode that the newly Ironborn will reenact in their cribs, one in which we dispensed with the usual jaunty anachronisms, winking fan service, grammar lessons, and jokes about beehives, then it is "Battle of the Bastards."

Here we beheld the stuff of Icelandic sagas and Led Zeppelin albums—and lo, it was truly the sport of kings. So pick your poison, sour goat's milk or that "grape water," this is the second-to-last episode of the season, a contender for the most epochal hour of Game of Thrones to date, and the classy prestige Emmy-submitted episode of the year. So happy shitting, America.

Our first hint that this was not your average hour of Thronefeld was that the part where the dragons raze a harbor of ships full of slavers was a mere prelude. That's not a complaint, as it's the little touches that keep six seasons of choosing violence fresh. For example: Didn't Daenerys look like the sun was in her eyes throughout the entirety of her confrontation with the trifecta of masters in Mereen? Didn't Tyrion seem to suddenly perk up after a season of boozy banter and eunuch gags by saying unsayable dialogue like, "The masters cannot let Mereen succeed because if Mereen succeeds, a city without slavery is a city without masters; it proves that nobody needs a master?" Wasn't it great to see the three worst people in Essos forced to play fuck, marry, kill with one another at spearpoint? And didn't it seem like Yara and the Khaleesi were taking a Sapphic shine to each other? (And wouldn't you rather watch the latter show, where warrior princesses dismantle the patriarchy brick by brick?)

Typically, these are the questions we'd be mulling over the week following an episode of the world's favorite revanchist fantasy program, but this time around, we have business in the North, so to dragons, multiple beheadings, ships, and pirates, let us say, just this once, "Meh."

Photo by Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

He's Good. Verrrry Good!

Ramsay Bolton doesn't usually come off as a funny guy, but he recognizes talent when he sees it: "He's good," he says of Jon Snow's man-to-man shenanigans, "he's very good." Jon, for his part, tells Sansa, "You don't have to be here," but the way I see it, she's one of the three parties tuned in for this war on Winterfell: the Sansas, who have suffered through worse and worse on the show, the Jon Snows, who have paid for their loyalty and come back again, and the Rickons, who haven't seen the show in two seasons but thought they'd check in again this week and... holy shit. You beheaded whose beloved childhood pet? Where's Catelyn Stark, and why isn't she ending this? How old was that little girl when she was burned at the stake?

Jon, Sansa, and their advisors are lit like Rembrandts as they strategize in their tents. But for all the Barry Lyndon candlelight, Davos Seaworth gets the Golden Hour shot, cradling poor little Shireen's wooden stag in the pyre (and, all things being equal, if Davos had to wait a year almost to the day to learn what happened to the Baratheon princess, then we can wait an episode for Davos to exact vengeance from Melisandre, whose "don't lose" war counsel is a real blip on the Patton scale). But the best Davos moment this episode has to be when he clarifies to Tormund that he only meant "demons" as a figure of speech. For there is no metaphor north of the Wall.

Photo by Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

"Hey!"

I do not understand the enduring morale of the Westeros Pinkerton class. Who are these swords-for-hire who stick around after their liege sets children on fire, shoots down Rickon in an old-fashioned Gallipoli relay, stabs dads (though, lest we forget, Roose Bolton was "poisoned by his enemies"), and fires on their own minutemen? And yet the men in Bolton army, with their stupid helmets, watch Ramsay join the Stark-killers club, and then charge past the flayed burning corpses of—who? Probably more tools who shilled for the Boltons—to fight the combined forces of the Starks, the Mormonts, and the Wildlings.

The scene that follows manages to communicate both the precision-architecture of warfare and the total disorientation of an individual in the thick of it. In this case, the camera sticks with Jon Snow as he draws his sword like a hero prepared to face down the whole blockade himself, only to be quickly lost in the slo-mo carnage. The most salient dialogue for ten minutes is when Tormund meets up with Jon in the eye of the scrum and goes, "Hey!" Horses charge in and out of the long take, friends and foes vanish as fast as we can register them, and the technical crew more or less clinches the award for greatest simulated proximity to actual death.

Photo by Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

Once the Boltons' phalanx surrounds the Starks, we, with Jon, are buried beneath a mountain of corpses, caked in gore, and helpless to protect Tormund, who sees your headbutt and raises you a throat-biting, and Wun Wun, who punches a horse in the face, then succumbs inside the castle gates to something like 20 good arrows. When the camera backs off to show Jon up to his neck in combatants, it resembles a Magic Eye pattern; like if you squint, it's going to turn into a sailboat, or a horse, or a butterfly.

In the end, of course, the heroes triumph and a show that has prospered by foiling our expectations simply rewards our attention. The Knights of the Vale ride to the rescue of the embattled Starks, Jon Snow beats his opposite number Ramsay to a bloody pulp, and then, for good measure, Bolton is eaten by dogs at Sansa's command. And yes, we may have lost a giant in the process, but seems to me Wun Wun has a bright future as a spokesmonster for GEICO or something. As straight-up, visual storytelling spectacle, the episode was a marvel. As plot resolution, it killed all the right people. There's more pleasure in life than the reaving of hordes, more to Thrones than poop jokes and swordplay, but as far as the give-and-take of season six is concerned, this is a high water mark by any standard. Shoot it into space and let foreign planets quake in fear at our mettle.

Recent work by J. W. McCormack appears in Conjunctions, BOMB, and the New Republic. Read his other writing on VICE here.

The San Diego-Tijuana border. Photo by Flickr user Kordian

For years, the border separating the United States from Mexico has been the focal point for immigration debates in America—both concerning Mexicans and, more recently, the surge of families and children fleeing Central America and entering the US through Mexico.

But this summer, a new trend is emerging on the section of the border where San Diego meets Tijuana: The number of Chinese immigrants caught crossing into the United States from Mexico has skyrocketed.

From October 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016, Border Patrol agents apprehended 663 Chinese immigrants at that part of the border, according to a report last week in the Los Angeles Times. It's a major spike compared to previous figures: In the entire 2015 fiscal year, only 48 Chinese nationals were apprehended in that area. The year before that, just eight.

The jump amounts to an 8,188 percent increase over the course of three years—and there are still four months left in the current fiscal year, so the tally for the full year is expected to be even higher.

Compared to the rest of the border, the surge of Chinese immigrants in the San Diego area seems like little more than a blip on the immigration radar. In the first seven months of this fiscal year, Border Patrol agents logged 223,871 apprehensions along the Southwest border, according to data from the agency obtained by VICE. Immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras made up 95 percent of that total.

"When you really look in the overall scheme of migration, it's an incredibly small number of people," said Muzaffar Chishti, one of the directors at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank focused on immigration. "If the numbers become 20,000 next month, I may say there is something else going on. But on the basis of these numbers, they do not rise to the level of an alarm or a fundamentally different pattern of migration."

Related: More African and Asian Migrants Are Arriving in Mexico After Long Latin American Journeys

The Southwest border is composed of nine different sectors, stretching from the Pacific coast to the Rio Grande Valley. When you look at the entire Southwest border, the trend flattens out. Border Patrol apprehended 1,211 Chinese immigrants along the border in the first seven months of this fiscal year. A year ago, agents caught 1,327 Chinese immigrants trying to cross from Mexico, and in the 2014 fiscal year, they caught 1,693. Even if the numbers are on pace to be higher this year, the overall portrait doesn't match the same dramatic spike that's taking place in San Diego.

Even still, there are a considerable number of Chinese immigrants entering the United States by way of Mexico. For some of them, it's their best shot to get here.

Of the 2 million Chinese immigrants living in America, roughly 10 percent do not have legal status, which means they entered the country illegally or overstayed a visa, according to the Migration Policy Institute. For immigrants hoping to live and work in the US long-term, but without the legal paperwork, overstaying a visa can be the simplest route—you arrive legally, and you simply don't leave. China has a relatively high approval rate for business and tourist visa applications (90 percent in the 2015 fiscal year, according to data provided to VICE by the Department of State), but that still leaves some prospective immigrants without a legal pathway to enter the US.

"We are really talking about a much lower class of people, who do not have access and connections to get legal visas," said Peter Kwong, a professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College and a leading scholar on Chinese immigration.

Kwong told VICE many of these poorer migrants are leaving the country due to the economic stagnation in China over the last few years. "A lot of factories are laying off people, exports are slowing down," he said. "So therefore, you have fewer options in China, and if there is a possibility of leaving China and going to a foreign country, you would do that."

A spokesperson for the United States Border Patrol told the Los Angeles Times that smugglers could charge anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000 to bring a Chinese national to Mexico and then across the border. The price may seem steep for immigrants who supposedly lack the means and connections to obtain a visa, but Chinese immigrants have historically paid a high price for illicit passage to America, according to Elliott Young, a professor of history at Lewis and Clark College and the author of Alien Nation, a book on the history of Chinese migration to the United States.

He's heard of Chinese immigrants paying $30,000 for trips to the US that involve routes through Asia, Africa, or Latin America. "My guess would be that a lot of these people don't actually have $30,000," he told VICE. "They're either borrowing the money from friends and family or becoming indebted to businesses or smuggling networks."

Related: The US Doesn't Want China's Undocumented Immigrants, and Neither Does China

Another factor to consider, said Young, is that many Chinese immigrants have familial or community ties in the US already. The presence of longstanding Chinese communities in cities like New York and San Francisco could "make it easy to migrate," he said.

Whether those migrants get legal work permits or not, Young said he could see the logic behind borrowing money to come to the US—especially as a way out of economic turmoil back home.

"You could pay off those debts within a year or a couple of years," he told VICE. "Given conditions in China and diminishing prospects in China, that might make rational economic sense."

Follow Ted Hesson on Twitter.

Welcome to the future of funerals. Photo via C.H.U.D.

Hopefully you're more familiar with Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers than the town of Smith Falls, Ontario, who apparently fail to understand that pouring human ooze into the sewer system is a guaranteed way to create an army of C.H.U.D.

Ass munching. Salad Tossing. Kissing the Chocolate Starfish. Yes, we're talking about rimjobs and depending on the individual, he or she either loves doing it or having it done or thinks it is the absolute grossest sex act there is.

You can't really blame those backdoor naysayers because, well, as Amy Schumer says in her amazing song "Milk, Milk, Lemonade," that is where your poop comes out. Because of that, there are all sorts of issues with rimjobs, some due to cleanliness and some due to illness. When ass eating goes good, it's great. But when It goes bad, it goes very, very bad.

Here are some of the worst ass-eating horror stories you'll ever read, as-told-to VICE contributors Brian Moylan, Justin Caffier, and Amber Bryce.

Slippery When Wet

I'd been seeing this girl sporadically and decided it'd be fun to have her over to fuck while I was house sitting for my boss. She came through and we started having sex in the fancy master bedroom shower. We decide to do some anal while in the sterile confines of the shower and after a little of that, she was getting sore. So I pull out, quickly rinse my dick off, and get on my knees to start rimming her to help her get into it and relax.

I don't know if it was the heat from the shower, the sudden shift in blood from having a stretched out asshole to not, or a mix of the two, but just a few seconds in to my rimming, she starts going limp and falls hard on my nose. I'm quickly scrambling up to catch her and slipping around on the tile.

She's woozy and regaining consciousness when I drag her out, soaking wet, to the bed. She says that had never happened to her before, so it must've been a fluke. But in those 15-20 seconds, I feared the worst, like she'd had an aneurysm or something. Besides dealing with the tragic loss of life, how would I have explained that to my boss?—Chuck, 29, Norfolk

Dutty Whine

When I was in high school I was getting curious about kink, and suggested to my bf at the time that I rim him as a previous partner had introduced me to it. He was a little grossed out at first, but he took a shower and then figured out that he LOVED IT.

Well, two years down the road we couldn't have sex without me paying attention to his ass somehow, because if I didn't he would lay on his back with his knees on his shoulders and WHINE AT ME until I gave in. This led to it being a huge turnoff for me in that relationship, especially when he became complacent and his asshole was dirty all of the time.

Many years later, I am with the guy who got me into it originally, and we have a grand old time doing almost anything imaginable with each other.... and he doesn't whine at me to suck his asshole like a little bitch.—Laura, 27

Ass STDs

I clearly remember the guy. He was inn his 20s, blond, fit, very good-looking and very sexy. But there was something wrong with his skin color though. I couldn't tell if his skin was yellow-grayish because of the poor light in the booth at the Universe Gym or if there was something off with him.

His ass was totally sweet to eat, perky and bubbly. But a few days later I started to feel super weak. Something was definitely wrong. I went to the doctor and it took me an hour to walk 500 meters. I was so weak, I had to stop walking every 30 seconds.

I did blood exams, the result was Hepatitus A. I started to turn yellow, and threw up everything I was trying to eat. After two weeks, I started to feel a little better, but my boyfriend at the time contracted it as well, most likely form eating my ass.

Apparently, there's a delay between the time you contract the virus and the time you get sick. It took us six month to get over it. It was horrible. —Pierre, 42

Teepee on the Tongue

I almost never do butt stuff. I'm very poop-squeamish. But part of it might be related to a quasi-horror-story. The first rimjob I ever gave, I paused to pick a little something off my tongue, and it was a scrap of toilet paper which just made the thing far too visceral, a reminder that my tongue was doing something he had done with toilet paper not long ago. I wonder if that is what ruined rimjobs for me forever. I also remember the first time I looked at my own butthole in a mirror and it horrified and upset me. I don't like the idea of anyone looking at it ever." —Monica, 29

Fatty Flavors

The worst thing about eating ass is that sometimes on first lick there is a bit of a chemical taste—I think from the soap my boyfriend uses. —Laura, 27

Bacterial Booty

Back in my slutty days, I once took a guy home from a bar. He was a dancer and had the most beautiful ass I've ever seen. It was big and lightly covered in fur and since I love eating an ass I just had to get my mouth all over it. Everything seemed fine and we had a great time. The next morning I got up, got dressed and went to get my haircut. While I was at the barber, I noticed I had like a pimple near my mouth, which was annoying, but whatever. Then, when I was done getting my haircut there were two more. By the time I got home, there were little white bumps all around my mouth.

I went to the doctor two days later and he told me I had a bacterial infection on my mouth, probably from eating out a dirty hole. He gave me some cream and it went away in a few days.

The worst part though was, before it went away, I went to a friend's house and his roommate totally clocked me and said, "Is that a breakout from eating ass?" I don't know if I should be embarrassed that he knew or embarrassed for him that he'd had it too. —Julian, 39

The Brown Eye

I was licking the ass of my boyfriend at the time and while that was happening he suddenly ripped a big fart on me. He collapsed in a giggle fit while I was completely turned off and kinda pissed.

I didn't think much more of it until a few days later when I woke up with my eyes glued together with crust. My boyfriend had given me pinkeye from farting while I tossed his salad. I didn't break up with him over that but it's no surprise we didn't last much longer after that.— Steph, 24, Orange County

Skid Row

So, the first time my high school gf and I tried anal play, we were drunk and she really hadn't prepared too well. We were messing around late at night in the basement of her parents' house while they were asleep. It was a big enough house that they were far enough away and not likely to hear anything. We'd figured that out in the past.

So I start licking her butthole while rubbing her clit and she's breathing heavy and I think getting into it. Suddenly she says "Oh no!" and I feel a gritty wetness on the tip of my tongue. A millisecond later the taste hits me and I start spitting and gagging and loudly saying, "What the fuck!" Apparently my licking had knocked loose some liquid feces somewhere deep in her bowels.

Her parents, fortunately, didn't hear my cries and come down. But there was a streak of brown on the tan suede couch we'd been messing around on and despite our best efforts, the stain never came out. I remember noticing it every time I came over there. —Anthony, 27, Miami

No Warning

I had been partying for like a week straight. After drinking all the booze, I wanted to have all the sex. I talked to this really hot muscle guy who I had been chatting with on Grindr for months and I finally went over his house to hook up.

We were making out and I was feeling totally fine and then he was fingering me and then he was rimming me and then all of the sudden he got up and ran really quick into the bathroom. I heard hacking into the sink. I don't know if he was actually vomiting. I figured out what happened and I was like, "Oh no. Oh no." I knew I pooped in his mouth. I just sat there. He came back in and I was like, 'Did what I think just happened really happen?' He said yes and I was like 'I'm going to go.'

I went to the bathroom and there was a whole bunch of poop back there. I didn't feel it happening. He was fingering me and I think he churned it up. There was no warning. I didn't even have that farting feeling. It came out of nowhere. On the walk home though, I was horribly sick and was running to my apartment because I had explosive diarrhea for the rest of the night.

Before I left, while I was getting dressed I was trying to tell him that one day it would be really funny and a great story to tell, but I don't think he bought it. After all, I wasn't the one with poop in my mouth. — David, 32

The Tag Team Salad Toss

Many moons ago my good friend and I were out and we met this really hot guy who was like a super cute surfer and had this amazing surfer kid vibe. We took him home to have a threesome, even though I didn't really ever hook up with this friend. The guy really wanted us to rim but I was not into it even though rimming is one of my favorite things in the world. Partly, it was because it was my good friend and we were just hooking up with each other to get to the hottie.

Anyway, he is like really into us rimming each other, so I fake rim my friend. I just put my face in his ass and make these crazy slurping, lip-smacking sounds while my friend is sucking the guy off. The guy totally calls me out and is like, 'That sounds fake.' Then I had to be quieter and really pretend. He eventually got up to watch cause he didn't believe me! So I had to rim my friend a little bit, but I had one of those "this is not sexy at all" looks and I just transitioned to something else." —Aaron, 31

Dinner Date with a Nugget Muncher

One evening, I was online surfing craigslist ads. To my surprise and delight, there was a guy nearby who was looking. I was a bit skeptical because the pictures he sent were very attractive and I reasoned that they were either grabbed from the internet or old. I arrived at his place and he was exactly as he appeared in the pictures he sent, so my heart (and my cock) did a little jump for joy. Handsome face, hot body, and mischievous demeanor.

He asked me to make myself comfortable on his "rim chair." That gave me pause, because I was not fresh and clean in my nether regions, which I hastened to point out. He said that it would give him great pleasure to sniff and lick my ripe hole. What to do? I decided I would "broaden my horizons" by trying something new. Plus, did I mention that he was hot?

In truth, it wasn't a rim chair at all, it was two paint cans and a couple slats of wood. I had visions of the wood slats breaking and sending splinters into my ass and his face. I have to admit that he was very skilled with his tongue and it felt amazing. But a funny thing happens when you're being rimmed—the sphincter starts to relax. Unintentionally, I let out a few farts as I was riding his tongue and it seemed like my gas encouraged him and he was making little moans of pleasure while pumping his cock with his hand.

Distressingly, I felt the rumblings of a bowel movement deep in my gut so I stood up to bring an end to the rim job. He was baffled and I was slightly embarrassed to admit to him that I thought we should stop lest I accidentally poop on his face. He looked at me and said earnestly, "That wouldn't be a bad thing."

This sexy man wanted me to defecate on his beautiful face and I was horrified—yet intrigued. I tried to decline, saying things like: "I'm not into scat," "I don't like the smell of shit." "This isn't very sanitary." Wordlessly, he led me back to the makeshift rim chair and sat me down and he put a small towel around his neck, the way a hungry diner tucks a napkin into his collar.

The little circles he was making with his tongue were working magic and re-stimulated that strong urge to dump, so I let out some nuggets. The most unnerving thing was not shitting on a guy, but the fact that I could hear him chomping on my logs. The thought turned my stomach a bit but somehow my dick was rock hard. Perhaps it was the visual stimulation of this really attractive man, or perhaps it was the pleasurable sensations he was sending through my body with his tongue—whatever it was, I started to relax and enjoy the experience and I vividly recall riding his chin like I was at the rodeo.

There were a few times that shook me from my daze when he'd ask me to stop shitting so that he'd have time to chew and it would reoccur to me that I was pooping on someone's face. But to his credit, he did not make a mess and I never smelled anything. After we both nut, I sheepishly thanked him, put on my clothes and skedaddled. He texted me a few times after that but I did the ghosting thing and didn't reply. I think one time was plenty. —Dave, 27

All photos by Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO except when otherwise noted

WARNING: Spoilers for season six, episode nine below.

Ramsay Bolton—rest in pieces—was never a great villain. Sure, he was sadistic as hell, but he never strayed far from his narrow, cringe-inducing pathway that's now ended in a rather fitting way, with his body devoured by his own hungry hounds as Sansa calmly watched, even cracking a Lemonade-esque smile at the end. With the erstwhile Warden of the North in the bellies of dogs, the Starks have taken Winterfell.

Like many, I'm perfectly happy that Bolton is dead. Alas, we now have a villain gap. Who will fill it? Who will we love to hate in the final 14 episodes (one more this year, 13 to come in two final seasons)?

My hope is not for more old-fashioned villains like Joffrey and Ramsay—who, with craftsman-like intensity, wreaked havoc on individual bodies with artisanal care toward exacting the most pain from their victims. Instead, I think it's time for a real villain, someone who works on a grand scale, to step forward and claim his or her rightful place on the show.

Here are our options:

Cersei Lannister

My favorite Cersei moment saw her sitting on the Iron Throne, holding Tommen in her lap, poison in her hand. The Battle of Blackwater was raging, and Cersei thought her side was likely to lose. She was calm, maternal, affectionate—and ready to off herself and her youngest child.

Cersei's also been so abused by her late husband, by her father who never saw her true value, and most recently by the High Sparrow (though of course she was responsible for his rise, as a vehicle to take down her rival, Queen Margaery). In addition, she's failed to achieve, really, any of her goals. She's a tragic figure as well as one of the show's most interesting characters, responsible for so much death, but never truly attaining capital-V villain status. I'm a little afraid for Tommen, but Cersei is more Medea than Lady MacBeth, avenging betrayals with the worst possible acts, rather than successfully plotting her way to power, which makes her a less-than-ideal candidate.

Daenerys Targaryen

On many occasions, we've caught a glimpse of what would happen if Daenerys truly embraced the power of the dark side, and it's not pretty—just ask the masters she crucified or the Khalasar she incinerated. The Queen of Dragons is all too willing to respond to crisis by vowing to kill everyone on the other side—and their cities, too, as we heard last night—but recently she's learned to step back from the brink, helped along by timely advice from Tyrion. The Khaleesi isn't exactly heroic anymore, but she's still a ways from becoming public-enemy one, when there are so many worse characters out there.

Photos courtesy of HBO

The High Sparrow and Melisandre

If there's one thing we've learned from the show, it's that zealots (and weddings) are dangerous. The Red Woman has burned alive a young girl and birthed a demon to assassinate a prince. Jonathan Pryce's High Sparrow hasn't done either of these things and seems comparatively nice, but that actually makes him more terrifying, not less. Still, while the Faith Militant have fun tattoos, until their leader starts barbequing children, he's second-rate for religiously fanatical villains. Meanwhile, when Melisandre removed her necklace at the end of episode one and revealed her tired, aging body, it became impossible to sustain the well-deserved hate. Then she brought our hero Jon Snow back from the dead. There's plenty of drama to come with her, as Davos looks to make her pay in next week's episode, but she's just no longer the sinister mastermind, rather another vulnerable and complicated minor player in the game.

The Night King

Hating the Night King is like hating winter itself. Sure, you've got to defend yourself against the killing frost, but there's just not enough personality for real emotion. He's like Sauron in Lord of the Rings—a malevolent force that one should fear—but hatred is reserved for the humans (or wizards) who choose to serve his ends. True villainy requires intent and choice; the Night King just is. Still, he's definitely coming, and defeating him will surely occupy a significant portion of the final two seasons.

Photos courtesy of HBO

Euron Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand

The world is dark and full of terrible people. We're clearly supposed to despise Euron Greyjoy, but I just can't get super worked up about internal Iron Islands politicking, no matter how Trump-like he may seem. It's true that Ellaria Sand has done some nasty deeds—gut-stabbing her country's leader, ordering the assassination of the leader's son and young wife—but I still sympathize with her desire to kill Lannisters and avenge her lover Oberyn (who, in turn, just wanted to kill the Mountain for raping his sister). Moreover, Dorne is stuck at the edge of Westeros, deliberately isolated from the other kingdoms, so it's not likely we will get many opportunities for true, Stark-betraying, man-flaying, Joffrey-esque evil.

There is one man, however, whose villainy quite literally made the entire show possible. In fact, he's just galloped to the rescue, smirking as he rides beside Sansa Stark.

Photo courtesy of HBO

The real villain of Game of Thrones is, and always has been, Littlefinger.

Do you remember how the story started? John Arryn, Lord of the Vale and wise Hand of the King, died. Looking for a new chief minister, King Robert went north to Winterfell to ask his old comrade, Ned Stark, to take the position. Everything bad that's happened to the Starks, not to mention the whole civil war, followed.

Littlefinger was responsible for Arryn's death, having persuaded Jon's wife, Lysa, to poison him, so that they could marry. Later, he shoved her out the Moon Door in order to protect Sansa, with whom he's got a creepy daddy-lust vibe (due, in part, to his love for Sansa's mother, the sister of Lysa, Catelyn Stark). Between those two murders, he arranged to have King Joffrey poisoned, and while we cheered the death, it didn't really help calm things down in Westeros. Most recently, he gave Sansa to the Boltons (in a move that made no sense, really, and isn't in the books), but now has motivated the Vale to reclaim her. He's a hero!

But what's he want?

Answering that question requires returning to season one and a scene that popularized the term, "sexposition." While the prostitutes Ros and Armeca practiced fucking, Petyr Baelish saw fit to explain his whole raison d'être. Littlefinger talked about his love for Catelyn Stark and the many humiliations he's suffered at the hands of the great lords of Westeros. He tells Ros that in revenge, all he wants is, "Everything, my dear. Everything there is."

Ramsay Bolton was a distraction. The real villain has always been here, scheming, with limitless ambition, and without scruples. My prediction: Next he's going to try to get rid of Jon Snow, to make sure Sansa depends only on him.

Follow David Perry on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

After a two-week period marred by reports that Donald Trump's campaign is in chaos, as well as falling poll numbers and public criticism from other Republicans, the campaign announced that Corey Lewandowski is out as the GOP frontrunner's campaign manager. The New York Times had the news first.

"Corey Lewandowski will no longer be working with the campaign," Trump's campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement to the Times. "The campaign is grateful to Corey for his hard work and dedication and we wish him the best in the future."

It's unclear if Lewandowski was fired or decided to jump ship, but the move reportedly came as a shock to Team Trump; no one received a staff-wide email announcing the departure, according to the Washington Post.

Even before reports surfaced that the campaign manager had fraught relationships with top Trump staffers like Hicks and senior advisor Paul Manafort, Lewandowski attracted attention to himself after he was charged with simple battery after grabbing Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a campaign event in March. Prosecutors later dropped those charges, and Trump stood by his employee during the controversy, so it's unclear what prompted Monday's decision. As with everything Trump, there's no shortage of theories. Gabriel Sherman of the New York Times Magazine blames the children:

Read: The Trump Campaign Is a 'Dysfunctional' Mess, Insiders Say

Check out Alabaster Pizzo's website, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Bad job interviews always feel like literal nightmares. Here's a challenge you prepared for, maybe even practiced in front of the mirror for, a moment that could have a real effect on your life. But inevitably you find yourself stuttering and stammering, or sweating too much, or forgetting the brilliant point you wanted to make. Even if you actually perform well, the "we'll be in touch" at the end always feels like a knife in your stomach.

But keep your chin up, and save the deep self-loathing for something else. Chances are even your worst interview wasn't too terribly bad. You may have not gelled with the hiring manager or articulated where you see yourself in five years to the best of your ability, but absolute disasters are rare.

Job recruiters, however, go through a lot of these interviews, and they've seen it all—including the actual, for-real nightmares. We called up several job recruitment/placement agencies around New York City and asked them about the candidates that have come in and really, really bombed.

NO

I am interviewing this guy who is wearing a funeral suit (a.k.a. the only suit you have that is way too big for you and you wear it to every formal gathering). He is also wearing a beanie. Five minutes into the interview he realizes he is wearing his beanie and so he takes it off, but forgets that he has a giant wad of toilet paper stuck to his head from a giant pimple he must've popped prior to the interview. The toilet paper is stuck to his head, and he is trying to rip it off, but the blood has clotted and is holding the tissue to his head. I'm sitting there like WTF and swallowing my laughs. (I laugh when shit hits the fan, it's a nervous thing.) Finally he gives up, and I proceed to interview him while toilet paper that is covered in blood is stuck to his head. He is also holding the wad he pulled off in his hand the hold time. Very awkward.

GOD NO

This one woman didn't even get to the interview before fucking it up. We'd set up an appointment with her. About half an hour before she was supposed to come in, she sends an email: "This is probably going to sound odd, but my turtle unexpectedly got very sick, and I had to deal with a lot of back and forth to the vet." She said she'd call the next day to discuss when she could come in. An hour after her weird cancellation, she wrote us back with an update. "Don't worry! I am walking my turtle in the park to get some sunlight."

OH, HELL NO

I am interviewing a motion graphic designer, and we are talking about his background. All seems normal, so we proceed to the the next step, and he pulls out his iPad to show me his reel. He hits play, and it is full-on anal porn. This guy is violently fucking this chick in the ass with full-on, tight anal shots. The designer just says "oops" and presses stop. Oh, hell no. Needless to say, we never placed him.

GO GURRRRL, BUT NO

We were in final rounds with a woman for a in-house designer role. We get the offer on the table and say the final step is just the background check. There is dead silence on the phone, and finally the woman says, "Well I have to go ahead and admit that I won't pass the criminal background check, because I caught my man cheating, so I burned that fucker's house down."

WTF? NO

One time I had a candidate come in for an interview right around lunch, like 12:30 or 1. It's no big deal, we do it all the time and people make plans to eat before or after. But this one woman brought in food with her and attempted to eat it during the interview. And it wasn't something easy like a sandwich. I forget what it was, exactly, but it was messy. Like rotisserie chicken legs or something. I'm of course shocked, so I ask how she thinks it reflects on her as a potential employee of one of our clients. In between bites she says, "I know, I'm awful. I just know my body, and knew if I didn't eat I'd be brain-dead, so I figured it was the better option." It wasn't. If you're ever in that position, just come in with low blood sugar. You might seem a bit spaced-out or vacant, but trust me, we've seen a lot worse. Like someone eating wings or whatever in the interview, for instance.

AWW, NO

One time I was interviewing a guy, and something was just very visibly off. You could tell his mind was somewhere else. He would ask me to repeat questions, head just wasn't in the game. After about 20 minutes of this, I just stopped and, very politely, said, "Is everything OK?" Without even missing a beat, he just started bawling. His dog had died that fucking morning. He thought he could make it through the interview. He couldn't. I sent him home and then reached out a couple weeks later to see about trying it again. He never returned my emails.

PREEMPTIVE NO

Employment is a two-way street. It has to be mutually beneficial. When people are only about themselves, I've found that they typically aren't the best candidates or employees. So maybe I'm sensitive to it, but when I'm interviewing someone who is asking about time off and salary before they've even sat down, I know I'm not placing them anywhere. Sometimes they even send off pre-interview red flags that warn you they're going to need a lot of hand-holding. If a potential candidate sends me emails asking what train to take to our building or where they should park when they get here, I always want to answer back, "Don't bother coming."

NO, PLAYER

I had a guy openly hit on me during an interview. It was such a bummer because he was actually very qualified and very charming. We got along great, and I was happy about finding him work, which wouldn't have been hard. But just before we ended our interview, he said something about me having the most gorgeous eyes or smile or something. I said thanks, and tried to move on, but he just kept going on about it. I put my hand on the table just in case he hadn't seen my wedding ring before. It didn't help. He asked me out. I declined. I didn't place him. I was too worried for the women he might work with. If he couldn't keep together during an interview, could you imagine him at an after-work happy hour?

PLAYER, NO

We actually placed a candidate who interviewed very well, but then almost immediately started getting calls from the client about terrible performance. She was hired to do marketing for a fashion/retail company, but was totally clueless about it. She took three-hour lunch breaks, would come in late, leave early. They started tracking her closely, making note of all the times she went AWOL so we could have it on record. One time she didn't show for a meeting she was supposed to lead. When we took her off the job, she was indignant, and swore up and down the company was lying. The day after we pulled her, she had the nerve to go back up and get her personal things.

FINALLY: NO

We'll occasionally throw recruiter lunches where some clients we're working with come in and talk to some specific candidates we've invited. It's casual, and there's a lot less pressure on both sides. Just basically a networking function designed to let employers know about you and your expertise and get your name out. Well, one guy is talking to an employer when someone accidentally knocks into him. He drops his pizza, facedown, on the floor. He picked it up, brushed it off, and ate it. Right in front of the client. We still laugh about it. "Don't send me anyone who'd eat pizza off a floor in front of me," he'll say.

Nina Cranstoun is one of the few female boxing promoters in the UK. Using her brassy charm and the promise of glamorous fight nights, she lures in some of the biggest underground fighters from across the country. She's risen above sexist attitudes in her mission to make the hyper-masculine world of amateur boxing a little bit more spectacular.

Thumbnail photo via Flickr user SoWa Sundays

There's a Central Perk Cafe inspired by Friends in Beijing, China, and a cocktail RV, ABQ, inspired by Breaking Bad in London, England. And a restaurant inspired by the Golden Girls may be making its way to New York City, DNA Info reports.

(Sorry, we had to.)

Read: I Asked a Psychic Medium to Contact the Golden Girls

The activity that's apparently causing outrage in Calgary. Photo via Flickr user smb4life

Alberta, often dubbed Texas North, is typically regarded as a freedom loving place—Albertans cherish their oil and trucks and they don't give a shit what everyone else thinks.

So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that Calgary has for the past 30 years banned a relatively benign sporting activity—backyard skateboarding. According to the Calgary Herald, the city outlawed backyard skateboard ramps in the 80s, not because of safety concerns, but because the sound a skateboard makes going down a ramp is too damn loud.

At city council this week, the draconian rule was overturned, allowing wannabe Tony Hawks to practise their tricks in the privacy of their own yards. But the shift was met with resistance from officials who apparently think all hell will break loose if people have to deal with the sound of polyurethane wheels on a wooden structure. (Yet blasting bro-country music isn't an issue? Whatevs.)

"The clanging, it can put you over the edge. That's really what most people are talking about. The noise is a different type of noise. It's a rhythmic noise," said Councillor Ward Sutherland, while fellow Councillor Andre Chabot, who admitted his own daughter skateboarded to get around the city for years, said lifting the ban would "exasperate things."

"I can't support this, though I certainly appreciate the intent."

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, the world's greatest mayor and often a voice of reason, told council he doesn't understand what the fuss is about.

"To assume that one kind of activity is different than another kind of activity is over-regulation in the extreme."

In the interest of doing its due diligence, the city actually commissioned a report comparing the noise of skateboards going down a ramp to other sounds. It found that in terms of decibels, the dreaded "clanging" is about on par with the sound of a human being speaking. If only there was a ban on that, we might not have to waste taxpayer money on debates like this.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Man Arrested for Trying to Shoot Donald Trump
A man arrested at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas on Saturday made an attempt to grab a police officer's gun so he could shoot the Republican candidate. British national Michael Steven Sandford, 20, told the authorities he had been planning to kill Trump for a year. He was denied bail during a court appearance in Nevada.—AP

Clinton Condemns Senate for Blocking Gun Control
Hillary Clinton has responded to the Senate blocking four separate proposed measures on gun control by tweeting "Enough," followed by a list of the Orlando shooting's 49 victims. The presumptive Democratic nominee followed up by tweeting: "It's time to demand more than thoughts and prayers from our elected officials."—USA Today

FBI Issues Warrant for Sect Leader
The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for Lyle Jeffs, a polygamous sect leader who has disappeared ahead of his trial over federal food stamp fraud. Jeffs, 56, a leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, had been ordered to remain at home in Salt Lake County under strict conditions until the October trial.—NBC News

Chinese Government Scales Back Hacking in US
Chinese government hacking of the US has decreased sharply since mid 2014, according to a new report by security firm FireEye. Intrusions into the networks of US companies have fallen from 60 in February 2013 to a handful in April 2016. The fall is thought to be a response to US indictments and the threat of economic sanctions.—The Washington Post

International News

Car Bomb Attack Kills Six Jordanian Troops
A car bomb attack has killed six and injured 14 Jordanian border guards outside a camp for Syrian refugees near the border between the two countries. The Jordanian army said the car exploded just a few hundred meters from the Rakban camp. No group has yet claimed responsibility.—Reuters

Fake Explosives Belt Triggers Bomb Alert in Brussels
Belgian police have detained a man near Brussels City2 shopping center and sealed off the area early on Tuesday morning, after he called police to say he was wearing explosives. The man was reportedly found to be wearing a fake explosives belt. Prime Minister Charles Michel has held a meeting with Belgium's crisis center to discuss the incident.—Sky News

Venezuelans Line Up to Back Recall Vote
More than 70,000 people who signed a petition for a referendum to remove President Nicolás Maduro have waited in line to have their signatures validated. Citizens have until Friday to have signatures checked formally, and 200,000 validated signatures are needed for the referendum to go ahead.—BBC News

Iran Warns of Violence After Shia Cleric
The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards has warned of violent resistance among Shia Muslims in Gulf states after the leading Shia cleric in Bahrain was stripped of his citizenship. Qassem Soleimani said the Sunni-led nation's action against Sheikh Isa Qassim could "set the region on fire."—Al Jazeera

The car that killed Anton Yelchin (right) in a freak accident was recently recalled. Photo via Flickr

Everything Else

Car That Killed Yelchin Under Recall
The model of car that killed actor Anton Yelchin in a freak accident on Sunday—a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee—was recently recalled for a gear defect that could make drivers mistakenly think they are in park. Yelchin's death is under investigation by the Los Angeles Police.—The Verge

LGBTQ Enquiries into Guns Spikes in Wake of Orlando
Gun groups have reported an increase in LGBTQ interest after the mass shooting at Pulse club in Orlando. The Pink Pistols, an LGBTQ group that teaches people how to use weapons, has seen a spike in membership.—Broadly

Ruling Party Blocks Weed Decriminalization in Mexico
President Enrique Peña Nieto told the UN in April that he supported a major change in marijuana laws, but his own party has blocked a measure to decriminalize weed. One drugs policy expert said: "It looks like he never really wanted it."—VICE News

Russian Records Every Waking Moment in a Bid to Live Forever
Russian "transhumanist" Alexey Turchin records everything he does as audio, video, and EEG brain scans in a bid for digital immortality. He believes artificial intelligence will allow for his "future reconstruction."—Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new film 'The Black Widow of Boxing.'

Chris Woods portrait by Jonnie Craig

This article appeared in the June issue of VICE UK magazine. Click to subscribe.

Former BBC Panorama producer and investigative journalist, Chris Woods, is the author of Sudden Justice, an examination of the development of drones and their use in combat, secretive assassinations, and covert strikes since 9/11. He also ran the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Covert Drone War Project, which helped expose the shadowy world of drone warfare. In 2014, he set up Airwars.org, a collective of journalists and researchers across the Middle East and Europe dedicated to tracking airstrikes against the Islamic State, attempting to keep tabs on civilian casualties, and pressing for transparency and accountability in the war on terror. [Figures are accurate as of time of press—May 20, 2016]

VICE: For those unfamiliar—what does AIRWARS do?
Chris Woods: We track allegations of civilian casualties from international airstrikes targeting Islamic State (ISIS) and asses them, where we can. We have become concerned over recent years by the West's narrative—that our airstrikes are now so perfect that they don't kill civilians. Between the Russians and the coalition now we have more than a thousand alleged incidents where strikes have killed civilians. It's a colossal number.

What sources are you using for this?
Ninety-five percent of our sourcing is Arabic language—all of our researchers are Syrian, Iraqi, or Lebanese. Traditional media in Iraq and Syria has pretty much disintegrated, but it doesn't mean the information has disappeared. We take in everything—from activists, NGOs, even ISIS's own propaganda regarding airstrikes—assemble it, link to it all, include photos, names of the dead, and make our own assessments. But we leave it to others to draw their own conclusions. As for official sources, coalition members put out press releases that vary from reasonable—the British and Canadians have been particularly good—to unbelievably, shockingly bad.

Screengrab via airwars.org

Where are we at present with the air campaign against ISIS and civilian deaths?
There have been more than forty-four thousand bombs and missiles used, twelve thousand coalition airstrikes. Only the US has admitted to killing any civilians. The other twelve coalition members say they haven't even injured a civilian, which is where we start to get into the realms of fantasy.

I have to say that the coalition is taking extreme care not to kill civilians. They put out a statement the other week saying that they think they have killed twenty-five thousand ISIS fighters now. So that puts civilian casualties at about four percent by our reckoning. Most military analysts will tell you four percent is a very good number for an air campaign. The coalition is taking huge care not to kill civilians, but in our view, it is not enough care. Claims that there are no civilian casualties are a military fantasy.

This crosses over with your work on drones—this dangerous idea of military technology being clean, combined with a lack of accountability?
There is no doubt that drones—air power in general—are far more precise than ever. But all the precision means is that the bomb gets where it's meant to go; it doesn't tell us anything about what it does when it gets there. We are dropping bombs, sometimes bloody big bombs—up to two thousand pounds of explosives—on towns where large numbers of civilians are held captive by ISIS. Even if your weapon is the most precise ever invented, it doesn't let it off the hook for killing civilians. I think our politicians have confused precision with effect—they are different things.

Screengrab via airwars.org

What else about your AIRWARS work crosses over with your work on drones?
Drones are still part of what I do. They are being used to huge effect in Iraq and Syria—forty percent of British airstrikes in Iraq are by drone. Drones are just another weapon platform. I suppose the thing that links these two areas is that they are two air-only responses by the West to a terrorist problem. That's the more fundamental issue that we haven't sorted out here: What is it that creates and sustains terrorists? And is our response to these terrorists making things better of worse? There's a disconnect between cause and effect in the West.

Do you see the work you have done on drones, and your continuing work on AIRWARS as more of an effort to defend civilians, or a means of changing the way our governments work? Or is it impossible to separate those two aims for you?
I have been a journalist for more than twenty-five years now. I suppose, like all journalists, I came into it expecting to change the world. The reality is that that happens very, very rarely. I remember doing a report for the BBC on an atrocity in Israel, and it was pretty much ignored. It made me rather upset at the time, but a producer of mine then said, "sometimes all we can do is bear witness." Just record it and report it and at least then its there on the record and maybe one day someone will go back and look at it. I think that a lot of what we do with tracking these airstrikes and civilian casualties is at least marking them. Even if governments and militaries ignore all our reports, they can't say that the information wasn't there for them to see and make judgments on.

Assuming that the West is not going to stop bombing its enemies imminently, what changes are you hoping to bring about?
For us, it's about honesty. The UK is a war-like country. Part of the reason we go to war so often is that war is something we visit on other people; it's not something we have visited on us. And our politicians have gotten used to insinuating that our bombs only kill bad people. If we could change people's understanding of the reality of war, perhaps we would be a little less inclined to reach for it as a first option. I have covered multiple wars, and everyone tears a nation apart. There's no such thing as a clean war. I was there for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and I went back every year until 2009, and I saw it unfold. Everyone knew what would happen, and it did... Al Qaeda emerged in Iraq because of our intervention, the Islamic State is a byproduct of that intervention and the fact that we left. We see this time and time again; it's action without consequence for the West. We are talking about going back into Libya again, after Obama called it his worst foreign policy error.

Screengrab via airwars.org

People in the West need to understand that there's a cost to war, a blood cost paid by civilians. Those civilians or their families may feel that's a price worth paying to defeat say, ISIS, but we have to be honest about it. We aren't the only ones playing this denial game—Russia says its bombs don't kill civilians. Assad, the murderous Assad, says his bombs don't. It's absurd.

How hopeful are you about an increasing level of transparency about airstrikes and civilian casualties?
Just when you think things couldn't get less transparent, they do. The Dutch recently extended their airstrikes from Iraq to Syria. Presently they don't even demark between the two. They send out press releases effectively saying, "This week we dropped some bombs somewhere in Iraq or Syria." That's not accountability. It's appalling. The Dutch were for a time ranked bottom of our transparency table, below Saudi Arabia. So, our team is optimistic, but it depends which military you are talking about. Really the pressure for change has to come from the public. They have to challenge their MPs, militaries, presidents, and prime ministers. And next time our leaders say "we have killed no civilians in this war," just think about that claim.

This article appeared in the June issue of VICE magazine. Click to subscribe.

Laurie Davis, the owner of eFlirt, mixes online and offline tools to match her clients. Photo by Bonnie Turtur

"Do not meet for coffee," Sasha Silberberg, the 24-year-old matchmaker at OKSasha, told me about my upcoming date. "That's what every motherfucker does. That's boring. Go on an adventure."

Silberberg, who wears glitter on her face to meetings and uses words like "rad" and "chill," is not what I pictured when I arranged to meet with a matchmaker. But if she seems more like a friend or wingwoman than a matchmaking yenta, that's because it's exactly what she intended.

Silberberg, like a growing group of "millennial matchmakers," is taking a new approach to setting people up. In an age where apps like Tinder and Grindr have seemingly taken over the dating market, Silberberg wants to bring dating back to person-to-person interactions arranged under the watchful eye of a matchmaker. So she, and many others, are carving out a new market of matchmaking services for millennials, by millennials, much of which supplements online dating rather than seeking to replace it.

"People sign up to date with me because I make dating fun, and I help people be themselves more," Silberberg told me. "If you're not acting from your most authentic self during the dating process, you're going to have a really hard time with what you're actually looking for."

Today's millennial matchmakers (many don't even call themselves matchmakers, but use "dating coach" or "wingwoman" instead) are more like objective friends. Some, like Laurie Davis of eFlirt, surf clients' online profiles to help them find preliminary online matches, while others, like Sofi Papamarko of Friend of a Friend Matchmaking, work exclusively offline, matching clients with her own acquaintances or other clients. Silberberg, who used to be a Lyft driver in San Francisco, sometimes set up the people she drove.

"They usually picture an auntie being a matchmaker, not their cool, slightly older friend." — Sofi Papamarko

"Millennials want guidance," said Christina Weber, matchmaker and founder of Underground Unattached, an intensive three-hour, no-phones-allowed, small group dating experience. "I think that we're not taught how to have relationships with people. That's something that's deeply lacking in our education curriculum. are a little bit confused with how they navigate the relationship while they focus on building their careers. They want close relationships but don't know how to do it."

Like old-school matchmakers, they consult their client databases and send you on dates, but the focus is less on marriage and money and more on finding someone you just really like hanging with first. Millennial matchmakers also use a combination of intuition and logistics, such as location and interests. Are you Tumblr famous and love "dank memes"? Watch Huang's World and play Neko Atsume obsessively? These younger matchmakers have a lover to complement you in all your quirkiness, while older matchmakers don't even know what Snapchat is.

Of course, to most millennials, hiring a matchmaker seems old-fashioned and unnecessary. We're used to taking matters into our own hands (and iPhones)—hiring cleaners with Handy, finding somewhere to sleep with Couchsurfing, renting cars with Car2Go. Matchmaking services can be costly (a year with Papamarko starts at $249 for men and $349 for women; Silberberg's packages of services start at $1,000) while apps like Bumble and Scruff are free.

But Silberberg and Weber stressed that navigating the dating world on your own can be overwhelming, and plenty of young people aren't even sure what they're looking for in a match.

"Millennials are educated and they've spent all this time perfecting how to think with their brains, but dating is tapping into your feelings and emotions," Davis told me. Davis, who says she has successfully matched more than 100 couples (including some who have married), said having a coach around can give millennials the tools and the data to find the person they're looking for, whether through dating apps or in real life.

One of OKSasha's dating events. Photo courtesy of Sasha Silberberg

Dates set up by matchmakers can also feel safer than ones arranged by, say, Tinder. You're less likely to be ghosted or homme fataled by a match brought to you by a matchmaker, because there is a higher standard for personality and accountability.

Lisa Marion, who found her current boyfriend through a millennial matchmaking service, told me the prospect of a matchmaker seemed strange at first. "It seemed old, stuffy, hella expensive, and scary," she said. But when she found out about Papamarko and Friend of a Friend Matchmaking, she started to see it more like being set up by a friend. "She was affordable for a young person like me and just seemed like a great person."

"I'm sure there are some open-minded, intuitive, brilliant older matchmakers. But those aren't the stories I'm hearing," said Papamarko, who is 35. "People seem to find my relatively young age refreshing. They usually picture an auntie being a matchmaker, not their cool, slightly older friend."

Adam Anklewicz and Melina Condren were both struggling to date when they hired Papamarko. Anklewicz had been bringing a wingman to bars to no success. Condren was disillusioned with the online messages she was receiving, half of which were "creepy and gross," and the other half of which "seemed like generic messages men send to every woman under 35 in the hopes of getting a response from anyone."

Anklewicz signed up in December 2013 and met Condren in June 2014, after several other dates set up by Papamarko. The couple has been together ever since.

"The entire process was fun and easy," Condren told me. "I trusted her because she and I knew each other, and I'm friends with some of her other matches. But it wasn't a big investment, and the payoff could have been—and was—huge."

Anklewicz added that "because of the financial barrier to entry, I think a matchmaker like Sofi has more serious and high-quality people in her roster. She sorts through the chaff to find the wheat for you."

And although many have suggested that dating is dead among millennials, the matchmakers see things differently.

"If you see surveys on millennials, I think you see a great deal of hope for wanting a partnership," said Jasbina Ahluwalia, who runs the matchmaking service Intersections Match by Jasbina. Ahluwalia pointed out that millennials are the children of boomers, the generation with the highest divorce rate.

"I can see why they would be jaded," she told me. "But love is something the vast majority of people seek—to be connected, to feel like someone has your back when you go to the doctor and you fill out that emergency contact. I think that's a universal thing. I don't think millennials are exempt from that."

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The best part of summer is sitting quietly in your home with the air conditioner on. The second-best part of summer is going to the beach, which is like a park but wetter. What's not to like? Lie on a towel, throw yourself into the salty water, build a sandcastle, buy an ice cream, collect seashells, dig a big hole to sit in, secretly drink vodka from a thermos, lose track of time, run along the surf until you don't know where you are, harass a lifeguard, argue with seagulls, pass out in the sun, wake up sunburned with the cops standing over you. The beach!

Even your average beach is a better place to be than, say, a pretty good grocery store. Even the worst beach in the country is better that the best DMV. The best beach, if you're curious, is probably in Hawaii or Florida or New Jersey, according to travel websites, but you don't have to fly to some other state to find a good beach—just walk in one direction until you hit water.

Compiling a list of great beaches is as easy as googling "list of great beaches." But what about America's crappiest beaches? Where are those murky gems? Their sands may not be white, their water may not be azure, their vistas may not be free of stray dogs eating something unidentifiable, but they, too, are worthy of acknowledgement.

To compile this list, I trawled Yelp for the lowest-rated beaches (it's really hard to score below a three out of five if you're a beach), then highlighted some of the angriest reviews. Again, these beaches are probably all fine, but they are notably subpar for their respective areas. I mean no disrespect here, mostly I just think it's funny to read people complaining about beaches.

Manhattan Beach, Confusingly Located in Brooklyn (3 Stars)

Tommy K has a lot of issues: "Trashy beach meaning lots of trash on the beach—broken glass, plastic bags, chicken bones and wrappers of all sorts—and it makes its way into the water everyone! Do you want to swim in trash? Some people don't mind, but I do.

The water is dark, very dark. I wonder if people even go out far enough to piss.

Police patrol the area for alcohol, so beware."

Dre D has some good points as well: "The sand is whatever.... THE BATHROOMS!!!! GOTTT DAMN!!!! I might as well piss on the floor. The WATER!!!!!! GOTT DAMN!! as I stepped through the dry sand heading to the wet part.. I looked up and as I looked up about 800 meters out I see 4 oil rigs just sitting there. WTF? The water was and is filthy!"

STONESTEPS BEACH, IN ENCINITAS, NORTH OF SAN DIEGO (3.5 STARS)

Stonesteps Beach, which seems pretty nice actually. Photo via Flickr user Scott Durgan

Michael B makes what seems like a savvy attempt to keep his beach crowd-free: "Because the beaches are at the bottom of large bluffs, be in shape. The bluffs are unstable and the beach smells like old seaweed. Tourist should stay away."

Lisa L continues Michael's project ,and I think is making fun of Carlsbad? There are definitely some complicated SoCal beach politics at work here: "A few years back part of the bluff fell on and killed a sunbather. Much safer beaches can be found in Carlsbad. Also stairs are very steep—If you are looking on Yelp for a beach—You are more of a Carlsbad type beach goer ;)"

Vincenzo M raises valid points: "There are no showers, rest rooms or other facilities at the steps and limited lifeguard service... If the tide is high, there is no beach!... There are a bunch of old people (with nothing better to do) who constantly hang out at the steps and scrutinize everyone like a hawk. Even very minor infractions are immediately reported to the Sheriff."

Brock J honestly did not like it, and it doesn't seem like he's part of an anti-tourist whispering campaign like Michael and Lisa: "Awful beach. Bugs everywhere, seaweed EVERYWHERE on the beach."

Bryan Beach, Near Houston (2 Stars)

Michael H was inspired to sarcasm, which is not a good sign: "Avoid at all costs if you do not like brown water and walls of decaying algae."

Carola M has a story of confusion and pain to tell: "When my mom and I arrived to this beach we were thinking it was the beach where we were trying to go, but we noticed we were at the wrong beach. It said Bryan Beach and not Quintana Beach. We went in to take a look, and you can clearly tell that no one takes care of this beach. There was seaweed everywhere there is not even that much space to put up a tent or to even park your car, and there was trash every where. It was in very bad shape, and I am never going to come back here again."

Hobie Beach, Miami (2 stars)

Hobie Beach has a nice view, at least. Photo via Flickr user osseous

Allison F does not like this beach: "Not good. Not good at all... Literally two feet of sand connect the parking lot to the shoreline, and the sand is infested with inch-long chips of broken beer bottles and other glass parts. You can't take your shoes off unless you want to get sliced up.

Also buried in the sand is miscellaneous trash, including what looked like old chicken wings; really could have been anything as I didn't get a close enough look before my dog devoured it. YUCK."

A D has similar complaints: "The water and shore line is thoroughly disgusting. There were tonnes of litter and dead seagulls (skeletons, decomposing) that were all over the shore. The water was murky and brown with lots of broken glass, broken coral, seaweed. Thank god I had my eye on my puppy as she was sniffing around the dead birds."

Marilyn M appreciates that there aren't many dog beaches around, but has some questions: "Why was so much money spent on improving the parking lot if the main attraction was going to be completely neglected? Why aren't there any posted signs with rules and regulations (regarding dogs, trash and prohibited items such as glass), why aren't there any waste baskets closer to the beach? Why is this beach OBVIOUSLY never cleaned up?"

Dempster Beach, in Evanston, Illinois (2 Stars)

People have some problems with Dempster Beach. Photo via Flickr user Mark Ordonez

Kristen W says this beach is run by the MAN and also has a socioeconomic critique: "This could be a very lovely beach if it weren't for two things: obnoxious, nanny-state lifeguards and a high entrance fee. Daily passes (or 'tokens') are $8. You can purchase season passes as a resident or a non-resident however they are pricey. I guess this is why there is no diversity on this beach."

D A agrees with Kristen W, and maybe they should start a petition or something: "A free beach is a benefit to the community. It's a public resource. It would bring more people to the beach and to the surrounding areas and businesses. Oh wait, sorry; if it's free it might bring poor people, and we don't want them, do we, Evanston? What if the poor people come to use our sand."

Steve R has a review that shows everyone, no mater his or her politics, hates paying for the beach: "I live in Evanston and pay thousands of dollars in property taxes and I have to pay to use my city's beaches. So if my brothers family and mine use the beach for one day it cost over 100 dollars. This is typical liberal nanny state government. From life guards to the police all they want to do is harass and fine you. So that the government employees of Evanston can retire with nice pensions at the age of 55. I have put my place up for sale and I am moving. This town sucks worse than Chicago."

Bastendorff Beach, in Southern Oregon (3.5 Stars)

Julia R says that this beach is bad: "Well, the plan was to go to the beach yesterday, not an ashtray.... Yikes, Parks Department! Cutbacks much??? This place was FILTHY! Rusty nails, broken glass, beer cans, bottle caps, cardboard carriers for 6-packs of beer, the remains of fireworks, baby binkies, condemn wrappers, and cigarette butts everywhere!"

Tommy C is more relaxed: "Just an average beach. Nothing really to rave about."

Doheny State Beach, South of LA (3 Stars)

A nice view from apparently not a very nice beach. Photo via Flickr user Charles Wagner aka ChumpChange

Shana M summarizes the problem with this beach, which does actually sound like a pretty bad place: "Probably one of the dirtiest and worst beach in OC !!! We paid $15 for parking to get in just to find unmaintained beach."

Thomas G explains further: "Toxic beach. I'm new to the area and started coming down there and trying to swim a little bit and get back into the ocean. I noticed every day after I swam it took 2 or 3 days to quit feeling like I had the flu. When I read online that it's rated as one of the worst beaches in California for pollution and toxic bacteria I realized what was going on."

Mark M has strong opinions: "What a crap hole. Anyone that like this place has never been to a decent beach. A lackluster beach with tiny little piss-ant waves with a bad run-off. I had friends get Hepatitis going here."

Tanya F echoes what everyone else says, but is full of regret: "There is natural debris all over the waterfront and it is completely covered with flies. Getting to the water I almost stepped on a dead bird, glass, and some strange black tar looking substance. I am really concerned for this beach as I have a lot of good memories here and would love to continue to come back."

Long Beach Beaches, in Long Beach, Duh (2.5 Stars)

Holly T, who wrote an exhaustive, knowledgeable review that is too lengthy to quote here, sums up: "There are good parts of the Long Beach beaches if you know where to go. But compared to any other beach in the area, they really fall short, which is a shame."

Andrya H gave the beach four stars, but I think that's sarcasm: "Long Beach Residents are practicing safe sex seeing as we found a lot of condoms a long the shore."

Risky R takes the beach's shortcomings personally: "I live and grew up near the shore in Long Beach. I am sad to admit that we have the worst beach around. Polluted water, filthy sand, and rank air sums up our whole beach experience."

Chip A strikes a defiant note: "review, who needs a fuckin review. We all know we don't live in long beach for the beach...its cheaper than HB, LB, MB,.....and still on that water."

Susan L, I don't think "they" say this, but OK: "It's true what they say, the worst beach is long beach."

Carson Beach, Boston (3 Stars)

Carson Beach seems fine? Photo via Flickr user Bill Ilott

Josie G knows her response is maybe a little too emotional to be a good example of a truly objective Yelp review, but forges ahead anyway: "In college, I used to come here thinking it was the best thing ever. Then I stepped on a bloody band-aid and a piece of glass in the same afternoon. No, thanks. They've definitely cleaned it up a bit, and I like the little snack bar that they've got. But that afternoon put a bad taste in my mouth and I haven't been back since."

Wendy S, OK I know I said all beaches are fine earlier, but this does seem to be a bad beach experience: "Not only did I find enormous amounts of trash on this beach, I found a human bone."

Joe R offers advice that really bums me out for some reason: "Do go, just remember to bring your low expectations and enough hand sanitizer for the entire family."

Julie A pulls no punches: "I think this might be the worst beach I have ever been to. It's a nasty sandbox next to some murky water."

Pass Christian Beach, Mississippi, Between Gulfport and Louisiana (2.5 Stars)

JJ has obviously thought about this beach a lot, and who are we to disagree with him?: "Absolutely nothing special about this compared to the 50 miles of medium sand and murky water in either direction up and down the gulf coast. its not walking distance to anything like a restaurant or bar either. I suspect local boosters are pimping the place to make a buck."

And Ana C will get the last word, because she is the most succinct Yelp beach reviewer of them all: "Did not like this beach at all... This beach is pretty dirty."

People at an April rally at Penn State cheer Bernie Sanders. Photo Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On Saturday, at the New Hampshire Democratic Party State Convention, Elizabeth Warren demonstrated the skills that have put her on the shortlist of Hillary Clinton's vice-presidential nominees. The Massachusetts senator has taught at Harvard Law, she's done important work on high-level economic commissions, she midwifed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into existence after the financial crisis. But what really excites some Democrats these days is her role as the political equivalent of an insult comic.

Taking Twitter beef offline a la Drake, Warren uncorked a bevy of jabs against Donald Trump. She rattled off a list of the GOP nominee's abandoned enterprises before declaring him "a proven failure." She used the phrase "thin-skinned racist bully" at least twice and "fraudster in chief" once. And she came within waving distance of calling the guy a pussy, wondering why he doesn't "just man up and take his licks" when it comes to the legal action former students are taking against Trump University.

"I really could do this all day," she said in the middle of one diatribe.

One thing she avoided doing all day was touch on the issue of Bernie Sanders, who has still declined to officially concede the 2016 race even though Clinton is the presumptive nominee. Warren and Sanders have both worked to pull the Democrats to the left on economic issues, yet Warren has stayed out of the primary infighting that has divided the party. Presumably part of the reason she's being considered for the VP slot is her ability to appeal to passionate Sanders supports who still aren't ready for Hillary, but she seems determined not to mention the 74-year-old elephant in the room.

Warren avoided delving into any specific policies where she and Sanders agree, like cracking down on big banks. Even when she talked about the minimum wage, it was just to say it should be higher, not to take a stand on the Clinton-Sanders debate over whether $12 or $15 an hour is the fairer number.

If Warren didn't do much to extend an olive branch across the intra-party rift, some Sanderistas in the crowd showed little interest in being reached out to. At a few points during her speech, a small group of them chanted "Bernie!" and waved signs for their candidate.

This is Greg. Guess which candidate he supports? Photo by author

One of the chanters, delegate Felicia Teter, said afterward that she was "a little sad about Warren's speech." Teter told VICE she'd liked Warren's past willingness to criticize the Democratic Party as well as conservatives and was disappointed to see her just calling out Trump. Indeed, in 2014 Warren was widely seen as the voice of a dissenting left wing of the party when she fought against a deal that included weakening the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.

Teter said she's holding out for the party to change course and nominate Sanders. "Yes, I'm terrified of Donald Trump being president, but the Democratic Party right now has the opportunity to stop this," she said. If the Dems just changed course and gave Sanders the nomination, Teter argued, he'd handily defeat the orange menace.

In an effort to tamp down tensions, convention organizers had asked delegates to leave anything bearing the names "Clinton" or "Sanders" at home (the protesters during Warren's speech acknowledged they were acting against the wishes of the party leaders). A couple dozen Sanders sign-holders were present, but relegated to lining the sides of a driveway outside the convention. Among them were Vickie Abbott, age 70, and her friend Marie Clark, who, like Teter weren't convinced Sanders wasn't about to become president.

"We've just begun," Clark said. "For us, this is forty years in the making."

Marie Clark (left) and Vickie Abbott (right). Photo by author

Clark and Abbott laid out the standard case for the eliminated-by-normal-standards Sanders: There are still a lot of votes being recounted, the party ought to get behind Sanders as the more electable candidate who can win independent and even Republican votes in a matchup against Trump, anything could happen at the Democratic National Convention. If all else fails, maybe Bernie should think about a third-party run.

Other Sanders supporters, like delegate Karen Day, are unhappy with the way Clinton was favored by superdelegates early in the process, but expect the party to come together after the national convention. Day's ready to move into the Clinton camp if she really has to. "Whoever gets the nomination's got my vote," she said. (Polls have mostly found that a large majority of Sanders fans would vote for Clinton, provided he endorsed her.)

Another Sanders-supporting delegate, David McKenzie, said he's backing Clinton now, and expects others will do the same. But he said he isn't eager for his first-choice candidate to step aside and endorse the presumptive nominee just yet. McKenzie said he thinks Sanders's choice to play hard-to-get may force the Democratic Party to move to the left to placate the Vermont senator's passionate progressive base.

Some Sanders supporters were clearly working through their position on the fly. Alex Rego, a college student who's running for New Hampshire state representative, said he's troubled by Clinton's past, particularly her remarks about " superpredators" and her husband's role in promoting mass incarceration.

Rego said he's "not too sure I'll end up voting for Hillary." A moment later, though, he said he'd do it if it turned out to really be necessary to make sure a Democrat holds the highest office in the land.

That's the rub: Few people who disagree with Clinton from the left would rather see Trump in the White House. Eventually voting for Clinton might be a matter of picking the lesser of two evils; it also might mean going through the six stages of grief.

Delegate Zoranda Pringle said she supported Clinton in the tough 2008 fight against Barack Obama, so she knows where Sanders voters are coming from. But she thinks they'll come around, just like she did.

"I remember the pain, and it's real pain," she said. "I cried, and I'm sure that they are crying too."

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Darth Vader illustration via Nerdist, via Pinterest/Gay Times

A long time ago (but not in a galaxy far, far away) a video game was the catalyst for my inelegant stumble from the closet. As a teen I was a regular in the online servers of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, a thoroughly mediocre game that against all odds had cultivated a dedicated community. It was a summer's evening and having contemplated spilling the oh-so-fabulous beans to my strictly religious parents, or to blabber to my school friends, telling a bunch of random internet nerds seemed the least perilous course of action. With a handful of keystrokes, I was out.

What happened next was unfathomable to my teenage brain. Nobody turned their back to the wall to avoid an imminent lightsaber bumming. Nobody immediately labeled me "Manakin Guystalker" or "Obi Wanty Knobby." Nobody launched a crafty rock at my head from the second story school window. Instead, I was greeted with a series of short but approving responses suggesting that I was brave, still welcome, and most of all, holding up the line for the next lightsaber duel—my name had been called.

Somehow this reaction surpassed even my fantasies of adulation and confetti. I was just another geek pretending to be a Jedi who happened to dig boy Jedi. In the world outside of video games I was constantly afraid. Afraid of being outed, or worse, condemned. The guild provided a space where none of that mattered. I could indulge in the activities that most other pubescent teenagers took for granted. I gossiped with Eowyn, the German 18 year old about celebrity crushes. I talked with candor about the stresses of constantly hiding away my true nature. An imaginary space afforded me very real, very formative experiences.

A screenshot from 'Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy'

Eventually, Jedi Academy even granted me my first taste of relationships. Buoyed by my own confession, another teenage boy known as Darth Tanner (yes, a Sith, but also seriously cute) came out to the group as well. We would spend hours together in the server, and then on AOL Messenger, excitedly devouring each other's life history, leaving each conversation more excited than the last. It didn't matter that he lived in Ohio and I in a dreary town in the West Midlands; I was experiencing a small slice of normality that all my peers took for granted, and to which my access was otherwise blocked. A life had been changed by a single game server and the kindly folk who ran it.

Needless to say, the benefits of my new online life soon spilled over into the real world; the floodgates had opened. Soon after my Jedi Academy outing I opened up to my friends, my sister, and eventually my parents. To this day I'm unsure how long I would have lingered in the closet, convinced of my own abomination had I not plucked up the necessary courage on that fateful day.

Since that incredible event, the relationship between my sexual preference and the video games I play has been more fraught. The world of online games helped me out of the closet, only to attempt a coup and usher me back in moments later. As I quickly discovered, the small, friendly server of a minor Star Wars game is The Shire to the rest of the internet's Mordor.

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Try logging into League of Legends and you'll soon become acquainted with ubiquitous habit of gay bashing. When things go wrong, which they so often do in online games, the torrent of poorly spelled homophobia gushes forth. You're rarely just a "n00b," you're a "gay n00b" or, if you've been foolish enough to jump into a North American server, you're almost certainly a "faggot." This is all before you announce that you're gay and find that kind of talk offensive. That particular mistake is only made once.

The more I came to identify with "gayness" the more I also became aware how de facto heteronormative single-player games are, and how their obsession with hyper-masculinity was so alienating. Maybe that's why I've always found silent or nameless protagonists the most fascinating, as it's possible to project the feminine aspects of my selfhood onto them without feeling like I would be personally offending the creators. Even when characters in games do have same-sex dalliances, it never felt representative of any sort of romance I've experienced. Shepard's masc-for-masc love affair in Mass Effect 3 was the kind of poor imitation of intimacy found in badly acted porn.

And yet I've been unable to forget the one video game that taught me to accept myself. So many games have delivered into my life enriching experiences which have changed my mode of thinking or gripped me with their unfettered cleverness, but in this single area games have never since delivered.

A LDNGaymers gathering, photo via LDNgaymers.net

And yet the world is changing, I know that. Gaming culture is coalescing with what I hesitate to call "the mainstream" at an ever-accelerating rate. As it does, more and more subcultures are brought within touching distance. The latest season of RuPaul's Drag Race featured two queens with looks inspired by anime, comic books, and video games. The cast of Game of Thrones were brought in as part of an Overwatch PR stunt. It's not the death bell for Zac Efron's career that he was photographed as part of the Electronic Arts showing at E3 2016. For the first time in the community's history, it's acceptable to integrate "gamer" into the plurality of identities that any person sustains at one time.

On the issue of gay gamers, the community still has a long way to go. Let us not mention the online event of two years ago which rhymes with "LamerLate" and the fault lines it revealed in the community's delicate psyche. For my part, I've since joined an LGBT society called LDNGaymers. We get together, we play Mario Kart, we debate whether Mass Effect 3 was shit or not (it was) and, most importantly, we exist happily in two spaces at once, never once questioning whether we belong in a queer, console-friendly space.

We'll be marching in London Pride in full-on gaming cosplay. The servers of DOTA 2 will likely never show me an enlightening experience as happened with Jedi Academy, but I don't care because games are once again bringing me closer to people and teaching me how to love myself.

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Look at Anna Haifisch's art and comics on her website and Twitter.