fuck, croc, i was rooting for you. i really was. you deserved better.

the story goes that croc was originally pitched by argonaut games to nintendo as a yoshi game, as what would be the first ever 3D platformer: Yoshi Racing. miyamoto was apparently enthusiastic about the idea, but nintendo turned them down. argonaut had previously had a very close working relationship with nintendo. they helped make many of their first 3D games on the snes, including the original star fox. but things started to seem iffy when nintendo decided not to release star fox 2, which was already completed. when nintendo turned down argonaut on their yoshi project, argonaut forged forward with the idea and ended up making croc. and nintendo? well, whether or not they took the idea directly or not, they made super mario 64, a game with a similar premise and with a legacy that continues to endure, while croc has faded into obscurity and argonaut fizzled out in the 2000s. jez san, the founder of argonaut, said miyamoto himself apologized to him for how nintendo handled the situation, and that at least croc was doing well for them. but jez san felt that the bridge had already been burned a long time ago.

this firmly solidifies croc as an underdog, a scrappy and ambitious game who had its thunder stolen by one of the biggest gaming companies of all time. we all love an underdog story, i'm sure. but underdogs aren't always good at their job. and croc, frankly, isn't.

it's all so rote as to be asinine to describe: croc consists of running and jumping between FOUR COLORFUL WORLDS and collecting FLOATING ICOSAHEDRONS and saving these little fuzzy critters called "gobbos", which i can't take seriously at all, partially because its a silly name, but mostly because i once stumbled into some erotica about lesbians turning into goblins that was very intensely into body odor fetish and she referred to herself as a "gobbo" and that's all i can think about when i hear it now. the levels are trivially short if you don't go for the collectibles, which at least can make completing this game less painful. but i don't even like 3D platformers that much to begin with, and this game is maligned even among those fans.

i'm sure there a bunch of reviews on youtube or whatever that go into the particular design failures of croc. i don't really want to get into it too deep. but a note on tank controls: i think tank controls are fine. i like them. they do need to exist in a context, though. croc is a 3D platformer, which usually shouldn't have that, but i do genuinely think you could have a decent 3D platformer with tank controls. but this isn't it. controlling croc doesnt feel great, but it could be a lot worse, it's better than bubsy 3d. honestly the bigger issue is his tailwhip attack, where he yells "kersplat!!" or "kaboof!!" or "kapow!!" and pretty much never hits any enemy and dies because the hit detection in this game is terrible. for me the problem of game feel is exacerbated by everything else. it has this classic 3d platformer design, the same kind that underwhelmed me in spyro and crash, and in fact the extension of design in the mascot platformers of the previous era, a game of just "Stuff in Places". its far from the worst example of that design, collectibles are usually framed within some particular challenge or puzzle, but it’s just not enough. everything is forgettable. it instills this sense of meaninglessness to these objects and it doesn't help that along with that, moving croc around never feels great.

i know people have nostalgia for these kinds of games, but there is a very good reason mascot platformers have died out. they were always banking on the likability of their funny animals, but there's only one mickey mouse. there are some great ones, sure. but do you like mr nutz, kao the kangaroo, donk the samurai duck? probably not, and if you do, you probably stan gex ironically. because when you're banking on the character, you're not really spending much time on everything else. i dont know what most of these enemies are supposed to be, the levels mostly look the same, couldn't hum you any of these songs. but that doesn't matter. just look at the funny animal, go through 8 levels in green grass forest place collecting MAGIC GEMERALDS and then 8 levels in the sewer and then 8 levels in ice world and then the end of the game. these games lack so much personality even though that's the exact thing they're trying to cash in on. croc, my friend, i'm trying to give you a chance, i'm listening to you when you say "kersplat!!", i want you to be the clumsy yet triumphant underdog, but theres so little to care about, i dont care about the secret jewels, and every single time i save one of these little gobbos all i can think about is that goblin lesbian porn i read. how did i even find it? i can't even remember, but it was about a virus that turns people into very stinky goblins and orcs. ive got no problem with the green lesbians, i respect and cherish them. but i have so many questions. why "gobbo"? is that seriously sexy? why was it so clearly a reference to covid-19? with quarantine measures and such? how would a virus even change your bone structure? maybe it can, im not a doctor. and why did it then frame the virus as something that would project into social standing? it constantly highlights prejudices and judgements cast on those who become smelly goblins. are there unanswered issues with racial politics within its fantasy? why was it also very deliberately using an epistolary style, as if on reddit? are cockney accents for goblins supposed to be sexy? why was the stinkiness so important? are goblins and orcs particularly stinky? they were always talking about the smell, i'm not even sure what smell i was supposed to imagine. i know that's a fetish but like why? is reading about the odor enough to illicit a response? i'm not even really disgusted by it i am just trying to process it. there are so many weird twists and turns with the interiority of the characters that we see, how they respond. stinky gobby girl and her big giant smelly orc gf. im happy for them but also what. is it supposed to be a metaphor for something specific? queerness, transness, disease, disability, racism, classism, something else entirely? who is all this even for? is it for me? did i like it? i don't THINK i liked it, but i definitely found it somehow, and i definitely read it to the end, and i definitely am still thinking about right now when i'm trying to play croc: legend of the gobbos and i’m definitely considering reading it again

hellsinker: hello! welcome to hellsinker. would you like to learn how to play?

me: sure!

hellsinker: alright, so first things first, this is a bullet hell shoot'em'up with three unique playable characters: DEADLIAR, FOSSIL MAIDEN, and MINOGAME, plus one unlockable character. hellsinker has a unique emphasis on strategy and problem solving with a special scoring system and different routes.

me: cool!

hellsinker: you have a weapon, which can charge, a subweapon, and a special move. there's also a slowdown button. you can combine and time these to do different special attacks. when youre holding down fire you'll also have a SUPPRESSION RADIUS around you where some enemy bullets slow down and you can even delete some! if you get close to an enemy, you can SEAL them, which stops them from firing.

me: got it!

hellsinker: on the left side of the screen, you're gonna see a bunch of HUD info. let's break it down. first, you can see how many lives you have left. you can also earn more lives. pretty self explanatory

me: right. so if i lose them all it's game over?

hellsinker: yeah. well no, you'll get a chance to continue. but it's not like a normal continue, you only get one and it changes the game significantly, and you can lock yourself out of a continue. anyway let's get back to the bars. next from the top is SOL. SOL determines the strength of your main shot but is also your DISCHARGE gauge, so you have to balance that. LUNA just below it determines how fast you fire.

me: alright

hellsinker: okay so next up is STELLA. the more STELLA you have, the more bullets enemies will fire. your score will also scale with STELLA. you can increase and decrease STELLA with item pickups, or by aggressive/defensive play respectively, that kind of stuff. you can acquire APPEASEMENT that will help you decrease your STELLA if you graze the requisite number thus spawning two OLD RELICS

me: hm

hellsinker: finally, TERRA starts at 240. you lose TERRA if you die, but also if you avoid LIFE CHIPS and stuff like that. oh, also, it goes down if you finish a level. if it hits zero, as the next segment, you'll be sent to the Shrine of Farewell

me: what

hellsinker: on the other side of the screen, we have at the top your autobomb status, which can be set to ASPIRANT, SOLIDSTATE, or ADEPT. as a reminder, your DISCHARGE and Subweapon will behave differently based on whether you're holding the fire button down, the state of your gauges, etc. after that, you have the Spirit score, one of the three separate scoring systems in hellsinker. it's represented by three bars which represent the base 10 decimal digit values of your Spirit score. you can get a BREAKTHROUGH at 5200 Spirit, unless youve triggered the other BREAKTHROUGH in Kills, in which case it takes 6200.

me: wait

hellsinker: there's also a Kill score, which can also trigger a BREAKTHROUGH at 2500 or 5000 kills. BREAKTHROUGH will reset the threshold of LIFE CHIPS necessary to earn an IMMORTALITY EXTEND (80+40n pts) and sets said bonus to 200. Below that is Token score, which is like the other two but has no BREAK, and is earned by collecting LUNA DROPLETS (which have inverted gravity mind you), which also slightly increases your LUNA, and DROPLETS increase in value arithmetically.

me: uh

hellsinker: okay, so remember TERRA? so the Shrine of Farewell is a bonus stage boss rush but you get infinite lives. STELLA is constantly rising. there are four bosses, and one extra. your Spirit score drops to zero though. oh, also, BOOTLEG GHOST doesnt work while you're here.

me: bootleg ghost????

hellsinker: because your Spirit score is reset (m=0) you're probably worried about your score, but don't worry, you get the chance to earn your Spirit back in the Shrine of Farewell by collecting Crystals. after this, TERRA is disabled for the rest of the run, so make sure to maximize your spirit-to-crystal ratio if you're chasing a Spirit based high-score route, but its also useful if you're going for survival. hard limit of segment 7

me: wait but

hellsinker: as i’m sure you inferred by now, along with executive fire, the primary engagement of HELLSINKER regardless of which GRAVEYARD EXECUTOR you’ve selected (and agnostic of MISTELTOE configuration) is one of: α) management of SOL (DISCHARGE when necessary), LUNA, and SUBWEAPON gauges by destruction, collection, and timing β) safely managing proximity between mutable projectiles while evading needletype and other immutables γ) proximity protocol beta applied to adversaries to reduce production of danger δ) judiciously balancing STELLA with RELICS and transubstantiation of mutables into STELLA, in order to synthesize needs for evasion and for Spirit/Kills ε) maximizing destruction (Kills), Spirit, and Token ζ) achieving IMMORTALITY EXTENDS through BREAKTHROUGH (5.2k(+1k)m || 2.5k(⋅2)d) and LIFE CHIP acquisition η) again, doing all this while evading and using the proper attack protocols contingent on your EXECUTOR and/or MISTELTOE θ) managing TERRA reducing actions in order to deploy the visit to the Shrine of Farewell strategically, such as to maximize Spirit (m) prior: 1 Crystal (i) = 0.5% m1, upper bound of n = 424i (disambiguation: non-summated) ergo maximal execution miΣ(n424) = 2.12 * pre-Shrine.

me:

hellsinker: alright! that just about covers the basics. ready to start playing?

me: i'm still working on the left side of the screen

hmmmmm... something's off...... i don't know........ whats goin on here.... somethin aint right.... something's going on...... hmmm.... somethin just aint right..... i don't know..... there's some funny business i think....... whats goin on here...... somethin aint right........... something's going on........ somethin just aint right....... i think there's something funny goin on.... hmmm................ somethin aint right............. what's goin on here........ hmmm.................. something's off...................

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." Sometimes a game is 5 different games. Maze Spelunking? Box Puzzles? Bank Robbery? Tomb Raiding? Cow Abduction? Cooking? Torture chamber? We got it all, smella! Tron Bonne is based and so is her game.

I love the servbots!!! Every time they say "Yes, Miss Tron!" I mark out. Me, too, guys. Tron Bonne rules. She's such a dork but she's also a bad bitch. And she built this little bots. Loyal friends with empty yellow heads. I know I'm about to get cliched but fuck it. Cliches exist for a reason. Tron Bonne is a fucking mech queen and they stan. If you've never wanted to protect the cinnamon roll, you're lying to yourself. We say "smol" not just because its a meme but also because sometimes a friend really is a smol. And the servbots are smol. They're just tiny idiots who wanna help!!! What kind of evil pirate would build such silly little guys? Are they intentionally such goofballs? Were they supposed to be evil and just ended up like a little peachypies? How much yogurt is in their processors? I want no harm to come to them. When the mean bird robots say mean things to them I get angry and am ready to destroy the mean birds. Do not be rude. They're proof machine intelligence is a good idea. They just smile and say "yay" and I think that is a good thing. When people compliment them they nearly cry. They're trying so fucking hard and they can't do anything right. They can't do anything right and when they do do something right it's a triumph, a beautiful miracle that need be heralded and rewarded by trumpets, by a symphony that would make the sun weep. Dumb idiot babies. They're doing their best, please for the love of god be nice to them.

There is a tendency in lots of games these days to focus on one thing and doing that one thing well. It can be a good design strategy. But sometimes? Sometimes a game is 5 games. And sometimes that's good, too.

I feel within myself often the compulsion to rate and rank things. That’s why I typically rate the games I’ve played. I attempt to rationalize and standardize these ratings, but really, they’re a failed attempt to condense the whole of my experience into a single number. It’s a fraught process, but I am compelled to do it anyway.

Why do I say all this?

Custer’s Revenge is the worst game I’ve ever played.

In trying to rationalize my ratings, I ask what makes something worthy of the best, and eventually, what’s worthy of the worst. It ultimately comes down to instinct. What makes something good or bad is mostly an attempt to generate a post hoc understanding of my own experience. I have ideas about what all these numbers mean, and doing so means I have to also consider what it means to be worthy of being called the worst.

And nothing is more deserving of the label “the worst” than this.

When most games are “bad”, its because they’re buggy, or messy, or ugly. It is an assessment based on very concrete qualities, treating it more like software. But we’ve got to recognize that there are oh so many ways for a game to be “bad”. Because they’re not just programs, they’re also arrays of artistic expression. In my view, the one way that we can truly assess whether something is “bad” is whether or not it is harmful. And there is no question in my mind that Custer’s Revenge is harmful.

I played Custer’s Revenge for maybe about a minute. It was probably not any more than sixty seconds. I regret every single one of those seconds. I feel ashamed to have played this juvenile, racist, misogynistic trash. Every inch of it is repugnant. Wasting even a fraction of a second on this game makes me a worse person. There are few pieces of art that can invoke within me such self-loathing. I literally felt ill, a turning in my stomach, a flush of shame at what I had done. What I had done? Touch this vile game.

It’s a bad video game, too. Even without its abhorrent subject matter, its gameplay is repetitive, droll, and uninteresting. Avoiding repetitive patterns of arrows and then rapidly pressing the button. That’s all there is to it. This isn’t a matter of it aging poorly, either. There are masterpieces of early game design from this era. Critics at the time hated it, too. It’s not bad because it’s old; it’s bad because it’s bad. There really is no redeeming quality in the slightest.

Even its name is an offense. Imagine taking the rape of an indigenous woman by General Custer, a man who has since become a symbol of the violent colonization of the Western US in the 19th century, and, as such, was once described by Vine Deloria Jr. as “the Adolph Eichmann of the plains”, and then framing that rape as “revenge”.

The developers claim that it was all in good fun, no offense intended, that they only seek to make entertain. Well, I’m not entertained. I’m not laughing. I’m not smiling. I’m not having a good time. And I have very pointed questions for anyone who is.

Custer’s Revenge is, in its totality, fully deserving of being considered one of the worst games ever made. It has earned every single word of spurn volleyed into its back. Just thinking about what it is, the fact that anyone would put time and effort into making this, makes me angry and disappointed. It is a cruel, racist, misogynistic, and juvenile game. Its mere existence gives pornography a bad name. If only they had taken this abomination and buried it in New Mexico instead.

Tender Frog House, a game which is described by its creator as "a forum post of a game", is cynical. It's not that it's technically wrong about many of its comments on wholesome games. In fact, its response to wholesome games which view themselves as a unique political statement are incisive in their own way. These aren't wholly original ideas, but they are conveyed with a precision and a bite that calls attention. And they have truth to them. Certainly, being cozy is not a radical act. Those who make this claim are fooling themselves. But Tender Frog House comes off as taking a very broad swing against not just a particular subset of wholesome game creators, but about twee art, and eventually the purpose art itself. And this is where the incisive critique turns into a cynical rat's nest.

Tender Frog House pre-empts my response by refuting the notion that this perspective is cynical, that this is simply a knee-jerk response that defends a conservative mindset. Well, guess what? It is cynical. But it's not cynical for the sake of its perspectives on wholesome games, but rather, its perspective on their ethos. Tender Frog House more or less explicitly states that those who create so-called "wholesome games" are in fact engaging in what amounts to a deeply conservative pastiche which only serves to perpetuate a fascist capitalist society. Further, those who find joy or pleasure in this art or view it as a means of expressing themselves are in fact experiencing a false consciousness which only furthers that fascist capitalist society.

This is an exemplar of cynicism: calling people phony. I refuse this. I refuse to adopt a worldview where people who find and make art that makes them happy is fascist. Tender Frog House seems to find no room for this; either your art is revolutionary praxis, or its reactionary propaganda. Could it simply not be that people make games about cute frogs because it makes them happy? Is that not enough? Why must art only serve the purpose of political action? Art serves many purposes, and just because it performs either an ineffective or maybe even ever-so-slight counteraction does not mean it is not ultimately worthy of being enjoyed. Art acts on us in innumerable ways, in the mind and the body. Not all of these experiences are worth politicizing. That which is anodyne may not cure anything, but that doesn't mean it won't pair well with some wine. As I stated, I think the notion that coziness, sincerity, and self-care are in-and-of-themselves radical is false. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth having.

Moreover, I haven't found supposedly more revolutionary "serious games" to be effective on that front, either. Tender Frog House certainly doesn't inspire me, either as an artist or as a political actor. Maybe I am projecting, but it seems it instructs me to adopt a realpolitik of aesthetics, where I may only offer affordances to or create that which is unequivocally revolutionary. Well, personally? I have found little of that art enjoyable. I have played the Molle Industria games, and others. These games do not invite any transformative thought, and they are incredibly didactic (and frankly, not particularly persuasive). I don't think art is a particularly effective form of praxis, whether it's cozy or cynical. I'm not convinced any of these serious games bring us any closer to a better society than a cute game about frogs.

Let's stop pretending art is a uniquely precious vector for political action. I doubt that line of thinking leads anywhere. But who knows. There is a reason Adorno hated jazz. I think time has proven him wrong. We'll just have to wait for time to pass to see about Tender Frog House.

Perhaps FTL's most understated strength is how well it toys with tension. As the last hope of the federation, it's your job to carry the final warning to your base and build up a reliable arsenal of weaponry, crew, and tools, all while navigating this seemingly hostile and unpredictable interstellar landscape. There's so much that could potentially go wrong regardless of your boons; mantises could teleport onto your ship and slaughter your teammates, hull breaching missiles could starve your ship of oxygen while your shields are disabled by ion shots, ionizer drones could barge in and randomly disable your systems while under fire from beam weapons, and so much more. Peace and stability are fragile, fleeting things in this universe; every decision you make, every shot you take and dodge, feels like yet another roll of the dice. It's only a matter of time before you stumble into another nearby star where solar flares turn the ship into a sporadic furnace, or that distress signal you thought to help out was actually a rebel honeypot, or negotiations break down and Hacking Malfunction's sinister and eerie exploration theme flips like a switch to its battle counterpart and the war drums begin thumping in sync to the opening shots of yet another engagement. Safety is merely a formality in the eye of the storm, and the only certainty that is nothing feels certain when jeopardy is just one click away.

Yet, I never felt alienated by how RNG-heavy FTL often appears to be, because somewhere in the back of my mind, I was constantly reminded that there was always some degree of a solution. The intricacies of the systems and mechanics involved in the turn-based real time hybrid combat as well as the many factors regarding map navigation always seem to lend some degree of freedom when it comes to tackling new problems, considering the depth of interaction created when so many different ideas and concepts intertwine. Boarders and ship fires can be painfully snuffed out by opening the ship's airlocks and corresponding doors to temporarily deoxygenate parts of your ship. Enemy defenses such as heavy shields can be bypassed with missiles and bombs to properly disable corresponding systems, or perhaps you'd rather overwhelm shields with flak cannons before using Bio-Beams to destroy enemy crew members instead and gain more scrap from empty ships. Even random events within galaxy maps can often be affected by your current toolkit; for instance, one random event lets you disable a rogue cannon on a whim if you happen to have ion weaponry aboard, while another random event might allow you to have your Slug crew member assess the mental condition of a stranded human to see if it's worthwhile picking him up while avoiding any potential sabotage. Alternatively, many potential "dangerous" events can be spotted from afar with long-range sensors so you're not just walking into asteroid fields and falsified distress signals left and right. It's not perfect of course; rarely will you ever have all the necessary equipment and crew at your disposal to mitigate or avoid every negative externality, and many times, it just comes to yet another case of making tight judgement calls and internalizing the natural push and pull of just how much you're willing to put at stake before you end up getting the short straw.

Nevertheless, there was something at play that kept me trying over and over again even though it ultimately took me over five years of playing on and off to finish the game on easy mode. It always felt like I could progress further had I just done this instead, or now that I've made these mistakes I could try again and just change a few habits or prepare more adequately, or as djkoutsos put it, there was more to the situation at hand that I had missed at first that was worth another run to explore more thoroughly. It's this constant enigma as well as this sensation that I could always do better or at least have done something to better my situation, that drove me forward. I've resigned myself to the fate that something will inevitably go wrong, but by doing so, I've also accepted that my efforts don't feel like they were vain when it seems like all hope is lost. Perhaps the RNG will overwhelm me at the worst possible time as usual, but I think it's just as important that FTL manages to consistently preserve the illusion of control so the game never genuinely feels too unfair or aggravating.

There's one exception to this rule unfortunately, which makes it stand out as FTL's most glaring weakness. As implied earlier, difficulty spikes in FTL arise from losing the luck of the draw, which happens so often that there's a certain satisfaction to playing it cool and Macgyvering your way out of the seemingly impossible. However, one difficulty spike stands out above the crowd, in the form of the final boss. The rebel flagship in sector 8 is essentially a gauntlet of every strategy thrown at you at once: tons of firing weapons, drone support, Zoltan shields, cloaking, energy surges that fire a billion lasers at you at once, you name it and they've got it. It is almost humanizing fighting each separate enemy ship in FTL, because everything that they've got up their sleeve, you can respond to in tandem, and vice versa; it's why personal growth and knowledge of the game's systems is so fundamental to fulfilling progression. That's also why the final boss sticks out like a sore thumb; it's this grueling three part encounter of navigating the encyclopedia of FTL, with each part most likely right after another because chances are that all nearby beacons have been taken over by rebel anti ship batteries and you won't have any meaningful opportunities to repair your ship, much less drastically alter your load-out. As such, conquering the final boss is often a matter of keeping the final destination in mind during the initial trek with little room to improvise during the denouement, which can unfortunately make the bulk of the game feel like all prep work for a final confrontation that overshadows many of the quick skirmishes prior. It's most likely an intentional design decision considering how much the rebel fleet is gassed up by friends and foes alike during your journey; I just wish that the final boss was balanced more accordingly so that my failures didn't feel tinged with disappointment of "wasting" a couple of hours only to get wiped by a slew of hazards in ten minutes or so.

I think I'll always have a soft spot for FTL regardless. It's been almost nine years since I've cracked open the game for the first time, and there's just something enthralling about constantly balancing on the precipice of danger and carefully mashing the space bar to squeeze every bit of leeway from every possible in-game second. If you're looking for a game that you'll constantly keep learning from yet never truly "master" due to all the curveballs it keeps throwing at you, this is prime material right here. Just heed my advice: don't fuck with the alien spiders, as nothing good will come of that. Unless you've got fire beams, in which case, fire away.

"...それもラブ
...これもラブ"

Moon is probably the most frustrating 5-star game ever made, so I want to get that out of the way before I start this review that this game will most definitely require patience that some people can't afford, and I will say, even for me who considers himself pretty patient, it wore on me a couple of times too.

Anything annoying that can possibly be listed, Moon has. Tedious backtracking, a limited-time system at the start of the game, waiting for events to pan out that can only be triggered in certain timeframes, confusing and sometimes hard to read puzzles, and an economy that sometimes doesn't give you the cash you need to progress so you have to waste time playing a gambling mini-game. (but can only be accessed during the day, of course.). These problems are often listed when people criticize the game and can be factors to why people can put it down. These problems did plague my playthrough of Moon too, so I can't say these aren't valid reasons for why someone may drop the game a few hours in, I totally get it.

Here's the thing though: I can't hate this game even if I tried.

Even with all these problems, I kept coming back to the world of Moon because the game is just so inviting on the face of it. Moon breaks the traditional tropes of RPGs not to tell a darker story, but a brighter narrative. This is the game where you revive cute claymation creatures that the "Hero" of this game slain and you get "Love points" for saving these animals. This is the game where you can help out townfolks and follow along with their side stories to get satisfying outcomes. This is the game where your grandma bakes you cookies every time you visit her while you listen to "Claire De Lune" with your pet dog. This is the game where you can listen to bizarre yet catchy indie rock you bought from a guitarist on the side of the road so you can mute the ruffling grass noise you will constantly hear on your journey. You never know what you're going to get every time you boot up Moon, and Moon kept surprising me over and over again with witty yet lovely little outcomes.

Moon uses its surrealist aspects not to make its narrative more weird or dark like most games do, but to make the game more likable. Its constant enforcement on the themes of love and kindness rubbed off on me harder than any other game has. It's not the most mechanically sound game I've ever played from this genre, but Moon is probably the most likable and charming game I've ever played. Even at it's most frustrating parts, I kept wanting more and more from this weird wonderful little game.

If nothing else, Moon is a game that loves you, and hey, I love this game too.

The comparisons are too easy to make. A narrative driven independent game with lush prose that dabbles in magical realism and science fiction as it confronts visions of both the future and past. It also happens to be set in a version of our world (in this case, the American South) that has been skewed, deals with themes of labor politics and the plight of the working class, and draws on and reinvents design philosophies from decades year old games. The comparisons make themselves. That’s why I am doing my damnedest not to say those games’ names, because to do so robs Norco of its own, distinct identity. It’s torture not to draw line after line between its constituent elements to its counterparts for the sake of preserving that identity, maybe especially because I think Norco is experiencing an identity crisis of its own.

Let me be unequivocal: Norco is a good game. I think it’s worth playing. There’s a part of me that feels bad for offering an emphasis on criticism, as if I’m kicking down a darling indie game. So I’m trying to be particularly explicit here: I think Norco is a good game. It’s filled with beautiful writing, unique characters, and potent themes of grief and politics. It has things to say. But I’m not sure Norco is quite sure what those things exactly are.

I have biases, and two in particular that I arrive at here: I care disproportionately about endings, and I care greatly about “aboutness”. Norco’s ending fell flat for me, and I struggle to know for sure what it’s truly about. These are my biases. As I’ve just said, there are so many reasons to love this game. That’s not what I’m going to write about here. I’m going to write about what keeps me from truly loving Norco.

I think I disproportionately weight endings in narratives because they are what stories leave you with. When you walk out of the theater, the thing that is mostly immediately carried with you is the last frames before the credits rolled. Games, historically, do not have great endings. I don’t mean mechanically; there are lots of games with great final bosses and all that. But the narrative ending, the last moments, these are usually unnoteworthy, and it’s usually brushed off. With narrative driven work, however, this is a little harder to forgive. Of course, everyone likes different kinds of endings. I am picky with my endings, I’ll admit, but I try to have a nuanced understanding of what does and doesn’t work with me in an ending. Enter Norco.

Norco’s ending, by which I mean the exact final moments before the credits roll, feel rushed and incomplete. It is in desperate need of a denouement. It’s ironic, because the climax of this game is flanked, quite literally, with two beautiful moments on the left on the right, one of which is perhaps the game’s most beautiful sequence. I will not spoil it, but it is an ethereal, melancholy, and haunting image of memories and home. I almost wish moment was positioned as the Norco’s last moments, because this potency is immediately undercut by the climax, which felt bereft of catharsis. And I think the reason this climax fell so flat for me is because it relied on the motives of the main character, whose identity and desires are opaque and indistinct.

Kay, the protagonist, never feels like she is given the opportunity to become a character of her own. Blake, her brother, almost feels like one, but is mostly off screen. The companions you encounter feel like characters. They have motives, interiority, likes and dislikes, quirks. Catherine, Kay’s deceased mother, who you play as in flashbacks, gets to be a character, too. This is welcome; rather than just being a grief object for the protagonist, Catherine gets to be a person. So rarely are stories about grief as much centered on who we lose as how we lose them. But what about Kay? What are Kay’s feelings? What does Kay want, need? What does she like or dislike? I’m not sure I could tell you anything about her, despite having spent hours in her shoes. I felt more empathetic and understanding of its side characters by the end. All I know about Kay for sure is that she is detached.

A detached character is obviously not a bad thing, and detachment serves an important role here. Kay’s detachment, as I read it, is representative of a response to what feels to many young people like the slow march into a catastrophe by modern industrial society. It is very intentional, and the rare moments where Kay’s detachment is overtly characterized, it is felt strongly. But when a game builds up to a climax which centers on the characters goals, motives, and desires, her own specific relations and history, all of which are deliberately muted and blurred… I struggle to be moved by that climax and its ever brief ending.

Kay is neither a cipher nor a character you roleplay as. I don’t know what she’s supposed to be. She’s not me, but who is she? I can neither imagine myself as her or imagine her as someone else. Like the game itself, the player is in a crisis of identity.

Norco is kind of a mess, both narratively and mechanically. It’s modeled after classic adventure games, but the puzzle design is a far cry from that old school style -- which is not something I’m exactly mourning. Those puzzles were notoriously arcane and absurd, an ethos that has aged in quite a way, and it wouldn’t have worked here. Norco’s puzzles are relatively straight forward and signposted heavily, and you can ask for advice. But Norco also has a combat system. And it has mini-games. A lot of them. Most of these mini-game puzzles are fine. Nothing exceptional, but nothing horrible. There is one bit I did think was excellent and well executed, which I won’t get into again for spoilers, but involves a boat. But I truly have no idea why this game has combat. It’s not fun and just feels silly. And this lack of cohesion is also seen in its thematic underpinnings.

The themes are easy enough to identify: the struggles of the working class, religion’s social role, messianic myth, the desire to find meaning under late capitalism, ironic middle class hipsterism, the ever-extravagant machinations of the bourgeoisie, and so on. But these themes are neither explored on their own fronts nor are they unified by any central theme. The “Mind Map”, which is an interior display of the lore and relationships in Kay’s life (again, trying not to make the comparison here) is dense with connections but not with cohesion. There is some fascinating world-building and cool ideas in here. But where do they lead to?

Obviously I don’t think it’s necessary that a “message” be had in art, but when you neither pose questions nor offer answers, it can begin to feel more like these themes are props. Norco mostly acknowledges and maybe comments on its phenomena. Again, that’s not intrinsically bad, but I have my preferences, and the absence of direction doesn’t work for me here. All of it is cool, sure. But I don’t know what to make of it, and not in a way that fills me with giddy curiosity. I didn’t leave Norco with any questions, for either its world or for my own.

Again, I feel guilt, “damning with faint praise”, but I seem to be in the minority here, which is nice, I guess. It makes me feel a little more comfortable offering criticism. After all, I can find plenty of ecstatic analyses of Norco, but not as much where I’m coming from. I see why others have fallen in love with it. But I never got that far. Maybe I’ll grow more fond after reading criticism and other’s feelings. But this was my initial response, and that counts for something.

Norco, at its core, ends up as a collage, so scattered as to almost resemble a pastiche of itself. It’s soup full of scoopfuls of ideas that have been lightly emulsified. Collages can be good. And Norco is good. Its lack of thematic and structural direction does not nullify all the beauty therein, but it is why I don’t think I’ll ever get goosebumps when I think about it.

Making a 10 second Simpsons gag into an actual game is always a hard needle to thread. Going too meta vs being too basic all the little nuances in between. My Dinner With Andre smartly doesn't try to overstay its welcome and switches up the discussion about art and philosophy. Instead of centering on two friends talking about theater, Andre and Wallace talk about the game industry. Andre's disillusion with the AAA studios versus Wallace's financial struggles as an indie developer makes for a good turn and a good centerpiece for the commentary.

The choices are pretty straight-forward. Tell Me More lets Andre keep talking. Trenchant Insight allows Wallace to offer a counterpoint regarding his own gaming experience. Bon Mot lets Wallace make a quip. It doesn't change the actual discussion by any degree, but it doesn't really need to.

The key part of My Dinner With Andre, to me, is that there's no real right side of the debate. There's no winner or no victor, its just about the conversation. There's sort of a happy reconciliation in here when the two decide to build a game together. The original film has a discussion about how Andre could afford to leave the theater industry, while Wallace has to struggle more to pay the bills. I'm not asking them to go too far in the other direction and make them miserable. But its just a bit too tidy for me.

But also, its a ten minute gag game. There's some charming animation, there's sincere dedication to recreating both the Simpsons and the movie, its just delightful. I respect it.

Famed doctor of medicine, psychoanalyst, student of freud, and eventually, imprisoned fraudster wilhelm reich described a four beat pleasure process. this pleasure process consists of physical tension -> energetic charge -> energetic discharge -> physical relaxation. the obvious example that we're all thinking of is the orgasm the scatter-shot featured here in bangai-o. upon launching into a level your whole body yearns for the 400 missile eruption... bio electricity springs forth from its own inner source, flooding your entire system, causing it to pulsate - expanding and contracting with the flow of your potent energy. this charge builds and builds until it demands relief: the inner production of energy grows too great. a wave of missiles fires at you. at the moment before annihilation you fire off the scatter-shot, finally discharging this mass of built up energy toward the outside. pleasure washes over you - this discharge liberates you from the dammed-up tension. the system pauses in preparation and anticipation for the awesome task of rendering 68000 sprites at once, each with their own accompanying screams of ecstasy. the tv screen begins radiating a healing cosmic orgone energy, relieving you of injuries both physical and psychic. a pure light replaces your consciousness and you are finally Awake. relaxation felt as a bodily state. 'enoughness'. the missiles serve as the fertilizing agent, swimming instinctively towards the numerous receptive eggs enemies. then another wave of missiles is fired at you...

bangai-o is this pleasure process looped continuously and in novel ways. it comes with all these new weird membranes that stimulate the player in new weird ways. it's instinctive and animalistic - just look out for the closest pink projectiles(!) and achieve the big (bangai) O. it's addicting. if I waited too long between levels I'd get irritable and I'd have a hard time sleeping on days that I didn't play it. speaking of - the narrative elements are rather dreamlike as well, characters come back from the dead, dialogue is often nonsensical, and we even get the jungian archetypes of the father and mother. the bangai-o itself represents the unity between the anima (mami - or maybe even mommy... hmmm much to consider...) and the animus (riki). fighting your progenitor over and over again in battles of nuclear fertility - that's robert anton wilson's anal emotional territorial circuit too. what a psychosexual experience this game is. more psychology and sex than pretty much any game I'd say.

not-as-famed thinker of the counter-cultural movement, occultist, and psychologist christopher s. hyatt re-labelled reich's pleasure process as THE UNIVERSAL CYCLE OF JOY. he said that each thing capable of completing the cycle can be considered a success. this process orients us towards life and away from the drive towards destruction, away from the need to return to the womb. it moves us forward (he states that most people are stuck in one of the three stages preceding relaxation, not you or me though, we made it). stanislav grof may have even argued that it releases us from the trauma of birth. if completion of this process does in fact equate to success then bangai-o is the most successful game of all time.

Works about voyeurism that directly confront the viewer for participating are nothing new (Rear Window, Blow-Up, The Truman Show, Finding Frances, etc.), but I do think there's sincere eternal beauty-genius in the idea that everything we see through a lens - whether fact or fiction, consensual or non-consensual - constitutes a perverse one-way violation of the natural world in pursuit of wicked desires that we can never fully suppress, layers of cultural coercion that build like a coastal shelf of pressure upon everyone who participates with a camera from any direction.

Immortality is at its best when it's gleefully reveling in this idea, a sort of hypersexxxual Day For Night that permits and often encourages luxuriation in watching beautiful people be flirty and sexy and funny on, off, and mid-camera, poring over a grand archive of film footage that successfully evokes a variety of eras without putting tie-dye lampshades on them. The game could be accused of titillation, but the aforementioned genius of works like this is that the word "voyeur" acts as a creative shield behind which the footage can justifiably hide, cheekily asking its critics if they'd like to see one more clip of someone with their boobs or dick out. It's unlikely you'll say no - you're part of the problem, after all.

The ideas here aren't particularly original to anyone who's watched a "movie about movies"-type movie (it made me think of Boogie Nights a lot), but that doesn't mean they aren't worth exploring in a new mode of interaction - disjointed narratives in film can be a real pain when executed poorly because of their reliance on the audience "jigsawing" data-points together in real-time, but Immortality gives viewers the patient pleasure of being able to tap and spin the film reels (via a very satisfying interaction metaphor) at their own pace, bolstered by a helpful "find {noun}" match-cut feature that makes digging through each character/actor/person's tapes much more enjoyable than trying to piece a picture from Momentos in perpetual movie motion. At a dozen-or-so hours long, it's easy to spend a whole evening just silently researching a single participant in the puzzle, naively feeling yourself like Jack Terry in Brian DePalma's Blow Out.

It's unfortunate, then, that Immortality simply can't resist telling a video game story. Without spoiling too much: about two-thirds of the way in, all the psychosexual intrigue dissolves away to make space on the cutting room floor for a plot that is so corny and clunky that I think even the writers of Star Trek: Voyager would have passed it up in favour of another episode about that planet of Scottish ghosts. There's an unintentional sadness in seeing Charlotta Mohlin, a professional actress and beautiful interpretive dancer, gradually be reduced from an ephemeral alien to a static exposition device who speaks in the pronouns of Cromp and Wenbembo. When you're dealing with desire and bodies and valise of inner selves, why do you need to bring the fucking Chongo into it? What a shame.

Regardless, this is still absolutely worth your time if you, like me, like to write big pretentious essays on Letterboxd about all the ways dialectical Freudian analysis can be applied to Solo: A Star Wars Story or whatever. Haters and intermediary filmbros will claim the plot of Marissa's last picture, Two of Everything, is an almost point-for-point remake of Mulholland Drive, but true kinophiles know it's an homage to The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

CW: Murder, gun violence, child death, sexual violence, cannibalism, suicide, gore, eroticism of gore, knife violence, glorification of tragedy and crime, misogyny.
Updated version
Video version of this review

Preface

First, I would like to make abundantly clear this is a heinous work. On a surface level it is reprehensible. Digging into it makes every aspect of it worse. If it could only be played with a critical eye that would be one thing, but as I will get into this isn't just some curiosity to dissect.

The United States has had 27 school massacres since 1927. 16 of these occurred after Columbine. All but two were carried out with the use of firearms. Since 2000, there have been 388 school shootings in the United States.

Canada has had three school massacres ever (ignoring the genocide perpetrated by the Residential School system). One of these occurred after Columbine. It was carried out with a firearm. Since 2000, there have been 8 school shootings in Canada.

Japan has had one school massacre ever. It occurred on June 8, 2001. Eight children were murdered. All but one were girls. The perpetrator used a kitchen knife. There has never been a school shooting in Japan. There have been two multiple fatality shootings in Japan since 1952.

Potential

I think this is important to bring up because, from a Western and particularly an American perspective, school shootings are a dark reality that happens with shocking yet numbing frequency. The Onion's perennial publishing of their "No Way to Prevent This" article is testament to that. While it would be disingenuous to say school shootings have had no resonance in Japan, it is true that they have not happened there. The distance from tragedy lessens its emotional impact.

This is to say that, in a vacuum, Morimiya Middle School Shooting (MMSS) reads as intensely insensitive but not outright malicious. It is, in a vacuum, akin to Postal or Hatred, mimicking real world tragedy without outright reference to any specific event. An argument could even be made that there is some merit to MMSS in its commentary on the why of school shootings. The unnamed player character walked in on her mother's suicide, her father was an abusive alcoholic who disappeared. Her rage turns outward towards those who do not give her the attention she was missing from her parents. It ultimately manifests as a desire to commit murder after the game's fictionalised Japan reports on regional mass killings.

Like Super Columbine Massacre RPG, MMSS appears then to be a work which asks for a societal introspection alongside our abject horror. By not referencing a specific historical event, MMSS has the potential to make commentary without inflicting direct emotional harm. Its gamification and unnamed player character have the potential to instill a sense of being complicit with the act, as with Brenda Romero's 2009 board game Train. Even its arcade gameplay loop, high scores, and unlocks have the potential to increase engagement for some grand payoff of self-disgust that one would invest so much time into becoming good at murdering teachers and children. A part of me held out hope in my few playthroughs that there would be some message at the end of it all, that this glorification of violence would have a point. Instead, MMSS is closer to JFK: Reloaded. It teaches nothing. It has nothing to say. It exists to shock. It exists to hurt.

Play

On a technical and mechanical level, MMSS is something of a marvel. It is an RPGMaker game with gunplay. There is an undeniable element of strategy to it. Suffice it to say that every aspect of school shootings are on display here. If you have seen coverage of new schools in the United States being built to 'confuse and frustrate' school shooters, you can intuit how the prototypical Japanese school might facilitate mass murder with firearms and explosives. The player needs to slow down to increase their accuracy. I leave it to you to put two and two together. The unlocks amount to different weapons the player can use, as well as cheats. The player needs to manage the loaded ammunition between their weapons so as to not end up reloading while students wielding poles lunge at them to stop their advance. The player has a very strict time limit before the police arrive to arrest them. The player gets the most points for killing female students. None of this is particularly fun, even if it were removed from what it is depicting, but that it has been done on an engine meant for traditional JRPGs is impressive. That it is mechanically more than pointing and shooting is noteworthy. It is just barely engaging enough to warrant a couple playthroughs.

Precedent

Discussion of MMSS necessitates consideration of its creator and their niche. MMSS was developed by エリック aka erikku aka eric806359 aka kata235. They are an ero guro artist. Their depiction and obsession with the macabre is not in line with an H.R. Giger type, however. It comes across as more similar to the work of the Marquis de Sade. Reading through erikku's Twitter feed and scrolling through their Pixiv feels like trawling through The 120 Days of Sodom; it is a display of an amoral libertine.

Some choice textual excerpts from their Twitter (roughly translated):

"Drawing muscles makes me want to eat them."
"A touching coming-of-age story in which a young girl who has just lost her father gets a gun and grows up to be a splendid mass murderer."
"If I'm going to die anyways, I want the human race to perish while I'm still alive."
"I'm not a monster. Even for someone like me, I have human likes and dislikes. ...For example, what I love is 'Decapitation'"

I think you get the idea.

Their Pixiv is similarly naught but ero guro. Ero guro is not some 'release valve' for erikku, it is their sole purpose.

Perusal

Despite this, MMSS contains zero erotic elements. ConeCvltist stated in his review that MMSS probably exists for someone to get their rocks off. I think he is at once right and wrong in this assertion. Without explicit eroticism, MMSS is only a guro work, and thus cannot be said to be primarily for sexual gratification. However, it is also inextricable from its creator's main body of work. His illustrations of MMSS's main character are surrounded by nude women's stomachs being cut open, by school girls being strangled to death, of raw human flesh being consumed next to bare corpses. MMSS is not explicitly sexual, but it is implicitly erotic. The primary demographic is not you or I, but those already familiar with erikku's portfolio. And while not in the game itself, erikku has made numerous animations of the player character shooting school girls, their inflated chests jiggling, their panties digging into their crotches.

MMSS is unable to depict this level of fidelity for gore or lewdness in RPGMaker due to the rapid pace of gameplay. What illustrative art is present shows up in the introduction, endings, and when in the apartment at the start. For erikku's intended audience, however, those depictions don't need to explicitly exist within the game. One's familiarity with those short animation clips, those illustrations allows them to, in part, fill in the gaps during gameplay. In researching erikku and being exposed to the supportive art for MMSS, subsequent playthroughs have been marred by more accurate depictions of the violence and murder rendered in pixel form. Furthermore, I have seen that his illustrations and animation snippets are released in packs with other, non-MMSS related works of an ero guro nature. The mind fills in the gaps, the mind construes all of this as sexual.

Pang

In MMSS, during the news report on recent killings, one scene shows a middle school girl being escorted by police as her victims clutch their stomachs. This murderer committed their acts with a kitchen knife. They primarily targetted girls.

As mentioned at the very start, there has been one school massacre in Japanese history. It involved a kitchen knife. The perpetrator primarily targetted girls.

This is odious enough on its own, this unveiled allusion to the Osaka school massacre as tasteless as anything making light of the mass murder of children. erikku's fanbase will recognise this as a direct reference to his other game, Rouka de Onigokku (Tag in the Hallway). You sprint through hallways and stab students before you can be caught. It operates like an endless runner. The William Tell Overture plays the whole time. While MMSS references tragedy broadly, Rouka de Onigokku references it precisely. In MMSS one can even unlock use of a knife to carry out the game's mass murder in the same manner as Rouka de Onigokku's main character. It is despicable. It gets worse.

Perturbed

There is very scant documentation of MMSS on the English-speaking clearnet. I myself only came across it by chance on Backloggd. What I have found is deplorable.

Following the release of MMSS, erikku started answering fan questions on Twitter. Most of these are in Japanese, but some have been translated by erikku himself.

"Q: [...] how do you deal with negative feedback or criticism regarding the sensitive nature of 'taboo' nature of your art?
A: [...] I try not to care too much about negative feedback and so on :)"

"Q: [...] what do you use for inspiration before making a picture? Do you read about some real life murder cases?
A: I often read about real life murder cases, and watch a movie and TV series about murder. But I don't use anything for inspiration. I just draw what I want to draw."

His tweets continued in their perturbing statements. Above the aforementioned illustration of Rouka de Onigokku's main character, he writes "I was caught by the Thought Police and was temporarily suspended. It was caused by the cannibalism animation, but I think all the zombies are gone now. ...By the way, the situation in the picture is a very, very, very healthy illustration of a student playing a prank with ketchup and being taken care of by the police."

They also started answering questions on peing.net.

"I'm just painting 'imaginary violence against non-existent people.'"

"Murder, abductions, and transportation of body parts over long distances are very hard work, but it's better than repeating the incidents in a nearby area and narrowing the scope of police investigation towards you."

"I think there are various reasons why the culprit in Morimiya didn't commit suicide (including suicide by police). One of the goals is to know the suffering of the victims, including the survivors and bereaved families. It may also be the result of hatred towards the mother who took her own life. No matter how many people you kill, the hatred toward your mother, who took her own life and became a 'suicide statistic' cannot be cleared, but 'I won't die like that!' Is that the result of trying to persevere?"

"I have been drawing pictures of killing people since I was a child, but it was when I was a teenager that I start having interest in killing (anime) girls."

MMSS and Rouka de Onigokku are not just gamified depictions of perturbed minds. They are the machinations of a fucked up pervert. It gets worse.

Perverse

When looking up MMSS, one of the only results is the RPGMaker Fandom wiki. It provides the Google Drive link I got the game from. Far above that download link lies a link to the 'Official Discord,' with the blessing of erikku.

The rules for the 'Morityu Community Server' notably state the following:

"Rule 3. Don't be a weirdo. Keep edgelording to a minimum. If it's TMI, don't post it.
You can love seeing girls suffer all you want, just don't tell everyone, because nobody wants to hear about it.
Don't be that guy who idolizes mass shooters. It's cringe as hell and a sign that you should probably go outside for once."

"Rule 5. Do not talk about planning any mass murders or crimes of any form.
You may talk about previous cases of mass murder, but do not talk about the possibility of yourself or others committing crimes.
Even if you're not going to do it and are just posting it as a "what if", it is punishable by a ban.
This is the one rule you don't want to break."

The server is a cesspool of racism, homophobia, sexism, and generally making light of school shootings as a topic. Users have /k/ommando avatars and names and banners. They share gameplay clips and compete for high scores. They share links to movie clips of school shootings, they share DOOM WADs for school levels. They pontificate about whether or not women get aroused during shootings. They cheer for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, for police murdering black people. They hide behind the thinnest veneer of respecting Discord's ToS.

Searching for MMSS information led me to a danbooru post making light of the Christchurch mosque shootings. The artist's commentary notes the inefficacy of focusing on the victims of mass murder rather than the perpetrators themselves, particularly when those criminals understand how to effectively use the memetic nature of modern media.

It was also on that Fandom wiki I learned that the art room in MMSS has portraits of several school shooters. Real school shooters. If this is not glorification, I don't know what is.

The citation for that art room tidbit took me further still. A forum dedicated to Columbine and other school shootings and crimes. A thread titled Video games about Mass Murder. Users laud MMSS as one of the best games about mass murder. Avatars depict children holding guns threateningly. The Similar topics at the bottom of the thread ask what games school shooters played.

It's then I decided I had had enough.

Perpetuity

I wish there was a conclusion I could make here. Some hopeful message about erikku realising this is fucked beyond belief. That Discord being banned. The host of the Columbine forum shutting down.

There is no conclusion. There is no takeaway. This is revolting. Researching put knots in my gut. Writing evoked constant self-doubt.

I believe there is room for societal introspection on serious, challenging topics through games. But when the act of playing tragedy is not contextualised, is not condemned, then those games will function as just that, games. Tools for amusement, not for learning. Something to strategise about, not think critically about. A pedestal for amorality, not a mirror reflecting it.

Irredeemable.

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.