When I turned 18, there was a casino about 2 hours away on a reservation that I could get into. We'd get paid on Friday night, head to the gas station near us that would cash a paycheck, pile into my crappy little Ford, then make the drive. We'd get there a little before midnight and everyone had their own game.
The second time we went, one of my friends was hypnotized by the craps table. There were 16 players standing around this sea of green, and every minute or so, you could hear them screaming at the top of their lungs like they just won a million dollars. On the way home that night, I taught him everything I learned from books I'd read about the different bets. "Smart" bets where the house edge was only 1.4%, all the way down to the risky ones where the house edge was over 10% (meaning that for every $100 wagered, you should expect to lose $10).
The next time we went, we hung around the table, trying to figure out the right way to bet. It seemed a little complicated, so we tried other games. At the end of the night, I had the last $10 and he asked if he could borrow it to go place a bet. I handed it over, then went to the bathroom in preparation for the ride home. When I finally found him again, he had a stack of chips in front of him. He had been gone for about 5 minutes and already turned $10 into a few hundred. Well, if you can turn 10 into 100, you can turn 100 into 1,000 just as easily. We left empty handed that night, but I'll never forget the rush.
I loved blackjack. I learned how to play at an early age from my uncle, who would always cheat and take my money. He'd say "I just taught you a very valuable lesson." He actually taught me two: 1) if you play against a casino, you may have a good night and win thousands of dollars, but if you keep going back, you'll eventually have nothing left. 2) My uncle was a scumbag who continually cheated and took my money, then told the family I was a poor sport and they couldn't understand why I hated doing anything with him. One of my earliest memories at the casino was running $100 at the blackjack table into $3000, which is more than I made in a month of bussing tables. I went home, paid my rent and blew the rest on useless things I can't even remember.
What does any of this have to do with $GME? Well I'm still chasing the same high as I was when I was 18. I don't go to the casino anymore, but I've got something even better on my computer. I bought $2k worth of weeklies on Jan 25. Before everything crashed, they were worth over $100k, more than enough to fix most of the problems I've caused in my life. BUT, I was still standing around that craps table. The roller had just made his 30th point in a row, $GME was on fire and couldn't possibly roll a 7! I put my 2k back in my pocket and shoved the rest on the pass line. A few minutes later, the croupier inevitably yells "7 out!" and just like that, I'm back to nothing.
Now I do what every moron around the table does. You reach back into your pocket, pull out the 2k and make a deal with your maker. "Just let it happen one more time. I won't be greedy THIS time and I'll stop when I hit 50k." I stop looking at the smart bets and start eyeing the center of the table, where hard ways are paying 10:1. Yeah, that'll be how I get back to 50k. A couple of those in a row and I can put a down payment on a house. 5 minutes later, I'm on my way out to the car and I feel like I've been punched in the gut. Again.
Every one of you in this subreddit is another person sitting at the casino. Everyone has their game. The people holding $GME stonks right now? You're playing baccarat. If you've never heard of it, it's what James Bond plays in the old movies. It's about the most boring thing you can do. Two hands are dealt and you're betting on which one wins before anything happens. There's no actual skill and it's the same thing as betting heads or tails, while losing 1% of your bet every time.
The people who cashed out and picked something else like $AMC or $BB? Those are the slot players. You had a big hit and now you're going to switch machines because the other ones are "due". You're looking for the exact same magic, thinking there was something smart in your play, when it was really just dumb luck in timing.
The people saying "If Daddy Elon or Cowboy Cuban gets in, we can trigger a squeeze!" You're the guy who spent too much money in the first 20 minutes of the trip and now you're begging everyone else for a loan.
Tldr: Nothing is happening with $GME. Stop saying "tomorrow is the day." Billionaires are not coming to bail you out. If institutional investors come in, they're waiting for this constant downhill slide to end at where the stock belongs, probably around $20. You can't trigger shit by holding. The HFs will outlast you.
Edit: Screenshots from the worst 40 minutes of my financial life https://imgur.com/a/MlTRJmx
Edit 2: JFC, some of you are takin WSB way too seriously. You should not be using reddit for DD. Also, this is not financial advice. Don't take financial advice from someone who tells you stories about chasing highs at casinos.
Edit 3: This is WSB, my dudes. I'm glad most of you were entertained by my story. For the few of you who got that worked up by a random stranger on the internet telling you that he's a degenerate, you may actually have a problem. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/

Due to the original one being removed, I thought I should make my own in the hopes of it getting noticed by the community, I'm just a guy who wants to help out, not a mod or anything!I had to make the flair 'Glitches' due to me not being able to flair it correctly as AutoMod consistently removes it.
Updated as of: 10/02/2021
Please acknowledge that most of these glitches aren't discovered or made by me, all credits to the original owners the source links are hyperlinked into the message boxes.
List of currently working glitches:
​

MASK MERGE GLITCH [PATCHED]	BRING ANY VEHICLE TO CAYO PERICO INTEL MISSION [WORKING]	KOSATKA SPEED GLITCH [WORKING]
GCTF 1 SEATER VEHICLES [WORKING]	NOT SOLO DUPLICATION - DUPE EVERY 5 MINS [WORKING]	AFTER PATCH NEW GCTF METHOD 1.52 [WORKING]

​

HOW TO CLEAN DIRTY DUPE VEHICLES [WORKING]	HOW TO SAVE CEO OUTFITS [FAST METHOD] [WORKING]	UNLIMITED CASINO CHIPS [WORKING] CONSOLE ONLY
MODDED RESPRAYS [WORKING]	GET INVISIBLE TORSO AND ARMS [LEGS TOO?] [WORKING]	GET NOOSE OUTFIT [WORKING]

​

SOLO RAPID DUPLICATION [WORKING] ALL CONSOLES	Solo Glitch Method - Clean Dirty Dupes on PC	1.52 Glitch F1 Wheels on almost any car. PC
CHANGE CASINO HEIST VAULT CONTENTS [PC ONLY & WORKING]

​
Thread for guidance on duplicating vehicles:
https://www.reddit.com/gtaglitches/comments/g3oabw/so_you_wanna_be_a_dupe_god/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Don't expect this to be a daily thing, I put daily, but I really meant news of the day. Also, not financial advice.

Quick major news

• Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO in 21Q3.
• $GOOG EPS at $22,30 with revenues at $56,90B.
• $AMZN EPS at $14,09 with revenues at $125,6B
• Silver went down 8%, Gamestop went down 60%, AMC went down 41,2%. Short ladder quadra-witching attack?
• Pfizer estimates that its anti-covid vaccine will generate 15 billion dollars in revenue in the year 2021.
• The banking sector is going up a lot thanks to rising U.S. government bond yields.

What to look for tomorrow

• ECB Monetary Policy Statement
• Major Earnings report : Paypal, Qualcomm and Ebay

My thoughts

New retail money and its consequences on the overall market
This whole squeezy thing made a lot of new people aware of the stock market. Most made money. I therefore predict that there's going to be a lot of new money in the market. That leads to 2 things :

• The market as a whole will go up
• The market will have much more volatility the more unemployed people there is (the more quarantined people there is also).

The first point is rather obvious in my opinion but the second one needs a little bit of explaining. It's based on the Boredom Markets Hypothesis from Matt Levine. For short : people are bored, people want fun, people see the stock market as a fun casino, people trade.
Add to those 2 points the fact that retail investors actually beat index funds during the first quarantine in 2020. This is a recipe for success for the overall market :

1. Retail investors are bored and trade fun stocks.
2. Retail investors actually made money.
3. They get their jobs back and they no longer have time to follow the market.
4. They put their money, earnings and salary into boring ETFs or blue chips stocks.

I've said basically this on this post about my 100k yolo. A little update on this : I really bought at the peak and after those great first days of the week, I barely broke even. So that sucks! Also, I might change for SPY calls as I think s&p500 will have a similar growth as Nasdaq but the SPY calls are giving better returns than Nasdaq calls for the same % change of the underlying.
Apple vs Facebook
So, hum... Facebook, with 96% of its users using the mobile app, decided to declare war against the biggest smartphone manufacturer? That's going to go well... To be fair, they don't have that much choice when the big smartphone manufacturer decides to make it very transparent what data you have access to and how much data you collect.
So, as more young people realize the extend of the data collected by Facebook, and since they're not really big fans of the app anyway, they will most probably stop using it for other more fun social medias. If they can't attract new young people, that's the death of Facebook app's growth.
Add to that more and more controversies on the whole Whatsapp-Facebook merge, more and more people more aware of alternative apps, and probably some regulations coming in this year or 2022, this is not great for Facebook at all.
But for Apple? How is Apple going down? Let's take the insane worst-case scenario for apple that Facebook stops support for Iphones. You think people will stop using Iphones just to have a social media that they've been using just as an addictive habit?
And for ther other apps in the Apple Store profiting of data collecting, I'm sure they know how lucrative the Apple market is as those customers that spend the most amount of money on phones will most likely spend the most amount of money on other things. Paid apps will do well. Ads there will do extremely well. They just need to be less shady about how they collect their data. And if you stop support for your Apple app just because Apple shows how you collect your users' data, this will not be very good PR for you my guy.
So yes, Facebook is in a lot of trouble and seems to be slowly going downhill but it's not a new trend. Apple is just the one hurting them the most at the moment. So my long-term thesis (2 or 3 years) is that Facebook will be hurt by this with a maximum upside of a stock price being flat and apple is going to do really great in the coming years.
Bye!

Hey Guys,
What's YOUR plan to make the most of this bull market in bitcoin?
I'll outline a scenario and would like to hear your ideas on how to avoid this scenario.
​

• BTC goes up to $X. As it turns out, when BTC reaches $X, that ends up being the high for the bull run. (I have no idea what the top will be so I'm using $X as a variable).
• When BTC reaches $X, millions will say "my goodness its going up to $X++++" (in short, it's going up a lot more!!).
• After BTC reaches $X which is the top, BTC will go down, and you'll hear "buy the dip! We're going back up!"
• It goes down some more, you'll hear "we're just shaking out the weak hands for the bull run to continue!"
• When it goes down even more you'll hear "HODL HODL HODL!"
• Then it will go down to the low of the bear cycle and you won't hear anyone. Everyone would have sold near the lows of the bear cycle, exactly when they should be buying.

This is the EXACT scenario that played out a few years ago.
We got to $20k and the Euphoria level was at 100%. All you heard was predictions of $50k while people rushed to mortgage their homes and max out credit cards to ride the wave to $50k.
Ethereum pumped hard after the BTC top so that offered folks hope that BTC was going to go back up to $50k soon.
Very few people who got in late made any money...
FWIW, I got in at $13k, and ended up selling out at $11k for a "modest loss." I swore it would never happen again - ever. It won't.
So, when we reach the top of this cycle, how will YOU know?
What will you do to make sure you're able to cash your chips in and leave the casino while waiting for the next bear market low to buy again?
Anecdote: I remember when CNBC went on to live television and offered a click by click tutorial on how to buy XRP when it was $3.25.
I also remember my wife coming home telling me that all her co-workers were talking about buying BTC. I'll be looking for "social signals" like this as well as looking at the charts, while also taking profits on the way up.
Enough about me... what's YOUR plan?
🧐🧐

Hello everyone. A few years ago I posted a complete summary of the Borderlands games up to Borderlands 3. Today I am back to update the story summary with all of the new events and lore revealed in Borderlands 3. That original post can be found here. If I missed anything or got something wrong, please comment down below so I can amend it.
Be warned there are MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for Borderlands, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 2, Tales From the Borderlands, Borderlands 3, DLC expansions, and the future of the series. Without further ado, here it is, the complete story of the Borderlands franchise!
Lore
Long ago, an ancient alien race known as the Eridians inhabited the universe. Originating from the planet of Nekrotafeyo, Their technological advancements far exceed anything the modern universe has been able to create thus far. The Eridians created Guardians, mechanical constructs, to protect their race and caches of technology, riches and weapons, known as Vaults. Powerful women imbued with supernatural powers known as Sirens begin to appear at some point. Only 7 Sirens can exist in the universe at a time, and when one dies, her unique powers are passed to another individual. Of the 7 known Siren Powers, we have seen 5 of them; Phaselock, Phaseshift, Phasewalk, Phasetrance, and Phaseleach.
At some point in their history, the Eridians encountered an immensely powerful interdimensional creature called The Destroyer. The Destroyer threatened all of creation, and in a final effort to stop it from destroying the universe, the Eridians sacrificed their race to trap the beast inside The Great Vault, a massive Vault the size of a planet. Nyriad, a Siren, completed the sealing of the Great Vault through use of a Powerful Machine on Nekrotafeyo. Following this, Nyriad, in an effort to prevent her Phaseleach powers from transferring to a new host, locked herself in the Vault on Nekrotafeyo to die. The Phaseleach powers would not be transfered to a new host upon her passing.
The Great Vault would later become known as the planet of Pandora, with her moon, Elpis serving as the Great Vault’s key. In an effort to keep the Destroyer dormant, a feeding hole was constructed through which sacrifices would be made every 200 years. A Vault Monster known as The Warrior was left behind on Pandora to protect the Great Vault, and a Vault Monster known as The Sentinel was left on Elpis to hold knowledge of the Great Vault’s purpose.
Fast forward millions of years to modern times. Humanity develops faster than light travel and begins to explore the galaxy. Typhon DeLeon, seeking a life greater than that of his turd farming parents, sets out on a universe-wide expedition to search for fame and glory. He discovers an Eridian Vault on the planet of Promethea. He sells the Vault's contents to a small company known as Atlas to fund further searches for Vaults. Typhon DeLeon would gain notoriety as the first Vault Hunter.
The riches within the Promethean Vault allow Atlas to become the largest and most powerful corporation in the galaxy. They establish their corporate headquarters on the Promethea and begin to explore and settle new worlds, one of which is Pandora. The Dahl Corporation arrives on Pandora soon after, and expands it's mining operations to the planet and her moon, while Atlas rules over its Pandoran settlements with its elite military unit, the Crimson Lance. The Corporate Wars, fought between massive corporations over resources began sometime after.
During DeLeon's travels, he meets a woman named Leda, with whom he accidentally discovers the ancestral homeworld of the Eridians, Nekrotafeyo, while making love. The couple would conceve their children within the Vault after opening it and slaying the Vault Monster within. Leda gives birth to conjoined twins, whom Typhon would separate so that they could survive, unbeknownst to the fact that they had absorbed the Phaseleach Siren powers of Nyriad. The twins were named Troy and Tyreen, and would later become known as The Calypso Twins. At some point of their childhood, Leda would be accidentally killed by Tyreen while exercising her Siren powers, resulting in Typhon becoming a stricter father. The twins would later escape from their protective father, fleeing the planet.
Pandora is bustling. Research facilities, mining stations and trade posts spring up overnight. A global network known as the ECHOnet is established, linking the planet’s populace. Little did the inhabitants of Pandora know, however, that they had settled during the planet's seven year winter. When the summer rolled around and the local fauna came out of hibernation, a nearly planet-wide exodus occurred. Those who couldn't leave took up shelter. The planet became a lawless frontier nearly overnight, with Dahl abandoning their facilities and letting loose the prisoners they had employed as slave labor. Hector, and his battalion are trapped and left in a mine on Pandora during Dahl’s exodus. Atlas abandons their the top-secret Gortys Project, which hopes to control the mysterious Vault of the Traveler, and locks away various pieces of the project across their facilities all over Pandora.
In the year 2873, 2 years before the events of the first game, Patricia Tannis, who was employed by Dahl, had uncovered fragments of a Vault Key, confirming the suspicion that a Vault was present on Pandora. The key was stolen by bandits and spread across Pandora. Speak of the Vault swept across Pandora...
Meanwhile, on Elpis, the situation was not much better. Dahl’s military force, led by Colonel Zarpedon denounced their ties to Dahl following Zarpedon’s encounter with the Vault on the moon. The military force became known as the Lost Legion and swore to protect the Vault. Extensive mining efforts by Dahl on the surface led to what is known as "The Crackening". The moon burst, opening great chasms and lava flows. The destruction of their mining facilities and the mutiny commited by Zarpedon forced Dahl to abandon Elpis. They fled the Pandora system shortly after.
With the moon under the control of a crazed military legion and Pandora, a lawless frontier, all seemed to be lost for the system, until...
Borderlands
The year is 2875. Four Vault Hunters; Roland, Mordecai, Brick and Lilith arrive at the small town of Fyrestone. Led by a mysterious ”Angel”, the Vault Hunters slowly begin clearing out local bandit populations until they encounter a bandit boss known as Sledge. Having killed Sledge, the Vault Hunters retrieve an Eridian artifact which is revealed to be part of the Vault Key. At the same time, Commandant Steele, acting Crimson Lance Commander on Pandora declares rule over the planet and demands any Eridian artifacts be turned over to the Crimson Lance.
The Vault Hunters travel to the city of New Haven, one of the largest surviving civilizations on the planet and learn about the location of Patricia Tannis. Tannis directs the Vault hunters to the next three pieces of the Vault Key, during which they encounter the Crimson Lance. Upon killing the bandit boss Flint who is believed to have the final Vault Key piece, it is revealed that Tannis had the final piece and was working with the Crimson Lance all along. Steele disables the ECHOnet and the Vault Hunters set out to the Crimson Enclave, a Crimson Lance base, to rescue Tannis.
Upon saving Tannis and reactivating the ECHOnet, Tannis sends the Vault Hunters after Steele who is attempting to open the Vault. The Vault Hunters fight through Lance and Guardians alike to reach The Vault just before Steele opens it. Upon opening the Vault, Steele is immediately killed by The Destroyer an ancient alien that was housed inside the Vault. The Vault Hunters kill the beast and return the Key to Tannis, whilst it is revealed that Angel, the guide to the Vault Hunters has been communicating to them through a Hyperion satellite the whole time.
Events Leading up to The Pre-Sequel
The opening of the first Vault triggered the release of an element called Eridium, which slowly begins popping up all over the planet of Pandora. Detecting the release of the element, the Hyperion corporation begins to move into the Pandoran system.
The Vault Hunters are summoned shortly after by an ex-Lance officer known as Athena. Athena assists the Vault Hunters in striking down an already crippled Crimson Lance and their sole surviving general, General Knoxx, driving the Lance off of Pandora for good.
Meanwhile, a Hyperion experiment that was intended to rid Pandora of Vault Hunters goes awry when a reprogrammed CL4P-TP unit, better known as a Claptrap unit sparks a revolution among Claptrap robots. Hyperion contacts the Vault Hunters and asks for help in dealing with the problem. The Claptrap revolution is shattered and the Claptrap robots are returned to normal, or at least as normal as Claptrap robots can be.
2 years pass between the events of Borderlands and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
The Pre-Sequel
With the Crimson Lance all but defeated, Athena seeks work as a hired gun. She comes across a distress signal put out by a Hyperion engineer by the name of Jack in the year 2877 who reveals his position to be aboard a Hyperion space station known as Helios. The station is under attack by Zarpedon’s Lost Legion who hope to halt the progress of construction of the station above Pandora. Athena, as well as mercenaries Wilhelm, Aurelia Hammerlock, Timothy Lawrence (who has undergone facial reconstructive surgery to pose as Handsome Jack's doppelganger), Nisha, and Claptrap travel to Helios to rescue Jack and save the station.
The Lost Legion are repelled by the Vault Hunters, and Jack launches the crew to Elpis in search of a jamming signal which is preventing fast travel off of Helios. The crew encounters Janey Springs who helps them get to the city of Concordia, a former spaceport before The Crackening. After dispatching some scavengers, the team enters Concordia, meeting up with Roland, Lilith and Moxxi who assist them in disabling the jamming signal, allowing Jack to fast travel off of Helios.
Jack confronts the Meriff, mayor and sheriff on Concordia and kills him. He then formulates a plan to retake the station. The team head to an old Dahl factory and assemble a robot army to retake Helios. This raises concerns among Roland, Lilith and Moxxi, however they go along with Jack. Jack and the team travel to Helios with assistance from their robot army and confront Zarpedon who reveals the location of a Vault before being killed.
Elsewhere on Helios, Professor NakayamaA deranged Hyperion scientist begins working on an AI prototype which he hopes he will be able to use to cheat death and upload a patient's consciousness onto a computer.
Roland, Lilith and Moxxi turn against Jack, seeing he is going mad with power. They head after the Vault, hoping to claim it before Jack. Jack sends his crew back to Elpis in search of the Vault.
The team dispatches Eridian Guardians as they head deep into Elpis, eventually reaching the Vault Elesser, beating Roland, Lilith and Moxxi. They defeat the guardian, The Sentinel, and Jack arrives just in time to claim an artifact inside which gives him visions of a new Vault on Pandora, home to an even greater power. Lilith enters Elesser and smashes the artifact, scarring Jack and pushing him over the edge. Jack adopts the identity of Handsome Jack with a mask covering his scarred face. With the company of Hyperion in his control, he begins seeking out the Vault on Pandora.
Events Leading up to Borderlands 2
Jack, learns of a secret weapon hidden away inside of Claptrap, known as the H-Source. Jack sends his crew inside of Claptrap’s mind in order to retrieve it. The team fights throughout Claptrap’s subconscious, learning more about the robot than they could ever care to know, until finally retrieving the H-Source and returning it to Jack. Jack uses the code to destroy all Hyperion Claptrap units. He executes the Claptrap belonging to his crew and dumps him off in Windshear Waste where he is discovered by Sir Alistair Hammerlock.
Athena and Aurelia leave Jack at this time, both disgusted by his actions. Athena settles down with Elpis native Janey Springs. The couple moves to the town of Hollow Point on Pandora shortly after, and much to the chagrin of Janey, Athena continues in her mercenary ways. She almost immediately picks up a contract put out by a man named Felix, who hires her to protect his two adopted daughters.
Aurelia disappears, whilst Nisha, Wilhelm and Timothy Lawrence stay by Jack's side.
Jack’s takes over the Pandoran mining town of Lynchwood for his girlfriend Nisha. Wilhelm, Nisha and Jack attack the city of New Haven, prompting Roland, Mordecai, Lilith and Brick to defend the citizens while they evacuate. Jack kills Brick's dog, while Wilhelm nearly kills the Vault Hunters, driving them away. Wilhelm and Jack then board a train commandeered by Helena Pierce, leader of New Haven and execute her as well as the city's residents.
This loss of New Haven and his dog causes Brick to snap and murder a Hyperion informant that the Raiders had captured in order to get intel on Handsome Jack. Roland kicks Brick out of the Crimson Raiders. Mordecai isolates himself, while Roland and Lilith begin assembling an army of ex Crimson Lance soldiers under the banner of the Crimson Raiders to protect Pandora. They face initial resistance from Jack and are slowly pressed back to their headquarters in the city of Sanctuary.
Jack, utilizing Eridium to power his weaponry and having declared himself dictator of Pandora, begins sending out messages drawing new Vault Hunters to the planet in search of the Vault. Jack systematically kills off all new Vault Hunters that arrive on the planet.
3 years pass between the events of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2.
Borderlands 2
A Vault Hunter team comprised of Axton, Maya, Salvador, Zero, Gaige and Kreig survive a train bombing and crash in Windshear Waste in the year 2880. They encounter Claptrap who leads them to Alistair Hammerlock in the small town of Liar’s Berg. All the while, Angel directs them and pledges to help defeat Jack. Hammerlock sends the Vault Hunters after clearing out local bandits, which opens the way for the Vault Hunters to travel to the city of Sanctuary. At Sanctuary, the Vault Hunters are informed that the Crimson Raider’s leader, Roland, has been captured by a bandit known as the Firehawk. The Vault Hunters confront The Firehawk, who turns out to be Lilith whose elemental Siren powers have been enhanced by the release of Eridium across the planet. Lilith sends them after another bandit tribe who has Roland, and upon freeing him, learn of a plan Roland has to defeat Jack.
The Vault Hunters attempt to recapture the Vault Key from a Hyperion train with the help of Mordecai and Tiny Tina, however they find Wilhelm, Jack’s enforcer instead. He is narrowly dispatched by the Vault Hunters, and a power core is retrieved off of him that Angel insists can be used to shield Sanctuary from Helios’s barrage of fire. The Vault Hunters return the core to the city, and upon plugging it in, the core drops Sanctuary’s shield. Helios opens fire on the city, prompting Lilith to teleport the city away.
With the city crippled, Angel begs to be forgiven, telling the Vault Hunters that Jack is using her to charge the Vault Key to open the Vault and release The Warrior, an ancient alien that will serve whoever releases it. Angel tells the team that if Jack opens the Vault he will destroy Pandora. Angel reveals where she is being held, in a Hyperion facility and urges the Vault Hunters to free her. The team, led by Roland, Mordecai and Lilith gather what they will need to assault the compound, recruiting Brick along the way. The team assault the Hyperion base and encounter Angel, who is revealed to be Jack’s Siren daughter. She tells the Vault Hunters to kill her to stop the key from being charged, and when they do, Jack kills Roland and captures Lilith in order to use her to finish charging the key. Following Angel’s death, her Siren powers are transferred to Tannis, who keeps her anointment of Siren powers a secret from the rest of the Crimson Raiders.
With Roland dead and Lilith captured, Mordecai and Brick lead the assault through the Eridium Blight to the Vault. The Vault Hunters arrive at the Vault just after Jack opens it and releases the Warrior. The Vault Hunters kill the Warrior and Jack and free Lilith. Lilith, wanting to destroy the Vault Key accidentally activates a map showing the locations of more Vaults all across the universe.
Events leading up to Tales from the Borderlands
The Vault Hunters split up, some traveling off planet to find new Vaults, others staying on Pandora, taking up mercenary work. During a game hunt with Sir Hammerlock, the Vault Hunters encounter Professor Nakayama holed up in a crashed Hyperion ship. Nakayama falls down a flight of stairs and dies. His body is recovered by traveler and collector Shade after the ship is looted by the Vault Hunters.
With Jack dead, a power vacuum is created on Helios. A Hyperion executive known as Saul Henderson takes control of the company, but he is murdered shortly after by Hugo Vasquez, who regains control of the company. At some point, Timothy Lawrence, as well as all of the other Handsome Jack doppelgangers are instructed to travel to The Handsome Jackpot, a massive casino space station, where they are trapped, facing the threat of being blown up by a injected bomb.
It is unknown how many years pass between the events of Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands.
Tales From The Borderlands
NOTE: Not all events in Tales From the Borderlands are canon. While the overarching story is canon, certain events, such as characters that died or survived or minor details may differ from playthrough to playthrough. Gearbox has not confirmed which events from the game are canon, or if certain characters died or are still alive.
In the city of Hollow Point, three con-artists, Felix and his two adopted daughters, Fiona and Sasha, set up a con involving a fake Vault Key. Fiona delivers the fake Key, built by Felix, to Sasha and her boyfriend August.
At the same time, a cybernetic enhanced Hyperion middle manager by the name of Rhys, seeking a promotion from Henderson, is shocked to find him dead, launched out of an airlock by Vasquez. Vasquez demotes Rhys to Assistant-Vice Janitor but not before letting a potential deal with a Vault Key slip. Rhys, angered by Vasquez, recruits his friends Vaughn and Yvette to interrupt the deal and get the Vault Key. They travel to Pandora where the face bandits in the town of Prosperity Junction. Yvette sends down a Loader Bot to help them. The Loader Bot flies away, dispatching the last of the bandits upon Rhys's order.
Rhys and Vaughn enter The World of Curiosities where they find the taxidermied body of Professor Nakayama. Rhys recovers a data chip off of the body before they meet Shade, who introduces them to August and Sasha, the owners of the Vault Key.
The deal goes awry when Bossanova, a dub-step loving bandit boss, and Zero, crash into the World of Curiosities in the heat of battle. The fake Vault Key is smashed and Bossanova takes the money and escapes, followed by Zero. Amidst the confusion, Rhys and Vaughn try to hijack Felix's caravan. The two are taken prisoner by Fiona, Sasha and Felix. Hoping to prevent being tossed out of the caravan, they reveal they can track the money. The two sides form a temporary alliance. Rhys, hoping to find the money, plugs the recovered data drive into his head and collapses, while Vaughn successfully tracks the money to an abandoned Atlas warehouse.
Rhys comes to and they form a plan to recover the money from Bossanova who offers it to whomever wins his death race. Zero crashes the party and kills Bossanova, and just as the crew are about to get the money, it is captured by Felix who betrays Fiona and Sasha. Depending on your choices during the game, Felix will be blown up by the rigged case, or will toss it and escape. Either way, the money is destroyed. The group begins searching the arena for something of value. Rhys stumbles into a cellar which contains rare Atlas treasure. Fiona and Rhys each obtain a mysterious artifact that, when joined together, displays a map to a Vault.
A construct of Handsome Jack appears to Rhys, threatening to kill him. Rhys, obviously startled, tells Jack that he is dead and is merely a hologram. They infer that Jack's consciousness was aboard the data drive he took from Nakayama. Meanwhile, Fiona, Sasha and Vaughn uncover the location of a secret Atlas facility which they hope will lead them to the Vault.
The team meets back up with Loader Bot, and travel to Hollow Point for repairs to the caravan. They are shot at by the moonshots on Helios, and Rhys and Vaughn are separated from Fiona and Sasha.
Rhys and Vaughn travel across the desert until they encounter Vasquez, furious at Rhys for the blown Vault Key deal. Rhys and Vaughn escape thanks to help from Jack and Loader Bot.
Fiona and Sasha arrive at Hollow Point, and with the help from Scooter, repair the caravan. The sisters are attacked by two goons whilst looking through their old home; Kroger and Finch. They escape from Kroger and Finch and run into Athena, whom they also narrowly escape from. The sisters are reunited with Rhys, Vaughn and Loader Bot, and they leave for the abandoned town of Old Haven, where the Atlas facility is located.
They discover an Atlas facility hidden underneath the town, but are ambushed by Vasquez and August. Rhys and Fiona take their artifacts and join them with a machine deep in the facility, all whilst Vaughn and Sasha are held at gunpoint. The machine connects the artifacts and releases an object known as Gortys, a large sphere. Rhys triggers the facilities security system, deploying drones. They meet up with Vaughn and Sasha amidst a firefight between August's goons and the facility's security drones, and manage to escape. Outside of the facility, the team run into a bandit boss by the name of Vallory who orchestrated the Vault Key deal. August and Vasquez emerge from the facility and are interrogated by Vallory, who kills Vasquez and demands that Fiona and Rhys hand over Gortys. Vallory attempts to execute Fiona before she is stopped by Athena, who scares off Vallory, her son August and their goons.
Rhys activates Gortys, and she reveals that she can locate and control the Vault of the Traveler, but needs a few upgrades first. Athena joins the crew as they set off for Gortys' first upgrade.
Along the way, Jack, who has been berating Rhys since revealing himself, and Rhys form a hasty alliance, although Rhys never fully trusts Jack.
The team arrives at an Atlas biodome situated far out in the tundra. They encounter an Atlas scientist named Cassius who reveals where the upgrade they are seeking is located. The team splits up, with Vaughn, Loader Bot and Gortys staying behind with Cassius, while Rhys and Sasha seek out the Atlas Security Station, and Fionna and Athena go after the upgrade.
Fionna and Athena recover the upgrade and are attacked by Vallory upon meeting back up with everyone. The group is separated once again across the facility. Rhys meets up with Sasha and Loader Bot and they attempt to rescue Gortys who is being pursued by August. Fionna, elsewhere, finds Athena fighting Brick and Mordecai, however they are both incapacitated. Vallory gathers the prisoners and tells them that they are working for her now to try and recoup her losses from the failed Vault Key deal. Athena is hauled off by Brick and Mordecai, who Vallory reveals were hired to remove her from the picture. Gortys reveals that her last upgrade is on Helios station in Jack's old office.
Back in Sanctuary, Athena recounts the events of the presequel to Lilith while being interrogated. Lilith orders her execution, but Athena is saved when a mysterious Guardian known as The Watcher tells Lilith that there is a war coming, and that they are going to need all the Vault Hunters they can get. Lilith, having already sent Gaige and Axton to Epitah in search of new Vaults, contacts them and tells them to spare the life of Aurelia, whom they found on the planet.
Fionna, Sasha, Loader Bot, Gortys, and August travel to Hollow Point to seek help from Scooter and Janey. Meanwhile, Rhys, Kroger and Finch travel back to Old Haven to recover the face of Vasquez, which Rhys says will let him digistruct a disguise to get them into the station. Vaughn is left at the biodome with Cassius. They return to Hollow point, and the team, along with Scooter, launch to Helios. Along the way, the rocket sucks up the corpse of Henderson, which requires immediate attention. Fionna and Scooter go outside to detach the rockets, but Scooter is caught and sacrifices himself to keep the mission going.
The team arrives on Helios, and Rhys, disguised as Vasquez, encounters a furious Yvette. Rhys knocks her out, out of fear of compromising the mission, while Fionna and Gortys attempt to infiltrate A Hyperion tour to gain access to Handsome Jack's office. When that plan goes awry, Jack reveals to Rhys that there is a hidden trapdoor into his office. Rhys, Fionna and Gortys meet up below Jack's office, where Rhys enters the office and retrieves the upgrade. Here, Rhys claims the deed to the Atlas corporation, which Jack has been holding onto since destroying the company. Jack convinces Rhys to sit in his chair, and either traps him and uploads himself into Helios's computer, or convinces Rhys to upload Jack of his own volition. EIther way, Jack now has control of Helios station, and tells Rhys that he is going to graft an endoskeleton into him so he’ll have a new body to control, however Rhys escapes.
Rhys encounters Yvette, who he explains to that Jack has control of the station. Yvette joins them as her and Rhys head for the reactor core while Fionna and Gortys are ordered to evacuate back to the shuttle.
Fionna and Gortys encounter August who leads them back to the shuttle, where they are betrayed by Finch and Kroger, who take Sasha, Gortys and her final upgrade.
Rhys and Yvette enter the reactor core, where Jack tries to stop them, however they successfully shut down the core, triggering a meltdown. The entire station is evacuated, and Loader Bot sacrifices himself to launch Yvette and Rhys's escape pods. Fionna escapes at this time, as does August.
With Helios falling out of the sky, the scattered crew lands in what appears to be the Eridium Blight. Rhys makes his way to Jack's shattered office, where Jack manages to jump back into Rhys. Rhys's mechanical arm is skewered on a piece of metal, and he rips it off, as well as digging his cybernetics out of his head, despite Jack's pleading. Rhys tears out his echo-eye, and either destroys the device or holds onto it. Either way, Jack is no longer a threat to Rhys or the crew.
Elsewhere, Fionna emerges from her escape pod, and begins searching for her sister. A fleeing bandit informs her that Vallory upgraded Gortys and that the Vault was opened. Fionna picks her way across the wreckage, finding Vallory shooting a rocket launcher off into the distance. She attempts to confront Vallory, but is stopped by Finch who says that her sister put up a fight. Fionna kills Finch and confronts Vallory, who says that they need to destroy Gortys (now a gigantic robot) because she is keeping the Vault monster on Pandora. Vallory is smashed and Fionna rushes over to the launcher and aims it at Gortys. Sasha appears and helps her, and the two destroy the beacon atop Gortys, which releases the Traveler..
With Gortys seemingly destroyed and their adventure over, Fionna and Sasha return to their old ways in Hollow Point, while Rhys travels back to Cassius's facility and is outfitted with new cybernetics. Fiona and Rhys receive ECHO beacons roughly a year later, which leads them to the town of Prosperity Junction, where the whole adventure started. They are both kidnapped by a mysterious Stranger, who demands they retell their entire story, from the Vault Key deal to the opening of the Vault.
They both tell their stories as they travel back toward the wreckage of Helios, where the Stranger turns them over to Kroger, in exchange for a captured bandit. Kroger threatens to kill Fiona, but is strangled to death by the Stranger. The bandit reveals himself to be Vaughn, who has adopted the leadership of the surviving Hyperion employees.
Vaughn leads Rhys and Fiona back to his home on Helios with the Stranger in tow, while explaining how Cassius helped him escape from the Atlas biodome following Vallory's ambush. Vaughn made his way to the wreck of Helios and began organizing the survivors.
Back at Helios, Rhys, Fiona and Vaughn interrogate the Stranger, who reveals himself to be Loader Bot. Loader Bot explains that he survived the crash of Helios and witnessed Fiona and Sasha destroy Gortys. Betrayed, he transferred himself into Jack's exoskeleton and formulated a plan to rebuild Gortys. He captured Rhys and Fiona to better understand what happened, but with the air cleared, Loader Bot revealed his plan. He scavenged up Gortys's parts and hopes to reactivate her, this time with proper assistance from Rhys and Fiona this time.
Vaughn shares a plan to defeat The Traveler, a massive Vault monster that has teleportation abilities. He tasks Fiona and Sasha with detonating a bomb inside the monster to cripple it, while Gortys will fight the monster into position in front of Helios's moonshot cannon.
Fiona recruits a team of people to help. Gortys is reassembled and the Vault of the Traveler appears. Gortys is adamant about fighting The Traveler again, however Rhys reassures her that this time will be different. The team forces The Traveler to teleport, at which point Fiona and Sasha jump the caravan into it with a bomb. Inside of the monster, Fiona plants the bomb, however as they make their escape, the detonator fails to work. Sasha sacrifices herself to detonate the bomb while Fiona escapes. The bomb is detonated and Gortys wrestles The Traveler in front of the moonshot, where The Traveler is blasted apart.
The team finds Sasha dead, but she is resuscitated by one of Felix's gadgets. While the team begins scavenging loot, Fiona and Rhys head toward the Vault, reminiscing about their adventure and Rhys's attraction to Sasha. They enter the Vault and head up a staircase leading to a chest. They open it together and disappear as they Vault teleports them away.
Events leading up to Borderlands 3
It is unknown what happens to Rhys, Fiona, Sasha, Vaughn, and the other Tales characters at this time. What we do know is that whatever Rhys found inside the Vault allowed him to rebuild the Atlas corporation with help of Zero. Vaughn stays on Pandora with his clan of bandits within the remains of Helios.
Colonel Hector and his Dahl Battalion escape the mine they were trapped in at some point after it was discovered by Cassius, and upon finding out Pandora is a desolate wasteland, become hellbent on creating the paradise the Dahl Corporation promised them long ago. The New Pandora military clear Vaughn’s bandit gang out of the remains of Helios and attack the Crimson Raiders’ base of Sanctuary with a toxic gas which leads to rapid growth of plant life, created by Cassius.
Lilith and the Crimson Raiders are forced to flee Sanctuary, and come across Vaughn in a bandit outpost known as The Backburner. They team up to stop Hector. The Raiders come across Cassius at the site of the collapsed mine where Hector and the New Pandoran army were trapped, and upon learning that the gas is being used for evil, Cassius agrees to help make an antidote. Hector floods the facility with gas, infecting Cassius who must be killed so that the Raiders can make an antidote. Cassius’ blood is harvested and an antidote is created. The Raiders assault Sanctuary, now overgrown with plants. Hector has ingested the gas, mutating him into a monster who consumes the Vault Key and Sanctuary. Lilith has no choice but to destroy the floating city, killing Hector and scattering the Vault Key somewhere in the Pandoran desert.
Now without a base, Ellie, sister of Scooter, is tasked with building a new base of operations for the Raiders, the Sanctuary III spaceship (don’t ask what happened to Sanctuary II)
Pandora experiences a period of (relative) peace, with the corporations gone and Hector’s New Pandoran army defeated. The Crimson Raiders mostly dissolve, with the Vault Hunters going their separate ways. Maya retires to the ancestral Siren world of Athenas to train a girl who will become a new Siren, Ava, Gaige becomes a wedding planner, Kreig secludes himself in a cave to mend his mind and conflicting personalities, and Axton and Salvador become game show hosts.
The Calypso Twins begin spreading their gospel about the Great Vault over the ECHOnet, gaining a large following. They find that the bandits and psychos of Pandora are especially susceptible to their propaganda, and the various bandit clans of the planet begin to unite under them, becoming known as The Children of the Vault. The sheer number of bandits and psychos following the Twins alarms Lilith, who begins to reunite the Crimson Raiders to fight back.
7 years pass between the events of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3.
Borderlands 3
It is the year 2887. Lilith sends out a distress call for new Vault Hunters, attracting FL4K, Moze, Zane and Amara, a Siren, to Pandora, where they help Lilith assault a Children of the Vault base. Lilith tasks them with finding the Pandoran Vault Key that was lost following the destruction of Sanctuary. The team encounters Vaughn, who helps them recover the Key, which directs them to the ecumenopolis of Promethea. Before they can board Sanctuary III however, Lilith’s Siren powers are leached by Tyreen in an ambush. The Children of the Vault take off to Promethea, where they believe the Great Vault is located.
The Crimson Raiders follow them to Promethea where they find the planet under siege by the Maliwan Corporation, led by Katagawa Jr.. The Raiders make contact with Rhys, now CEO of the reformed Atlas, who requests their help breaking the Siege. The Raiders travel down to the surface and successfully hold off Maliwan forces, which have allied themselves with the Children of the Vault. Rhys directs the Raiders to Athenas, where part of the Promethean Vault Key is under protection of Maya and the Sages. The Crimson Raiders travel to Athenas and repel the Maliwan assault there, claiming a piece of the Promethean Vault Key and recruiting Maya and Ava.
The Raiders rejoin the fight on Promethea and manage to recover the other pieces of the Vault Key after killing Katagawa Jr. They travel to the Promethean Vault, believing it to be the Great Vault that the Twins are seeking. Inside the Vault however, they find a Vault Monster, The Rampager, and not the Great Vault. Tyreen and Troy arrive at the Vault after the Vault Hunters kill the beast, and Tyreen leaches the Rampager’s energy, revealing their plan to absorb the powers of Vault Monsters. Maya is killed while attempting to save Ava from the Calypso Twins.
The Crimson Raiders regroup on Sanctuary III. Tannis suggests that the Raiders slay the Vault Monsters before Tyreen can leach their energy. The Crimson Raiders travel to the swamp planet of Eden-6, headquarters of the Jakobs corporation. There, they meet Wainwright Jakobs, heir to the Jakobs corporation. He informs the Vault Hunters that Alistair Hammerlock, his lover, has been captured by his sister, Aurelia, who has claimed the Jakobs corporation with help of the Children of the Vault. The Vault Hunters rescue Alistair, acquire the pieces of the Eden-6 Vault Key, and confront Aurelia in Jakob’s Manor, killing her. They open the Vault hidden beneath the manor, and kill The Graveward before Tyreen can leach the monster’s power. Infuriated, she takes Tannis captive.
The Raiders pursue the Twins back to Pandora, where they rescue Tannis from bandit bosses, Pain and Terror. It is here that Tannis reveals her Siren powers to the Raiders. Troy begins the process of opening the Great Vault, activating its Vault Key, the moon of Elpis, which begins to tear Pandora apart. The Raiders assault the Children of the Vault headquarters, and kill Troy who is leaching his power from Tyreen. Upon killing him, Troy’s Siren powers, which were in turn stolen from Maya, are passed onto Ava. Tyreen escapes before the Vault Hunters are able to kill her.
The Vault Hunters are shortly contacted by Typhon DeLeon, who summons them to Nekrotafeyo. When the Vault Hunters meet the first Vault Hunter, he explains to them that Pandora is the Great Vault, and that if Tyreen wakes the Destroyer, she will be able to leach its powers and become the most powerful Siren in existence. He points the Vault Hunters to the Machine, the massive engine that sealed the Destroyer away in Pandora long ago. With the Pandoran, Promethean, Eden-6 and Nekrotafeyo Vault Keys, the Machine can be reactivated and the Destroyer can be sealed away once again. Before the Machine can be activated however, Tyreen teleports onto the planet, disabling it and mortally wounding her father, Typhon. Typhon tells the Vault Hunters not to be the last of their kind before succumbing to his injuries.
The Vault Hunters chase Tyreen back to Pandora just as she leaches the power of the Destroyer, merging with it. The Vault Hunters fight hard and eventually defeat Tyreen the Destroyer, which returns Lilith’s Siren powers. Lilith, in an effort to stop the Great Vault from being opened and destroying Pandora, sacrifices herself, flying up to Elpis and branding the moon with the firehawk symbol. Pandora, and the universe is saved.
Events leading up to Borderlands 4(?)
Following the battle, the Moxxi and the Vault Hunters travel to the Handsome Jackpot where they find Timothy Lawrence. After Hyperion collapsed, the station fell into chaos. Jack’s former court jester, Pretty Boy has gained control of the station, and is seeking Timothy’s “winning hand” access, which would allow him to take control of the Loaderbot factory deep within the station’s bowels. The Vault Hunters defeat Pretty Boy, and Moxxi agrees to go on a date with Timothy Lawrence.
Elsewhere, on the frozen world of Xylourgos Wainwright and Hammerlock prepare their wedding, planned by Gaige. It is briefly interrupted by a fanatic cult worshipping the still beating heart of a long dead Vault Monster, but it is nothing the Vault Hunters cannot deal with.
Tannis, in an effort to study the minds of psychos, begins examining Kreig’s broken mind, and helps him come to terms with what's happened to him and Maya’s death, bringing him back into the fold.
THE END
So far...
I believe this is the most comprehensive story of the Borderlands Series so far. If I missed anything or got anything wrong, please correct me in the comments! Thanks for reading everyone!

Hi, everybody. My name is Sid, and I’m an addict.
It took me a long time to accept that. But when you take a job in a casino just so that you can be there all the time and try to gain an edge, you’re an addict. It’s obvious even to me. More so to my family and friends, who I barely see anymore.
It’s not pills or coke, booze or heroin that I’m hooked on. I’m addicted to gambling.
The casino that made me so obsessed is not an ordinary one, though. It’s far from ordinary.
You don’t play for money at Fantasy Casino. You play for your dreams.
I hear you laughing.
But have you ever had a really, really great dream? One that got so good you snapped awake the second it started to get really excellent?
Well, imagine that times a thousand. Times a million.
A dream so real and so perfect that all of your fantasies become reality. Time stretches out. You feel like you are there forever. A lifetime passes before your return.
Infinite wealth, the ability to fly like superman, you’re surrounded by sex and beautiful people all day as you relax in a palace built to your mind’s most exacting specifications of perfection.
But then you wake up, and in an instant it is gone.
The power, the wealth, the endless sex and supernatural powers.
Everything is suddenly NORMAL again.
And so you go back to the casino.
I went back to the casino.
But the problem with gambling is that you don’t always win. And when you lose, suddenly the winnings are gone as well, vanished without a trace. All I knew was that I had to have that feeling again.
So I went inside the giant building and then followed the secret signs which led to a door that led to a staircase going downwards.
I went down the stairs and knocked on the door marked “Private” and waited for an answer.
“Password.”
The voice on the other side of the black door waited for my response.
“Seramth Gin.” I said the unnatural words carefully and deliberately, still not knowing their meaning.
A friend had told me the password, a fellow gambler who I would later find dead in his apartment. His corpse white, bloated, and maggot-infested.
His eyes were black and filled with blood which streamed from his eye sockets like tears. He had bit his tongue clean off and his fingernails were found lodged in various surfaces throughout his apartment. Like he had been trying to claw his way out of a steel box that only he could see.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. That was later. At this point I was still hopeful for another wonderful dream. Still thankful for his advice to seek out the place.
The door opened and I walked inside. It was the same as it had been the day before, only less busy at this time – still early afternoon.
I approached the table I had been sitting at the night before.
Poker – Texas Hold ‘em: Ten dream limit – the sign read.
The rules were simple. You got a stack of chips. If you doubled them, you received a dream. If you lost them, you lost a dream.
I wasn’t concerned about losing dreams yet, I still didn’t understand exactly what that meant.
When I lost my first stack of chips, I quickly bought in again. And again. And again.
Pretty soon I realized I had lost eight dreams with no winnings whatsoever. I was in a slump. A losing streak.
I decided to go home and count my losses. Literally, since I had no idea what that even meant.
As I got up to leave the table, the dealer looked at me. His eyes were remorseless and cold.
“See the cashier on your way out,” he said, handing me eight black chips.
I gulped and walked over to the glass window where the cashier sat waiting. Handing him the eight chips, he raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue.
“That’s a shame. Hold out your hand please.”
Two men in black suits came up behind me suddenly and stood on either side of me, intimidating in their stature and demeanour.
I did as he asked and held out my hand with the palm facing up.
The cashier pulled out a strange-looking device from beneath the counter. It had a vial of vermillion-coloured liquid at the top that was attached to the rest of it which resembled a gun with a hypodermic needle at the end.
I screamed and tried to pull away, but the two men grabbed me and held my arm through the window. Thrashing and elbowing them, I tried to get away but it was useless.
The cashier injected the stuff into my veins quickly and it felt cold and slimy going through my system. I could feel it suddenly in my heart, turning it cold and then up into my mind and my lungs and all extremities causing me to shake and violently seize. I writhed on the floor, blood pouring from my ears and my eyes.
Finally the feeling settled down into a numbness that prickled the insides of my blood vessels. It wasn’t until later, once I realized what the casino really was, that I found out what they had done.
I went home with the certainty that they had injected me with something. If winning had resulted in the greatest dream I had ever had – essentially an almost never-ending fantasy – what would happen after a loss?
Nightmares. That was what it would be. I was sure of it.
I settled into bed that night and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep quickly after such an emotionally exhausting afternoon.
As soon as my eyes closed, they opened again and it was morning.
It felt as if I had not slept at all. My mind was fuzzy and it was difficult to focus. My eyes wanted to close again but my alarm was telling me that it was time to get up for work, so I hit the “dismiss” button and hopped in the shower.
I threw on my clothes and went out the door. At work I noticed a few people looking at me strangely, but I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out to me that my shirt was on inside-out. At this point I was still working in an office doing commodities trading and such lapses were frowned upon.
If you couldn’t focus enough to put your shirt on properly in the morning, how could you focus enough to get the work done in such a demanding environment? Millions of dollars changing hands with each transaction meant that such trivial things were put under a magnifying glass and coupled with other subsequent mistakes each following day after that, I found myself in the boss’s office by the end of the week being handed my walking papers.
Desperate for rest after days of not feeling any benefit from sleep, I went back to the casino.
They knew just by looking at me how to dig their claws in further. After a couple hours I had managed to win myself a dream.
They handed me the complimentary cocktail as they had the time before. I hadn’t realized the significance of it and still didn’t, despite the unusual vermillion colour of the drink. I swallowed it in one gulp and went out the door practically dancing and clicking my heels, ready to go home and feel rested again.
My dream that night was wonderful. Everything I had hoped for in many ways.
But not as good as the first time. I wanted that feeling back again.
Knowing that it was a dream the whole time and realizing that it was going to end seemed to shorten the fantasy, made it seem hollow and manufactured.
If I could win again maybe it would be like that first time, I thought.
The casino drew me in again and again. I found myself a zombie most days, exhausted, at my wit’s end. Ready to call it quits for good and say goodbye.
But then I would win again and it would all seem to be alright for a while.
My debt kept growing and growing with nearly every trip. The hypodermic needle would be plunged into my skin and every time they had to hold me down. Every time I would feel a little more empty. A little more hollow.
Waking up every day began to feel the same. Nothing had definition or purpose.
“You’re here all the time,” one of the goons whispered to me as they shot the needle into my vein the time after that. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You should just get a job here and then at least you’ll be in on the secret.”
I applied the next day and got an interview with the boss. I would find out later that if you got someone to apply there you got a one dream bonus.
In his office, the well-dressed man was sitting behind a massive polished ebony desk. The room was adorned with paintings, sculptures, and other high-priced artwork. He had photos everywhere of himself shaking hands with world leaders, new and old, for hundreds of years.
His face never changed. Never aged.
“So, you want to work with us? Tired of dreamless nights without end? You want to have some relief, is that it?”
“Yes. Please. Anything. I’ve been coming here for so long and it’s an endless cycle. I want back what I’ve lost but I keep finding myself more and more in debt with each visit.”
“Ah, so do you understand it now, then? What the ‘injections’ are?”
It finally dawned on me, sitting there. Not injections at all. They weren’t putting something in us. They were taking something out. The vermillion-coloured liquid in the vials – our dreams.
“If I take a job with you, will the same rules apply? Will they still take my sleep, my rest, every time I lose?”
“Yes. We can’t have the employees living by different rules than everyone else. But we will give you an alternative injection, so that you feel well-rested when you come in for your shift.”
“I’ll do it. I need to rest. I need to get some meaningful sleep. My life has been miserable ever since coming here.”
“Well, I can’t promise that this will help,” he said, getting up from his desk with a hypodermic gun in his hand. The vial of fluid sitting atop this one was jet-black and looked evil and poisonous. He rolled up his sleeves as he primed it and I watched a few beads of it drip oil-like out of the tip of the needle.
“What the hell is that!? I don’t want that stuff in me!”
“But you need to sleep, my dear worker. I can’t have you passing out at the blackjack table like a narcoleptic! You agreed to this, after all. You wanted to rest, and the only way for that to happen is for you to have SOME sort of dream. Not everyone is as lucky as you, you know. To have that wonderful vermillion fluid in your veins. Some people come to us begging to take it from them. Some of our employees for example, the ones who do the recruitment for us, are full of this black stuff.”
“What?” I had gotten up from the chair and was backing away from him towards the door. But I found it was locked as he approached.
“First you have to tell me the password, Sid.”
“Seramth Gin.” I said the words that I had said every time to gain access to the casino, only this time I pictured the letters and rearranged them in my mind.
“Nightmares.”
He smiled as he injected me with the vial of black hate, and it went into my veins feeling hot and unpleasant. I began to sweat and the beads of it turned cold on my skin as I shivered.
I’ll sleep tonight. I might even wake up feeling rested. But as long as I live and work at that casino, I’ll be afraid to dream again. Because now my unconscious hours are occupied by the most terrifying experiences imaginable. Nightmares beyond imagining in their awfulness. That is my fate.
Unless… Just maybe, I can win one more time.
JG
TCC

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

[December 15, 2020] – New Content in Grand Theft Auto Online

• The Cayo Perico Heist has been added to GTA Online. In this update, players are contacted by Miguel Madrazo who will task them with infiltrating one of the most secure private islands in the entire world, evading or neutralizing the heavily armed security forces stationed there, and escaping with valuable evidence along with as much art, gold and drug money as they can carry. Players must scope, prep, and execute the Heist either solo or with up to three other players and will have the opportunity to access several new weapons and vehicles along the way.
• The Cayo Perico Island has been added to GTA Online. The Island consists of several different key locations that players can explore while scoping for the Heist, including a beach party where new DJ collective Keinemusik performs an exclusive set. Upon completing the Heist as leader, players can return to the Cayo Perico beach party at their convenience and invite others along for the journey.
• The Kosatka has been added to GTA Online. The Kosatka is a new driveable Submarine property that acts as a base of operations for planning The Cayo Perico Heist. The Kosatka can be customized with Guided Missiles, a Sonar Station, and a Weapon Workshop. The Kosatka also comes with a Moon Pool where players can store the new Sparrow, Kraken Avisa and Pegassi Toreador vehicles.
• The Music Locker has been added to GTA Online. The Music Locker is a new Nightclub located underground below The Diamond Casino & Resort, which acts as a social hub and is where players can first meet Miguel Madrazo to learn about The Cayo Perico Heist. The Music Locker is also the venue that showcases new DJs added with this update.
• One new DJ has been added to GTA Online. Players can see this new DJ perform at The Music Locker:
  • Moodymann
• A new feature to toggle strobe lights in The Music Locker has been added. In the Style section of the Interaction Menu, the strobe light toggle can be found, listed as “Music Locker Strobes” and can be toggled on or off.
• New DJ Request Missions have been added to GTA Online for owners of the Casino Penthouse who have completed The Cayo Perico Heist. Players will earn special rewards for completing these requests.
• Two new Radio Stations have been added:
  • K.U.L.T 99.1 FM
  • Still Slipping Los Santos
• Two existing Radio Stations have been updated with all-new mixes and tracks:
  • Worldwide FM
  • FlyLo FM
• New Hidden Cache collectibles have been added to GTA Online. Players can find up to 10 Hidden Caches on the ocean floor around San Andreas each day. Players who own the Kosatka Sonar Station can blip the Caches on their radar. Players are rewarded with GTA$ and RP for finding these Hidden Caches.
• Nine new vehicles have been added to GTA Online:
  • Kosatka
  • Sparrow
  • Kurtz 31 Patrol Boat
  • Vapid Winky
  • Shitzu Longfin
  • Kraken Avisa
  • Annihilator Stealth
  • RO-86 Alkonost
  • Pegassi Toreador
• One new weapon, the Military Rifle, has been added to GTA Online and can be purchased from Ammu-Nation stores.
• Additional new weapons have been added to GTA Online and can be unlocked on Cayo Perico.
• Over 180+ items of clothing have been added for both Male and Female characters in GTA Online.
• Over 30+ Tattoos have been added to GTA Online.
• Nine new Face Paints have been added to GTA Online.
• Six new celebration emotes have been added to GTA Online, which can be used while dancing:
  • Crowd Invitation
  • Driver
  • Runner
  • Shooting
  • Suck It
  • Take Selfie
• Several new Awards related to The Cayo Perico Heist have been added to GTA Online, including the opportunity for players to earn up to 1.4 million in bonus GTA$ for various Heist challenges.
• Five new styles of Blackjack tables and four new styles of Three Card Poker tables are available for purchase for players who own a Casino Penthouse and the Private Dealer. They can be purchase from the Casino Shop using Chips and equipped using the Interaction Menu.

GTA Online Fixes

Game Stability and Performance

• Fixed several issues that caused game crashes, freezes and other stability problems
• Fixed a stability issue that caused high memory usage for PC players, which could have led to pausing/stuttering on low specification hardware
• Fixed an issue that may have caused players to get stuck on a black screen during transitions between GTA Online content

Matchmaking & Networking

• Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on the sky camera after attempting to use the ‘Quick Job’ option to enter a Casino Heist lobby
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players remaining in the same session after using the 'Find New Session’ option
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on a loading screen when accepting a Job invite while inside the Arcade
• Fixed an issue that may have caused network errors during the race portion of the GTA Online Tutorial
• Fixed position sync issues with the Rune Zhaba vehicle when some players in a GTA Online session are running at a high framerate

Content

• Fixed an issue that resulted in the news van getting stuck on a sign stopping Mission progression during the Casino Work Mission – Fake News
• Fixed an issue that caused the Casino Heist Prep Mission – Duggan Shipments to end unexpectedly after launching
• Fixed an issue that caused the Police Van from the Casino Heist Random Encounter – Patrick McReary to appear during an Open Wheel Race
• Fixed an issue that resulted in the Mission starting with 3 seconds on the timer in the Casino Heist Random Encounter – Patrick McReary
• Fixed multiple instances of incorrect button prompts that were present in several Arcade Games on the Japanese version of the game
• Fixed overlapping text that was present in the Arcade Game – QUB3D
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players with restricted accounts being able to see the custom initials of players on the high score screen of Arcade Games
• Fixed an issue that caused the Movie Props Hidden Collectibles to be missing from their intended location
• Fixed an issue that caused Lester’s car to not be drivable in the Heist Mission: Fleeca Job – Scope Out
• Fixed an issue that caused players to be stuck with no functionality in the Heist Mission: Fleeca Job – Scope Out
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck after trying to launch the Heist Mission: Fleeca Job – Scope Out
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to use the skip trip functionality in the in the Heist Mission: Prison Break – Plane
• Fixed incorrect objective text that was present in the Heist Mission: Prison Break – Station
• Fixed an issue that caused players to fall through the map during the Casino Heist – Finale
• Fixed an issue that caused players to be taken into a Casino Heist Mission after not choosing an option on the Next Job Voting Screen, despite having made no Casino Heist progress
• Fixed visual issues that were present after quitting spectator mode during the Adversary Mode – Every Bullet Counts
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to re-equip rebreathers during the A Superyacht Life Mission – Salvage
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to use their weapon wheel during the A Superyacht Life Mission – Salvage
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players losing camera functionality in the Gerald’s Last Play Mission – Make Ends Meat
• Fixed a button conflict that was present in the Arena War – Game Masters
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players falling under the map after modding a vehicle in the Arena Workshop Property
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to deliver Cargo during the Business Battle – Assassination
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on the objective ‘Hack the Security Panel' in the Business Battle – Factory Raid
• Fixed an issue that caused the Mission to instantly fail after launching a Sell Mission

Awards and Daily Objectives

• Fixed an issue that caused the Daily Challenge – 'Participate in the Featured Series' to not register correctly

Properties

• Fixed issues that resulted in players’ Arcade set up progress getting reset
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck after drinking at the Arcade bar
• Fixed camera issues that were present when entering the Arcade
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players losing movement functionality after storing the Enus Paragon R (Armored) in their Office Garage
• Fixed helicopter spawning issues on the Yacht
• Fixed visual issues that were present with the Office Garage cutscene
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to exit their Arcade after accepting an invite
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on a loading screen after driving into the Arena Garage

Vehicles

• Fixed an issue that prevented several variations of vehicle cinematic cameras from appearing for all vehicles
• Fixed an issue that caused the Bravado Gauntlet Classic’s trade price to be displayed incorrectly on the Benny's Original Motorworks site
• Fixed an issue that prevented Cargobob helicopters from being able to pick up the Vapid Peyote Custom using the hook
• Fixed several miscellaneous model and texture issues for the following vehicles:
  • Invetero Coquette D10
  • Bravado Gauntlet Classic Custom
  • Albany Manana Custom
  • Vapid Peyote Custom
  • Bravado Youga Classic 4x4

Clothing

• Fixed clipping issues that were present with several of the ‘Open Shirts’ and ‘Open Party Shirts’
• Fixed several miscellaneous clipping and texture issues for the following clothing items:
  • Animal masks (and other larger mask options)
  • Tucked Short Shirt variants
  • Untucked Short Shirt variants
  • Sport Shorts
  • Yacht Captain outfit

Miscellaneous

• Reduced the frequency that the player will receive call, text and email notifications regarding content from previous GTA Online content updates
• Fixed an issue that resulted in vehicles not arriving after being requested from Ms. Baker
• Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to interact with certain activities in the Casino
• Fixed an issue that caused the Avenger’s entrance trigger to not be visible to players
• Fixed an issue that resulted in spectators being unable to swap filters
• Fixed an issue where PlayStation 4 players without a PS Plus subscription would not be directed to the correct menu when attempting to access GTA Online

Story Mode

• Fixed an issue that caused some weapon magazines and attachments to be missing during cutscenes