FMTownsParty
684 Reviews liked by FMTownsParty
NEET Girl Date Night
2022
this is my black panther
Ricochet
2000
'Pendulum Hold Your Colour Full Album Free Download [MP3 HQ]' changed their name to 'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316'
'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316' says: WwwwWwwwwasdaasdsadwwasdwwwassd
'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316' triple-rebound beheaded player: 'HD Ricochet Motorola Wallpapers'
'HD Ricochet Motorola Wallpapers' left the server.
'John Ricochet' says: hhow do i i turn off auto Aim>??
'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316' left the server - Timed out due to a client-side error
'John Ricochet' wins! 1st place of 1 players. 0 total Points
'John Ricochet' says: how d
'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316' says: WwwwWwwwwasdaasdsadwwasdwwwassd
'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316' triple-rebound beheaded player: 'HD Ricochet Motorola Wallpapers'
'HD Ricochet Motorola Wallpapers' left the server.
'John Ricochet' says: hhow do i i turn off auto Aim>??
'Windows XP Serial Number 034634-262024-171505-828316' left the server - Timed out due to a client-side error
'John Ricochet' wins! 1st place of 1 players. 0 total Points
'John Ricochet' says: how d
Ricochet
2000
Triple Rebound shots killed my parents. I must have my revenge
Content warning for non-explicit discussion of real life death, expulsion of bodily waste and fluids, pregnancy, childbirth, needle use in a medical context
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am a woman. My experience as a woman is one of the less common ones, statistically, because I didn’t have it in me to assert that I was one until a good quarter century after most women are informed that this is what they are. That there are rules to this, and ways to perform womanhood, and perhaps most importantly for a lot of people, certain baseline genetic requirements that separate women from non-women. That last part is the sticky one for me, and because of this there are a lot of people out in the world who hate me, who want me to simply not be. Many of these people are powerful and they make decisions every day about my privilege to exist, but many many more of them are regular people out in the world. Sometimes it’s easy to tell who they are by the looks they give, the things they say; sometimes it’s not so immediately obvious. It is stressful to go outside, often, and occasionally it is outright difficult. Nevertheless, I am a woman.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French writer who has been prolific in many fields over her six decades of writing, but I often find myself thinking of her most famous work, one of her earliest publications - 1980’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, because it is the only thing by her that I’ve read. It’s a 200-ish page book that builds heavily on old Freudian theory to, among other things, consider the ways people use powerfully negative experiences to define and value the self.
Kristeva defines abjection like this: “The human reaction to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other.” Abjection, in a way, forces us to choose our identity; we define ourselves via rejection, by how we think of ourselves in opposition to things that disgust or harm us. It preys upon this idea of selfhood, of the boundaries we construct and maintain to create identity. It preys upon the divisions we create when we erect these boundaries. One example of this that Kristeva uses is things we naturally expel from our bodies, stuff like blood from a wound, teeth that fall out, semen, piss, shit, vomit. One second these things are subject – they’re part of you – and the next they’re object – separate from you entirely. This may not seem like much but this intrinsic mental separation from what was a part of you as soon as it leaves your body highlights how fragile these boundaries actually are.
I am, because I am not.
Kristeva thinks it’s a thin line.
She most often frames abjection in terms of violence, revulsion, disgust, and trauma. And it’s true that we tend to use the word “abject” as a maximalist adjective to highlight negative things. Abject terror. Abject misery. Abject poverty. But for Kristeva it’s not actually a bad thing in the grand view; on the contrary it’s an essential part of making us who we are as a collective and as individuals. She talks a lot about childbirth as the first moment of abjection. Birth being as much a kid fighting to live, to create a self, a sense of being, even as they tear away from the safety of their mother’s womb. It’s an inherently violent act and it’s the only way to become. It’s an ongoing process throughout life; kids have values imposed on them - language, culture, law - all things contrary to totally natural impulses but also things that most of us agree are necessary for them to grow into society as we know it. This is a process that repeats constantly throughout life to varying degrees. It can be painful, horrible, and disgusting, but it’s necessary. These experiences sharpen our sense of who we are, in our sense of opposition to the things that cause us pain, horror, and disgust.
I am not, so I am.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silent Hill 4: The Room has, if I’m remembering all My Gaming from last year correctly, the largest cast of characters of any Team Silent game, but it is almost entirely concerned with the thematic opposition of its player character, Henry Townshend, and its central figure and villain, Walter Sullivan. Henry is cursed, you see, trapped inside of his apartment by supernatural forces, unable to be seen or heard by anyone on the outside even as he becomes increasingly aware of a deadly, ghostly threat haunting the complex and its inhabitants. Walter uh, IS that threat, the ghost of a serial killer returned partially from the grave to finish his cruel sacrament with the six-ish murders he had to leave off in life (all according to his grand plan, of course). His ultimate goal, it’s eventually revealed, is to get permanent access to Henry’s apartment, which he sees as the vessel for his own mother, whose spirit he believes will awaken when he completes his twenty-one ritual murders.
Walter has a tragic past, raised within an evil cult, abused constantly by his caretakers, turned out onto uncaring streets with only his brainwashing and occult dogma to motivate him to go on. He’s a man who experiences moments of abjection and rejects them, becoming singularly focused on rescinding his identity. He is in constant pursuit of a mother he doesn’t remember, his mission to return permanently to the safety of her womb, where he can exist eternally, unburdened and unfettered by both his trauma and his self.
In all of the early Silent Hill games, aspects of the world take on attributes specific to the psyches of particular characters central to the story, and in The Room that person is Walter himself, whose fears and hates dictate the worlds that Henry and his neighbors are dragged into throughout the game. Walter’s fears are decidedly more mundane than previous Silent Hill fear generators, with environments like normal forests and subway stations, urban blocks and apartment complexes. Walter is afraid of, generally speaking, the Out There. He wants to retreat. Enemies are other people. They squish, they slurp, they burp grotesquely (bodily expulsion is a hallmark of abject experience, remember). Ghosts pursue you doggedly, without pause, and the worst thing they can do is just be present, their very auras radiating sinister energy that hurts Henry without action.
Henry himself is a mirror to Walter, trapped seemingly eternally in the thematic womb, his only escape the long long tunnel that forms in his bathroom wall, one that spawns him into these frightening outside worlds, often in the fetal position (I know writers who use subtlety and they’re all cowards, etc). While he does face trauma in these worlds and after every moment of abjection retreats back to his apartment for nourishment and healing, Henry does, ultimately, want to get the fuck outta there bro. He’s desperate for human connection too (and connection beyond murder – his moments of abjection always come via Walter doing something fucked up to one of his neighbors), desperate enough to peep on his direct next door neighbor Eileen through a hole that a previous tenant left in their shared wall. Tellingly, Henry can’t even begin to have a real connection to Eileen, or anyone, until he symbolically begins to separate himself from the room; once they meet for real and succeed in evading Walter’s attacks for the first time, the room stops healing Henry, and becomes open to hauntings that actively harm him.
The titular room is Henry’s place of refuge and comfort, at first, but it’s also his ultimate enemy. This is true the entire game, not just after Walter’s influence begins to infect the space. He’ll die if he stays here. He has precious little food, and during gameplay he gives away his last bottle of chocolate milk (milk being one of Kristeva’s confessed personal objects of great disgust, in a moment of fun serendipity). He has no one to interact with, and even though it’s stated in game that he was not a social guy before he was cursed, once you’re down to zero everything seems like a lifeline. Eventually, of course, he’ll be literally killed by the curses that infect the room. He can’t stay. He needs to be born, and he knows it. It’s a false security, and it intrinsically can’t last.
Walter and Henry aren’t the only figures central to the game, though. There is, of course, a third pillar here: you. Er, me. Y’know, The Player. There is essentially nothing to Henry – this is part of why he exists primarily as a thematic contrast to Walter, and part of why it’s hard to ascribe much character to his actions. You’re Henry in large part. When he’s in the apartment you even control him in first person. You are the ultimate voyeur, in the same way that Henry is to Eileen and Walter is to Henry. And this is part of why Walter’s worlds and the creatures that populate them are on the surface so much more generic than the places and monsters of past games: applicability.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have this uncle who died in his apartment. I didn’t know him, really. From stuff I’ve been told he wasn’t a good guy. I was a kid, and we lived states away. I only met him a handful of times at big family parties. The only reason I ever think about him at all probably is because he died in his apartment, and even then I’ve only started thinking about him so much recently, in the last couple of years, because we’ve all been spending a lot more time in our apartments. It’s covid, bay bee. The reason I think about him so much is because when he died in his apartment, nobody knew. Nobody cared to check in. They only found him, weeks later, because his landlord went into his place because they had assumed he had run out on it because he hadn’t paid rent or responded to any communication, for weeks, because he was dead.
So I think about that a lot the last couple years.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I mentioned that Walter’s hellscapes are mundane places and his monsters are other people and I do think this is a reflection of where the developers thought maybe a lot of their presumed audience was at when Silent Hill 4 came out. Which is pretty funny. But it’s real, too, for me. There’s not a lot that’s scarier for me as a trans person than An Only Vaguely Familiar Public Place With An Off Vibe. That’s alarm bell central. It’s hard out there, man. Rarely do I feel outright unsafe but often do I feel eyes. It’s difficult to tell a lot of the time if the eyes are real or if I’m inventing them, and that doubt can make it even harder to feel confident in my place in perfectly normal spaces. Just yesterday I was actively frightened waiting in line for the bathroom in an inexplicably crowded gas station in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. You just never know when it’s going to be a problem. I was never the most confident person, but this low level thrum of unease colors every moment of public life. In talking about abjection in an academic sense and especially when talking about fiction it’s easy to forget that part of it is that it is upsetting by nature. But in life it sharpens me. I know who I am.
It’s a harsh dichotomy – every day I am more visibly transgender in more irreversible physical ways. Every day I become more obviously Neither Male Nor Female and while I love this about myself and I am truly happy with these changes they are the same changes that make me less safe and more vulnerable in ways that become harder and harder to cover up with clothes and masks. It would be easy to retreat to my womb, metaphorically. I want to, sometimes. I work remotely on a permanent basis. I live literally across the street from the grocery store. My girlfriend is here, my cats are here, my friends are online.
But I am transforming. Every week I stab myself with a needle. I force through this needle the fluid that makes my body into what I want it to be. A violent transmogrification. I feel the most beautiful in these moments. They are moments of clarity, of self expression, of definition by rejection. I am not a man. I am a woman. This needle in my leg is my signature. Living in fear of living in fear can’t be the way.
I am not who I was. I oppose that. I am becoming. Every week I am new. I need to tear away.
I want to be born.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am a woman. My experience as a woman is one of the less common ones, statistically, because I didn’t have it in me to assert that I was one until a good quarter century after most women are informed that this is what they are. That there are rules to this, and ways to perform womanhood, and perhaps most importantly for a lot of people, certain baseline genetic requirements that separate women from non-women. That last part is the sticky one for me, and because of this there are a lot of people out in the world who hate me, who want me to simply not be. Many of these people are powerful and they make decisions every day about my privilege to exist, but many many more of them are regular people out in the world. Sometimes it’s easy to tell who they are by the looks they give, the things they say; sometimes it’s not so immediately obvious. It is stressful to go outside, often, and occasionally it is outright difficult. Nevertheless, I am a woman.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French writer who has been prolific in many fields over her six decades of writing, but I often find myself thinking of her most famous work, one of her earliest publications - 1980’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, because it is the only thing by her that I’ve read. It’s a 200-ish page book that builds heavily on old Freudian theory to, among other things, consider the ways people use powerfully negative experiences to define and value the self.
Kristeva defines abjection like this: “The human reaction to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other.” Abjection, in a way, forces us to choose our identity; we define ourselves via rejection, by how we think of ourselves in opposition to things that disgust or harm us. It preys upon this idea of selfhood, of the boundaries we construct and maintain to create identity. It preys upon the divisions we create when we erect these boundaries. One example of this that Kristeva uses is things we naturally expel from our bodies, stuff like blood from a wound, teeth that fall out, semen, piss, shit, vomit. One second these things are subject – they’re part of you – and the next they’re object – separate from you entirely. This may not seem like much but this intrinsic mental separation from what was a part of you as soon as it leaves your body highlights how fragile these boundaries actually are.
I am, because I am not.
Kristeva thinks it’s a thin line.
She most often frames abjection in terms of violence, revulsion, disgust, and trauma. And it’s true that we tend to use the word “abject” as a maximalist adjective to highlight negative things. Abject terror. Abject misery. Abject poverty. But for Kristeva it’s not actually a bad thing in the grand view; on the contrary it’s an essential part of making us who we are as a collective and as individuals. She talks a lot about childbirth as the first moment of abjection. Birth being as much a kid fighting to live, to create a self, a sense of being, even as they tear away from the safety of their mother’s womb. It’s an inherently violent act and it’s the only way to become. It’s an ongoing process throughout life; kids have values imposed on them - language, culture, law - all things contrary to totally natural impulses but also things that most of us agree are necessary for them to grow into society as we know it. This is a process that repeats constantly throughout life to varying degrees. It can be painful, horrible, and disgusting, but it’s necessary. These experiences sharpen our sense of who we are, in our sense of opposition to the things that cause us pain, horror, and disgust.
I am not, so I am.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silent Hill 4: The Room has, if I’m remembering all My Gaming from last year correctly, the largest cast of characters of any Team Silent game, but it is almost entirely concerned with the thematic opposition of its player character, Henry Townshend, and its central figure and villain, Walter Sullivan. Henry is cursed, you see, trapped inside of his apartment by supernatural forces, unable to be seen or heard by anyone on the outside even as he becomes increasingly aware of a deadly, ghostly threat haunting the complex and its inhabitants. Walter uh, IS that threat, the ghost of a serial killer returned partially from the grave to finish his cruel sacrament with the six-ish murders he had to leave off in life (all according to his grand plan, of course). His ultimate goal, it’s eventually revealed, is to get permanent access to Henry’s apartment, which he sees as the vessel for his own mother, whose spirit he believes will awaken when he completes his twenty-one ritual murders.
Walter has a tragic past, raised within an evil cult, abused constantly by his caretakers, turned out onto uncaring streets with only his brainwashing and occult dogma to motivate him to go on. He’s a man who experiences moments of abjection and rejects them, becoming singularly focused on rescinding his identity. He is in constant pursuit of a mother he doesn’t remember, his mission to return permanently to the safety of her womb, where he can exist eternally, unburdened and unfettered by both his trauma and his self.
In all of the early Silent Hill games, aspects of the world take on attributes specific to the psyches of particular characters central to the story, and in The Room that person is Walter himself, whose fears and hates dictate the worlds that Henry and his neighbors are dragged into throughout the game. Walter’s fears are decidedly more mundane than previous Silent Hill fear generators, with environments like normal forests and subway stations, urban blocks and apartment complexes. Walter is afraid of, generally speaking, the Out There. He wants to retreat. Enemies are other people. They squish, they slurp, they burp grotesquely (bodily expulsion is a hallmark of abject experience, remember). Ghosts pursue you doggedly, without pause, and the worst thing they can do is just be present, their very auras radiating sinister energy that hurts Henry without action.
Henry himself is a mirror to Walter, trapped seemingly eternally in the thematic womb, his only escape the long long tunnel that forms in his bathroom wall, one that spawns him into these frightening outside worlds, often in the fetal position (I know writers who use subtlety and they’re all cowards, etc). While he does face trauma in these worlds and after every moment of abjection retreats back to his apartment for nourishment and healing, Henry does, ultimately, want to get the fuck outta there bro. He’s desperate for human connection too (and connection beyond murder – his moments of abjection always come via Walter doing something fucked up to one of his neighbors), desperate enough to peep on his direct next door neighbor Eileen through a hole that a previous tenant left in their shared wall. Tellingly, Henry can’t even begin to have a real connection to Eileen, or anyone, until he symbolically begins to separate himself from the room; once they meet for real and succeed in evading Walter’s attacks for the first time, the room stops healing Henry, and becomes open to hauntings that actively harm him.
The titular room is Henry’s place of refuge and comfort, at first, but it’s also his ultimate enemy. This is true the entire game, not just after Walter’s influence begins to infect the space. He’ll die if he stays here. He has precious little food, and during gameplay he gives away his last bottle of chocolate milk (milk being one of Kristeva’s confessed personal objects of great disgust, in a moment of fun serendipity). He has no one to interact with, and even though it’s stated in game that he was not a social guy before he was cursed, once you’re down to zero everything seems like a lifeline. Eventually, of course, he’ll be literally killed by the curses that infect the room. He can’t stay. He needs to be born, and he knows it. It’s a false security, and it intrinsically can’t last.
Walter and Henry aren’t the only figures central to the game, though. There is, of course, a third pillar here: you. Er, me. Y’know, The Player. There is essentially nothing to Henry – this is part of why he exists primarily as a thematic contrast to Walter, and part of why it’s hard to ascribe much character to his actions. You’re Henry in large part. When he’s in the apartment you even control him in first person. You are the ultimate voyeur, in the same way that Henry is to Eileen and Walter is to Henry. And this is part of why Walter’s worlds and the creatures that populate them are on the surface so much more generic than the places and monsters of past games: applicability.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have this uncle who died in his apartment. I didn’t know him, really. From stuff I’ve been told he wasn’t a good guy. I was a kid, and we lived states away. I only met him a handful of times at big family parties. The only reason I ever think about him at all probably is because he died in his apartment, and even then I’ve only started thinking about him so much recently, in the last couple of years, because we’ve all been spending a lot more time in our apartments. It’s covid, bay bee. The reason I think about him so much is because when he died in his apartment, nobody knew. Nobody cared to check in. They only found him, weeks later, because his landlord went into his place because they had assumed he had run out on it because he hadn’t paid rent or responded to any communication, for weeks, because he was dead.
So I think about that a lot the last couple years.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I mentioned that Walter’s hellscapes are mundane places and his monsters are other people and I do think this is a reflection of where the developers thought maybe a lot of their presumed audience was at when Silent Hill 4 came out. Which is pretty funny. But it’s real, too, for me. There’s not a lot that’s scarier for me as a trans person than An Only Vaguely Familiar Public Place With An Off Vibe. That’s alarm bell central. It’s hard out there, man. Rarely do I feel outright unsafe but often do I feel eyes. It’s difficult to tell a lot of the time if the eyes are real or if I’m inventing them, and that doubt can make it even harder to feel confident in my place in perfectly normal spaces. Just yesterday I was actively frightened waiting in line for the bathroom in an inexplicably crowded gas station in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. You just never know when it’s going to be a problem. I was never the most confident person, but this low level thrum of unease colors every moment of public life. In talking about abjection in an academic sense and especially when talking about fiction it’s easy to forget that part of it is that it is upsetting by nature. But in life it sharpens me. I know who I am.
It’s a harsh dichotomy – every day I am more visibly transgender in more irreversible physical ways. Every day I become more obviously Neither Male Nor Female and while I love this about myself and I am truly happy with these changes they are the same changes that make me less safe and more vulnerable in ways that become harder and harder to cover up with clothes and masks. It would be easy to retreat to my womb, metaphorically. I want to, sometimes. I work remotely on a permanent basis. I live literally across the street from the grocery store. My girlfriend is here, my cats are here, my friends are online.
But I am transforming. Every week I stab myself with a needle. I force through this needle the fluid that makes my body into what I want it to be. A violent transmogrification. I feel the most beautiful in these moments. They are moments of clarity, of self expression, of definition by rejection. I am not a man. I am a woman. This needle in my leg is my signature. Living in fear of living in fear can’t be the way.
I am not who I was. I oppose that. I am becoming. Every week I am new. I need to tear away.
I want to be born.
Returnal
2021
Data File-
//defragmented
[#FORCED START OVERRIDE - - LOG OPENED]
BROADCAST: DSE Backloggd - - RA 18h 06m 0s | Feb 20th 2023
====================
XENOGLYPH I
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 86%]
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“Never should have smoked that ҂ѼҎ҉֎ (excrement? physic?), now I’m in the Abyssal Scar.
I must admit to having been left gobsmacked and dumbfounded by how much Returnal has left such a strong impact on me. I don’t have much history with Housemarque’s library of games, despite Super Stardust HD being such a near-permanent fixture on my PS3 that it could have passed for my TV’s screensaver. Outland is relatively slept on these days too, I reckon, but ƺƻƛʥʭФѩ (unneeded digression?). Returnal finally received a PC port, allowing me to give the title a shot. The ᵬᶚỻӜѯ (electronic device?) is so deprived of games it’s genuinely heartbreaking…”
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====================
XENOGLYPH II
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 91%]
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“Typically I’d run for the hills whenever someone threatened me with a roguelite - a genre I often find ƛʥ؆ٱᵯᶈ (disinterest in?) at the best of times, and one that stands in stark opposition to what I personally find fulfilling about videogames at worst. There wasn’t much in place to prepare me for how deftly Housemarque utilised their core arena arcade design tenets around this Cronenberg/Villeneuve aesthetic pastiche with equal parts confidence and purpose. It must be said, because it is ﬗꬳꬲﭏ (true?), that this is the best-feeling third-person shooter I’ve touched. The degree of freedom of expression in the general character movement, as well as the broad utility of the tools available allow for some astoundingly gratifying excursions through arenas fraught with enemies spewing endless pointilist bullet patterns in easily analysable & counterable on the fly attack patterns.”
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====================
XENOGLYPH III
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 95%]
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“The compounding subtleties and delicate touches to the way Returnal’s roguelite structure was sculpted for purpose to encapsulate Selene’s purgatorial journey convinces me of this being one of the best character studies I’ve seen since maybe Silent Hill 2? Blurring the line between ﬕתּﻼἕ (symbol?), metaphor and physicality and never prescribing strict and demystifying literalisations. I think it is a very special thing when taking a moment to enjoy the environmental art design can yield subtle narrative realisations, lines drawn between the fragments of a character that they allow you to excavate. The world of Returnal is so dizzyingly all-encompassing.”
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[!!!!CONTENT WARNING: Topics of suicide!!!!!]
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XENOGLYPH IV
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 0%]
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“Rot13 Rneyvre va gur jrrx, V znqr na nggrzcg ng raqvat zl yvsr. Qvqa’g nppbzcyvfu zhpu orlbaq fbzr oehvfrf naq n srj qnlf fcrag va n orq va RE. Va gur zbzragf yrnqvat gb zr npgvat ba zl vqrngvbaf, vg sryg yvxr funeqf bs vpr jrer cvrepvat guebhtu rirel cneg bs zl obql - svyyvat zr jvgu n qrrc puvyy naq fgvyyarff, nyzbfg nffhevat zr gung vg’f bxnl, gurer’f ab funzr, V’ir nyernql orra qrnq. Jura V neevirq onpx ubzr, fgvyy n yvggyr qehax bss gur cnva naq funzr bs vg nyy, V qvqa’g xabj jung gb qb. Guvf ebbz qvqa’g srry yvxr zl bja nal zber. V qvqa’g erpbtavfr gur crefba va gur zveebe, gur crefba jub jebgr zl grkgf be zrffntrf. Yvfgyrff, V gubhtug abguvat bs pbagvahvat zl cynlguebhtu bs Ergheany, vg jnf whfg na rnfl cvrpr bs abeznypl V pbhyq fyvc onpx vagb.
Fryrar ernjbxr ba na nyvra cynarg jurer fur nyjnlf qvq, gur napube cbvag ng gur fvgr bs gur vavgvny nppvqrag. Fur znqr n pbzzrag ba ubj haerpbtavfnoyr gur raivebazrag jnf sebz ure ynfg yvsr, fur yvfgrarq gb nhqvb ybtf erpbeqrq ol urefrys naq rkcerffrf qvfthfg naq pbashfvba ng ubj guvf crefba pbhyq cbffvoyl or ure. Univat na nethzrag jvgu tubfgf naq ybfvat gb lbhe bja ibvpr, qrfcrengryl pynjvat sbe n yvtug ng gur raq bs gur ghaary bayl gb erirny gur znyvtanapvrf naq cnenfvgrf rngvat njnl ng lbhe bccbeghavgvrf sbe frys shysvyyzrag. Fghpx va n fvflcurna gevny sbe frys, sbetvirarff, ngbarzrag gung bsgra srryf qbjaevtug shgvyr.
V xabj nyy bs guvf fbhaqf evqvphybhfyl gevgr, ohg Ergheany fgehpx n areir jvgu fhpu cerpvfvba vg sryg nyzbfg vainfvir. Univat guvf yvggyr fvzhynpehz bs n wbhearl gb puvc njnl ng naq zrgnzbecubfr bagb zlfrys unf urycrq prager zr, svaq pbagrkg va gur abvfr naq pbashfvba, znqr zr srry yvxr V pna nvz gb or abezny ntnva. Znlor gur wbhearl V'z ba vf n shgvyr bar, gurer'f rirel cbffvovyvgl V'yy ybfr zl sbbgvat naq snyy gb gur onfr bs gur zbhagnva lrg ntnva - ohg orsber gura, V'yy fgevir sbe nppbzcyvfuzragf gung whfgvsl zl cynpr va guvf yvsrgvzr. V'yy fubj zl gunaxf gb gur crbcyr jub znxr yvsr n wbl. V'yy xvpx gur jbeyq va gur qvpx orpnhfr fcvgr pna or n cbjreshy zbgvingbe.”
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[LOG CLOSED]
//defragmented
[#FORCED START OVERRIDE - - LOG OPENED]
BROADCAST: DSE Backloggd - - RA 18h 06m 0s | Feb 20th 2023
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XENOGLYPH I
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 86%]
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“Never should have smoked that ҂ѼҎ҉֎ (excrement? physic?), now I’m in the Abyssal Scar.
I must admit to having been left gobsmacked and dumbfounded by how much Returnal has left such a strong impact on me. I don’t have much history with Housemarque’s library of games, despite Super Stardust HD being such a near-permanent fixture on my PS3 that it could have passed for my TV’s screensaver. Outland is relatively slept on these days too, I reckon, but ƺƻƛʥʭФѩ (unneeded digression?). Returnal finally received a PC port, allowing me to give the title a shot. The ᵬᶚỻӜѯ (electronic device?) is so deprived of games it’s genuinely heartbreaking…”
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XENOGLYPH II
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 91%]
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“Typically I’d run for the hills whenever someone threatened me with a roguelite - a genre I often find ƛʥ؆ٱᵯᶈ (disinterest in?) at the best of times, and one that stands in stark opposition to what I personally find fulfilling about videogames at worst. There wasn’t much in place to prepare me for how deftly Housemarque utilised their core arena arcade design tenets around this Cronenberg/Villeneuve aesthetic pastiche with equal parts confidence and purpose. It must be said, because it is ﬗꬳꬲﭏ (true?), that this is the best-feeling third-person shooter I’ve touched. The degree of freedom of expression in the general character movement, as well as the broad utility of the tools available allow for some astoundingly gratifying excursions through arenas fraught with enemies spewing endless pointilist bullet patterns in easily analysable & counterable on the fly attack patterns.”
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XENOGLYPH III
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 95%]
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“The compounding subtleties and delicate touches to the way Returnal’s roguelite structure was sculpted for purpose to encapsulate Selene’s purgatorial journey convinces me of this being one of the best character studies I’ve seen since maybe Silent Hill 2? Blurring the line between ﬕתּﻼἕ (symbol?), metaphor and physicality and never prescribing strict and demystifying literalisations. I think it is a very special thing when taking a moment to enjoy the environmental art design can yield subtle narrative realisations, lines drawn between the fragments of a character that they allow you to excavate. The world of Returnal is so dizzyingly all-encompassing.”
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[!!!!CONTENT WARNING: Topics of suicide!!!!!]
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XENOGLYPH IV
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 0%]
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“Rot13 Rneyvre va gur jrrx, V znqr na nggrzcg ng raqvat zl yvsr. Qvqa’g nppbzcyvfu zhpu orlbaq fbzr oehvfrf naq n srj qnlf fcrag va n orq va RE. Va gur zbzragf yrnqvat gb zr npgvat ba zl vqrngvbaf, vg sryg yvxr funeqf bs vpr jrer cvrepvat guebhtu rirel cneg bs zl obql - svyyvat zr jvgu n qrrc puvyy naq fgvyyarff, nyzbfg nffhevat zr gung vg’f bxnl, gurer’f ab funzr, V’ir nyernql orra qrnq. Jura V neevirq onpx ubzr, fgvyy n yvggyr qehax bss gur cnva naq funzr bs vg nyy, V qvqa’g xabj jung gb qb. Guvf ebbz qvqa’g srry yvxr zl bja nal zber. V qvqa’g erpbtavfr gur crefba va gur zveebe, gur crefba jub jebgr zl grkgf be zrffntrf. Yvfgyrff, V gubhtug abguvat bs pbagvahvat zl cynlguebhtu bs Ergheany, vg jnf whfg na rnfl cvrpr bs abeznypl V pbhyq fyvc onpx vagb.
Fryrar ernjbxr ba na nyvra cynarg jurer fur nyjnlf qvq, gur napube cbvag ng gur fvgr bs gur vavgvny nppvqrag. Fur znqr n pbzzrag ba ubj haerpbtavfnoyr gur raivebazrag jnf sebz ure ynfg yvsr, fur yvfgrarq gb nhqvb ybtf erpbeqrq ol urefrys naq rkcerffrf qvfthfg naq pbashfvba ng ubj guvf crefba pbhyq cbffvoyl or ure. Univat na nethzrag jvgu tubfgf naq ybfvat gb lbhe bja ibvpr, qrfcrengryl pynjvat sbe n yvtug ng gur raq bs gur ghaary bayl gb erirny gur znyvtanapvrf naq cnenfvgrf rngvat njnl ng lbhe bccbeghavgvrf sbe frys shysvyyzrag. Fghpx va n fvflcurna gevny sbe frys, sbetvirarff, ngbarzrag gung bsgra srryf qbjaevtug shgvyr.
V xabj nyy bs guvf fbhaqf evqvphybhfyl gevgr, ohg Ergheany fgehpx n areir jvgu fhpu cerpvfvba vg sryg nyzbfg vainfvir. Univat guvf yvggyr fvzhynpehz bs n wbhearl gb puvc njnl ng naq zrgnzbecubfr bagb zlfrys unf urycrq prager zr, svaq pbagrkg va gur abvfr naq pbashfvba, znqr zr srry yvxr V pna nvz gb or abezny ntnva. Znlor gur wbhearl V'z ba vf n shgvyr bar, gurer'f rirel cbffvovyvgl V'yy ybfr zl sbbgvat naq snyy gb gur onfr bs gur zbhagnva lrg ntnva - ohg orsber gura, V'yy fgevir sbe nppbzcyvfuzragf gung whfgvsl zl cynpr va guvf yvsrgvzr. V'yy fubj zl gunaxf gb gur crbcyr jub znxr yvsr n wbl. V'yy xvpx gur jbeyq va gur qvpx orpnhfr fcvgr pna or n cbjreshy zbgvingbe.”
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[LOG CLOSED]
Wanted: Dead
2023
So, I decided to do a little digging on the development and circumstances of Wanted Dead and im convinced this is like a money laundering scheme or something. Like, this is definetly a crime right. Some rich asshole forms an entertainment company in switzerland called 110 Industries, which seems to consist almost entirely of this, Vapourware, and selling the debut album of Stephanie Joosten - most notable for playing quiet in MGSV - on Vinyl. He seems to really want to just make a game that's john wick, so he picks up Soleil and they just use his money to make a sequel to Devil's Third instead, being sure to cast Joosten and a Phillip-Morris model in lead roles, and put in the movie references the rich funder wanted in.
And yes, this game is just Devil's Fourth. Whilst Itagaki is oddly absent considering this game feels like a scam, It's the same Valhalla game studios team from Third, and it plays remarkably similarly. The main change is that combat is slightly less shit. You get pretty standard combos with your sword intermixed with a ludicrously powerful pistol used to stagger and parry enemies at a pretty high range. There's a heavy emphasis on canned finishers to restore health (Think doom 4), and the general sense is the game really wants you in the thick of things at basically every moment, slashing and dashing amongst the gunfire. It's a very chaotic system, and I would hesistate to say it's good, the enemy variety just isnt there, and enemies are just a bit too tanky to keep the flow great, but it's far improved from Devil's Third and is a serviceable action game with a pretty nice high degree of difficulty. I would go as far to say that it's bosses are pretty good, and I really like how fast the player dies - make the wrong mistake to even a single grunt and they'll kill you straight up, even on the difficulty that gives you cat ears.
But let's be real, that's really not appeal of Wanted dead when you get down to it. What is - is that will not see a game as truly baffling as Wanted: Dead in a long time. So many times it will make you question why. Why is there a relatively high production value full shmup included? Why is there this kinda rad mix of animated cutscenes intermingled in? Why do some scenes feel pieced together out of dialogue from different drafts? Why does the game clearly jab at some heavy stuff like health insurance and Margaret Thatcher for like 2 seconds and then drop it? Whats up with the Cooking videos featured heavily in the advertising but not in the actual game? Why is there a single (one) ladder that you can climb in the whole game? I legitimately could go on for much longer than this you have no idea, you go like ten seconds in this game and you wonder what the fuck the motivation behind the decisions was.
The game is all over the place to the point where I am in denial that it's just incompetence. A police officer pulling stuff from an interview that the SUPECT REFUSED TO TELL HER to go on to the next plot point is something Neil Breen would catch in the edit. The game's developers have been open that it's a throwback to cheapo PS2 games (presumably oneechambara being the point of reference?) but I seriously feel like this is all a bit. Am I being made fun of? Are Soleil making fun of this rich swiss asshole by making a shitpost? Am I now an accessory to money laundering?
Wanted: Dead is not a "weird game" in the way something like a Suda51 or Swery game is, or even LSD Dream Emulator. I'm tempted to compare it to kane and lynch 2 but that game is a million times more focused in it's vision and what it's trying to portray. I can't stop thinking about it, every decision it makes is so... wrong, yet also so deliberate. I've seriously never played anything like it.
It also, at times, also shines legitimately super brightly. I really like the banter between the gang, as weirdly odd as the voice acting is. I really like that one of it's primary characters is straight up mute and its a nice representation even. The mixing of media types and stuff is sick, there's one absolutely brilliant boss fight and the very final moments of the game provides a legitimately ace story twist which honstly makes me view the whole thing much more fondly.
The whole thing is bewildering. I can't stop thinking about it.
----------------------------------------------
Other "huh?" things I didn't mention for the sake of pacing
- Final level is absurdly long after the rest of the game was pretty good in this regard
- Claw minigame does basically nothing
- Difficulty curve insanely and blatantly all over the place, the first mission is one of the hardest.
- The degree to which the world is altered from the real world is odd and excessive.
- There's like 6 shower scenes
- Why do you get a free single revive like half the time when the game is overwise commited to being a tough classic action game? But you only get it when one member of your squad is there?
- Why is there such detailed gun customisation in a 5 hour action game
- Why is the one loading screen a very dated meme.
- Why does the one ninja elite enemy look like it's from a different game
- Why do the protagonists just not even mention sometimes why they're going to do a thing.
Make it make sense.
And yes, this game is just Devil's Fourth. Whilst Itagaki is oddly absent considering this game feels like a scam, It's the same Valhalla game studios team from Third, and it plays remarkably similarly. The main change is that combat is slightly less shit. You get pretty standard combos with your sword intermixed with a ludicrously powerful pistol used to stagger and parry enemies at a pretty high range. There's a heavy emphasis on canned finishers to restore health (Think doom 4), and the general sense is the game really wants you in the thick of things at basically every moment, slashing and dashing amongst the gunfire. It's a very chaotic system, and I would hesistate to say it's good, the enemy variety just isnt there, and enemies are just a bit too tanky to keep the flow great, but it's far improved from Devil's Third and is a serviceable action game with a pretty nice high degree of difficulty. I would go as far to say that it's bosses are pretty good, and I really like how fast the player dies - make the wrong mistake to even a single grunt and they'll kill you straight up, even on the difficulty that gives you cat ears.
But let's be real, that's really not appeal of Wanted dead when you get down to it. What is - is that will not see a game as truly baffling as Wanted: Dead in a long time. So many times it will make you question why. Why is there a relatively high production value full shmup included? Why is there this kinda rad mix of animated cutscenes intermingled in? Why do some scenes feel pieced together out of dialogue from different drafts? Why does the game clearly jab at some heavy stuff like health insurance and Margaret Thatcher for like 2 seconds and then drop it? Whats up with the Cooking videos featured heavily in the advertising but not in the actual game? Why is there a single (one) ladder that you can climb in the whole game? I legitimately could go on for much longer than this you have no idea, you go like ten seconds in this game and you wonder what the fuck the motivation behind the decisions was.
The game is all over the place to the point where I am in denial that it's just incompetence. A police officer pulling stuff from an interview that the SUPECT REFUSED TO TELL HER to go on to the next plot point is something Neil Breen would catch in the edit. The game's developers have been open that it's a throwback to cheapo PS2 games (presumably oneechambara being the point of reference?) but I seriously feel like this is all a bit. Am I being made fun of? Are Soleil making fun of this rich swiss asshole by making a shitpost? Am I now an accessory to money laundering?
Wanted: Dead is not a "weird game" in the way something like a Suda51 or Swery game is, or even LSD Dream Emulator. I'm tempted to compare it to kane and lynch 2 but that game is a million times more focused in it's vision and what it's trying to portray. I can't stop thinking about it, every decision it makes is so... wrong, yet also so deliberate. I've seriously never played anything like it.
It also, at times, also shines legitimately super brightly. I really like the banter between the gang, as weirdly odd as the voice acting is. I really like that one of it's primary characters is straight up mute and its a nice representation even. The mixing of media types and stuff is sick, there's one absolutely brilliant boss fight and the very final moments of the game provides a legitimately ace story twist which honstly makes me view the whole thing much more fondly.
The whole thing is bewildering. I can't stop thinking about it.
----------------------------------------------
Other "huh?" things I didn't mention for the sake of pacing
- Final level is absurdly long after the rest of the game was pretty good in this regard
- Claw minigame does basically nothing
- Difficulty curve insanely and blatantly all over the place, the first mission is one of the hardest.
- The degree to which the world is altered from the real world is odd and excessive.
- There's like 6 shower scenes
- Why do you get a free single revive like half the time when the game is overwise commited to being a tough classic action game? But you only get it when one member of your squad is there?
- Why is there such detailed gun customisation in a 5 hour action game
- Why is the one loading screen a very dated meme.
- Why does the one ninja elite enemy look like it's from a different game
- Why do the protagonists just not even mention sometimes why they're going to do a thing.
Make it make sense.
My Abandonware is one of my favorite sites, and some of my favorite people ever are those who fix up old games just to make them playable on modern operating systems for those wishing to experience their childhood again. They didn't need to do that, but they did and I'm forever grateful for that, because I sure as hell wouldn't have been able to pull that off with my preschool level programming skill.
Imagine you were a kid and for some reason Mattel shipped you five hundred Hot Wheels playsets leaving them all on your front yard one morning, that's essentially the plot of this game. How did this happen? Are you a kid who got the house to themselves while stealing their parent's credit card number? Is it a power fantasy being daydreamed in your little mind as you're tortured at school from sitting through math class? I can relate, I'd slap at least ten members of US Congress for all those playsets in addition to just doing that for free.
Stunt Track Driver is essentially just an FMV time trial racer, there's a championship mode, but your only opponent is the time limit counting down that threatens you with a good ol' Famicom-esque punishment of sending you back to the first track if you dare to let it hit zero, and slow you to a crawl as your little wee diecast car suddenly runs out of Hot Wheels brand fuel. The Attic stage was, and still is my worst nightmare. Little corner turns with hops in them to make you inexplicably tumble offscreen as a wav file of someone kicking a dodgeball through a Lego set plays, then you got the damn cat making you have to correct yourself mid-air after it sends your car flipping upwards from gingerly pawing around in the mouse hole. All with the tiniest shred of time available to you, because fuck you we only have six (seven, one's hidden in the damn Mattel logo) stages, aside from the track editor where you can connect five Volcano Blowout sets in a row in your garage.
Who the fuck keeps a suit of armor with an axe in their attic? Who you duelin' at midnight grandpa?
Stunt Track Driver is wonky due to it's dastardly FMV nature, it has no opponents to race, a mysterious force of nature could suddenly take you out as you're navigating a hard corner, and it might take an hour tops to see everything it has to offer. What's with this game? I'll tell ya what's with it. It's a heartwarming return from a 20+ year absence from my heart, that's what it is. To be a wee little diecast car racing around playsets in a random suburban house with no viewable humans, that's what it means to be a kid again.
Unspeakable levels of pleasant feelings I have for this silly kids game about kids toys, I love it so.
Imagine you were a kid and for some reason Mattel shipped you five hundred Hot Wheels playsets leaving them all on your front yard one morning, that's essentially the plot of this game. How did this happen? Are you a kid who got the house to themselves while stealing their parent's credit card number? Is it a power fantasy being daydreamed in your little mind as you're tortured at school from sitting through math class? I can relate, I'd slap at least ten members of US Congress for all those playsets in addition to just doing that for free.
Stunt Track Driver is essentially just an FMV time trial racer, there's a championship mode, but your only opponent is the time limit counting down that threatens you with a good ol' Famicom-esque punishment of sending you back to the first track if you dare to let it hit zero, and slow you to a crawl as your little wee diecast car suddenly runs out of Hot Wheels brand fuel. The Attic stage was, and still is my worst nightmare. Little corner turns with hops in them to make you inexplicably tumble offscreen as a wav file of someone kicking a dodgeball through a Lego set plays, then you got the damn cat making you have to correct yourself mid-air after it sends your car flipping upwards from gingerly pawing around in the mouse hole. All with the tiniest shred of time available to you, because fuck you we only have six (seven, one's hidden in the damn Mattel logo) stages, aside from the track editor where you can connect five Volcano Blowout sets in a row in your garage.
Who the fuck keeps a suit of armor with an axe in their attic? Who you duelin' at midnight grandpa?
Stunt Track Driver is wonky due to it's dastardly FMV nature, it has no opponents to race, a mysterious force of nature could suddenly take you out as you're navigating a hard corner, and it might take an hour tops to see everything it has to offer. What's with this game? I'll tell ya what's with it. It's a heartwarming return from a 20+ year absence from my heart, that's what it is. To be a wee little diecast car racing around playsets in a random suburban house with no viewable humans, that's what it means to be a kid again.
Unspeakable levels of pleasant feelings I have for this silly kids game about kids toys, I love it so.
YOU -- "But what if humanity keeps letting us down?"
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "Nobody said that fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "I guess you can say we believe it *because* it's impossible. It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
---
A 2 week old fetid corpse hangs from a tree, a ghastly sight; a human life reduced to a macabre piñata for small children to pelt stones at in a twisted idea of entertainment. The children themselves, a hopped-up junkie and a nameless orphan respectively, both the result of a broken system that has unequivocally failed them. The district of Martinaise, pockmarked by the remnants of revolutionary war, abandoned by the world at large, it and its people subject to the pissing contests of petty government officials to see who is lumped with the task of looking after the place, the site of a months-long, on-the-brink-of-warfare labor dispute that's about to boil over with the lynching of a PMC soldier who was meant to "defuse" the situation. All of this, left to the hands of a suicidal, vice-riddled husk of a cop who can barely get his necktie down from the ceiling fan without potentially going into cardiac arrest. Disco Elysium is an undeniably depressing experience that isn't afraid to cover the messy spectrum of humanity, from insane race-realist phrenologists to meth-addled children to every kind of ghoulish bureaucrat under the sun. The district of Martinaise, as fictional as it is, is a place I've seen before, reflected in the streets, reflected in the people, reflected in the system; an undeniably full-faced look at the horrors faced by those below, and the resulting apathy expressed by those above.
---
SUGGESTION -- Brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. I have no words for how I failed you.
---
Every aspect of Disco Elysium reflects its overall theme of "failure". Martinaise itself has been failed by the institutions meant to help it, abandoned by the powers that be, who only intervene when it looks like anyone is trying to enact change. NPCs can reminisce on days gone by, of the tragedies in their past, or of their cynical rebuke of the future. The various schools of political thought you can adopt and their representatives are mercilessly picked apart, from the Communists too entrenched in theory to take notice of the suffering around them, to the frankly pathetic fascists who use their prejudiced beliefs to shield themselves from their own flaws. Our protagonist is constantly haunted by his past and even starts the game recovering from his own self-destructive ways, and on a gameplay level, the way that our intrepid detective can fumble the bag in nearly every way imaginable and still be allowed to make progress in investigations and sidequests is commendable. Failure is so integral, so vital to Disco Elysium that it's not only an aspect deeply ingrained in its story, but also its very gameplay.
---
VOLITION [Easy: Success] -- No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
---
And yet, despite this cloying cynicism and acknowledgement of the ugliness of reality, Disco Elysium is magical because of the fact that it ultimately believes that there is a world worth fighting for in the end. It would be incredibly easy to be defeatist in the face of such constant, institutional and societal failure we are presented with in Revachol, to be ceaselessly apathetic in the face of your own overwhelming shortcomings, to fall back into the comfort of old vices instead of facing our problems head on. Still, Disco Elysium has that fire inside of it, an untapped hatred for fence-sitting, for passivity in the face of oppression and valuing the status quo over any meaningful change. Roll up your sleeves and fight for a better future.
---
RHETORIC -- "You've built it before, they've built it before. Hasn't really worked out yet, but neither has love -- should we just stop building love, too?"
---
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
---
RHETORIC -- "Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off."
---
Disco Elysium believes in the people. It believes in humanity, no matter how messy our supposed paragons are, or how flawed our beliefs and values can be, or how cyclical we can be in the face of it all. In a city plagued by an inability to move on, Disco Elysium says that there is always a possibility of change. If two broke Communists and a junkie wino can defy the very laws of physics in a slummy apartment, no matter how briefly, with the power of their faith and co-operation; imagine what we could do as a group. As a city. As a species.
Disco Elysium says that the cup is half full. Even if we won't see the own fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, it still looks you in the eyes and says:
"The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it," a conviction belted out by the youths of tomorrow.
"Un jour je serai de retour près de toi", written in bright burning letters across a market square.
"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE/ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD--FOR NEW PEOPLE/IT IS TOO LATE FOR US," painted on the side of an eight-story tenement.
"Disco Inferno...," a lone voice belted out through a boombox's speakers across a frost-bitten sea.
---
MANKIND, BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "Nobody said that fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "I guess you can say we believe it *because* it's impossible. It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
---
A 2 week old fetid corpse hangs from a tree, a ghastly sight; a human life reduced to a macabre piñata for small children to pelt stones at in a twisted idea of entertainment. The children themselves, a hopped-up junkie and a nameless orphan respectively, both the result of a broken system that has unequivocally failed them. The district of Martinaise, pockmarked by the remnants of revolutionary war, abandoned by the world at large, it and its people subject to the pissing contests of petty government officials to see who is lumped with the task of looking after the place, the site of a months-long, on-the-brink-of-warfare labor dispute that's about to boil over with the lynching of a PMC soldier who was meant to "defuse" the situation. All of this, left to the hands of a suicidal, vice-riddled husk of a cop who can barely get his necktie down from the ceiling fan without potentially going into cardiac arrest. Disco Elysium is an undeniably depressing experience that isn't afraid to cover the messy spectrum of humanity, from insane race-realist phrenologists to meth-addled children to every kind of ghoulish bureaucrat under the sun. The district of Martinaise, as fictional as it is, is a place I've seen before, reflected in the streets, reflected in the people, reflected in the system; an undeniably full-faced look at the horrors faced by those below, and the resulting apathy expressed by those above.
---
SUGGESTION -- Brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. I have no words for how I failed you.
---
Every aspect of Disco Elysium reflects its overall theme of "failure". Martinaise itself has been failed by the institutions meant to help it, abandoned by the powers that be, who only intervene when it looks like anyone is trying to enact change. NPCs can reminisce on days gone by, of the tragedies in their past, or of their cynical rebuke of the future. The various schools of political thought you can adopt and their representatives are mercilessly picked apart, from the Communists too entrenched in theory to take notice of the suffering around them, to the frankly pathetic fascists who use their prejudiced beliefs to shield themselves from their own flaws. Our protagonist is constantly haunted by his past and even starts the game recovering from his own self-destructive ways, and on a gameplay level, the way that our intrepid detective can fumble the bag in nearly every way imaginable and still be allowed to make progress in investigations and sidequests is commendable. Failure is so integral, so vital to Disco Elysium that it's not only an aspect deeply ingrained in its story, but also its very gameplay.
---
VOLITION [Easy: Success] -- No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
---
And yet, despite this cloying cynicism and acknowledgement of the ugliness of reality, Disco Elysium is magical because of the fact that it ultimately believes that there is a world worth fighting for in the end. It would be incredibly easy to be defeatist in the face of such constant, institutional and societal failure we are presented with in Revachol, to be ceaselessly apathetic in the face of your own overwhelming shortcomings, to fall back into the comfort of old vices instead of facing our problems head on. Still, Disco Elysium has that fire inside of it, an untapped hatred for fence-sitting, for passivity in the face of oppression and valuing the status quo over any meaningful change. Roll up your sleeves and fight for a better future.
---
RHETORIC -- "You've built it before, they've built it before. Hasn't really worked out yet, but neither has love -- should we just stop building love, too?"
---
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
---
RHETORIC -- "Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off."
---
Disco Elysium believes in the people. It believes in humanity, no matter how messy our supposed paragons are, or how flawed our beliefs and values can be, or how cyclical we can be in the face of it all. In a city plagued by an inability to move on, Disco Elysium says that there is always a possibility of change. If two broke Communists and a junkie wino can defy the very laws of physics in a slummy apartment, no matter how briefly, with the power of their faith and co-operation; imagine what we could do as a group. As a city. As a species.
Disco Elysium says that the cup is half full. Even if we won't see the own fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, it still looks you in the eyes and says:
"The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it," a conviction belted out by the youths of tomorrow.
"Un jour je serai de retour près de toi", written in bright burning letters across a market square.
"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE/ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD--FOR NEW PEOPLE/IT IS TOO LATE FOR US," painted on the side of an eight-story tenement.
"Disco Inferno...," a lone voice belted out through a boombox's speakers across a frost-bitten sea.
---
MANKIND, BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU
In the first hour of the game, there is a script where the ground collapses and the game expects you to fall into a hole. its so sad.
I didn't fall, but the game had a dialogue programmed with groans. The game assumed that you had fallen into the scripted trap.
It is incredible how the AAA pop have appropriated the narrative resources more typical of the indies of the beginning of the last decade. Those that allowed you to explore the space in a more reduced and detailed way, interacting with small objects on a stage, only to end up mixing it with Walkie Talkie sections and Voilà, you already have your cinematographic level.
Actually, an older version of space exploration reduced but exhaustive through the details already existed in the blockbusters since the late 90s (Shenmue? , MGS 2-4 maybe?) but they were never so frequent.
because the exploration can be slightly guided, since the digital worlds are a powerful and wonderful ultra-designed lie... But dictated? no plz
This game drowns you with absolutely all the trends it can afford, leaving no room for thought. grabs you by the neck without conviction, with such a corporate plan. its scary.
I'm on board for narrative-driven pop games (gosh, I love MGS4) but I need A LITTLE bit of authoring.
I didn't fall, but the game had a dialogue programmed with groans. The game assumed that you had fallen into the scripted trap.
It is incredible how the AAA pop have appropriated the narrative resources more typical of the indies of the beginning of the last decade. Those that allowed you to explore the space in a more reduced and detailed way, interacting with small objects on a stage, only to end up mixing it with Walkie Talkie sections and Voilà, you already have your cinematographic level.
Actually, an older version of space exploration reduced but exhaustive through the details already existed in the blockbusters since the late 90s (Shenmue? , MGS 2-4 maybe?) but they were never so frequent.
because the exploration can be slightly guided, since the digital worlds are a powerful and wonderful ultra-designed lie... But dictated? no plz
This game drowns you with absolutely all the trends it can afford, leaving no room for thought. grabs you by the neck without conviction, with such a corporate plan. its scary.
I'm on board for narrative-driven pop games (gosh, I love MGS4) but I need A LITTLE bit of authoring.
Dwarf Fortress
2022
Leyfir að Knúsabróðir, Scribe, has created Léirmheas, a digital video game review! He offers it to the Room of Riaráiste.
[OK]
[OK]
Fun in its ambition and variety, something Treasure would make themselves famous for following this game, but also sloppy in a lot of places. The fact that this game has a power-up for surviving bottomless pits feels like a last-minute balance decision, and fun is often interrupted by moments that feel unfair or too precise. Still, it's all worth it for this thing. The fact that the fight against this thing plays while "Produced by Treasure" appears in the end credits certainly says something about where this company was headed.
Tetris
1984
It's rather telling that this ur-Tetris operates with the same mechanical elegance as its progeny. I find the consideration of Tetris - and indeed, any game - as a 'perfect game' to be trite, but from the outset Alexey Pajitnov demonstrated with aplomb that Tetris is a perfect idea. The reiteration of gameplay systems necessarily precludes Tetris from an actualised perfection -- who can judge which of its 322+ official releases is 'definitive'?
Yet, with hundreds of versions each expanding on that which came before, one would expect the very first title to be lacking most of what allowed Tetris to be a success. The Electronika 60 release is a monochrome textscape without even the barest flourishes of the Game Boy version. The shrill piezoelectric beeper's pathetic tones are an auditory agony; the ubiquitous whine of the cathode ray tube a tinnital torment. There is no bag randomiser. There is no hold. Rotation is clockwise-only. No T-spins, no back-to-backs, no combos, no garbage, no ghost. One next piece is shown. Surprisingly the hard drop is present, despite its omission from subsequent versions until 2001's Tetris Worlds.
It all matters not. In a cacophony of noise befitting a Ryoji Ikeda installation, I am dealt five Z-pieces in a row. The inconsistent speed increments befuddle me, catching me off-guard. How characters are rendered makes it difficult to consider my board's layout. I am in love. This scant realisation feels pure. I am entranced by it. It is all I have ever needed and wanted.
Yet, with hundreds of versions each expanding on that which came before, one would expect the very first title to be lacking most of what allowed Tetris to be a success. The Electronika 60 release is a monochrome textscape without even the barest flourishes of the Game Boy version. The shrill piezoelectric beeper's pathetic tones are an auditory agony; the ubiquitous whine of the cathode ray tube a tinnital torment. There is no bag randomiser. There is no hold. Rotation is clockwise-only. No T-spins, no back-to-backs, no combos, no garbage, no ghost. One next piece is shown. Surprisingly the hard drop is present, despite its omission from subsequent versions until 2001's Tetris Worlds.
It all matters not. In a cacophony of noise befitting a Ryoji Ikeda installation, I am dealt five Z-pieces in a row. The inconsistent speed increments befuddle me, catching me off-guard. How characters are rendered makes it difficult to consider my board's layout. I am in love. This scant realisation feels pure. I am entranced by it. It is all I have ever needed and wanted.
Tsukihime
2000
"contest not with monsters lest ye become a monster, and if you spot long a white woman, the white woman spots also."
- frederick neetchah
the parts of this that really hit do so to such an extent that I was both genuinely moved and got that someone-walking-over-my-grave adjacent sensation of "oh this would have Done Shit to me as a teenager" but everything else really just gave me a new appreciation for fatomoru as a group of people looking at this and saying "hold my beer I can hurt you way worse and more gay-ly and with none of the gratuitously ill-considered sexual assault as gratification."
Arc and Hisui/Kohaku routes the obvious standouts and the opening and closing segments with Aoko put a perfect lil' bow on the thing, so bring on witch on the holy night I'm sold lol
- frederick neetchah
the parts of this that really hit do so to such an extent that I was both genuinely moved and got that someone-walking-over-my-grave adjacent sensation of "oh this would have Done Shit to me as a teenager" but everything else really just gave me a new appreciation for fatomoru as a group of people looking at this and saying "hold my beer I can hurt you way worse and more gay-ly and with none of the gratuitously ill-considered sexual assault as gratification."
Arc and Hisui/Kohaku routes the obvious standouts and the opening and closing segments with Aoko put a perfect lil' bow on the thing, so bring on witch on the holy night I'm sold lol
Deep Rock Galactic
2018
i can't say i anticipated enjoying this as much as i do but sometimes my tastes skew far more plain than i posture them. DRG is really charming. in my eyes it's the first cooperative game since L4D2 to really match that game's quickfire energy with accessible yet layered strategizing; the four available classes are idiosyncratic to such an extent that you might feel naked in any given operation without even one of their toolkits. it smartly pairs lite-monster hunter mission variability & team synergization with 2010's procgen & terrain destructibility to create these delicious scenarios where blue-collar panic is the norm as you shuffle and squirm in pitch-black subterranean sprawl. it's you and your dwarven brothers against hordes of starship troopers bugs, a wealth of toxic environs, and really all manners of cave fauna...as well as plenty of other surprises (both the extent of enemy and mission variability were genuine delights to me). i have a fondness for these kinds of titles - one where environment is integral to engagement, not just as a means of circumnavigation but as something that can be excavated, twisted, molded, and manipulated to create opportunity. the missions where you have to construct labyrinthine pipelines (and then RAIL GRIND ON THEM) or clumsily build connections to power machinery throughout convoluted geometry that has been torn apart by explosive combat, awkward digs, or meteor intervention set my brain alight. no more words only rock and stone.
Pentiment
2022
ℑ’𝔪 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔞 𝔱𝔬𝔴𝔫 𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔢𝔡 ℭ𝔬𝔞𝔱𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢. ℑ𝔱'𝔰 𝔦𝔫 𝔖𝔠𝔬𝔱𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡. ℭ𝔬𝔞𝔱𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢 𝔦𝔰 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔬𝔣 𝔊𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔤𝔬𝔴 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔦𝔫 2001 𝔦𝔱 𝔥𝔞𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔢𝔰𝔱 𝔭𝔬𝔭𝔲𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔥 ℭ𝔞𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔰 𝔭𝔢𝔯 𝔠𝔞𝔭𝔦𝔱𝔞 𝔞𝔫𝔶𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔩𝔡 𝔬𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡.
ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫’𝔱 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔞 𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔴𝔞𝔰𝔫’𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔩 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 14. 𝔚𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔣𝔦𝔩𝔪𝔰, ℑ 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔦𝔫 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡. ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫'𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 ℑ 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔨 ℑ’𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔴. 𝔐𝔶 𝔪𝔲𝔪 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞 𝔩𝔬𝔱 𝔱𝔬𝔬. 𝔖𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 “𝔭𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢 𝔟𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔶𝔬𝔲” 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔰 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔶 𝔣𝔞𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔢 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰.
𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖓𝖔𝖓-𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝕮𝖔𝖆𝖙𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖉𝖌𝖊. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓'𝖙 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖗𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 𝖊𝖝𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕴 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗. 𝕴𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕰𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘, 𝖜𝖊 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖘 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖊.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝕴 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖚𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖕𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖗𝖉 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖐 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝕴’𝖉 𝖉𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖘𝖊. 𝕴 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖚𝖕 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖌𝖔𝖙 𝖆𝖓 𝕬𝖈𝖙 𝕺𝖋 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖑 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖘. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖒 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖎𝖙’𝖘 𝖔𝖐𝖆𝖞 𝖇𝖊𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖒𝖞 𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖕𝖆 𝖌𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖊 £𝟑𝟎 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖚𝖞 𝕲𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖓𝕰𝖞𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖔 𝟔𝟒.
𝕬𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖘, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓’𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖆 𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖔𝖈𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖘-𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖉 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖓𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖍𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖔 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖘. 𝕳𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖙 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑. 𝕬 𝖋𝖊𝖜 𝖞𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖘 𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖆𝖓 𝖆𝖋𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖛𝖔𝖜𝖘.
𝓘’𝓿𝓮 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝔂 𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓮𝓭𝓾𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓢𝓬𝓸𝓽𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓹𝓾𝓫𝓮𝓻𝓽𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓾𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓞𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓷 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼, 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓫𝓸𝔂𝓼 𝓰𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓰𝓸 𝓽𝓸 𝓪 𝓵𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓵 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴. 𝓜𝔂 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓰𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓖𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓽 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝓯𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷, 𝓼𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝔂𝓲𝓷𝓰.
𝓐 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓾𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓸𝓾𝓽𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓻𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓰𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭, 𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓮𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷, 𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓷𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥. 𝓗𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝔀𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼. 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓖𝓸𝓭’𝓼 𝓹𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓹𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓭𝓷'𝓽 𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓵𝔂 𝓼𝓪𝓬𝓻𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓸𝓷𝔂. 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵 𝓘 𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓵𝓮𝓹𝓽 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓶𝔂 𝓬𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝓫𝓸𝓽𝓱 𝓸𝓯 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓼𝓮𝔁.
𝓐𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓘 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓸𝓭 𝓓𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓭𝓮𝓬𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓭 𝓘 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓯𝓲𝓰𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓱𝓾𝓶𝓪𝓷 𝓮𝔁𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮, 𝓘 𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓭 𝓼𝓲𝓰𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓻𝓪𝔂𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓘 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓼 𝓸𝓯𝓯 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓶𝔂 𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮-𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓮. 𝓘𝓷 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝔂𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓪𝓭𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓰𝓮𝓽 𝓪 𝓳𝓸𝓫 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵'𝓼 𝓮𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓿𝓪𝓵𝓾𝓮𝓼.
𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵-𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵.
𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝟸𝟷, 𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚓𝚘𝚋 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝙶𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚐𝚘𝚠 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚔 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙲𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚐𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚗𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙾𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝, 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚖 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚞𝚕 𝙸𝙸 𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚊 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝙰 𝚏𝚎𝚠 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚑.
ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫’𝔱 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔞 𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔴𝔞𝔰𝔫’𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔩 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 14. 𝔚𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔣𝔦𝔩𝔪𝔰, ℑ 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔦𝔫 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡. ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫'𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 ℑ 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔨 ℑ’𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔴. 𝔐𝔶 𝔪𝔲𝔪 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞 𝔩𝔬𝔱 𝔱𝔬𝔬. 𝔖𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 “𝔭𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢 𝔟𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔶𝔬𝔲” 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔰 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔶 𝔣𝔞𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔢 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰.
𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖓𝖔𝖓-𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝕮𝖔𝖆𝖙𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖉𝖌𝖊. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓'𝖙 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖗𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 𝖊𝖝𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕴 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗. 𝕴𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕰𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘, 𝖜𝖊 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖘 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖊.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝕴 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖚𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖕𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖗𝖉 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖐 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝕴’𝖉 𝖉𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖘𝖊. 𝕴 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖚𝖕 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖌𝖔𝖙 𝖆𝖓 𝕬𝖈𝖙 𝕺𝖋 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖑 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖘. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖒 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖎𝖙’𝖘 𝖔𝖐𝖆𝖞 𝖇𝖊𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖒𝖞 𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖕𝖆 𝖌𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖊 £𝟑𝟎 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖚𝖞 𝕲𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖓𝕰𝖞𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖔 𝟔𝟒.
𝕬𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖘, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓’𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖆 𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖔𝖈𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖘-𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖉 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖓𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖍𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖔 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖘. 𝕳𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖙 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑. 𝕬 𝖋𝖊𝖜 𝖞𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖘 𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖆𝖓 𝖆𝖋𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖛𝖔𝖜𝖘.
𝓘’𝓿𝓮 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝔂 𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓮𝓭𝓾𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓢𝓬𝓸𝓽𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓹𝓾𝓫𝓮𝓻𝓽𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓾𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓞𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓷 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼, 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓫𝓸𝔂𝓼 𝓰𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓰𝓸 𝓽𝓸 𝓪 𝓵𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓵 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴. 𝓜𝔂 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓰𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓖𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓽 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝓯𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷, 𝓼𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝔂𝓲𝓷𝓰.
𝓐 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓾𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓸𝓾𝓽𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓻𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓰𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭, 𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓮𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷, 𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓷𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥. 𝓗𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝔀𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼. 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓖𝓸𝓭’𝓼 𝓹𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓹𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓭𝓷'𝓽 𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓵𝔂 𝓼𝓪𝓬𝓻𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓸𝓷𝔂. 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵 𝓘 𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓵𝓮𝓹𝓽 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓶𝔂 𝓬𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝓫𝓸𝓽𝓱 𝓸𝓯 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓼𝓮𝔁.
𝓐𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓘 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓸𝓭 𝓓𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓭𝓮𝓬𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓭 𝓘 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓯𝓲𝓰𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓱𝓾𝓶𝓪𝓷 𝓮𝔁𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮, 𝓘 𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓭 𝓼𝓲𝓰𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓻𝓪𝔂𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓘 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓼 𝓸𝓯𝓯 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓶𝔂 𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮-𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓮. 𝓘𝓷 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝔂𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓪𝓭𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓰𝓮𝓽 𝓪 𝓳𝓸𝓫 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵'𝓼 𝓮𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓿𝓪𝓵𝓾𝓮𝓼.
𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵-𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵.
𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝟸𝟷, 𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚓𝚘𝚋 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝙶𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚐𝚘𝚠 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚔 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙲𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚐𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚗𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙾𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝, 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚖 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚞𝚕 𝙸𝙸 𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚊 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝙰 𝚏𝚎𝚠 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚑.