Fate/Zero S2E5: "Kiritsugu Emiya and the Stupidest Person in the World" (continued)

Alright, I think I'm just going to quote Shirley word for word here, because otherwise it may look like I'm misinterpreting something.

“a case study in evolution by natural selection said:
”I only...I only wanted to prove it worked! His research...but...I guess...it didn’t work.””

She then throws the dagger the priest gave her onto the ground at Kiritsugu's feet and begs him to kill her before it's too late. As she begs, she screams in pain, limbs twisting at unnatural angles, fingers gripping the mesh of the chicken coop hard enough to break both it and themselves.

So.

She knowingly ate a jar of magical plant fertilizer.

Just fucking stole it from Daddytsugu's lab and chugged the whole bottle, alone in her house, without telling anyone anything about it.

She seemed to think that somehow, in doing this, she'd be able to prove that the treatment that he just EXPLICITLY SAID ISN'T MEANT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION IN THIS FORM works on humans who consume it.

It seems like this is supposed to be tragic and horrifying. And sure, person eating a live chicken and then convulsing brokenly around begging for death is necessarily horrific imagery regardless of context. But beyond that very shallow aesthetic level, this isn't scary or sad. It's...well, let me give you the real world equivalent:

“Florida Man Tries To Test Neighbour’s Experimental Car Engine, Inserts Own Penis Into Combustion Chamber And Ignites”

That's what this is. That is literally what this plot point is. It evokes the same emotional response, and invites the same degree of sympathy.

I feel worse for the fucking chicken than I do for Shirley.

Kiritsugu freezes up. She keeps begging for the death that she's somehow managed to avoid blundering into throughout the twenty-ish years preceding this moment, and finally starts taking bloody bites out of her own arms. Kiritsugu runs away, and a few minutes later comes back with the priest.

On one hand, the priest called the whole "possessed by a demon" fate for Shirley, so that does imply that he might have some understanding of what's going on, so with Daddytsugu nowhere to be found I guess it makes sense to try him. On the other hand, it seems more likely that the priest - rather than having any magical understanding - simply knew that bringing Shirley within one hundred meters of anything even potentially dangerous would end with a body count. Eh, well, Kiritsugu's just a kid I guess, and to be fair at least some Catholic priests in this world know about magic stuff, so it's worth a try just for that.

Shirley it was! I'm Shir!

The sun has set by the time they get back, and Shirley is nowhere to be seen. That said, the scene is otherwise just as Kiritsugu described it, so the priest has no reason to disbelieve him, especially when he finds the dagger he gave her. For now, the priest brings Kiritsugu to the church and tells him to stay inside while he gathers the villagers to look for her and prepares to attempt an exorcism. Kiritsugu sits in the church, huddled by a window, his body trembling in fear and worry. Then, through the window, he sees a group of people attack the priest in the evening darkness and wrestle him to the ground. One of said people then gets up and turns toward the window, revealing that they might not actually be people anymore.

I don't know what's dopier: Shirley chugging a bottle of wizard Miracle-Gro thinking it would do anything besides kill her, or the fact that wizard Miracle-Gro just so fucking happens to turn humans into Romero zombies.

What, was Daddytsugu making the flowers "immortal" by turning them into zombies or something?

...huh. Undead plants. Now that I'm typing it out, that actually does make perfect sense. Thinking through the logic of it, it's almost enough to make me forget how stupid this all is. Key word: almost.

The zombies make it into the sanctuary and start charging toward the office that Kiritsugu is hiding in. Kiritsugu bars the door, but the zombies start banging on it hard, and it seems inevitable that they'll break through before long. Also, he just saw the priest get killed in front of his eyes, so that's pretty traumatizing. Suddenly, a sword impales the zombie in the process of breaking the office door down, stabbing right through the wood and nearly cutting Kiritsugu as well! His father showing up to the rescue with some sword magic? Nope, it's these guys!

Wonder how they could have gotten here this fast? It doesn't seem like the priest lived long enough to have hit a red button and signalled the Vatican to teleport these guys in. Something or someone must have tipped them off earlier, and I don't think Daddytsugu would call them before trying to handle the situation himself.

Also, they're using the same type of enchanted daggers that Kirei does. Nice bit of continuity there; if anyone has the resources and inclination to equip their magic spec-ops teams with standardized equipment, it would be the Vatican.

Kiritsugu isn't sure if he should see these grim-faced warrior monks as rescuers or just another threat. They don't seem to be taking too much care to avoid collateral damage, after all. He sneaks out of the church while they're wiping out the zombies and runs out into the village, looking for familiar faces that aren't slack-jawed and covered in blood. Unfortunately, the few remaining townsfolk who haven't been turned yet seem to be surrounded, and are dropping like flies as the undead swarm continues to grow.

It's pretty well executed as a zombie horror scene, all things considered, but it's also a really generic one. They're just your classic Night Of The Living Dead shamblers. A bit faster than some iterations of the concept, but not full on fast-zombies. They surge toward the living in droves and tackle them, tear their throats out, and let them join the swarm. No novelties in either powerset, presentation, or narrative role. It definitely dates Fate/Zero as a product of the mid two thousands. Seriously, people were *obsessed* with zombies in the 2002-2009 era, and the stories that were being told about them were incredibly same-y in terms of plots, unquestioned conventions and aesthetics, and the details of the creatures themselves. So, it may not really be the show's fault that this is boring me; as a survivor of the aughts, I've just seen this too many damned times. I'd be interested to see a zoomer's reaction to this; like I said, it IS a well-made example of its kind.

As Kiritsugu watches, paralyzed with horror, a sharply dressed man who doesn't look like a monk steps into view and sets some infested houses on fire. By the time he snaps out of it enough to move or speak, the entire town is in flames, and the pyromancer has moved on in pursuit of the undead without seeming to notice Kiritsugu.

I guess that's one thing that sets this apart from the million other zombiepocalypse scenes that people were churning out at the time. Instead of GI Joes with flamethrowers and working-class heroes with shotguns eradicating the infestation, it's wizards with fire spells and monks with enchanted knives. It's a small difference (just having that wizard use lightning or summoned demons or something instead of fire would have helped more), but I'll take what I can get.

On a less forgiving note, the wizard who did the burning was this fucking guy:

If you don't recognize him without the stupid top hat, it's that extremely embarrassing supporting antagonist from Garden of Sinners: Paradox Spiral who was written like a particularly up-their-own-ass middle schooler's attempt at a slasher villain. I was willing to dismiss this as just a similar looking guy or (at most) an Easter egg, but since some of you have been very adamant that this is, in fact, the same character, and that it is important that I acknowledge this, then sure. I'm docking this episode another five points for reminding me that this cringe-singularity of a character exists in the same franchise, and for regrettably informing me that he somehow, inexplicably, isn't being quietly buried by embarrassed editors. You're welcome.

Anyway. Kiritsugu doesn't have long to get ahold of himself though, because the pyromancer seems to have missed a spot. A handful of zombies - including the zombified town priest - emerge from a gap in the flames and close in around the child. They manage to surround him against the fire before he can escape, but he's rescued at the last second by a working-class hero with a shotgun.

.....sigh.

It's a woman at least, so that's a departure from the norm. The norm for both Fate/Zero, and for the genre that it's randomly decided to partake in for this one episode. Also, once she comes closer and we get a good look at her clothing she doesn't seem as working class as she initially appeared either. Ooh, and she uses pistols as well as a shotgun! Alright, we're on a roll here now!

It's sort of undermined by the show immediately doing the stupid fakeout where it looks like she's about to shoot him but then it turns out that there's just another zombie behind him, though. Seriously, it would have been more surprising if the scene DIDN'T do that. What does this even communicate to us besides being an empty genre signifier for a genre that this work as a whole doesn't even belong to?

...

I'm not typically one to point to Kara no Kyoukai as a positive example (especially not after being reminded that tophat KURAAAAAAZY guy is still a thing), but compare the zombie fight scene from the hospital episode to this one. That zombie was scary! It was an implacable monster, a beast who's whole theme was "you can't kill what's already dead." They hit it with bullets. They hit it with fire magic. It barely gave a shit.

That scene ended up frustrating me for other reasons (those being 1. the characters' failure to realize that severing its limbs was at least slowing it down enough to be escaped from, and 2. the arbitrariness of Shiki's space ripper stingy eyes suddenly working on it at a random moment when previously they didn't), but still, one thing that it absolutely *wasn't* was generic. And, until those flaws in the fight's resolution phase, it was also pretty exciting and intense.

The point I'm making with this is that the Mooniverse is full of weird magic and bizarre powersets. Why would you ever waste it on generic Romero zombies - complete with the mandatory flamethrowers and shotguns that everyone wordlessly agreed were the best anti-zombie weapons back then for some reason - when you could do almost ANYTHING with it? If these zombies were like the ones in KnK and had to have their limbs cut off to buy time for more obscure and specialized magic to be brought to bear? That would be awesome! And terrifying! Certainly unforgettable, unlike this EXTREMELY forgettable sequence. Heck, it would also explain why the Vatican squad prefers blades over guns if undead are a semi-common threat: environmental storytelling! This could also point to Kiritsugu's MO later in life; the way he researches his targets carefully and makes sure he brings the right weapons to each battle could stem from childhood experiences with an enemy that can't be killed just any way.

KnK style zombies are just one option. Dig into some obscure vampire folklore from an obscure part of the world! Make up some whacky bullshit type of undead that could only ever make sense in Fate! Anything besides this!

...

Gun lady tells Kiritsugu that he should follow her if he doesn't feel like being zombified. Trembling, he complies. Once they've made it a ways up the hill and have an overlook of the burning town, she explains that these creatures are what most people would call "vampires," but that those in the know prefer the hilariously Engrish-y name of "dead apostles."

I suspect that the Japanese is something like "apostle of death," but the sub and the dub both think otherwise.

If these are vampires (it wasn't obvious that they were drinking blood from their victims, but there's no flesh missing either so I guess blood is indeed more plausible going by the visuals) then the sundown likely had something to do with the timing. Shirley was able to kinda sorta keep her mind all day until right after sunset, at which point she started biting people left and right. Makes sense.

Gun lady also explains that there are two different paramilitaries cleaning this mess up. The first is the Vatican "executor" squad. They're dedicated monster-hunters, and are determined to not let a single bitten villager escape; harsh, but there's probably no way to reverse it once you've been bitten, so it's a necessary harshness. The other is a volunteer team from the Mages' Association. Their main objective is to keep anyone from learning anything; they don't want muggles finding out about magic, and they don't want rogue wizards to see this incident and get ideas. They DO want to get those ideas for themselves, though, so their secondary objective is to apprehend the wizard who caused this outbreak and make him share his notes before they punish him for his reckless actions.

That's where she comes in. She's a bounty hunter, and the Mages' Association wants her to capture the responsible party.

The way she phrases it, there's a warrant out for the culprit's "sealing." Not sure if that's a euphemism for execution, or if it's more literal ("sealing" away in a magic prison? Or perhaps "sealing" his own powers away and revoking his wizardry, if they have a way of doing that).

Alright, I looked back and checked this time to be sure, and yes. THIS is the lady who eventually makes him those rib-bullets. Gotcha.

...also, why is she telling him all this? Can she somehow tell that he's already in the know? I'd normally assume she's planning to kill him afterward as per Fateverse SOP, but clearly she doesn't. Which means she's either unusually merciful for a Mages' Association hanger-on, or she can tell he's a nascent wizard himself.

Well, now that she has told him all this, she asks a question in return. Where on this island might someone try to hide from bounty hunters?

...

"Where on this mountainous, jungle-covered island would someone try to hide?"

-______-

I swear to fucking god.

...

Cut to Kiritsugu's house, to which his father has finally returned. He's currently in the process of stuffing a big pile of paper money into boxes, burning his research notes, and nervously eyeing the loaded gun he has on the table beside him.

Wonder where the hell he was all during the day?

He expresses relief when Kiritsugu comes in the room. He told him not to go into town, and was very worried when he came back to find the house empty.

Seeing the ashes of his father's freshly burned notes, Kiritsugu asks him why the hell he was doing vampire research. When asked how he knew about that, Kiritsugu explains that he found Shirley in the process of turning, with the empty jar beside her. His tone is accusatory, which...well, on one hand it seems like he didn't warn her about exactly how dangerous the stuff they were researching was, but on the other hand WHY THE HELL WOULD HE EXPECT HER TO EAT A BOTTLE OF PLANT FERTILIZER HOLY SHIT LOL. And, when Kiritsugu tells him what happened, he doesn't seem to have already known, which...

...

.....

Wait wait wait.

So, Daddytsugu left home in the morning, right after noticing the theft.

The vampire transformation doesn't take effect in full until sundown.

In that ENTIRE FUCKING TIME, he never thought to look for Shirley? You know, the one other person on the island who knows the inside of his lab? What the hell was he even DOING all day if not that?

I guess he might have assumed that the thief was another wizard, and therefore spent the day scanning for signs of residual magic use or whatever to try and track them. But in that case, why did he tell Kiritsugu not to go into town? A rival wizard would try to get off the island with their prize as soon as possible, not randomly break the masquerade by destroying a town for funsies, right?

This sequence of events requires Daddytsugu both to know that some idiot in town actually ate his vampire Miracle Gro, and to NOT know that that idiot was Shirley, despite her being the only villager who's ever had access to it.

What even is this plot?

...

Daddytsugu says that this was certainly unfortunate, but there's no way to undo it at this point, and at the very least he knows now that he's been wasting his time with that avenue of research.

She shirley did.

Daddytsugu was trying to invent a type of vampire that retains its mind and personality after transformation; seeing if he can turn Romeros into Rices, basically. However, if the formula that Shirley took just turned her into a normal vampire who creates normal vampire spawn without any behavioural differences from other "dead apostle" colonies, then that means he needs to start over from scratch.

Obviously, a race of vampires wouldn't be able to sustain itself without humans to feed on, but this research wasn't meant for the public. Like most other traditional mages, Daddytsugu is looking for the Root, only he's taking a more "paperclip maximizer" approach than most. Step one is to devise an immortality method that will enable him or his successors to spend centuries studying the Akashic mysteries without any loss of mental faculties. Vampires are ageless as long as they have blood, he just needs to let the human mind survive the transformation and then it should become ageless as well.

...

I'm looking back at the crab story from the beginning of the episode, and I want to say that it almost works. The concept of the privileged "gods" keeping the world's bounty to themselves and denying it to mere mortals fits. The way that Daddytsugu is planning to extend his lineages' lifespans by feeding on the blood of nonwizards also parallels an exploitative god who demands sacrifices that its worshippers can't afford to give.

But at the same time, what happened to Shirley and her community didn't happen because it wasn't meant for her, or because she took it without permission. If the story had maybe had the girl mistake the gods for more generous beings than they really were, then that would be somewhat closer; paralleling the naïve, idealistic assumptions Shirley made about why Daddytsugu was doing immortality research and who he intended to benefit from it. But that's not what happened in the story.

Additionally, the girl in the story needed food for her sick mother. She was desperate, breaking the rules because she thought she had no other choice. That was the main thing that made the gods in that story so cruel and unjust. Why the hell did Shirley think she needed to test the explicitly-not-ready-for-human-testing treatment right now? If Daddytsugu was very old or dying of an incurable disease or something, I could see why she might think she needed to risk herself to test his research while it still exists. But there's been no indications of anything like this.

Also: what if Daddytsugu really HAD been working on benign immortality for the benefit of all mankind as she believed? Would that have made her actions any less insane or stupid? I guess it would have been less likely to destroy the town along with her (though still not impossible; it's magic, who even knows what could happen?), but drinking Miracle Gro is still going to fucking kill you at least. A tragedy still takes place. The bad outcome for Shirley didn't come because the girl and the gods were at cross purposes. It's more like the girl stole the seafood offering, ran halfway home with it, and then abruptly jammed one of the shells into her own eyeball while the gods watched in horrified confusion.

Is there still enough of a parallel between the folktale and the plot of the episode to make it work? Your mileage may vary. Personally, I don't think that there is.

...

Daddytsugu says that they need to flee the island and create new identities now, before the Mages' Association drops the hammer. Kiritsugu then asks him a question that well and truly baffles me.

"Use him like he used Shirley." What, like as a lab assistant? I mean...I assume the answer would be yes, probably?

Is Kiritsugu trying to imply that his father intentionally tested the formula on Shirley? Tempted/tricked her into stealing the bottle? It's hard for me to square that with the way he reacted to the missing bottle. He seemed really freaked out when he saw someone had taken it.

Did they bring back the localizers from KnK for just this one scene or something? And have them write both the sub AND the dub? "Complete mistranslation" is the only way I can make sense of this.

Daddytsugu brushes these concerns off, because they're nonsensical, and tells Kiritsugu that they need to run to a little hidden dock on the south end of the island where he hid a motorboat in case something like this happened. There's no time for him to grab his things; they need to run right now.

-______-

What.

The fuck.

Was he doing.

All.

Day?

Kiritsugu lunges toward him. Then, briefly, we flash back to him talking to the bounty hunter lady. She doesn't seem super surprised when he tells her about the bounded field protecting the patch of jungle up the road from the town that she'll have trouble penetrating, but it's programmed to admit him. Okay, so she did know - or at least strongly suspect - that Kiritsugu was related to the culprit mage. That explains why she was so forthcoming with information.

It...maaaaaaybe...explains her asking that idiotic question about "where on this island would someone hide?" Possibly? If she was just trying to say-without-saying that she knows he knows and wants him to spill, then it works. It really didn't seem like she was doing that, though. There was no knowing expression, or threatening interrogative glare, or anything like that.

So, maybe that earlier stupid moment is fixed and maybe it isn't. If it is though, the show immediately makes up for that by providing a new one:

Um...you do?

Why do you need to?

Is it just a matter of "only I can get through the magical defences?" I have trouble believing that. She's an experienced wizard-hunter, right? She must have dealt with defensive fields before. Especially if he provided her with the details.

If he'd said something like "let me talk to him first" this might make sense. Or, if we want to establish Kiritsugu as being unusually clever for his age, he can give the "I have to do this!" speech but then turn away from her and change expression completely, signalling that he just pretended to accept her narrative because he knows she wouldn't let him go if there was any chance he'd side with his father.

...but. That actually raises another issue.

Why WOULD she trust him to go ahead of her and assume she was siding with her over him?

Why is she letting this kid she's just met - who is almost certainly a son or nephew or something of her target - run to the target ahead of her? Wouldn't she realize that he's liable to warn the perp and steer him away from her? That's not what he does, but how did she KNOW that that wasn't what he'd do?

Trying to solve the problems with this scene just unearths more problems.

...is this just Kiritsugu's woman-charming powers at work again? It kind of feels like it might be. I have trouble imagining the author having a male bounty hunter go along with this so easily.

.....she's going to get fridged too after making those bullets for him, isn't she?

Flash forward again, to twelve year old Kiritsugu having just stabbed his father with the anti-demon dagger.

Did the priest leave that in the church with him? Just, left a kid alone with a dagger? Ehhhh, well, I guess if he thought the dagger really had anti-demon powers he might have wanted it to protect him. Still questionable judgement, though.

There's a brief flash back to Shirley asking Kiritsugu what kind of man he wants to be when he grows up. Then, we flash forward again to Kiritsugu finishing his wounded father off with three shots from his own (magical?) handgun.

This eleven or twelve year old kid, who we've never seen to have any sort of history or affinity with violence, just looked his dad in the eye and gunned down without blinking. Nothing personnel, kid.

...oh fuck I just got it.

...

The Fate/Zero visual novel was written in the 2005-6ish era. What had just taken over the animanga meme-o-sphere in that time?

I'm not 100% sure that this is what this episode is trying to gesture at. Only about 90% sure. I hope I'm wrong, because if I'm not then holy fuck did it botch this.

Think about it. "Are you planning to use me one day, just like you used (female companion)?" The attempt to make us horrified with Daddytsugu as if he actually DID do this on purpose, even though he didn't (his research was evil, of course, but not in the way that the story seems to be treating it. And not really much worse than the Fate wizard baseline). The showdown with the betrayed young boy in the lab. It's trying to force the round peg of Daddytsugu's story into the square hole of Shou Tucker's and just completely failing.

...

As he stands over his father's body, seemingly trying to either drop the gun or raise it again for another shot but being crippled by emotional turmoil catching up with him, whatername the bounty hunter enters the room. She explains that Kiritsugu gave his father's defenses too much credit; she was able to break through the bounded field pretty easily. Um...how did he get here that far ahead of her, then? He tells her that he did what had to be done; if his father hadn't died here, he'd have kept doing dead apostle research elsewhere. Her response is hard for me to assess, in context:

I mean, yes? She's sorta right?

Does the story KNOW that she's sorta right, though? It doesn't feel like it does. The show seems to actually not realize the inanity of how the zombie outbreak was triggered. Does it want me to know that this whole plot is stupid and that Kiritsugu is stupid for blaming it on his father? Or does it want me to agree with Kiritsugu, and see Maiya's statement here as just a commentary on Kiritsugu's unusually low kin selection bias that lets him be more of a utilitarian than most people? I can't tell.

It doesn't take Kiritsugu to task for this any more than just that one line from her, though. So it's probably the latter.

He asks her if she's a good person. Lol, what even if this dialogue? She avoids answering, and just tells him that she'll get him off the island and decide if she wants anything else to do with him after that. She asks Kiritsugu if he wants to pack anything; she needs to bring his dad's remains to her boat so she can collect that bounty, so he has a few minutes. Kiritsugu gives her this weirdly star-struck expression and says that no, there's nothing personnel that he wants to keep from this place. He'll keep wearing the same dirty clothes for day after day after day if he has to in order to preserve the hamfisted symbolism.

She drives him to shore.

I left the sub and dub both running for the rest of the episode, because I just kept having trouble believing what I was reading.​

The episode ends.


What was this episode?

Why was this episode?

That second question is the more pressing one. What does this tell us about Kiritsugu that we didn't already know? Is this really all just to answer Arturia's insipid "who hurt you?" question from the previous one? If so, then while I guess it does technically answer her question, it also completely dodges the spirit of it. What made Kiritsugu stop wanting to be a hero? Just the revelation that his father wasn't one? That doesn't fit. The episode ends with him heavy-handedly rejecting everything to do with his father's legacy. The end credits show the house burning down, in a way that suggests he burned it before leaving (...oh for fuck's sake, is that ANOTHER empty FMAism?). Is this supposed to mean that he's rejecting both the real AND the imagined versions of his father? Maybe? Except...in the present day he IS one version of his father or the other. If he thinks he can use the Grail to save the world or something, he's become the imagined version. If he really is just planning to give himself peppermint-flavored semen, he's become the real version.

It's possible that "Kiritsugu is doomed to eventually becomes his father, despite his own best efforts" is the intended reading. That could actually kind of work, depending. There's the common trait of being as ruthless as necessary to pursue the ultimate objective (however selfless or selfish that ultimate objective is). They both seem to turn the women in their lives who aren't Arturia into hypnotized thralls just by existing, but I don't think the story is aware that it's been doing that, so maybe not. I don't know.

...

In the time since I put this up on Patreon, one of my readers informed me that in the light novel, Shirley's speech during the chicken scene makes it much more ambiguous how this happened to her, and the part with Kiritsugu's dad asking him if he's been in his lab wasn't there. If what I was told is accurate (I haven't been able to corroborate it via googling; if any of my other readers have read it, I'd appreciate you chiming in to confirm), these details would imply that he actually did test it on her himself, rather than her being seized by a sudden fit of pica.

Is this plot still stupid? Well, yes. Why would he test it on her and then just release her into the wild instead of keeping her restrained in the lab for a few days to make sure it worked, when he knew that infecting the whole village would bring down retaliation from other wizards? Why would he be nowhere to be found the evening that the transformation was due to take effect? Etc. A lot of the same problems still exist.

It's an order of magnitude LESS stupid, though. Like, seriously, compared to the idiocy of her chugging eldritch Miracle-Gro of her own volition all those other issues might as well be CinemaSins nitpicks. I'd still think this episode was dumb and pointless, but I wouldn't be staring in dazed incomprehension at the screen like this.

Of course, now I'm just in a state of dazed incomprehension at WHY the studio would have made this change, if indeed they made it. Seriously, what the fuck could they have been thinking?

...

Aside from being completely stupid, insipid, and badly written as a story in its own right, this episode only barely - if at all - adds anything to the background of Fate/Zero. Just sheer edgy self indulgence at the expense of the main work. It's like the author actually decided "fuck this fandom, I'm going to write original stories featuring my sueified Kiritsugu now." I wonder if there's a timeline where he actually did just that. Changed Karysuegu's name and published the original light novel Fifty Blades of Grey.

Some brilliant moments of unintentional* comedy aside, this episode is the absolute worst Type Moon story I've reviewed so far. It's a dark, dark day when I'm unfavourably comparing something to Kara no Kyoukai, but here we fucking are.


*if it had been intentional dark comedy I would have seriously loved it.