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Maybe they are non binary, Aspen only seems to be referred to as they. I guess i never really thought about it and just projected Aspen as a bloke but I can't see any obvious gender for them.
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Jul 20, 2023 14:59
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Aspen seems to get they/themmed, and I'm pretty sure that's a pronoun set used by other people in the setting, it's not all he, she, and ke.
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Jul 20, 2023 15:03
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the applicable part of the chapter 45quote:“Something is weird in this movie.” Denish stares at the screen hard for a bit. “Ah! Where are brennans?” Aspen is some flavor of future non-binary
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Jul 20, 2023 15:08
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Affi posted:I'd love some of the non patreon people's reactions to Farther and Man on the Moon cause those two chapters slapped. I (SupSup Patreon spoilerish) got a big laugh at the people in the comments section begging for one more chapter so it doesn't end on a big cliffhanger. Wittgen posted:They're named Aspen, which feels like a boy's name to me. Apparently it's gender neutral though, so I don't know. But no, you see, it doesn't have the protagonist leveling up and making numbers go up, so what's the point? The downside of so many stories on RR being really bad are you're going to attract a certain percentage of readers who actually just really like bad stories.
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Jul 20, 2023 15:11
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Bremen posted:I (SupSup Patreon spoilerish) got a big laugh at the people in the comments section begging for one more chapter so it doesn't end on a big cliffhanger. SS55 He does level up though, gaining the ability to repair his azure rabbit trait. I think the problem is that I'm not convinced that Alden or Kibby are going to die, because it's a royal road story and it just seems unlikely, so the tension the author is trying to build up falls a little flat as a result. I liked the chapter though you can really feel the desperation, even if the meta knowledge of what platform I'm on kind of removes any fear that something bad will happen. Maybe Kibby will lose a limb.
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Jul 20, 2023 15:26
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M. Night Skymall posted:SS55 He does level up though, gaining the ability to repair his azure rabbit trait. I think the problem is that I'm not convinced that Alden or Kibby are going to die, because it's a royal road story and it just seems unlikely, so the tension the author is trying to build up falls a little flat as a result. I liked the chapter though you can really feel the desperation, even if the meta knowledge of what platform I'm on kind of removes any fear that something bad will happen. Maybe Kibby will lose a limb. This criticism always feels a little silly to me. Is Hamlet bad because you know both Hamlet and his uncle are gonna be dead by the end of the play? Does Pride and Prejudice suffer because despite what a weird cad Mr. Darcy is at the middle of the book, you know he’s going to make good by the end? Or to be a little more apt, the Steve Ditko series of panels where Spiderman lifts himself out of a pile of rubble is really compelling even though you know he’s gonna make his way out somehow anyway.
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Jul 20, 2023 15:57
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nrook posted:This criticism always feels a little silly to me. Is Hamlet bad because you know both Hamlet and his uncle are gonna be dead by the end of the play? Does Pride and Prejudice suffer because despite what a weird cad Mr. Darcy is at the middle of the book, you know he’s going to make good by the end? Or to be a little more apt, the Steve Ditko series of panels where Spiderman lifts himself out of a pile of rubble is really compelling even though you know he’s gonna make his way out somehow anyway. They're different mediums, aside from the comic, but even in comics spider man has died repeatedly so he *could* not make it out and have to get resurrected later  . I did say the chapter was good because I enjoyed the portrayal of Alden's desperation, but in a web serial if you're going to attempt to trade on the tension of consequences the reader has to believe that those consequences can happen or it's going to suffer a little. I don't think many people are reading hamlet or pride and prejudice to see what happens at the end so it's kind of a weird comparison. Nothing on RR is so well written that I'm in it for the prose, come on.SS55The issue, to me, is that it's only Kibby and Alden who we see in the writing as endangered here and we "know" that they're safe. The author could work around this expectation by introducing outside pressures on Alden's level of success. At the moment it looks like he'll come skidding in on his rear end mostly dead when he makes it to the "safety" of whoever's cleaning up the chaos, but you could cut away to his friends/family/Joe someone else impacted by his absence so that there are other things for the reader to consider along with Kibby and Alden that will be affected by what's happening to him, his long absence, the fact that he'll probably be severely injured and need recovery time, etc. Anyway, none of this is to say I didn't like the chapter, I just think there's room to improve on making me feel like Alden's desperation will have an impact beyond "Wow I made it, almost died there." Otoh, perhaps in the next few chapters there will be real repercussions (It isn't very safe when he arrives actually and he's beat to poo poo and has to deal with that, seems likely), but they aren't shown or foreshadowed much here in this chapter.
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Jul 20, 2023 17:27
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M. Night Skymall posted:They're different mediums, aside from the comic, but even in comics spider man has died repeatedly so he *could* not make it out and have to get resurrected later There's only so much I can say since I'm a patreon reader, but (non-patreon spoiler response) I can definitely truthfully say that when I read this segment on Patreon I was absolutely worried that someone would die, probably Kibby unless the author had a big fakeout planned.
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Jul 20, 2023 17:41
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SS 55 What I really enjoyed about this chapter was thinking about it from Kibby's perspective. For her no time has passed, she blinks her eyes and Alden has run effectively barefoot across a moon for days. She's seeing none of the in-between, just waking up long enough to see what Alden is doing to himself. 54 posted:There were huge dark circles under her eyes. Her whole body was shaking, and she was breathing too hard. “I got it wrong a little,” she said faintly. “I’m sorry.” 55 posted:Can you do just a couple of minutes?”
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Jul 20, 2023 17:54
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M. Night Skymall posted:SS55 He does level up though, gaining the ability to repair his azure rabbit trait. I think the problem is that I'm not convinced that Alden or Kibby are going to die, because it's a royal road story and it just seems unlikely, so the tension the author is trying to build up falls a little flat as a result. I liked the chapter though you can really feel the desperation, even if the meta knowledge of what platform I'm on kind of removes any fear that something bad will happen. Maybe Kibby will lose a limb. SupSup 55 I would point out that the author in SupSup has not historically been afraid to kill off major named or close characters to Alden. Both his parents and (presumably) Hannah have died so far. Edit: SupSup Patreon: I had though that Alden dying here was a legit possibility when I read this chapter, with the MC switching to Kibby. Her origin would mirror, in large part, Alden's with her parents dying then her older brother (and Alden's older sister) figure dying and leaving them alone. Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 17:55
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SS55 I actually liked that the chapter stayed on Alden and didn't do any cut-aways. Those can feel cheep and keeping the focus narrowed on Alden's journey sells the feeling of desperation and perseverance beyond limits in this hail Mary plan Chapter was really good and looking forward to the next.
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Jul 20, 2023 18:00
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Feeling characters have plot armor can cut against tension, but I think Sleyca deftly avoids those problems. Kibby is so lovable that my intellectual certainty that she would probably live was constantly haunted by a sense of "...unless?" Right up to the bitter end.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:03
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Nitrousoxide posted:SupSup 55 Those really aren't the same thing. The former die during that is effectively a sort of flashback prologue, and the latter also occurs during the same sort of extended prologue (I consider all the chapters leading up to Alden being his current age to essentially be the prologue, since it basically speeds through them to give you an idea of Alden's history, and we never get to know the characters well). That being said, while (patreon) I was pretty sure Kibby wouldn't die, I wasn't *completely* sure. It was at least plausible to me that there could be some sort of "Kibby dying cements Alden's heroic goals" narrative element and there were some pretty death flag-ish scenes in the past couple RR chapters. Kyoujin posted:SS55 I actually liked that the chapter stayed on Alden and didn't do any cut-aways. Those can feel cheep and keeping the focus narrowed on Alden's journey sells the feeling of desperation and perseverance beyond limits in this hail Mary plan Yeah, in hindsight (from the Patreon chapters) it's absolutely for the best that they didn't cut-away during the moon stuff. I remember wanting that to happen at the time, but it definitely would have been a bad idea.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:24
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imnotinsane posted:After everyone was commenting about time to orbit I jumped in and the various mysteries and the story as a whole really hooked me. The longer Sands goes without being told "Hey, we can and have disabled all the kill switches on the awake members of the crew!" the funnier it gets. That's going to blow up spectacularly unless he changes very quickly.
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Jul 20, 2023 20:59
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Time to Orbit spoilers: Isn't there a kill switch on one of the newer members of the crew? Although I wouldn't put it past them to have quietly disabled it. Rob Filter posted:[...]] I realised this earlier too  It's so good.
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Jul 20, 2023 21:14
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Nettle Soup posted:Time to Orbit spoilers: no, sands didn't revive any more convicts because he was paranoid about stacking the crew with them too much. the new crew are all rando civilians in the same priority bracket that aspen was in iirc
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Jul 20, 2023 21:24
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Bremen posted:But no, you see, it doesn't have the protagonist leveling up and making numbers go up, so what's the point? It's worse for SS and Slumrat because they are both genre deconstructions, so they will attract and disappoint the RR readers who expect an eternal chain of powerups. SS54-55 nonpatreon reader: This whole stranded arc has been extremely well executed and only works because Kibby is such a great character. It also feels like a bit of a wink to the opening of Randidly Ghosthound. I'm not completely sure reading that the author won't kill off Kibby. I don't think they will, although I suspect they will kill off someone other than Kibby soon just to let us know those prologue deaths are still on the table and side characters don't have plot armor. Manually patching up his fracturing skills seems like it's going to have some serious consequences (good or bad) when Alden gets out of this. And if Kibby dies I guess I'll go reread Chain of Dogs to feel better. I'm curious if we'll get several minor or a major timeskip at some point to age up Alden a bit and how the story transitions after this big first summoning/stranding thing wraps up. I could see anything from Alden being banned from Earth to Superhero High with summonings to conflicts with the powers who set up the superhero stuff on Earth to gremlin stuff.
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Jul 20, 2023 21:35
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Personally, I think the escape section drags on a chapter too long, even though all the ones stuck in the base hit right to get that feeling of isolation.
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Jul 20, 2023 21:40
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Man on the Moon might just be the high point of SupSup so far. I don't know about the readers, but I bet based on the strong reception the author will treat that as proof-of-concept for emotional highs/lows the serial can theoretically tackle. exciting! Necroepilogos was stunning this week. I might actually like the Pheiriant POV more than the main one! The claustrophobic space that makes up the setting, the story of A.I. growing beyond its programming but still being forced to interface with its loved ones through maintenance logs and pre-coded verbiage... love as a natural endpoint for non-human intelligences? Describing media through comparisons to other media is kind of passé but it's like if the Iron Lung sub was an Evangelion and I couldn't possibly love it more. A bit of a shame it's more of a side-plot so far, but maybe that will change soon quote:And I want you to know that you’re going to be okay. Alright? You’re gonna be okay. I’ve juiced you way beyond legal limits, my sweet boy. You’ve got an on-board store of grey goo plugged into your armour under-layer. I’ve taken the limiters off your mind loop-back function, which is … I don’t even know what that’s gonna do, you don’t have the substrate space to grow infinitely, but you’ve got room to get smart. Real smart. You’ve got on-board ammunition manufactories — really not supposed to put those in anything with a mind, haha … ha. Uh … oh gently caress, gently caress me, this isn’t even going to mean anything to you, is it? You’re never going to listen to this. You won’t comprehend. This is for me, I guess. Oh, gently caress’s sake, Rhian, come on, get this done. Get this done. Get him out the door. Pheiriant, I’ve upgraded your fusion reactor. You’ll run for a million years without maintenance. Maybe that’s long enough for, I dunno, people to come back, somehow? Maybe the blobs will reinvent civilization and make you a pet? Whatever. You’re basically as invincible as I can get you. But you’re running your diagnostic, so you’re hurt. You’re going to be alright, okay? Look after the girls. I’ve given them proper names, too — Melyn, and Hafina. Stupid of me, I guess, but I don’t want them rattling serial numbers off to each other for years. They’ll suffer memory degradation much faster than you, a century or two at most. But you won’t. You’re a good boy. You’re gonna be okay. Never forget that I love you.* quote:Then she noticed the screen; it was the only screen down here in the secret room, a tiny rectangle for displaying ammunition production rates. But now it had words. 12 Miles Below had the lore-dump that we had been waiting for and it was... a little dry frankly. Maybe the anticlimax is the point. The longer you think about it the funnier it gets that humanity was ended by a chatbot A.I. with a basic "evil overlord" personality loaded in, that managed to super-charge itself with metaphysical nuclear codes Ramie fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 01:39
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Ramie posted:Man on the Moon might just be the high point of SupSup so far. I don't know about the readers, but I bet based on the strong reception the author will treat that as proof-of-concept for emotional highs/lows the serial can theoretically tackle. exciting! It is certainly among my top 5 chapters in the series, Patreon stuff included. I'm a big fan of 61 as well, but that's a contentious chapter.
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Jul 21, 2023 02:00
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61 ruled and people mad about it are dopes.
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Jul 21, 2023 04:10
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I just want more Super Supportive. 55 I thought Alden’s use of peace of mind was extremely clever.
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Jul 21, 2023 04:21
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Finally got around to Time to Orbit: Unknown and I'm digging it about 1/8th of the way in. It's got real Gary Paulsen's "Hatchet" vibes so far.
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Jul 21, 2023 18:05
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Today's Slumrat 107 is a heady mixture of heartwarming and murderous.
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Jul 21, 2023 20:49
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LLSix posted:Today's Slumrat 107 is a heady mixture of heartwarming and murderous. Kind of Slumrat’s comfort zone lately. I hope Truth gets his visit to a pet cafe.
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Jul 21, 2023 22:50
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navyjack posted:Kind of Slumrat’s comfort zone lately. I hope Truth gets his visit to a pet cafe. I really hope that Etenesh doesn't get killed in her duel against Alemu. Slumrat 107
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Jul 21, 2023 23:26
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Time to Orbit 67: “Arboreans believe that if you’re going to honour somebody, it’s best to do it while they’re still alive. Ideally, an Arborean wouldn’t have anything to say in a eulogy.” “How do your funerals work, then?” I shrug again. “It depends on the condition of the body. It’s not always practical or safe to hold an ideal funeral. Symbolic substitutes sometimes have to be made.” “What’s an ideal funeral like?” “W-well. amazing
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Jul 22, 2023 19:08
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That was an excellent chapter. I really like how gracefully Time to Orbit: Unknown has handled the shifts in the story tone as the cast expands. This definitely doesn't feel like the author is scrambling to make things up on the fly, everything is coming together quite nicely.
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Jul 22, 2023 19:24
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fuckin love the zeelites
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Jul 22, 2023 20:00
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oh no
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Jul 22, 2023 20:02
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Arkendrithyst Patreon: I love this story right now, some poo poo goes down in this chapter and it is fascinating
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Jul 22, 2023 20:51
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Peachfart posted:Arkendrithyst Patreon: I love this story right now, some poo poo goes down in this chapter and it is fascinating The story is very funny right now because the tone hasn't changed much, it's just that now the "something unexpected happens with magic" events in the chapters now are "the world ends and someone has to fix it before everyone dies." The apocalypse has happened like five times over the last ten chapters. Admittedly this is because Erick is compartmentalizing hard and is very limited in who he can talk to about it, but still.
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Jul 22, 2023 22:14
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I've blasted through about 70% of Time to Orbit: Unknown in the last couple of days and it's been a real banger so far. The transition between a solo man vs nature story to group vs nature, to mystery (why the sabotage? Why are the crew plotting against our MC?) to now a little political thriller of the prisoners and Aspen vs the prison guards/slavers has been great. It's even worked in a rogue AI in the background using the sleeping colonists as a collective captcha solver to improve its intelligence. The conceit to have just a few people revived at a time has done a lot of work to keep the amount of new characters to a very manageable number and I and I've really gotten plenty of time to get to know them.
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Jul 22, 2023 22:34
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I've started reading Time to Orbit: Unknown (only 5 chapters into it, though). One thing I really like about it is that it's good about not explicitly telling you things that you can figure out from context. Like in chapter 4 when he puts on the space suit and the rotting smell disappears. I feel like a lesser story would add a couple sentences making sure the reader understands the implication there.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:15
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Ytlaya posted:I've started reading Time to Orbit: Unknown (only 5 chapters into it, though). There's a lot of stuff that the MC doesn't really understand (at least at first) but a fairly science savvy SF reader probably will.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:23
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Todays chapter... 
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Jul 23, 2023 22:50
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New SS patreon chapter is posted. Yes, I know I have a problem.
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Jul 23, 2023 23:11
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LLSix posted:New SS patreon chapter is posted. Yes, I know I have a problem. After noticing there are two parts to this recent chapter, I'm trying to decide when to read them. Perhaps tomorrow morning with my caffeine. Or maybe I'll read one part tonight and the other tomorrow.
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Jul 24, 2023 00:54
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SS56 public: What a great chapter! Kibby covering hard for the auriad. The griveck ready to battle the "best avowed" on the brink of death. Alden's artonan children's tv show knowledge for some gallows humor at the end.
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Jul 24, 2023 01:06
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SS56 I do like that the griveck's prey sense keeps getting stronger as Alden and Kibby approach SS69. A very nice chapter.
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Jul 24, 2023 01:20
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