text: The season itself had mixed response, garnering praise for the likable cast, entertaining tribal councils, and the gameplay of the Final 7. However, the new Final Four Twist was mostly panned by critics. After winning the final immunity challenge, Chrissy Hofbeck was awarded an advantage to be used at the following Tribal Council. She learned that in place of the conventional Day 38 final vote-off, she had to select one contestant to join her in the Final Tribal Council, while the remaining two contestants would be forced in a fire-making challenge to determine the third finalist. Due to the inclusion of this twist, contestant Ben Driebergen, who was virtually guaranteed to be voted out without immunity, was allowed one final chance of avoiding elimination. Subsequently, he went on to win the challenge and advance to the Final Tribal Council, where he then went on to win the season.


title: Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers

text: Alyssa Norwin of "Hollywood Life" said that the twist undermined the significance of winning the final immunity challenge. "People Magazine" blogger Stephen Fishbach, who played in "" and "", tweeted that it removed fundamental social strategy from the game. "" winner Adam Klein commented, "Super happy for the winner who played their heart out!! That being said, if that twist happened in my season, I would have come in 4th most likely. Players should be able to plan out their own endgame and know the basic format of the game they play."


text: Host and Executive Producer Jeff Probst ultimately confirmed that, while the twist itself was not implemented in the game to specifically benefit Ben, its main goal was to prevent contestants "like him" from being eliminated one step away from the Final Tribal Council, simply for being a threat to win the game. The twist, Probst said, gives these types of players one last chance to survive instead of just being unanimously voted out by the others.


text: Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly ranked this season 24th criticizing both the underwhelming start to the season and the fire-making twist. In 2020, "Survivor" fan site "Purple Rock Podcast" ranked this season 33rd saying that "cast is at least pleasant, and at one point in the season there is actually a shockingly strong strategic play" but this season is one that "you'll likely forget completely soon after watching it". Later that same year, "Inside Survivor" ranked this season 28th out of 40 saying that it has "aged better than its surrounding seasons, and that's due to a pretty strong cast, who may be better remembered if the endgame had played out differently."


text: In 2021, "Rob Has a Podcast" ranked "Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers" 33rd during their "Survivor All-Time Top 40 Rankings" podcast.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: The Believer is a 2001 American drama film directed by Henry Bean and written by Bean and Mark Jacobson. It stars Ryan Gosling as Daniel Balint, a Jew who becomes a neo-Nazi. The film is loosely based on the true story of Dan Burros, a member of the American Nazi Party and the New York branch of the United Klans of America. He committed suicide after being revealed as Jewish by a "New York Times" reporter. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden St. George at the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival. The film has become a cult film, with Gosling's rising star performance subsequently being viewed as his breakthrough role and one of the best performances of his career so far.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Daniel Balint is a former Jewish yeshiva student, brilliant but troubled, who is now a fanatically violent neo-Nazi in New York in his early twenties. As a child, he often challenged his teachers with unorthodox interpretations of scripture. He once argued that the Binding of Isaac was not about Abraham's faith but God's power: that God's purpose was not to have Abraham accomplish a particular task, but rather to demand unquestioning obedience, which Abraham refuses to give. Daniel concluded that God is a bully.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Daniel finds a meeting of fascists run by Curtis Zampf and Lina Moebius, where he also makes a connection with Lina's daughter Carla. Daniel advocates killing Jews, and a banker named Manzetti in particular, but Curtis and Lina oppose harming Jews on practical if not moral grounds. Impressed with Daniel's intelligence, Lina invites him to their camp retreat in the country. Afterward, Daniel and his neo-Nazi friends pick a fight with two African-American men, get arrested, and are bailed out by Carla. He spends the night with her but returns to his ailing father's home where he is harangued by his sister Linda for his Nazi beliefs, but she also urges him to stay and have "Shabbat" dinner. The men watch television, which is forbidden on Sabbath according to some Orthodox Jews, leading them to commiserate on the incomprehensibility of Jewish law.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Guy Danielsen, a journalist writing an article on hate groups, meets Daniel for an interview. He listens to Daniel's antisemitic speech, then reveals that he had been in contact with Daniel's old rabbi and knows that Daniel is Jewish. Daniel pulls out a pistol and threatens to commit suicide if Guy publishes the truth.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Daniel goes to the fascist camp retreat, where he meets Drake, a skilled marksman, along with an explosives expert. Six of the retreat participants, including Daniel, go to a Jewish deli, where they torment the owner about Jewish dietary laws until a fight breaks out. Daniel and his friends are required by a court to take sensitivity training, where they listen to the experiences of Holocaust survivors. One talks about how his infant son was murdered by a Nazi. Daniel is enraged that the man did nothing to save his son, but all the survivors assert that Daniel would also have done nothing, and he walks out in anger.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: The story haunts him, and he imagines himself as the Nazi. Later that night, Daniel and the gang break into a synagogue, vandalize it, and plant a time bomb under the pulpit. They also tear, trample, and spit on a Torah scroll, though Daniel protests. After they leave, Daniel takes the scroll and a "tallit katan" (a small Jewish prayer cloth) with him. The next morning, the neo-Nazis hear on the news that the bomb failed to go off. Back in his cabin, Daniel puts on the tallit under his shirt and performs a combination of the Nazi salute and a "Hagbaha".


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Drake approaches him with a plan to kill Manzetti. Outside a temple, Daniel fires at him but misses. Drake discovers the tallit and realizes that he is a Jew, so Daniel shoots him and escapes. He continues to meet with Lina and Curtis, who want to start an above-ground movement to bring fascism into the political mainstream, inviting Jews, blacks, and liberals. Daniel reluctantly agrees to help them raise funds. At the meetings that follow, Daniel first charms, then enrages, their potential donors with his intellectual games, leading to his expulsion. When news breaks that Manzetti was killed, Lina suspects Daniel, since he proposed the assassination, but Drake is the real killer.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Carla comforts Daniel and they sleep together at his home. When she sees the stolen Torah, she asks Daniel to teach her Hebrew, ostensibly for intellectual reasons. He soon runs into an old friend and his fiancée, Stuart and Miriam, who invite him to a Rosh Hashanah service, assuming that he is an anti-racist skinhead. When Daniel arrives, another old friend calls him out as a racist skinhead. As he is leaving, Miriam, who works for the District Attorney, tells him that half of the people in Lina's meetings are informants for the D.A. She asks Daniel to record conversations at a meeting so she can help him with possible charges stemming from the Manzetti killing, but he refuses.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: As Yom Kippur approaches, Daniel calls Miriam and insists on taking Stuart's place leading the Ne'ila service at the bimah on Yom Kippur. He and his friends plant a new bomb under the temple's pulpit even though they find it reinforced, limiting the explosion. When Daniel takes the pulpit the next day, he is shocked to see Carla in the congregation. He again imagines himself in the story the Holocaust survivor told him, this time as both the Nazi and the Jew. With minutes to go, Daniel stops and tells everyone to get out because there is a bomb, but refuses to leave himself.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Daniel is shown ascending the stairs in the Jewish school he left as a child. His old teacher approaches, hoping to talk about the Binding of Isaac, and suggests that Isaac died on the mountain and was reborn in the next world. But Daniel ignores him and keeps going, up, and up, as his teacher urges him to stop, calling out, "There's nothing up there."


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: "The Believer" received an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 93 reviews; the average rating is 7.34 out of 10. The consensus states: "Gosling commands the screen with a raw, electrifying performance." The film also has a score of 75 on Metacritic based on 28 reviews.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Jamie Russell of BBC Films said that it was "awe-inspiring ... a late contender for one of the best films of the year—an intellectually breathtaking, profoundly moving film." Charlotte O'Sullivan of "The Independent" said, "It's naturally thrilling..."The Believer" is astonishing." "Time Out" said, "the film is driven by Gosling's revelatory performance ... arresting, prickly, vaguely funny, even—'difficult' in the best sense."


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Todd McCarthy for "Variety" said, "Bean deals with the core elements of this odd, and oddly compelling, situation with admirable frankness and intelligence, but flounders around the edges. The tenets of Zampf and Moebius' political movement receive such scant attention that the scenes devoted to it are borderline ludicrous, and the masochistic impulses that seem to draw Carla to Danny—"Hurt me!," she begs at the start of their first sexual encounter, and he willingly obliges—are rote and undeveloped."


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: Julie Salamon for "The New York Times" said, "This willfully provocative film portrait (...) offers lots of raging, vulgarity and shock but little insight into the character's psychopathology. (...) The movie's most telling moment comes when Danny confronts Holocaust survivors about why they allowed themselves to be brutalized. One of them, an old man, responds by asking, "And what shall we learn from you, Daniel ?" It's a good question, never answered.


title: The Believer (2001 film)

text: David Germain for "The Washington Post" said, "Even as he commits hate crimes and becomes an anti-Jewish rabble-rouser, the youth is torn between contempt for Jewish passivity during the Holocaust and reverence for the traditions of Judaism."


title: Alicia Fox

text: Victoria Crawford (born June 30, 1986) is an American retired professional wrestler and former model known for her time with WWE under the ring name Alicia Fox.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Crawford debuted on "SmackDown" on June 13, 2008, using the Alicia Fox name and the gimmick of a wedding planner. In November, she moved to the ECW brand, where she managed DJ Gabriel. The following year, Fox began challenging for the WWE Divas Championship, which she won in June 2010, holding the title for two months, becoming the first and only African American Divas Champion in WWE history. In October 2014, she began starring in the reality television series "Total Divas" on E! as part of the main cast. Following the Raw Reunion in 2019, WWE officially began regarding Fox as a legend.


title: Alicia Fox

text: In 2006, Crawford signed a developmental contract with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and was assigned to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), WWE's then-developmental territory. She debuted on July 1, 2006, as a special guest referee, under her real name, in a match between Shelly Martinez and ODB. On September 6, Crawford made her in-ring debut, under the new ring name Tori, in an OVW women's battle royal, in which she was eliminated by ODB. She spent the following month competing regularly in both singles and tag team matches, against opponents including Mickie James, ODB, and Katie Lea. In late September, she began managing Elijah Burke, accompanying him to the ring for matches against Chet The Jet. At the OVW television tapings on October 18, having reverted to her real name, Crawford challenged Beth Phoenix for the OVW Women's Championship, but lost following interference from Serena Deeb. Two days later, on October 20, Crawford won a gauntlet match at an OVW house show to win the OVW Women's Championship. The following night, however, Crawford lost the championship back to Phoenix, who won an eight-woman elimination match. Crawford's championship win is unrecognized by OVW, and the promotion considers Phoenix's two reigns as champion as a single, uninterrupted reign. Crawford continued to feud with Phoenix in early 2007, facing her in several tag team matches, in which Phoenix teamed with ODB and Crawford teamed with Lea or Deeb. Simultaneously, Crawford participated in the "Miss OVW" contest, which was won by ODB. Crawford had a series of matches with Milena Roucka in April, before moving onto a feud with Maryse Ouellet. Her final appearance in OVW was on July 21, when she participated in a three-way match for the OVW Women's Championship, which was won by ODB.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Crawford debuted for WWE's new developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) on September 2, 2007, participating in a body contest. Her FCW in-ring debut came on September 25, where she and Nattie Neidhart defeated The Bella Twins (Brianna and Nicole) in a tag team match. She quickly began feuding with The Bella Twins, while allying herself with Neidhart. The Bella Twins defeated Crawford and Neidhart on two consecutive occasions, and on October 23, Crawford lost to Nicole in a singles match. A week later, she and Sheamus O'Shaunessy were defeated by Brianna and Kofi Kingston in a mixed tag team match. In December, Crawford teamed with Tommy Taylor in a loss to Brianna and Robert Anthony. The feud continued into 2008, with the Bellas defeating Crawford and Maryse Ouellet on January 8, and Crawford and Neidhart on January 19 and 29. Following the completion of the feud, Crawford began competing regularly against her former tag team partner, Neidhart. Neidhart won their first singles encounter on February 5 and was on the winning side of a tag team match on February 23, before Crawford won a singles match against her on February 26. Following her debut on "SmackDown", Crawford changed her ring name to Alicia Fox. She began managing Jack Gabriel in September, and teamed with Gabriel in mixed tag team matches against Mike Kruel and Wesley Holiday and Gabe Tuft and Melina, while continuing to compete in singles competition as well. Fox competed in the Queen of FCW tournament between December 2008 and February 2009, defeating Jenny Quinn and Tiffany en route to the final, where she lost to Angela Fong.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Crawford debuted on WWE's main roster on the June 13, 2008 episode of "SmackDown", as Alicia Fox, in a backstage segment with Vickie Guerrero, which saw her portraying Guerrero and Edge's wedding planner. During their wedding reception the following month, Triple H revealed Edge kissing Fox the day before the wedding on camera. Fox involved herself in the WWE Championship match at The Great American Bash when she attempted to help Edge, but she was stopped by Guerrero. The confusion surrounding her interference caused Edge to accidentally spear Guerrero.


title: Alicia Fox

text: After a three-month hiatus from television, Fox resurfaced on the November 18 episode of "ECW", managing English wrestler DJ Gabriel, in a fan favorite role. Their on-screen association was explained by WWE claiming that Fox had moved her wedding planning business to England during her hiatus from WWE television, where she had met Gabriel. Gabriel and Fox began feuding with the Burchill siblings (Paul and Katie Lea) in late December 2008. Fox made her ECW in-ring debut on January 6, 2009, in a loss to Katie Lea. The following week, Gabriel and Fox defeated the Burchill siblings in a mixed tag team match, giving Fox her first win as part of the brand. In March, Fox and Gabriel feuded with Tyson Kidd and Natalya, with Natalya defeating Fox on March 3 episode of "ECW". Fox competed in the 25 Diva battle royal at WrestleMania XXV on April 5, which was ultimately won by Santina Marella.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Fox was drafted to the SmackDown brand as a part of the 2009 Supplemental Draft on April 15. She made her in-ring debut as a heel on the April 30 episode of "WWE Superstars", teaming with Michelle McCool to defeat Maria and Gail Kim. After winning her debut match, Fox aligned herself with Michelle McCool, with the pair teaming together in tag team matches as well as accompanying each other to the ring for singles matches. Fox was in the corner of McCool when McCool won the WWE Women's Championship at The Bash.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On June 29 it was announced that Fox had been traded to the Raw brand. The following week, she made her "Raw" debut in a tag team match, teaming with Maryse against Gail Kim and Mickie James in a losing effort. She gained her first victory on "Raw" on July 13, when Fox, Maryse, and Rosa Mendes won a six-Diva tag team match. Fox picked up her first pinfall victory by defeating Kelly Kelly during a tag team match on the July 20 episode of "Raw". On the August 10 episode of "Raw", Fox was involved in a fatal four-way match to determine the number one contender for the WWE Divas Championship, but was unsuccessful. The following month, on September 14, she defeated Gail Kim to become the number one contender to the Divas Championship. She received a match for the championship at Hell in a Cell against Mickie James on October 4, but was unsuccessful. Fox became the number one contender to the Divas Championship again on the November 2 episode of "Raw", by winning a battle royal which involved The Bella Twins, Eve Torres, Gail Kim, and Kelly Kelly. She challenged Melina two weeks later for the championship, but was unsuccessful. Melina then vacated the Divas Championship due to injury, and a tournament was set up to determine the new champion in early January 2010. Fox defeated Kelly Kelly in the first round of the tournament, but later lost to Gail Kim in the semi-finals. Fox was on the winning team in a 10-Diva tag team match at WrestleMania XXVI, but on the losing side the following night in a rematch on "Raw". On the April 5 episode of "Raw", Fox was involved in a "Dress to Impress" battle royal to determine the number one contender to the WWE Divas Championship, but was unsuccessful, and the match was won by Eve Torres.


title: Alicia Fox

text: In May 2010, Fox began a storyline with Zack Ryder, after he requested that she and Gail Kim be ringside on several occasions to watch his matches, so he could impress them and find a new valet. During his match with Evan Bourne on May 10, Fox interfered on Ryder's behalf, but was stopped by Gail Kim. The following week, Bourne and Kim defeated Ryder and Fox in a mixed tag team match. After the match, Fox attacked Ryder in order to collect a "bounty" from the Raw guest host, Ashton Kutcher.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On June 20, 2010, at the Fatal 4-Way pay-per-view, Fox competed in a fatal four-way match for the WWE Divas Championship, which also involved Gail Kim, Eve Torres, and Maryse. Fox pinned Maryse to win the championship for the first time, and as a result became the first and only African American Diva to win the title. In her first title defence, on the July 5 episode of "Raw", Fox successfully defended the championship against Eve after feigning an ankle injury and as a result, Eve was granted a rematch at Money in the Bank by Raw's anonymous General Manager, where Fox was again able to retain the championship. In August, Melina returned from an injury and attacked Fox, after the latter declared herself to be undefeatable and the greatest champion in history. After defeating Fox in a non-title match on "Raw", Melina was granted a title shot, on August 15, at SummerSlam, which she won, ending Fox's reign at 56 days.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On August 31, Fox was announced as the mentor of Maxine for the all-female third season of "NXT" but Maxine failed to win the competition, and was the second rookie Diva to be eliminated. Later in the summer, Fox and Eve Torres were the first ever female performers in WWE to wrestle a match in China, during WWE's first ever live-event in the country, which was held in Shanghai. Fox later received a rematch for the Divas Championship against Melina on the September 6 episode of "Raw", which she lost. In December, Fox competed in a battle royal to determine the winner of the "Diva of the Year" Slammy Award, but was eliminated by Natalya and also took part of a triple-threat number one contender's match, which was won by Melina.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On April 26, 2011, Fox was drafted back to the SmackDown brand as part of the 2011 supplemental draft and in her first match back for the brand she was defeated by Layla and suffered a shoulder injury after being attacked by Kharma, following the loss. On the May 27 episode of "SmackDown", in her return, Fox and Tamina Snuka defeated the team of Kaitlyn and AJ Lee, which later transitioned into a feud between the two sets of Divas, with Fox and Tamina regularly winning tag team matches and allying with Rosa Mendes. The alliance between Fox and Tamina ended on the August 11 episode of "WWE Superstars", when Fox defeated Tamina in a singles match.


title: Alicia Fox

text: After a tag team match, which they lost, on the August 19 episode of "SmackDown", Fox was attacked by Natalya, which provoked a feud between the two. She began acting as a face while wrestling alongside several different Divas to face Natalya and Beth Phoenix, collectively known as The Divas of Doom, in tag team matches, and also regularly competing against them in singles matches. As part of the storyline, Fox also prevented Natalya and Phoenix from attacking other Divas, including Kelly Kelly and AJ. The storyline continued sporadically throughout the first half of 2012, with Fox losing tag team and singles matches to Phoenix and Natalya. Fox spent the remainder of 2012 and early 2013 competing in sporadic matches, usually on the losing side. In mid–2013, Fox appeared on the rebooted "NXT", entering a tournament to determine the inaugural NXT Women's Champion, where she defeated Bayley in the first round, but lost to Paige in the semi-finals.


title: Alicia Fox

text: In September, Fox took part of the WWE Divas Champion AJ Lee's team which feuded with the cast of the "Total Divas" reality television show, which led to a traditional seven-on-seven Survivor Series match, in which Fox was the first to be eliminated, courtesy of Naomi.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Since January 2014, Fox formed a tag team with Aksana, later dubbed "Foxsana". On April 6, Fox competed at WrestleMania XXX in the 14-Diva "Vickie Guerrero Invitational match" for the WWE Divas Championship, which was won by the defending champion AJ Lee. After that, Fox started a feud with the newly crowned WWE Divas Champion Paige, losing to her in a series of matches on "Raw", "Main Event", and "WWE Superstars". Her losses provoked a storyline, in which she lost her temper after matches, taunting the ring announcers, ringside crew, and crowd and defacing the ringside area. Fox was eventually able to defeat Paige on "Raw" on May 19 in a non-title match and celebrated by taking Jerry Lawler's crown afterwards. Her victory set up a title match between the two at Payback, on June 1, which Fox lost. Following a further loss to Paige on June 9, Fox attacked tag team partner Aksana, before defeating her in a match on "SmackDown", officially disbanding Foxsana. Fox subsequently entered into a feud with Nikki Bella after being appointed by Stephanie McMahon to berate her in a series of handicap matches. Meanwhile, Fox continued to throw temper tantrums during her matches throughout the summer, and even tormented Tom Phillips in a number of backstage segments on the WWE App.


title: Alicia Fox

text: After a hiatus, Fox returned to WWE television, on the September 29 episode of "Raw", where she defeated AJ Lee, with the help of her former rival Paige and subsequently, formed an alliance with her, and went on to pick up another win over AJ on October 20. However, when Fox inadvertently cost Paige a title match at Hell in a Cell, Paige dissolved the alliance by attacking her the following night on "Raw". This prompted a traditional four-on-four elimination tag team match, with each captaining a side, at the Survivor Series pay-per-view in November, where Fox's team won the match with a clean sweep. In January 2015, Fox developed a rivalry with Naomi, during which she formed a brief alliance with The Miz and Damien Mizdow, and the trio went on to defeat Naomi and The Usos in a series of mixed tag team matches. On the April 13 episode of "Raw", Fox competed in a number one contender's battle royal for Nikki Bella's WWE Divas Championship, which would be won by Paige.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On June 15, 2015, Fox was a part of the Divas that Paige tried to rally on "Raw" in an attempt to take a stand against The Bella Twins and join her, but no one accepted the offer. Three days later on "SmackDown", Fox assisted Brie Bella in her match against Paige, and thus aligning herself with The Bella Twins and formed "Team Bella". After weeks of Team Bella outnumbering Paige, Naomi, and Tamina, Stephanie McMahon called for a "revolution" in the WWE Divas Division by introducing the debuting Charlotte and Becky Lynch as Paige's allies, and NXT Women's Champion Sasha Banks aligning with Naomi and Tamina, leading to a brawl between the three teams. The three teams would ultimately face off, on August 23, at SummerSlam in a three team elimination match. Team Bella would first eliminate Team B.A.D. when Brie Bella pinned Tamina, however Team PCB would win the match after Brie was pinned by Becky Lynch. On the August 25 episode of "Tough Enough", Fox make a special appearance on the finale of the sixth season, wrestling finalists Amanda and eventual winner Sara Lee. While Nikki Bella was off television with an injury, Fox spent the remainder of 2015 competing occasionally in singles matches and tag team matches with Brie Bella.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On the March 14, 2016 episode of "Raw", Fox and Brie were defeated by Team B.A.D. following a distraction provided by Lana. After this match, Team Bella quietly disbanded and both Fox and Brie transitioned into fan favorites. On the March 22 episode of "Main Event", she and Natalya accompanied Paige to her match against Naomi, where Paige was defeated following a distraction provided by Summer Rae and a returning Emma.<ref name="Main Event 22/3/16"></ref> The following week, Fox, Brie, and Natalya accompanied Paige to her rematch against Emma on the March 28 episode of "Raw". After the match, she along her allies were attacked by Team B.A.D., before they were saved by a returning Eva Marie.<ref name="Raw 28/03/16"></ref> As a result, a 10-Diva tag team match between Team Total Divas (Bella, Fox, Natalya, Eva Marie and Paige) and the newly dubbed Team B.A.D. and Blonde (Naomi, Tamina, Lana, Emma, and Summer Rae) was announced for the WrestleMania 32 pre-show. On April 3, Fox's team emerged victorious at the event after Naomi submitted to Bella. Later that month, Fox became the first female performer in WWE history to appear in front of a live crowd in the Middle-East, where she kicked off the show in Dubai.


title: Alicia Fox

text: After being drafted to "Raw" as part of the 2016 WWE draft which took place on July 19, Fox made her first appearance for the brand on August 15, where she was defeated by Charlotte Flair. On the September 5 episode of "Raw", Fox was involved in a backstage confrontation with Nia Jax, resulting in a match between the two on the September 12 episode of "Raw", which would end in a no contest after Jax speared Fox through the ringside barricade. On September 25, a rematch took place at Clash of Champions, where Fox was defeated. After suffering a streak of losses, Fox scored a victory over Dana Brooke on the November 4 episode of "Superstars".<ref name="Superstars08/11/16"></ref> On the November 7 episode of "Raw", Fox was announced as one of the participants in the 5-on-5 Traditional Survivor Series Women's Elimination match at Survivor Series from her brand's team, before winning a six-woman tag team match along with her fellow team partners. At the event on November 20, Fox's team emerged victorious after Bayley pinned Becky Lynch.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On the December 6 episode of "205 Live", Fox started an on-screen relationship with Cedric Alexander by kissing him before his match against Noam Dar, in which Alexander was defeated. Dar dedicated his victory to Fox. Two weeks later on "Raw", Fox accompanied Alexander in a rematch against Dar, where he was victorious. Dar attempted to seduce her again afterwards.<ref name="Raw19/12/16"></ref> On January 10, 2017, an incensed Fox threw a backstage fit after Alexander severed ties with her on "205 Live", following her interference during his match with Dar, which eventually costed him the match. Subsequently, Fox became Dar's new valet. During this time, she began receiving gifts during matches on 205 Live, which Dar passed off as his. On one occasion, Fox was seen eating the flowers gifted to her at ringside, slowly displaying traits of her "crazy" gimmick again. It was eventually revealed that the sender of these gifts was Rich Swann, who subsequently turned down Fox as an act of revenge against her for Cedric Alexander, as she threw another fit. On June 4, Fox and Dar were defeated by Rich Swann and Sasha Banks in a mixed tag team match at Extreme Rules. Fox would continue to manage Dar as their relationship On the July 11 episode of "205 Live", Dar broke up with Fox after he lost to Alexander in an "I Quit" match.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Throughout the summer, Fox competed in different matches in all of which she ended up being on the losing side. In October, Fox reignited her feud with Sasha Banks, after she lost to Banks on "Raw" and attacked her backstage afterwards. This led to a rematch between the two, that took place at the kickoff show, in which Banks once again defeated Fox via submission. The following night on "Raw", Fox defeated Banks and Bayley to become the team captain of the Raw women's team for Survivor Series. During the five-on-five elimination tag team match, Fox was eliminated by Naomi, however, her team was victorious. In December, Fox faced off with the recently debuted Asuka whom she was unsuccessful in defeating. Fox and the rest of the women's roster soon entered into a feud with Absolution which included the returning Paige, as well as the debuting Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Fox was scheduled to participate in the first women's royal rumble match at Royal Rumble on January 28, 2018, but was pulled off the event following an injury and replaced by Kairi Sane. She was also replaced by Mandy Rose in the Mixed Match Challenge.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Six months after being off television, on the June 25, 2018, episode of "Raw", Fox appeared in a backstage segment being welcomed back by Bayley. Two weeks later, in her first match back, Fox teamed with Dana Brooke in a match against Sasha Banks and Bayley, however, the match ended in a no contest after a brawl started outside the ring between the two duos. In July, Fox started an alliance with Alexa Bliss, who helped her defeat Natalya. After a post-match attack on Ronda Rousey, who was at ringside for Natalya, Fox was announced to be Rousey's first singles opponent. A week later, Fox competed against Rousey in a losing effort, which served as the main event of "Raw", marking Fox's first main event match of her career.


title: Alicia Fox

text: In October, while Alexa Bliss and Mickie James started a feud with WWE Hall of Famers Trish Stratus and Lita, Fox began teaming up with Jinder Mahal as they were announced as participants in the upcoming season 2 of Mixed Match Challenge. James and Bliss were supposed to face Stratus and Lita at WWE Evolution, the first ever all women's pay-per-view. However, just three days before the event, on October 25, it was announced that Bliss was pulled off the match due to a concussion she suffered beforehand and Fox will replace her, in which an emotional Fox claimed was the most important match of her entire career. At the event, Fox and James lost to Stratus and Lita after Stratus pinned James. In December, Fox and Jinder Mahal defeated Ember Moon and Curt Hawkins in the quarterfinals and Bayley and Apollo Crews in the semi-finals to qualify to the finals of the tournament. At the pay-per-view, Fox and Mahal lost to Carmella and R-Truth in the finals of the Mixed Match Challenge after Carmella submitted Fox. Throughout the rest of 2018, with Bliss out of in-ring competition, Fox was paired with Mickie James as the two continued to team up in various matches.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On January 27, 2019, at the Royal Rumble, Fox competed in her first women's Royal Rumble match, where she entered at number 18 and lasted over 6 minutes and eliminated Maria Kanellis, before she was eliminated by Ruby Riott. Following a brief alliance with Nikki Cross, it was reported on February 10, 2019, that Fox showed up to a live event intoxicated. The producer for the match, Arn Anderson, was blamed for allowing her to perform in her condition. Following this, and other backstage issues he had with management, Anderson was released from his contract after having worked for WWE since 2001. Fox's first appearance since was at WrestleMania 35's WrestleMania Axxess in April, however she was not announced as a participant at the event. In her return to in-ring action, Fox competed against Becky Lynch on the April 22 episode of "Raw" and alongside Tamina against Billie Kay and Peyton Royce the following week on "Main Event" on May 2, 2019, respectively, both resulting in losses. The two matches would end up being Fox's final in WWE as an active performer. She made an on-screen appearance on the Raw Reunion episode on July 22, 2019, where she was billed as a WWE Legend amongst other former Superstars. After months of inactivity, her WWE.com profile was moved to the alumni section on October 17, and it was revealed that her contract expired and she had retired after a navel injury. Her final appearance on behalf of the company was at a pre-Wrestlemania fan event on November 13, 2019.


title: Alicia Fox

text: After a year of inactivity, Fox was announced for the January 4, 2021 episode of "Raw Legends Night" where she was seen backstage with Angel Garza and Mickie James. She was also present on stage as a spectator, with several other Legends, watching the main event. A few weeks later, she made a surprise return at the number 21 entry at the Royal Rumble, where she also pinned an interfering R-Truth to win the 24/7 Championship, becoming the first-ever female African American 24/7 Champion as well as the third Superstar, after Triple H and Ric Flair, to win a Championship during a Royal Rumble match. Truth immediately won the title back from Fox after she was eliminated by Mandy Rose, and was subsequently chased by her and other male superstars, who were in pursuit of the Championship. In April, she appeared on stage in her old ECW attire, during the opening of WrestleMania 37 alongside the rest of the active roster.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Fox returned once again at the number 21 spot the following year in the 2022 Royal Rumble as a surprise entry, lasting over six minutes. She was eliminated, following a brief Team Bella reunion, by Nikki Bella.


title: Alicia Fox

text: In 2013, Fox made an appearance on the television series "Cupcake Wars", as a guest judge along with Layla. The following year, Fox and The Miz presented an award at Cartoon Network's Hall of Game Awards.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Fox made guest appearances for the reality television show "Total Divas" produced by WWE and E! during the first two seasons, which began airing in July 2013 and as a co-host with Renee Young on the post-show YouTube series, "After Total Divas". In October 2014, she joined the main cast of the program for the second half of the third season, which began airing in January 2015, and continued until 2017.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Fox made her acting debut by guest starring in two episodes of Syfy series "Dominion" that aired in July 2015.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Fox has appeared in nine WWE video games. She made her in-game debut in "WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2011" and appears in "WWE '12" (DLC), "WWE 13", "WWE 2K16", "WWE 2K17,""WWE 2K18", "WWE 2K19", "WWE 2K20" and "WWE 2K Battlegrounds".


title: Alicia Fox

text: In July 2017, it was revealed that Fox would feature in the debut line of WWE fashion dolls by toy brand Mattel. In October, WWE launched Alicia Fox apparel in the form of t-shirts on their website.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Crawford has a younger sister named Christina, who was also a professional wrestler and Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleader, and now works as a real estate broker. Prior to becoming a professional wrestler, Crawford was a model and signed with WWE after being seen in a fashion catalogue by John Laurinaitis.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Between 2010 to 2012, Crawford was in a relationship with English wrestler Stu Bennett, who she remained friends with after their split.


title: Alicia Fox

text: In 2017, during an interview on Lilian Garcia's podcast, "Chasing Glory", Crawford explained that she suffered from anxiety due to alcohol abuse-related issues in the family. In November 2018, she also disclosed via her social media accounts that she suffered from blindness in one eye for nearly three years during high school.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Later in 2019, Crawford revealed that she had been battling alcoholism and had gone into recovery. In April 2022, Jim Ross revealed that Crawford has been sober for three years.


title: Alicia Fox

text: Crawford remained away from public limelight following her retirement and has been inactive on social media since. On the July 15, 2020 episode of "The Bellas Podcast", Brie Bella revealed that Crawford was now in school.


title: Alicia Fox

text: On October 4, 2022 it was revealed that Crawford and her boyfriend in the last 4 years, Michael Fitzgerald became engaged.


title: Father Brown

text: Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English author G. K. Chesterton. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr. John O'Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922.


title: Father Brown

text: Father Brown is a short, plain Roman Catholic priest, with shapeless clothes, a large umbrella, and an uncanny insight into human behaviour. His unremarkable, seemingly naïve appearance hides an unexpectedly sharp intelligence and keen powers of observation. Somewhat in the vein of Agatha Christie's detective character Miss Marple, Brown uses his unimposing demeanor to his advantage when studying criminals, to whom he seems to pose no danger. His job as a priest allows him to blend into the background of a crime scene, as others can easily assume he is merely there on spiritual business.


title: Father Brown

text: In early stories, Brown is said to be priest for the small parish of Cobhole in Essex, but he relocates to London and travels to many other places, in England and abroad, during the course of the stories. Much of his background is never disclosed, including his age, family, and domestic arrangements. Even his first name is never made clear; in the story "The Eye of Apollo", he is described as "the Reverend J. Brown" (perhaps in tribute to John O'Connor), while in "The Sign of the Broken Sword", he is apparently named Paul.


title: Father Brown

text: Brown's crimesolving method can be described as intuitive and psychological; his process is to reconstruct the perpetrator's methods and motives using imaginative empathy, combined with an encyclopaedic criminal knowledge he has picked up from parishioner confessions. While Brown's cases follow the "Fair Play" rules of classic detective fiction, the crime, once revealed, often turns out to be implausible in its practical details. A typical Father Brown story aims not so much to invent a believable criminological procedure as to propose a novel paradox with subtle moral and theological implications.


title: Father Brown

text: The stories normally contain a rational explanation of who the murderer was and how Brown worked it out. He always emphasises rationality; some stories, such as "The Miracle of Moon Crescent", "The Oracle of the Dog", "The Blast of the Book" and "The Dagger with Wings", poke fun at initially sceptical characters who become convinced of a supernatural explanation for some strange occurrence, but Father Brown easily sees the perfectly ordinary, natural explanation. In fact, he seems to represent an ideal of a devout but considerably educated and "civilised" clergyman. That can be traced to the influence of Roman Catholic thought on Chesterton. Father Brown is characteristically humble and is usually rather quiet, except to say something profound. Although he tends to handle crimes with a steady, realistic approach, he believes in the supernatural as the greatest reason of all.


title: Father Brown

text: When he created Father Brown, the English writer G. K. Chesterton was already famous in Britain and America for his philosophical and paradox-laden fiction and nonfiction, including the novel "The Man Who Was Thursday", the theological work "Orthodoxy", several literary studies, and many brief essays. Father Brown makes his first appearance in the story "The Blue Cross" published in 1910 and continues to appear throughout fifty short stories in five volumes, with two more stories discovered and published posthumously, often assisted in his crime-solving by the reformed criminal M. Hercule Flambeau.


title: Father Brown

text: Father Brown also appears in a third story — making a total of fifty-three — that did not appear in the five volumes published in Chesterton's lifetime, "The Donnington Affair", which has a curious history. In the October 1914 issue of an obscure magazine, "The Premier", Sir Max Pemberton published the first part of the story, then invited a number of detective story writers, including Chesterton, to use their talents to solve the mystery of the murder described. Chesterton and Father Brown's solution followed in the November issue. The story was first reprinted in the "Chesterton Review" in 1981, and published in book form in the 1987 collection "Thirteen Detectives".


title: Father Brown

text: Many of the "Father Brown" stories were produced for financial reasons and at great speed. Chesterton wrote in 1920 that "I think it only fair to confess that I have myself written some of the worst mystery stories in the world." At the time he wrote this, Chesterton had given up writing Father Brown stories, though he would later return to them; Chesterton wrote 25 Father Brown stories between 1910 and 1914, then another 18 from 1923 to 1927, then 10 more from 1930 to 1936.


title: Father Brown

text: Father Brown was a vehicle for conveying Chesterton's view of the world and, of all of his characters, is perhaps closest to Chesterton's own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view. Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophic truths than with scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read. However, the Father Brown series commenced before Chesterton's own conversion to Roman Catholicism.


title: Father Brown

text: Although Chesterton himself saw them as ephemeral, the Father Brown stories became his most lastingly popular works, remaining a familiar classic of detective fiction into the twenty-first century. T. J. Binyon, in a 1989 survey of fictional detectives, concluded that Father Brown had achieved a fame nearly as great as that of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. As Chesterton was already a well-established literary figure before creating Father Brown, the stories' popularity also had a positive impact on detective fiction as a whole, lending the genre further credibility.


title: Father Brown

text: Most historians of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction have ranked the Father Brown stories among the best of the genre. Binyon noted that while "the best of the stories are undoubted masterpieces, brilliantly and poetically written", they often hinge on crimes "so fantastic as to render the whole story absurd"; however, "Chesterton's skill as a writer manifests itself precisely in the way in which the moral aspects are concealed", allowing an astute reader to enjoy the stories as parables. Antonio Gramsci, who found the stories "delicious" in their juxtaposition of heightened poetic style and detective-story plotting, argued that Brown was a quintessentially Catholic figure, whose nuanced psychology and moral integrity stand in sharp contrast to "the mechanical thought processes of the Protestants" and make Sherlock Holmes "look like a pretentious little boy".


title: Father Brown

text: Kingsley Amis, who called the stories "wonderfully organized puzzles that tell an overlooked truth", argued that they show show Chesterton "in top form" as a writer of literary Impressionism, creating "some of the finest, and least regarded descriptive writing of this century":


title: Father Brown

text: P. D. James highlights the stories' "variety of pleasures, including their ingenuity, their wit and intelligence, […] the brilliance of the writing", and especially their insight into "the greatest of all problems, the vagaries of the human heart."


title: Father Brown

text: In Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", a quote from "The Queer Feet" is an important element of the structure and theme of the book. Waugh's novel quotes Father Brown's line after catching a criminal, hearing his confession, and letting him go: "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." In Book Three of "Brideshead Revisited", titled "A Twitch Upon the Thread", the quotation acts as a metaphor for the operation of grace in the characters' lives.


title: Father Brown

text: Father Brown has occasionally also appeared as a character in works not by Chesterton. In the novel "The D Case" by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, Father Brown joins forces with other famous fictional detectives to solve Charles Dickens's "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". The American Chesterton Society published John Peterson's "The Return of Father Brown", a further forty-four mysteries solved by a Father Brown living in the United States in his nineties. In the Italian novel "Il destino di Padre Brown" ("The Destiny of Father Brown") by Paolo Gulisano, the priest detective is elected pope after Pius XI with the pontifical name of "Innocent XIV".


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding is a recreational and competitive activity that involves descending a snow-covered surface while standing on a snowboard that is almost always attached to a rider's feet. It features in the Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding was developed in the United States, inspired by skateboarding, sledding, surfing, and skiing. It became popular around the globe, and was introduced as a Winter Olympic Sport at Nagano in 1998 and featured in the Winter Paralympics at Sochi in 2014. , its popularity (as measured by equipment sales) in the United States peaked in 2007 and has been in a decline since.


title: Snowboarding

text: The first snowboards were developed in 1965 when Sherman Poppen, an engineer in Muskegon, Michigan, invented a toy for his daughters by fastening two skis together and attaching a rope to one end so he would have some control as they stood on the board and glided downhill. Dubbed the "snurfer" (combining snow and surfer) by his wife Nancy, the toy proved so popular among his daughters' friends that Poppen licensed the idea to a manufacturer, Brunswick Corporation, that sold about a million snurfers over the next decade. And, in 1966 alone, over half a million snurfers were sold.


title: Snowboarding

text: Modern snowboarding was pioneered by Tom Sims and Jake Burton Carpenter, who both contributed significant innovations and started influential companies. In February 1968, Poppen organized the first snurfing competition at a Michigan ski resort that attracted enthusiasts from all over the country. One of those early pioneers was Tom Sims, a devotee of skateboarding (a sport born in the 1950s when kids attached roller skate wheels to small boards that they steered by shifting their weight). In the 1960s, as an eighth grader in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Sims crafted a snowboard in his school shop class by gluing carpet to the top of a piece of wood and attaching aluminum sheeting to the bottom. He produced commercial snowboards in the mid-70s. Others experimented with board-on-snow configurations at this time, including Welsh skateboard enthusiasts Jon Roberts and Pete Matthews developed their own snowboards to use at their local dry ski slope.


title: Snowboarding

text: Also during this same period, in 1977, Jake Burton Carpenter, a Vermont native who had enjoyed snurfing since the age of 14, impressed the crowd at a Michigan snurfing competition with bindings he had designed to secure his feet to the board. That same year, he founded Burton Snowboards in Londonderry, Vermont. The "snowboards" were made of wooden planks that were flexible and had water ski foot traps. Very few people picked up snowboarding because the price of the board was considered too high at $38 and were not allowed on many ski hills, but eventually Burton would become the biggest snowboarding company in the business. Burton's early designs for boards with bindings became the dominant features in snowboarding.


title: Snowboarding

text: The first competitions to offer prize money were the National Snurfing Championship, held at Muskegon State Park in Muskegon, Michigan. In 1979, Jake Burton Carpenter came from Vermont to compete with a snowboard of his own design. There were protests about Jake entering with a non-snurfer board. Paul Graves, and others, advocated that Jake be allowed to race. A "modified" "Open" division was created and won by Jake as the sole entrant. That race was considered the first competition for snowboards and is the start of what became competitive snowboarding. Ken Kampenga, John Asmussen and Jim Trim placed first, second and third respectively in the Standard competition with best two combined times of 24.71, 25.02 and 25.41; and Jake Carpenter won prize money as the sole entrant in the "open" division with a time of 26.35. In 1980 the event moved to Pando Winter Sports Park near Grand Rapids, Michigan because of a lack of snow that year at the original venue.


title: Snowboarding

text: In the early 1980s, Aleksey Ostatnigrosh and Alexei Melnikov, two Snurfers from the Soviet Union, patented design changes to the Snurfer to allow jumping by attaching a bungee cord, a single footed binding to the Snurfer tail, and a two-foot binding design for improved control.


title: Snowboarding

text: As snowboarding became more popular in the 1970s and 1980s, pioneers such as Dimitrije Milovich (founder of Winterstick out of Salt Lake City, UT), Jake Burton Carpenter (founder of Burton Snowboards from Londonderry, Vermont), Tom Sims (founder of Sims Snowboards), David Kemper (founder of Kemper Snowboards) and Mike Olson (founder of Gnu Snowboards) came up with new designs for boards and mechanisms that slowly developed into the snowboards and other related equipment. From these developments, modern snowboarding equipment usually consists of a snowboard with specialized bindings and boots.


title: Snowboarding

text: In April 1981, the "King of the Mountain" Snowboard competition was held at Ski Cooper in Colorado. Tom Sims along with an assortment of other snowboarders of the time were present. One entrant showed up on a homemade snowboard with a formica bottom that turned out to not slide so well on the snow.


title: Snowboarding

text: In 1982, the first USA National Snowboard race was held near Woodstock, Vermont, at Suicide Six. The race, organized by Graves, was won by Burton's first team rider Doug Bouton.


title: Snowboarding

text: In 1983, the first World Championship halfpipe competition was held at Soda Springs, California. Tom Sims, founder of Sims Snowboards, organized the event with the help of Mike Chantry, a snowboard instructor at Soda Springs.


title: Snowboarding

text: In 1985, the first World Cup was held in Zürs, Austria, further cementing snowboarding's recognition as an official international competitive sport.


title: Snowboarding

text: In 1990, the International Snowboard Federation (ISF) was founded to provide universal contest regulations. In addition, the United States of America Snowboard Association (USASA) provides instructing guidelines and runs snowboard competitions in the U.S. today, high-profile snowboarding events like the Winter X Games, Air & Style, US Open, Olympic Games and other events are broadcast worldwide. Many alpine resorts have terrain parks.


title: Snowboarding

text: At the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, Snowboarding became an official Olympic event. France's Karine Ruby was the first ever to win an Olympic gold medal for Woman's Snowboarding at the 1998 Olympics, while Canadian Ross Rebagliati was the first ever to win an Olympic gold medal for Men's Snowboarding.


title: Snowboarding

text: Initially, ski areas adopted the sport at a much slower pace than the winter sports public. Indeed, for many years, there was animosity between skiers and snowboarders, which led to an ongoing skier vs snowboarder feud. Early snowboards were banned from the slopes by park officials. For several years snowboarders would have to take a small skills assessment prior to being allowed to ride the chairlifts. It was thought that an unskilled snowboarder would wipe the snow off the mountain. In 1985, only seven percent of U.S. ski areas allowed snowboarding, with a similar proportion in Europe. As equipment and skills improved, gradually snowboarding became more accepted. In 1990, most major ski areas had separate slopes for snowboarders. Now, approximately 97% of all ski areas in North America and Europe allow snowboarding, and more than half have jumps, rails and half pipes.


title: Snowboarding

text: In 2004, snowboarding had 6.6 million active participants. An industry spokesman said that "twelve year-olds are out-riding adults." The same article said that most snowboarders are 18–24 years old and that women constitute 25% of participants.


title: Snowboarding

text: There were 8.2 million snowboarders in the US and Canada for the 2009–2010 season. There was a 10% increase over the previous season, accounting for more than 30% of all snow sports participants.


title: Snowboarding

text: On 2 May 2012, the International Paralympic Committee announced that adaptive snowboarding (dubbed "para-snowboarding") would debut as a men's and women's medal event in the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games taking place in Sochi, Russia.


title: Snowboarding

text: Since snowboarding's inception as an established winter sport, it has developed various styles, each with its own specialized equipment and technique. The most common styles today are: freeride, freestyle, and freecarve/race. These styles are used for both recreational and professional snowboarding. While each style is unique, there is overlap between them.


title: Snowboarding

text: "Jibbing" is the term for technical riding on non-standard surfaces. The word "jib" is both a noun and a verb, depending on the usage of the word. As a noun: a jib includes metal rails, boxes, benches, concrete ledges, walls, vehicles, rocks and logs. As a verb: to jib is referring to the action of jumping, sliding, or riding on top of objects other than snow. It is directly influenced by grinding a skateboard. Jibbing is a freestyle snowboarding technique of riding. Typically jibbing occurs in a snowboard resort park but can also be done in urban environments.


title: Snowboarding

text: Freeriding is a style without a set of governing rules or set course, typically on natural, un-groomed terrain. The basic allows for various snowboarding styles in a fluid motion and spontaneity through naturally rugged terrain. It can be similar to freestyle with the exception that no man-made features are utilized. "See also Backcountry snowboarding."


title: Snowboarding

text: Freestyle snowboarding is any riding that includes performing tricks. In freestyle, the rider utilizes natural and man-made features such as rails, jumps, boxes, and innumerable others to perform tricks. It is a popular all-inclusive concept that distinguishes the creative aspects of snowboarding, in contrast to a style like alpine snowboarding.


title: Snowboarding

text: Alpine snowboarding is a discipline within the sport of snowboarding. It is practiced on groomed pistes. It has been an Olympic event since 1998.


title: Snowboarding

text: Sometimes called freecarving or hardbooting(due to the equipment used), this discipline usually takes place on hard packed snow or groomed runs(although it can be practiced in any and all conditions) and focuses on carving linked turns, much like surfing or longboarding, and is seen as superior to other disciplines in many Europeans countries. Little or no jumping takes place in this discipline. Alpine Snowboarding consists of a small portion of the general snowboard population, that has a well connected social community and its own specific board manufacturers, most situated in Europe. Alpine Snowboard equipment includes a ski-like hardshell boot and plate binding system with a true directional snowboard that is stiffer and narrower to manage linking turns with greater forces and speed. Shaped skis can thank these "freecarve" snowboards for the cutting-edge technology leading to their creation. A skilled alpine snowboarder can link numerous turns into a run placing their body very close to the ground each turn, similar to a motocross turn or waterski carve. Depending on factors including stiffness, turning radius and personality this can be done slowly or fast.


title: Snowboarding

text: Carvers make perfect half-circles out of each turn, changing edges when the snowboard is perpendicular to the fall line and starting every turn on the downhill edge. Carving on a snowboard is like riding a roller coaster, because the board will lock into a turn radius and provide what feels like multiple Gs of acceleration.


title: Snowboarding

text: Alpine snowboarding shares more visual similarities with skiing equipment than it does with snowboarding equipment. Compared to freestyle snowboarding gear:


title: Snowboarding

text: Competitors perform tricks while descending a course, moving around, over, across, up, or down terrain features. The course is full of obstacles including boxes, rails, jumps, jibs, or anything else the board or rider can slide across. Slopestyle is a judged event and winning a slopestyle contest usually comes from successfully executing the most difficult line in the terrain park while having a smooth flowing line of difficult, mistake-free tricks performed on the obstacles. However, overall impression and style can play factor in winning a slopestyle contest and the rider who lands the hardest tricks will not always win over the rider who lands easier tricks on more difficult paths.


title: Snowboarding

text: Big air competitions are contests where riders perform tricks after launching off a man made jump built specifically for the event. Competitors perform tricks in the air, aiming to attain sizable height and distance, all while securing a clean landing. Many competitions also require the rider to do a complex trick. Not all competitions call for a trick to win the gold; some intermittent competitions are based solely on height and distance of the launch of the snowboarder. Some competitions also require the rider to do a specific trick to win the major prize. One of the first snowboard competitions where Travis Rice attempted and landed a "double back flip backside 180" took place at the 2006 Red Bull Gap Session.


title: Snowboarding

text: The half-pipe is a semi-circular ditch dug into the mountain or purpose-built ramp made up of snow, with walls between 8 and . Competitors perform tricks while going from one side to the other and while in the air above the sides of the pipe.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboard Cross, also known as "Boardercross", "Boarder X", or "Snowboard X", and commonly abbreviated as "SBX", or just "BX", is a snowboarding discipline consisting of several (typically 4 to 6) riders racing head-to-head down a course with jumps, berms and other obstacles constructed out of snow. Snowboard cross began in the 1980s, earning its place as an official Winter Olympic event in the 2006 Turin games. Unlike other snowboard racing disciplines such as parallel giant slalom, competitors race on a single course together.


title: Snowboarding

text: In snowboard racing, riders must complete a downhill course constructed of a series of turning color indicators (gates) placed in the snow at prescribed distances apart. A gate consists of a tall pole and a short pole, connected by a triangular panel. The racer must pass around the short side of the gate, passing the long side of the gate doesn't count. There are 3 main formats used in snowboard racing including; single person, parallel courses or multiple people on the course at the same time (SBX).


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding contests are held throughout the world and range from grassroots competitions to professional events contested worldwide.


title: Snowboarding

text: Some of the larger snowboarding contests include: the European Air & Style, the Japanese X-Trail Jam, Burton Global Open Series, Shakedown, FIS World Championships, the annual FIS World Cup, the Winter X Games, Freeride World Tour and the Winter Dew Tour.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding has been a Winter Olympic sport since 1998 Winter Olympics. Since its inauguration, Olympic snowboarding has seen many additions and removals of events. During the 2018 Winter Olympics, snowboarding events contested included big air, halfpipe, parallel giant slalom, slopestyle and snowboard cross.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarder Magazine's Superpark event was created in 1996. Over 150 of the World's top pros are invited to advance freestyle snowboarding on the most progressive terrain parks.


title: Snowboarding

text: Part of the snowboarding approach is to ensure maximum fun, friendship and event quality. Reflecting this perspective of snowboarding, you can find "Anti Contests" including are an important part of its identity including The Holy Oly Revival at The Summit at Snoqualmie, The Nate Chute Hawaiian Classic at Whitefish, the original anti-contest, the World Quarterpipe Championships and the Grenade Games.


title: Snowboarding

text: The United States of America Snowboarding and Freeski Association (USASA) features grassroots-level competitions designed to be a stepping stone for aspiring athletes looking to progress up the competition pipeline. The USASA consists of 36 regional series in which anyone can compete against athletes in a multitude of classes. For snowboarding, USASA contests regional events in six primary disciplines (Slalom, Giant Slalom, Slopestyle, Halfpipe, Boardercross, and Rail Jam), where competitors earn points towards a national ranking and qualify to compete at the USASA National Championships.


title: Snowboarding

text: The snowboarding way of life came about as a natural response to the culture from which it emerged. Early on, there was a rebellion against skiing culture and the view that snowboarders were inferior. Skiers did not easily accept this new culture on their slopes. The two cultures contrasted each other in several ways including how they spoke, acted, and their entire style of clothing. Snowboarders first embraced the punk and later the hip-hop look into their style. Words such as "dude", "gnarly", and "Shred the Gnar" are some examples of words used in the snowboarding culture. Snowboarding subculture became a crossover between the urban and suburban styles on snow, which made an easy transition from surfing and skateboarding culture over to snowboarding culture. In fact many skateboarders and surfers in the winter months snowboarded, and were the early snowboarders.


title: Snowboarding

text: The early stereotypes of snowboarding included "lazy", "grungy", "punk", "stoners", "troublemakers", and numerous others, many of which are associated with skateboarding and surfing as well. However, these stereotypes may be considered "out of style". Snowboarding has become a sport that encompasses a very diverse international based crowd and fanbase of many millions, so much so that it is no longer possible to stereotype such a large community. Reasons for these dying stereotypes include how mainstream and popular the sport has become, with the shock factor of snowboarding's quick take off on the slopes wearing off. Skiers and snowboarders are becoming used to each other, showing more respect to each other on the mountain. "The typical stereotype of the sport is changing as the demographics change". While these two subcultures are now becoming accustomed to each other, there are still three resorts, in the United States, which do not allow snowboarding. Alta, Deer Valley, and Mad River Glen are the last skiing only resorts in North America and have become a focal point over time for the remaining animosity between snowboarding and skiing.


title: Snowboarding

text: Common injuries in snowboarding differ between professional and recreational groups. The most common type of injury for snowboarders is injury to the upper body. In recreational snowboarding, wrist injuries are more likely to occur. Among professional snowboarders, injuries to the lower half, specifically the knee joint, are more likely to occur. When injured, snowboarders are twice as likely to get a fracture as skiers. Other minor injuries that happen are "wrist injuries, shoulder soft tissue injuries, ankle injuries, concussions, and clavicle fractures, were seen injuries are very common when snowboarding". In recreational and inexperienced "Most Injuries to snowboarders occurred more often while they were traveling at reckless speed on moderate slopes". Another common way injuries happen are because they try sticking with someone that is a higher skill level, which they are not capable of handling because of the lack of skill they posses. Some major injuries that occur during snowboarding are head, and spinal Injuries, "The main cause of spinal fractures in snowboarders was Jump landing failure and Compression type fractures occur in about 80% of snowboarders with vertebral fractures because they frequently fall backwards, and this can cause axial loading and anterior compression fractures". For professionals they dont really have as much injuries to their upper body. "Most of the injuries for professionals and elite snowboarders frequently sustain injuries when trying to execute challenging tricks at high speeds and with increased levels of force to the lower limbs".


title: Snowboarding

text: The average snowboarder is a male in their early twenties, and there are three times as many men as there are women in the sport. Snowboarders have a 2.4 times greater risk of fractures than skiers, particularly in the upper extremities. Conversely, snowboarders have a lower risk of knee injuries than skiers.The injury rate for snowboarding is about four to six per thousand persons per day, which is around double the injury rate for alpine skiing. Injuries are more likely amongst beginners, especially those who do not take lessons with professional instructors. A quarter of all injuries occur to first-time riders and half of all injuries occur to those with less than a year of experience. Experienced riders are less likely to suffer injury, but the injuries that do occur tend to be more severe.


title: Snowboarding

text: Two thirds of injuries occur to the upper body and one third to the lower body. This contrasts with alpine skiing where two thirds of injuries are to the lower body. The most common types of injuries are sprains, which account for around 40% of injuries. The most common point of injury is the wrists – 40% of all snowboard injuries are to the wrists and 24% of all snowboard injuries are wrist fractures. There are around 100,000 wrist fractures worldwide among snowboarders each year. For this reason the use of wrist guards, either separate or built into gloves, is very strongly recommended. They are often compulsory in beginner's classes and their use reduces the likelihood of wrist injury by half. In addition it is important for snow boarders to learn how to fall without stopping the fall with their hand by trying to "push" the slope away, as landing a wrist which is bent at a 90 degree angle increase the chance of it breaking. Rather, landing with the arms stretched out (like a wing) and slapping the slope with the entire arm is an effective way to break a fall. This is the method used by practitioners of judo and other martial arts to break a fall when they are thrown against the floor by a training partner.


title: Snowboarding

text: The risk of head injury is two to six times greater for snowboarders than for skiers and injuries follow the pattern of being rarer, but more severe, with experienced riders. Head injuries can occur both as a consequence of a collision and when failing to carry out a heel-side turn. The latter can result in the rider landing on his or her back and slamming the back of his or her head onto the ground, resulting in an occipital head injury. For this reason, helmets are widely recommended. Protective eyewear is also recommended as eye injury can be caused by impact and snow blindness can be a result of exposure to strong ultra-violet light in snow-covered areas. The wearing of ultra-violet-absorbing goggles is recommended even on hazy or cloudy days as ultra-violet light can penetrate clouds.


title: Snowboarding

text: Unlike ski bindings, snowboard bindings are not designed to release automatically in a fall. The mechanical support provided by the feet being locked to the board has the effect of reducing the likelihood of knee injury – 15% of snowboard injuries are to the knee, compared with 45% of all skiing injuries. Such injuries are typically to the knee ligaments, bone fractures are rare. Fractures to the lower leg are also rare but 20% of injuries are to the foot and ankle. Fractures of the talus bone are rare in other sports but account for 2% of snowboard injuries – a lateral process talus fracture is sometimes called ""snowboarder's ankle"" by medical staff. This particular injury results in persistent lateral pain in the affected ankle yet is difficult to spot in a plain X-ray image. It may be misdiagnosed as just a sprain, with possibly serious consequences as not treating the fracture can result in serious long-term damage to the ankle. The use of portable ultrasound for mountainside diagnostics has been reviewed and appears to be a plausible tool for diagnosing some of the common injuries associated with the sport.


title: Snowboarding

text: Four to eight percent of snowboarding injuries take place while the person is waiting in ski-lift lines or entering and exiting ski lifts. Snowboarders push themselves forward with a free foot while in the ski-lift line, leaving the other foot (usually that of the lead leg) locked on the board at a 9–27 degree angle, placing a large torque force on this leg and predisposing the person to knee injury if a fall occurs. Snowboard binding rotating devices are designed to minimize the torque force, Quick Stance being the first developed in 1995. They allow snowboarders to turn the locked foot straight into the direction of the tip of the snowboard without removing the boot from the boot binding.


title: Snowboarding

text: It is best to learn the different kinds of avalanches, how to prevent causing one and how to react when one is going to happen. Also when going out onto the snow, all who practice an activity with increased chances of injury should have a basic First Aid knowledge and know how to deal with injuries that may occur.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding boots should be well-fitted, with toes snug in the end of the boot when standing upright and slightly away from the end when in the snowboarding position. Padding or "armor" is recommended on other body parts such as hips, knees, spine, and shoulders. To further help avoid injury to body parts, especially knees, it is recommended to use the right technique. To acquire the right technique, one should be taught by a qualified instructor. Also, when snowboarding alone, precaution should be taken to avoid tree wells, a particularly dangerous area of loose snow that may form at the base of trees.


title: Snowboarding

text: Some care is also required when waxing a board as fluorocarbon waxes emit toxic fumes when overheated. Waxing is best performed in a ventilated area with care being taken to use the wax at the correct temperature – the wax should be melted but not smoking or smoldering.


title: Snowboarding

text: In a study conducted to examine the types of snowboarding injuries and changes in injury patterns over time, data was collected on injured snowboarders and skiers in a base-lodge clinic of a ski resort in Vermont over 18 seasons (1988–2006) and included extensive information about injury patterns, demographics, and experience. In conclusion of the study, the highest rate of injury was among young, inexperienced, female snowboarders. Injury rates in snowboarders have fluctuated over time but still remain higher than skiers. No evidence was found that those who spend more time in terrain parks are over represented in the injury population.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding films have become a main part of progression in the sport. Each season, many films are released, usually in autumn. These are made by many snowboard-specific video production companies as well as manufacturing companies that use these films as a form of advertisement. Snowboarding videos usually contain video footage of professional riders sponsored by companies. An example of commercial use of snowboarding films would be "The White Album", a film by snowboarding legend and filmmaker Dave Seoane about Shaun White, that includes cameos by Tony Hawk and was sponsored by PlayStation, Mountain Dew and Burton Snowboards. Snowboarding films are also used as documentation of snowboarding and showcasing of current trends and styles of the sport. In addition, the 2011 movie "The Art of Flight" showcased snowboarders such as Travis Rice attempting to attain greater feats in the sport of snowboarding.


title: Snowboarding

text: However, sometimes the snowboarding industry is not supportive of all snowboarding-themed films. In 2013, "The Crash Reel", a feature-length documentary by filmmaker Lucy Walker about former Shaun White rival Kevin Pearce, premiered on the film festival circuit to critical acclaim and was subsequently broadcast on HBO. Using Pearce's career-ending traumatic brain injury and subsequent recovery as a backdrop, the film examines the physical dangers inherent to pro snowboarders and other extreme sports professional athletes under pressure by sponsors and the media to perform increasingly spectacular feats. Although there are significant references to various brands in the film, Walker is "adamant" that the snowboarding industry did not sponsor the film in any way and in fact has been unsupportive, despite the film's mainstream media success.


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboard magazines are integral in promoting the sport, although less so with the advent of the internet age. Photo incentives are written into many professional riders' sponsorship contracts giving professionals not only a publicity but a financial incentive to have a photo published in a magazine. Snowboard magazine staff travel with professional riders throughout the winter season and cover travel, contests, lifestyle, rider and company profiles, and product reviews. Snowboard magazines have recently made a push to expand their brands to the online market, and there has also been a growth in online-only publications. Popular magazines include "Transworld Snowboarding" (USA), "Snowboarder Magazine" (USA), "Snowboard Magazine" (USA), and "Whitelines" (UK).


title: Snowboarding

text: Snowboarding video games provide interactive entertainment on and off season. Most games for this genre have been made for consoles, such as the Xbox and PlayStation. A plethora of online casual snowboarding games also exist along with games for mobile phone.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by real-world environments while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: The first LARPs were run in the late 1970s, inspired by tabletop role-playing games and genre fiction. The activity spread internationally during the 1980s and has diversified into a wide variety of styles. Play may be very game-like or may be more concerned with dramatic or artistic expression. Events can also be designed to achieve educational or political goals. The fictional genres used vary greatly, from realistic modern or historical settings to fantastic or futuristic eras. Production values are sometimes minimal, but can involve elaborate venues and costumes. LARPs range in size from small private events lasting a few hours, to large public events with thousands of players lasting for days.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARP has also been referred to as "live role-playing" ("LRP"), "interactive literature", and "free form role-playing". Some of these terms are still in common use; however, LARP has become the most commonly accepted term. It is sometimes written in lowercase, as "larp". The "live action" in LARP is analogous to the term "live action" used in film and video to differentiate works with human actors from animation. Playing a LARP is often called "larping", and one who does it is a "larper".


title: Live action role-playing game

text: The participants in a LARP physically portray characters in a fictional setting, improvising their characters' speech and movements somewhat like actors in improvisational theatre. This is distinct from tabletop role-playing games, where character actions are described verbally. LARPs may be played in a public or private area and may last for hours or days. There is usually no audience. Players may dress as their character and carry appropriate equipment, and the environment is sometimes decorated to resemble the setting. LARPs can be one-off events or a series of events in the same setting, and events can vary in size from a handful of players to several thousand.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Events are put on for the benefit of the "players", who take on roles called "player characters" ("PCs") that the players may create themselves or be given by the gamemasters. Players sometimes play the same character repeatedly at separate events, progressively developing the character and its relations with other characters and the setting.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Arrangers called "gamemasters" ("GMs") determine the rules and setting of a LARP, and may also influence an event and act as referees while it is taking place. The GMs may also do the logistical work, or there may be other arrangers who handle details such as advertising the event, booking a venue, and financial management. Unlike the GM in a tabletop role-playing game, a LARP GM seldom has an overview of everything that is happening during play because numerous participants may be interacting at once. For this reason, a LARP GM's role is often less concerned with tightly maintaining a narrative or directly entertaining the players, and more with arranging the structure of the LARP before play begins and facilitating the players and crew to maintain the fictional environment during play.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Participants sometimes known as the "crew" may help the GMs to set up and maintain the environment of the LARP during play by acting as stagehands or playing "non-player characters" ("NPCs") who fill out the setting. Crew typically receive more information about the setting and more direction from the GMs than players do. In a tabletop role-playing game, a GM usually plays all the NPCs, whereas in a LARP, each NPC is typically played by a separate crew member. Sometimes players are asked to play NPCs for periods of an event.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Much of play consists of interactions between characters. Some LARP scenarios primarily feature interaction between PCs. Other scenarios focus on interaction between PCs and aspects of the setting, including NPCs, that are under the direction of the GMs.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARP does not have a single point of origin, but was invented independently by groups in North America, Europe, and Australia. These groups shared an experience with genre fiction or tabletop role-playing games, and a desire to physically experience such settings. In addition to tabletop role-playing, LARP is rooted in childhood games of make believe, play fighting, costume parties, roleplay simulations, Commedia dell'arte, improvisational theatre, psychodrama, military simulations, and historical reenactment groups such as the Society for Creative Anachronism.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: The earliest recorded LARP group is "Dagorhir", which was founded in 1977 in the United States and focuses on fantasy battles. Soon after the release of the movie "Logan's Run" in 1976, rudimentary live role-playing games based on the movie were run at US science fiction conventions. In 1981, the "International Fantasy Gaming Society" (IFGS) started, with rules influenced by "Dungeons & Dragons". IFGS was named after a fictional group in the 1981 novel "Dream Park", which described futuristic LARPs. In 1982, the "Society for Interactive Literature", a predecessor of the "Live Action Roleplayers Association" (LARPA), formed as the first recorded theatre-style LARP group in the US.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: "Treasure Trap", formed in 1982 at Peckforton Castle, was the first recorded LARP game in the UK and influenced the fantasy LARPs that followed there. The first recorded LARP in Australia was run in 1983, using the science fiction "Traveller" setting. In 1993, White Wolf Publishing released "Mind's Eye Theatre," which is still played internationally and is probably the most commercially successful published LARP. The first German events were in the early 1990s, with fantasy LARP in particular growing quickly there, so that since 2001, two major German events have been run annually that have between 3000 and 7000 players each and attract players from around Europe.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Today, LARP is a widespread activity internationally. Games with thousands of participants are run by for-profit companies, and a small industry exists to sell costume, armour and foam weapons intended primarily for LARP.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Most LARPs are intended as games for entertainment. Enjoyable aspects can include the collaborative creation of a story, the attempt to overcome challenges in pursuit of a character's objectives, and a sense of immersion in a fictional setting. LARPs may also include other game-like aspects such as intellectual puzzles, and sport-like aspects such as fighting with simulated weapons.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Some LARPs stress artistic considerations such as dramatic interaction or challenging subject matter. Avant-garde or "arthaus" events have especially experimental approaches and high culture aspirations and are occasionally held in fine art contexts such as festivals or art museums. The themes of avant-garde events often include politics, culture, religion, sexuality and the human condition. Such LARPs are common in the Nordic countries but also present elsewhere.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: In addition to entertainment and artistic merit, LARP events may be designed for educational or political purposes. For example, the Danish secondary school uses LARP to teach most of its classes. Language classes can be taught by immersing students in a role-playing scenario in which they are forced to improvise speech or writing in the language they are learning. Politically-themed LARP events may attempt to awaken or shape political thinking within a culture.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Because LARP involves a controlled artificial environment within which people interact, it has sometimes been used as a research tool to test theories in social fields such as economics or law. For example, LARP has been used to study the application of game theory to the development of criminal law.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: During a LARP, player actions in the real world represent character actions in an imaginary setting. Game rules, physical symbols and theatrical improvisation are used to bridge differences between the real world and the setting. For example, a rope could signify an imaginary wall. Realistic-looking weapon props and risky physical activity are sometimes discouraged or forbidden for safety reasons. While the fictional timeline in a tabletop RPG often progresses in "game-time", which may be much faster or slower than the time passing for players, LARPs are different in that they usually run in real-time, with game-time only being used in special circumstances.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: There is a distinction between when a player is "in character", meaning they are actively representing their character, and when the player is "out-of-character", meaning they are being themselves. Some LARPs encourage players to stay consistently in character except in emergencies, while others accept players being out-of-character at times. In a LARP, it is usually assumed that players are speaking and acting in character unless otherwise noted, which is the opposite of normal practice in tabletop role-playing games. Character knowledge is usually considered to be separate from player knowledge, and acting upon information a character would not know may be viewed as cheating.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: While most LARPs maintain a clear distinction between the real world and the fictional setting, "pervasive" LARPs mingle fiction with modern reality in a fashion similar to alternate reality games. Bystanders who are unaware that a game is taking place may be treated as part of the fictional setting, and in-character materials may be incorporated into the real world.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Many LARPs have game rules that determine how characters can affect each other and the setting. The rules may be defined in a publication or created by the gamemasters. These rules may define characters' capabilities, what can be done with various objects that exist in the setting, and what characters can do during the "downtime" between LARP events. Because referees are often not available to mediate all character actions, players are relied upon to be honest in their application of the rules.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Some LARP rules call for the use of simulated weapons such as foam weapons or airsoft guns to determine whether characters succeed in hitting one another in combat situations. In Russian LARP events, weapons made of hard plastic, metal or wood are used. The alternative to using simulated weapons is to pause role-play and determine the outcome of an action symbolically, for example by rolling dice, playing rock paper scissors or comparing character attributes.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: There are also LARPs that do without rules, instead relying on players to use their common sense or feel for dramatic appropriateness to cooperatively decide what the outcome of their actions will be.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARPs can have any genre, although many use themes and settings derived from genre fiction. Some LARPs borrow a setting from an established work in another medium (e.g., "The Lord of the Rings" or the "World of Darkness"), while others use settings based on the real world or designed specifically for the LARP. Proprietary campaign settings, together with rulesets, are often the principal creative asset of LARP groups and LARP publishers.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARPs set in the modern day may explore everyday concerns, or special interests such as espionage or military activity. Such LARPs sometimes resemble an Alternate Reality Game, an "Assassin" game, or a military simulation using live combat with airsoft, laser tag, or paintball markers. LARPs can also be set in historical eras or have semi-historical settings with mythological or fantastical aspects incorporated.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Fantasy is one of the most common LARP genres internationally and is the genre that the largest events use. Fantasy LARPs are set in pseudo-historical worlds inspired by fantasy literature and fantasy role-playing games such as "Dungeons & Dragons". These settings typically have magic, fantasy races, and limited technology. Many fantasy LARPs focus on adventure or on conflict between character factions. In contrast, science fiction LARPs take place in futuristic settings with high technology and sometimes with extraterrestrial life. This describes a broad array of LARPs, including politically themed LARPs depicting dystopian or utopian societies and settings inspired by cyberpunk, space opera and post-apocalyptic fiction.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Horror LARPs are inspired by horror fiction. Popular subgenres include zombie apocalypse and Cthulhu Mythos, sometimes using the published "Cthulhu Live" rules. The World of Darkness, published by White Wolf Publishing, is a widely used goth–punk horror setting in which players usually portray secretive supernatural creatures such as vampires and werewolves. This setting can be played using "Mind's Eye Theatre", which is a set of LARP rules also published by White Wolf. World of Darkness LARPs are usually played in a "chronicle", a series of short events held at regular intervals, and are also popular at conventions. An international chronicle is run by White Wolf's official fan club, the "Camarilla".


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARP events have a wide variety of styles that often overlap. Simple distinctions can be made regarding the genre used, the presence of simulated weapons or abstract rules, and whether players create their own characters or have them assigned by gamemasters. There is also a distinction between scenarios that are only run once and those that are designed to be repeatable. A number of other common classifications follow.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Theatre-style, or freeform, LARP is characterised by a focus on interaction between characters that are written by the gamemasters, not using simulated weapons for combat, and an eclectic approach to genre and setting. Events in this style typically only last a few hours and require relatively little preparation by players and are sometimes played at gaming conventions. Some murder mystery games where players are assigned characters and encouraged to roleplay freely also resemble theatre-style LARP.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Some very large events known as fests (short for "festival") have hundreds or thousands of participants who are usually split into competing character factions camped separately around a large venue. There are only a few fests in the world, all based in Europe and Canada; however, their size means that they have a significant influence on local LARP culture and design. At the other end of the size scale, some small events known as "linear" or "line-course" LARPs feature a small group of PCs facing a series of challenges from NPCs and are often more tightly planned and controlled by GMs than other styles of LARP.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Nordic larp emphasises a collaborative "play to lose" strategy, keeping rules unobtrusive, and often explores emotionally complex issues. The Nordic Larp Wiki has extensive documentation of this style of playing, and of specific larps.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: While some LARPs are open to participants of all ages, others have a minimum age requirement. There are also youth LARPs, specifically intended for children and young people. Some are run through institutions such as schools, churches, or the Scouts. Denmark has an especially high number of youth LARPs.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Roleplaying may be seen as part of a movement in Western culture towards participatory arts, as opposed to traditional spectator arts. Participants in a LARP cast off the role of passive observer and take on new roles that are often outside of their daily life and contrary to their culture. The arrangers of a LARP and the other participants act as co-creators of the game. This collaborative process of creating shared fictional worlds may be associated with a broader burgeoning "geek" culture in developed societies that is in turn associated with prolonged education, high uptake of information technology and increased leisure time. In comparison to the mainstream video-game industry, which is highly commercialized and often marketed towards a male audience, LARP is less commoditized, and women actively contribute as authors and participants.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARP is not well known in most countries and is sometimes confused with other role-playing, reenactment, costuming, or dramatic activities. While fan and gamer culture in general has become increasingly mainstream in developed countries, LARP has often not achieved the same degree of cultural acceptability. This may be due to intolerance of the resemblance to childhood games of pretend, a perceived risk of over-identification with the characters, and the absence of mass marketing. In US films such as the 2006 documentary "Darkon", the 2007 documentary "Monster Camp", and the 2008 comedy "Role Models", fantasy LARP is depicted as somewhat ridiculous and escapist, but also treated affectionately as a "constructive social outlet". In the Nordic countries, LARP has achieved a high level of public recognition and popularity. It is often shown in a positive light in mainstream media, with an emphasis on the dramatic and creative aspects. However, even in Norway, where LARP has greater recognition than in most other countries, it has still not achieved full recognition as a cultural activity by government bodies.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: Communities have formed around the creation, play and discussion of LARP. These communities have developed a subculture that crosses over with role-playing, fan, reenactment, and drama subcultures. Early LARP subculture focused on Tolkien-like fantasy, but it later broadened to include appreciation of other genres, especially the horror genre with the rapid uptake of the "World of Darkness" setting in the 1990s. Like many subcultures, LARP groups often have a common context of shared experience, language, humour, and clothing that can be regarded by some as a lifestyle.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: LARP has been a subject of academic research and theory. Much of this research originates from role-players, especially from the publications of the Nordic Knutepunkt role-playing conventions. The broader academic community has recently begun to study LARP as well, both to compare it to other media and other varieties of interactive gaming, and also to evaluate it in its own right. In 2010, William Bainbridge speculated that LARP may one day evolve into a major industry in the form of location-based games using ubiquitous computing.


title: Live action role-playing game

text: In Denmark, Østerskov Efterskole uses LARP as an educational method of teaching subjects to high school boarding students through interactivity and simulation. LARP groups are also using simulations of current and historical events and topics like refugees and the AIDS crisis to roleplay and explore these subjects.