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SimonChris posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOMUfql2Smc This is great, thanks
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Apr 13, 2023 13:46
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Thank you all. This was way more response than I expected. Responding broadly: it's a medicine that's good in theory but socially harmful--like unintended consequences. In my broad idea there's a high level worker at the company with decent badge access, a hacker, a muscle, and a wealthy backer. High level worker got hosed over in a specific way and is convinced to just nuke the project. I know that nobody is going to take my story--and even if they did it wouldn't be the same as what I'm doing--but I want to keep it as vague as I've put it. Thanks, again!
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Apr 13, 2023 20:15
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 Obviously, this isn't something you have to do, fiction is fiction and cool nicknames are cool nicknames, but it is fun to think about a military nickname/codename that sounds cool but has a goofy-rear end backstory behind it.
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Apr 25, 2023 18:59
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iirc there are a few recurring characters in the Black Company series that have nicknames with embarrassing origins and it's a nice touch that probably came from Cook's experience serving in the navy, I think? And yeah my dad was in Vietnam and I've never once heard him reference anybody with a cool or flattering nickname. At best you get the bog-standard nicknames that go with different postings, i.e. he got called Radar for a while because he was in the communications corps, despite never having come within a hundred feet of a radar when he served. edit: hell Black Company has that too, the narrator for the first handful of books is the company's medic, who they all call Croaker, because the doctor kills his patients, you see
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Apr 25, 2023 19:35
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Too few people naming characters think about who gave them that name in general. It's not just military nicknames, it goes across the board for all characters. Sure, Faewynd sounds so fancy for your nature druid, but if I meet their parents and they're not ridiculous hippies then it's just a fuckin' whatever name that feels hollow. Like, I've given characters the old Cool Nickname before, but even then, Arnon the Gallow got "The Gallow Wind" from a mage who thought he was smarter and better than everyone and wanted to give his subordinates "tough" names--and that same mage gets made fun of later for not being as clever as he thought he was.
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Apr 25, 2023 20:18
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Junpei posted:
A former JAG talks about it for call signs in this LeagleEagle video on the original Top Gun (context starts at ~7:14 if the time stamp doesn't work): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTx_qZL3tqM&t=434s
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Apr 25, 2023 20:28
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curlingiron posted:The link may have expired, try this one: https://discord.gg/QpAESdpc I'd like to join the Thunderdome Discord, but it looks like this link is expired. Could anyone please toss up a fresh link? I would appreciate it. 
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May 4, 2023 23:44
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:I'd like to join the Thunderdome Discord, but it looks like this link is expired. Could anyone please toss up a fresh link? I would appreciate it. Hello, it's me, the link-bringer! Here you go: https://discord.gg/z8mNtsBX
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May 5, 2023 00:24
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curlingiron posted:Hello, it's me, the link-bringer! Here you go: https://discord.gg/z8mNtsBX I'm in! Thank you kindly.
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May 5, 2023 02:08
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 The people who are like this feel like they're barely a step removed from being IRL Patrick Bateman to me
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May 5, 2023 03:29
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Writers gotta eat too.
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May 5, 2023 12:36
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thunderdome winner
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Junpei posted:
That... tumblr post ... sounds like someone that has been through the querying wringer  .
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May 5, 2023 20:23
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That doesn’t actually sound like a book that’d sell? I’m not up on YA trends but I feel like they’ve moved to a new highly specific set of cliches.
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May 5, 2023 22:01
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General Battuta posted:That doesn’t actually sound like a book that’d sell? I’m not up on YA trends but I feel like they’ve moved to a new highly specific set of cliches. Yeah, there's a huge response post to that by a YA author that is basically like "literally every part of this is wrong, it was just written by someone making up lies in order to feel big" Here, but warning: it's neither funny or interesting (much like my posting) https://www.tumblr.com/what-eats-owls/713175182399897600/cryptotheism-pangur-and-grim
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May 5, 2023 22:48
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Oh, uh, apologies for posting the original without seeing that. My bad.
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May 5, 2023 22:50
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Wungus posted:Yeah, there's a huge response post to that by a YA author that is basically like "literally every part of this is wrong, it was just written by someone making up lies in order to feel big" She makes some good points but lol at "ACOTAR is not YA"... keep telling yourself that bud.
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May 11, 2023 04:29
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Hey guys! It's been a good long while since I've frequented Creative Convention, and I'm wondering if you could help me out with something. I've been working as an editor and writing coach for a while now, helping people to get their stuff published (mostly debuts, both in fiction and non-fiction) but entirely in a non-English speaking market in mainland Europe. I am currently trying to help a friend who's written a novel in English (he is British himself) and who is trying to find an agent for it, either in the UK or the US. I've done some searching online and I've written to some people I know and we've tried lists like Reedsy and Jericho Writers and whatever simple Google searches can turn up for the UK, which is already pretty much outside my area of expertise, but I have to admit that the whole query thing in the US has me entirely stomped. I am already very grateful at having read this thread's magnificent OP and found Query Shark and AgentQuerry mentioned in it, which have proven to be really good resources for what I need, but my actual and specific question is this: are there any other good lists of literary agents in English speaking countries like the UK and the US that you could recommend, other than what I've already covered? The novel intended for publication is in the humor/satire category, fiction, 64k words, if that helps. Meatgrinder fucked around with this message at 06:47 on May 16, 2023 |
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May 14, 2023 15:35
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https://querytracker.net/ is a great resource for finding agents and managing queries in the US/UK - you can filter by who reps what, who's open, etc. Also, if you pay for premium, you can obsessively watch agent timelines and panic over whether you're in their maybe pile or have just been skipped, which is a wonderful way to rack up dental bills. It doesn't cover every agent, but it does have most, and generally if you can't find an agency on there, it's worth considering whether or not that's a red flag. Individual agents, fine--I know the newest agent at Howard Morhaim isn't on there yet, for instance--but if an entire agency isn't listed, maybe do some thinking!
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May 15, 2023 15:19
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Wungus posted:https://querytracker.net/ is a great resource for finding agents and managing queries in the US/UK - you can filter by who reps what, who's open, etc. Also, if you pay for premium, you can obsessively watch agent timelines and panic over whether you're in their maybe pile or have just been skipped, which is a wonderful way to rack up dental bills. Cheers!
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May 15, 2023 16:41
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https://twitter.com/Peter_Wartman/status/1661080885989453824?t=LeeTbrUooQ6gcOhkUjmReQ&s=33
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May 24, 2023 01:05
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Junpei posted:https://twitter.com/Peter_Wartman/status/1661080885989453824?t=LeeTbrUooQ6gcOhkUjmReQ&s=33 Or just get high (but remember to write down whatever you figure out about connective tissue in your WIP)
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May 24, 2023 01:36
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 I've never quite had this problem (not bragging) but I figured some of you all could use this. Not every line has to be mind-blowing or emotionally rich! Some sentences just exist to describe things or get things moving, and there's nothing wrong with that!
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May 31, 2023 03:02
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sebmojo posted:The thot plickens Whoa my account still works. Plot thickener galore.
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Jun 2, 2023 02:05
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Picking up one the every line has to be a mind blower discussion, what is a cozy mystery? Is it Cozy, as in you can sit down and read it rather easily, hitting no hard words or complex thoughts/metaphors that require a lot of thought? Or it is cozy as in the plot doesn't touch any hard issues that you might see in regular crime or thrillers? I've been reading Janet Evanovich recently along with John McMahon's novels and am wondering what the difference is.
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Jun 2, 2023 17:51
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DropTheAnvil posted:Picking up one the every line has to be a mind blower discussion, what is a cozy mystery? to my understanding: "old school" cozy mysteries are Agatha Christie style stuff - murder is off screen, there's very little violence or sexuality described, typically few locations, and frequently results in the "gather everyone in the parlor to ferret out the killer" scene. modern cozy mysteries are book versions of murder she wrote or monk episodes - typically older protagonist, small town settings, again little violence and sex. they also often are tied together with hobbies (baking, quilting, etc)
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Jun 2, 2023 18:10
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Yeah cozies are PG-13 riffs on Golden Age fair play that lean "feminine" basically. Fun fact. Rita Mae Brown, one of the prominent cozy writers who did the cat themed Mrs. Murphy series, also wrote the script for Slumber Party Massacre.
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Jun 2, 2023 18:34
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Just put a picture of a bay window covered in plants and/or a curled-up cat on the cover. Boom. Now it's a cozy. 
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Jun 2, 2023 18:42
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Bonus points if the book has a post-script with a plot-related recipe or crafting directions
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Jun 2, 2023 21:10
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ActingPower posted:Just put a picture of a bay window covered in plants and/or a curled-up cat on the cover. Don’t forget the string lights.
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Jun 2, 2023 22:29
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My mother has about 17 million books titled The [dessert] Murder, I assume that's about as Cozy Mystery as you can get.
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Jun 3, 2023 03:37
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I don't know if anyone in here has been interested in trying Thunderdome but was kind of put off by how formal or no-nonsense the main Thunderdome thread can look, but if you were, we've been having some discussion about it lately and there's now a Thunderdome companion thread for discussion/questions/shitposting: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4033807 I think the general hope is that it'll be somewhere people can go to find out that we're all massive doofuses and you're allowed to write basically whatever the hell you want in Thunderdome, which it seems is not the current perception around it
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Jun 8, 2023 17:29
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I've been trying to write this thing, which started out as a early medieval story of a siege, since that's what I'm sorta knowledgeable on, which morphed into a horror fantasy. I got a problem. Evil Guy has this thing he gets power from. He soon finds that the more he kills the stronger he gets, but up to a point, for you see, he's been basically killing scum, and the Dark God demands the souls of the innocent. That is, children, mainly. I'm not sure how to handle that, given everything else is a world of eternal wars, mud, blood and poo poo. Piles of burning dead in a background of peasants cannibalizing the corpses hanging from trees with crows. Lovely. My pet hate of LOTR and other fantasy stuff is death is clean and often meaningless. I'm not having a problem putting adult heads on pikes but, I got grandkids and um, I'm not sure I can explain myself here, it's a bit hard to write. Well good job painting myself into a corner.
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Jun 16, 2023 05:30
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Fat Jesus posted:I've been trying to write this thing, which started out as a early medieval story of a siege, since that's what I'm sorta knowledgeable on, which morphed into a horror fantasy. I got a problem. Evil Guy has this thing he gets power from. He soon finds that the more he kills the stronger he gets, but up to a point, for you see, he's been basically killing scum, and the Dark God demands the souls of the innocent. That is, children, mainly. I'm not sure how to handle that, given everything else is a world of eternal wars, mud, blood and poo poo. Piles of burning dead in a background of peasants cannibalizing the corpses hanging from trees with crows. Lovely. My pet hate of LOTR and other fantasy stuff is death is clean and often meaningless. Just say the children all got evacuated before the siege began. Or, idk, children don't count as innocent because they have no moral sense yet, you need souls who actually understand good and evil and chose the former. There are lots of ways to elide the stuff you don't want to write about without breaking the grimdark tone.
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Jun 16, 2023 09:59
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How the heck do you plot thrillers? I'm working on the third draft of my post-superhero sci-fi/thriller sequel, and I've found it way more interesting to lean into the thriller side of things than the sci-fi side of things as I was working on the second draft, and while I read my share of thriller and crime stuff (just finishing third book of The Last Policeman, for example) I genuinely am not sure how to reduce a detailed story outline to a snappy plot that feels sensible and plausible.
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Jun 16, 2023 11:14
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Fat Jesus posted:I'm not having a problem putting adult heads on pikes but, I got grandkids and um, I'm not sure I can explain myself here, it's a bit hard to write. Well good job painting myself into a corner. Milkfred E. Moore posted:How the heck do you plot thrillers? I'm working on the third draft of my post-superhero sci-fi/thriller sequel, and I've found it way more interesting to lean into the thriller side of things than the sci-fi side of things as I was working on the second draft, and while I read my share of thriller and crime stuff (just finishing third book of The Last Policeman, for example) I genuinely am not sure how to reduce a detailed story outline to a snappy plot that feels sensible and plausible. Structures aren't rules, they don't dictate whether a book "works" or not, but they can be useful things to study.
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Jun 16, 2023 12:42
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Fat Jesus posted:I've been trying to write this thing, which started out as a early medieval story of a siege, since that's what I'm sorta knowledgeable on, which morphed into a horror fantasy. I got a problem. Evil Guy has this thing he gets power from. He soon finds that the more he kills the stronger he gets, but up to a point, for you see, he's been basically killing scum, and the Dark God demands the souls of the innocent. That is, children, mainly. I'm not sure how to handle that, given everything else is a world of eternal wars, mud, blood and poo poo. Piles of burning dead in a background of peasants cannibalizing the corpses hanging from trees with crows. Lovely. My pet hate of LOTR and other fantasy stuff is death is clean and often meaningless. Huh sounds like the Dark God might be mad at this guy, maybe denying power at key times that cause the heroes to get away or battles to be lost. Sounds like some internal conflict going on with the big bad, maybe he's trying to do other evil things to make up for it but it doesn't work. Sometimes he does better when not relying on this Dark God. Oh, no, now the trusted lieutenant is going to slay some babies and become the new chosen avatar of the Dark God! What, the villain is stopping them? What should the heroes do, side with the big bad or the person about to kill some babies? Let them kill them each other? Oh, great, now this baby is a jerk!
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Jun 16, 2023 20:02
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Thanks for the replies everybody, I do a poor job at explaining myself at the best of times. I have never written anything since school, which was a long time ago obviously. This thread has been pretty amazing, I have a much better idea of how to go about it now but in any case it's just fun, I'll keep trying and see what comes of it. Wasn't sure if I could suddenly switch from graphic to implied violence if you know what i mean, but I think I have more fundamental things to work on, having read the entire thread (almost). But anyway I grew a set and tried to write the bit, maybe you'll get an idea if I posted it? I've been to scared to show anyone what I've wrote, anyway we run livestock trucks it's not exactly the groves of academe out here, and to me my writing sounds just great, but probably isn't. Think of this bloke and his wife as sorta kinda like the couple from The Americans, but medieval serial killers controlled by a unknown master to manipulate the nobles, etc. Murdering heirs is an excellent way to keep the world in flames as we all know. Spoilered for bad writing and dead children. Harlan walked quickly through the garden path leading to the small single level manor house, wiping his feet then entering the small parlour. As he pushed open the door to the sitting room beyond he could see his dear wife, the sweet Delphine, a slim shapely figure dressed in pink finery, bows and ribbons in her glorious long hair, beaming at her dear husband returned to her at last. She stood standing in the doorway behind the children, dressed in their fine clothes sitting side by side on the sofa facing him holding hands, looking through him but not seeing anything since they were dead. Harlan walked to her, examining the children with great interest as he passed by. "They have been very good. Quite well behaved, very eager to see their father once more." Harlan nodded. He was standing with her now as she stood, motionless, smiling gaily and filled with promises of love. He turned from her and put a hand on each child's head, a boy aged nine and his sister, aged seven, and pushed them forward, seeing the tiny spot of blood where the sharp long needle she kept in her hair had gone through the base of their skulls, hitting a certain part of the brain that would render one to the darkness without pain, instantly gone. Such was this mother's love. He held their small heads in his hands, rubbing their hair as he closed his eyes, they were still warm, he noted, and he felt something, the pendant was hot, almost burning. Very strange. He turned to her again. She was now just Delphine, dead heartless eyes unsmiling as ever. "Is it all done?" "More or less." she shrugged. "More or less? And which is less?" He barked at her suddenly and she remembered herself. Sometimes she slips, Harlan had noted, but so far she had been surprisingly effective. "Robert's youngest son, he still lives. They put him on a boat to Wurzenburg." She smiled faintly. He almost laughed. Yes, they will take him to a place we control. So the problem would fix itself in time. "I must go darling, I have tea with some ladies as you know. Do be a dear and watch the children." Once again becoming bright and joyful, hiding herself from the world as some manner of murderous chameleon. She passed Beck and the other men on her way out and they tipped their hats to Magistrate's wife as she went to take tea with the ladies one last time.
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Jun 17, 2023 00:59
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Since I know most people stick to their bookmarks, I'm going to spam the busier threads with a link to the CC feedback thread
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Jun 17, 2023 12:47
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What kind of things do you keep in mind for line edits? I'm chewing through a project by feel at the moment. Once I'm done I'm planning another pass for specific things: - Passive voice - Filter phrases/weasel words (just, somehow, feel, sees, still, maybe, a bit, possibly, very) - Is-verbs ('He was angry' -> 'He fumed') - Sentences with ellipses, dashes, semicolons (I tend to write unwieldy run-on sentences) - High focus on body parts ('She held out her left hand to the doorknob and twisted it open' -> 'She twisted open the doorknob') - Stage directions ('He turned to look at her then walked to the other side of the room. She turned and looked out the window then turned back to look at him.') - Unnecessary prepositions ('She dropped it down onto the floor' -> 'She dropped it') I sometimes worry I'll go too far and end up clipped and unreadably terse, but that's probably a better problem to have than the opposite?
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Jun 22, 2023 09:04
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Some people have alleged this stupid rear end post was helpful for their line edits. https://www.sethdickinson.com/2015/02/26/lets-hurt-sentences/ Honestly your list is probably more useful!
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Jun 22, 2023 13:49
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