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babydonthurtme posted:I'm pretty stoked about that too! That poor dumb cthulhu dungeon, assimilated the wrong animal and revved up "chance to die" by 1000%. Dungeon Life I think there are protections in place, but appointing that monster as a Scion, who then pointed the dungeon at something weird, invalidated those protections. I'm curious if that 'something' was the key trigger, since it was described pretty vaguely.
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Aug 6, 2023 06:30
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TTO:U 86 Im actually a little upset that the Friend immediately collapsed as soon as they were about to add context to the mystery. It feels like the author is trying to string things out.
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Aug 6, 2023 07:34
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Onean posted:Dungeon Life I think there are protections in place, but appointing that monster as a Scion, who then pointed the dungeon at something weird, invalidated those protections. I'm curious if that 'something' was the key trigger, since it was described pretty vaguely.
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Aug 6, 2023 20:59
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SupSup Patreon Ch 73 I see Alden is going for the quote:<<We are the handsomest, the richest, the cleanest, and the most thoroughly prepared for every eventuality. Forty-eight seconds? It’s no trouble. A Rabbit man carries all he needs to survive the ravages of interplanetary travel upon his person.>>
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Aug 6, 2023 22:18
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^^^ I don't think it can really function as much of a sword, since Alden doesn't exactly have enhanced strength or skill to wield it in that way. The only difference between it and a regular umbrella would be that it can't break, but it's still going to be a light object. But it's a decent shield (though his balloon idea was better - the nature of his ability seems to strongly encourage using light materials if he's doing a shield, since they're equally inviolable regardless of material or consistency). Actually, it seems like the best tool would be something long and loose, like a long thin rope or thread. It could basically clothesline someone if they run into it. I guess it depends exactly how force to the objects Alden controls affects his authority - does it put more strain on his authority if someone hits a string he's preserved vs a more solid object? SupSup 73 (Patreon): Looks like Alden may have met his first friend (and she's also a good view into how "Avowed being forcibly relocated to Anesidora" can suck, since her whole motivation for becoming a hero is to be able to return home, since that's the only way you can really get off Anesidora as a high rank). I'm pretty excited to finally meet other Avowed around his age. I wonder what kind of test the school will give him; I don't think Alden stands a chance in anything vaguely resembling a "spar" against other students, since his only combat ability to speak of is "the ability to create a somewhat strong shield." Also, Alden's balloon idea was actually pretty good and clever. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 22:19
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So the Slumrat author got banned from RR over some secret discord drama or somethingquote:Well, this isn't how I planned to start the week. TL:DR- I won't be on RR for the foreseeable future, but I will be posting as usual here. Nothing should change on the Patreon side of things, other than untethering the tiers from RR. 
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Aug 7, 2023 00:00
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From what I heard, the Secret Mafia discord was coordinating reviews, and review bombs, to keep a select set of stories at the top of Rising Stars. As well as coordinating voting on reviews for the same reason. Also it was full of chuds apparently. there's an official vague blogpost about it: https://www.royalroad.com/blog/58/recent-moderation-actions
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Aug 7, 2023 00:18
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lol, lmao
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Aug 7, 2023 00:35
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Yeah. Laughter is a good response. Hopefully the various goon writers don’t get wrecked.
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Aug 7, 2023 00:48
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That's a real shame, I liked slumrat but yeah, it's a real scummy thing to do. At least now I know what was up with the shout outs every chapter. Every chapter had one and there was no way Warby was reading that many web serials.
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Aug 7, 2023 01:12
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Looks like Slumrat will be on a 2 week hiatus but the perm ban is now a temp ban. Hopefully the learned their lesson.quote:And I am Redeemed! To a two week ban.
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Aug 7, 2023 01:22
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BadMedic posted:From what I heard, the Secret Mafia discord was coordinating reviews, and review bombs, to keep a select set of stories at the top of Rising Stars. god knows I shouldn't even bother, no ethical consumption etc
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Aug 7, 2023 01:39
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DACK FAYDEN posted:oh lord, is there anyone I should be avoiding then I’ve been reading Dashiell Hammett recently, I don’t think anything bad has come out about him. Short stories written for genre magazines are adjacent to serials anyway. Has any web author ever become popular by writing a collection of short stories? I’ve seen short stories as Patreon rewards before; arguably many of the Guide’s reward chapters are short stories. But I don’t know of anyone who became popular off the form. In a sense the SCP Foundation qualifies, but I don’t think anyone knows the names of any of the contributors to it— it’s a relatively anonymous, though obviously very successful, set of writing.
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Aug 7, 2023 02:05
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Anias posted:Yeah. Laughter is a good response. To be more serious, I don't think the response of removing Top Reviews and review upvoting is the best way to handle it, but I'd also just have perma'd everyone involved. But given the amount of money on the line for stories that pass particular RR thresholds, it isn't surprising that this behavior is happening. There's probably a lot more Discords like this "Secret Mafia." Sounds like these ones were just the people stupid enough to have mycrimes.txt.
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Aug 7, 2023 02:15
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nrook posted:In a sense the SCP Foundation qualifies, but I don’t think anyone knows the names of any of the contributors to it— it’s a relatively anonymous, though obviously very successful, set of writing.
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Aug 7, 2023 02:19
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DACK FAYDEN posted:does qntm count? I bought all their books. but I don't actually know their name or anything. that one short story collection Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories was pretty popular over in the SF thread. I think that qntm’s popularity comes mostly from their long-form fiction like Fine Structure Constant, Ra, and There Is No Antimemetics Division. Their short stories, articles, and weird programming projects are great, but whenever I hear about qntm, it’s always in the context of either one of their big works or of a specific smaller piece (usually Lena). As such, I wouldn’t really consider them to be an author that got big specifically due to their short stories, even if their short stories are popular.
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Aug 7, 2023 03:34
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DACK FAYDEN posted:oh lord, is there anyone I should be avoiding then BadMedic posted:there's an official vague blogpost about it: Cicero fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 04:14
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I had the chance to take a look at two webserials from the trending and best rated lists on RR in the last few weeks. Re: Dragonize is your fairly traditional LitRPG where a young physicist dies and ends up becoming a dragon in a new world, if you follow this thread you probably get the gist of it. The first half of what's published is fine, fairly standard but with an interesting skill system and possibilities. Then the MC gets people to talk to and honestly my enjoyment dropped. Remember me specifying he was a physicist? If you thought he'd be using physics to come up with interesting ideas in the new world, that would have been interesting, but instead he mostly just has arrogant sounding dialog to try to show off how smart he is. Like, when a character suggests he should "harden" his scales, he corrects her and talks about how "hard" can be brittle and what he needs is to "toughen" his scales, for no actual purpose (it has nothing to do with any actual choices either can make). It gave me kind of painful flashbacks to the protagonist of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Maybe the story was going somewhere with that but it just ended up making him come off as conceited and arrogant, and there's so much LitRPG out there really it only takes one strike to make me drop something, so I won't be continuing. The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG does something more innovative with the LitRPG model, and that alone would be enough to catch my interest. A group of teens going to vacation at a lakeside cabin (of course) end up trapped in a strange town where horror movies come to life. But the tropes and cliches of horror movies benefit them as much as they threaten them, hence where the LitRPG elements come in. For example, the protagonist gets the ability "Oblivious Bystander" which means that as long as he seems not to notice the monster/murderer/etc they won't attack him, and is intent on rules lawyering that as much as he can in order to survive. There's stats as well, but it's a fairly simplified model that just compares a few stats; if there's a chase scene success comes down to whether the player or monster has the higher Hustle stat; if the athlete tries to fight off the monster with a baseball bat it's about whether his Mettle is higher than the monster's Grit, etc. It's a story about horror movies, but it's not actually a horror story, if that makes sense. The characters know what's up, and are well aware that using genre savvyness is how to stay alive; they're not peering out into the dark in terror wondering if there's a monster, they're peering carefully into the dark to try to figure out if the monster is a vampire, werewolf, or ghost, because knowing will help them find out what they need to do to survive. It actually kind of reminds me of Dungeon Crawler Carl, only (ironically) probably less grim. Though it's not a comedy either, even if I actually thought it might be from the description due to how the Oblivious Bystander thing works. I'm only about halfway through what's available so far (and I consider long stories to be a bonus) but I'm enjoying it and will be continuing. It may not be a great story, depending on how you measure that, but I think it's definitely a fun one. Bremen fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 04:22
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Cicero posted:Unrelated to this but the Paranoid Mage author is one of those right wing qanon types who believes that Biden stole the election and there's a Muslim invasion of Europe.
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Aug 7, 2023 04:26
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babydonthurtme posted:Ohhh that makes sense. Now I can't help but wonder how dungeons usually learn, and how long it takes for them to develop a semblance of caution. You'd think powerful monsters with an unidentifiable status block would scare the poo poo out of dungeons used to knowing what they're fighting. Dungeon Life Going by Violet, young dungeons are incredibly paranoid. My guess is that this other dungeon in the deep has basically had its ego inflated by being worshipped as a "God" and having no serious challenges to its existence, so it has lost that survival instinct.
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Aug 7, 2023 06:36
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Bremen mentioned The Game At Carousel a couple posts back and I've been reading through that one off and on over the last few days. I'm in the mid-60s right now. I have somewhat mixed feelings. The two things that stand out the most to me are 1) what Bremen noted about it being a story about horror that isn't a horror story, and 2) its relative lack of interest in the characters as characters rather than as roles. On topic 1... Like, the fact that there's a community there and that they do community things because it's ultimately a cooperative game makes sense and it's a natural outcome of the situation as presented, but I was very nonplussed that as soon as they step into the magic town friendly survivors show up, give them a standard tour, hand them the basic explanation of everything, and then point them toward a level-appropriate challenge so they can grind stats. The fact it starts out by so thoroughly undercutting any real sense of horror or mystery means that the story's later turns towards those tones as things get more complicated don't work that well. The characters just know too much about the basic rules! On topic 2... The story starts by sketching an awkward social situation the main character's in (on a trip with a friend who he's grown distant from) and early chapters reveal it's even more awkward (said friend was told to invite him, rather than inviting him himself). There's another character he's got a crush on. These things are gestured at occasionally, but they're basically ignored; past the first handful of chapters you could replace his friend with another person with the same in-story LitRPG role and very little would change about their scenes. One character reveals their big tragic past, but it's entirely so that they're pushing the main character into a plot. The story is just so transparently mechanical about its characters. The writing itself is competent enough and the concept is fun, but tone and characters are basically the heart of a story and The Game At Carousel has pretty big gaps in both respects. I'm planning to finish what's there but I'm not going to follow it as a serial.
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Aug 7, 2023 08:33
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Haystack posted:So, what are your favorite "numbers go up" serials? I'm a simple man, and I like it when there's systems to be exploited and lines to trend up. They don't have be litRPG; a sufficiently crunchy cultivation or progression fantasy could fit the bill. Right now I'm following Ar'Kendrithyst, Delve, Super Supportive, Bog Standard Isekai, and Ave Xia Rem Y. Azarinth Healer is a "unmbers go up" type of story and 99% finished. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/16946/azarinth-healer Ilea is technically a healer, though she mostly punches monsters and heals herself through any damage.
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Aug 7, 2023 08:59
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Einander posted:Bremen mentioned The Game At Carousel a couple posts back and I've been reading through that one off and on over the last few days. I'm in the mid-60s right now. I have somewhat mixed feelings. Haven't read it yet, but it sounds like it's just a UF instead of a horror. Horror is when there's hosed up poo poo trying to do terrible things to you and you're disempowered, UF is when there's hosed up poo poo trying to do terrible things to you and you're empowered to stop it. And it's hard not to do an empowerment story when you decide to add litrpg elements, that's what they're for. I guess I need to check it out.
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Aug 7, 2023 09:54
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BadMedic posted:From what I heard, the Secret Mafia discord was coordinating reviews, and review bombs, to keep a select set of stories at the top of Rising Stars. From that post, at least, it seems like they were giving each other reviews and coordinating to upvote the reviews they liked instead of downvoting other people. Tut tut, but I can find it in myself to forgive them. It would be interesting to see a full list of who got perma and temp banned, though. A little wall of shame.
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Aug 7, 2023 10:30
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Removing votes from reviews is gonna change up a lot. I did leave a 5* review for Slumrat earlier this week, mainly because I realised a lot of reviews I leave are negative and I wanted to balance the books a bit, but I wasn't bribed I swear!
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Aug 7, 2023 11:07
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Nettle Soup posted:Removing votes from reviews is gonna change up a lot. Is that a new avatar? Nice! And a Dwarf Fortress banner as well! Fancyyyyy!
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Aug 7, 2023 12:08
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I think I've had this avatar for around a decade now!
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Aug 7, 2023 12:44
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Megazver posted:From that post, at least, it seems like they were giving each other reviews and coordinating to upvote the reviews they liked instead of downvoting other people. Tut tut, but I can find it in myself to forgive them. Yeah I don't actually give a poo poo about people gaming RR's system considering how incoherent it has been at times.
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Aug 7, 2023 13:10
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Some off-site discussions of the RR Crisis, with some RR authors participating: https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/15jzc1t/refuting_false_allegations/ https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/comments/15k3r89/did_rr_just_ban_a_bunch_of_authors/
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Aug 7, 2023 13:55
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I looked through the recent SupSup Patreon comments and Sleyca actually goes through and manually likes every single comment. It's kinda sweet actually.
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Aug 7, 2023 15:50
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Megazver posted:Some off-site discussions of the RR Crisis, with some RR authors participating: Ha! Now my achievement for getting three upvotes on a review I wrote is a collector's item! More seriously, this is just depressing but not surprising. Kind of inevitable, especially on a site where people might be hoping to make lots of money but in great danger of being drowned out by the sheer volume, even without others engaging in malicious behavior. And boy the comments on those reddit threads show it; lots of "well everyone does it" and "how else is a new author supposed to succeed?" comments.
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Aug 7, 2023 17:37
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New authors would rather believe they aren't succeeding because of other people and bad actors rather than face the fact their writing isn't good enough for anyone to care about.
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Aug 7, 2023 17:42
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Nothingtoseehere posted:New authors would rather believe they aren't succeeding because of other people and bad actors rather than face the fact their writing isn't good enough for anyone to care about. I'm sure there's great stuff out there that gets missed. But at the same time there's, what, around 50,000 (edit: looks like nearly 60,000 now) stories on Royal Road? That means just to get onto a top 50 list your story needs to outperform 999 out of a thousand stories. Unless you are the reincarnation of Mark Twain it's an extremely ambitious goal. I remember something similar happened when Steam opened up their store to everyone instead of just approved publishers. A few people struck it really big and others decided they could do the same with their own indie games and starting pointing fingers when they failed. And yeah, a lot of it came down to visibility, but it was also the simple fact that even if their stuff was pretty good, when you have that much competition you have to either cheat or be almost superhumanly good to come out on top. Bremen fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 17:52
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Also stories that doesn't fit into Royal Road's preferred themes, genres, and tropes tend to do less well than stories that do.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:06
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For example Bob the Calamitous does better than the author's other work Journey Of Black and Red and it's a litrpg while Journey isn't.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:08
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Nothingtoseehere posted:New authors would rather believe they aren't succeeding because of other people and bad actors rather than face the fact their writing isn't good enough for anyone to care about. That statement isn't really valid considering LitRPGs except for a few outliers, dominate the popular stories list.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:16
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Kaja Rainbow posted:For example Bob the Calamitous does better than the author's other work Journey Of Black and Red and it's a litrpg while Journey isn't. Journey is very nearly over, for anyone thinking of reading it. Quite a lot of time has passed! Ariane thirsts for ever-larger explosions.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:17
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Journey is very nearly over, for anyone thinking of reading it. Quite a lot of time has passed! Ariane thirsts for ever-larger explosions. I was on its patreon, there's great stuff there (I switched to the Bob only tier after the story ended). Journey is a fun story.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:20
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IShallRiseAgain posted:That statement isn't really valid considering LitRPGs except for a few outliers, dominate the popular stories list. No, it's still valid, it's just an indication that what's "good" for RoyalRoad isn't the same as what many people would consider "good" stories. But getting to the top of RR still involves writing a good story for RR.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:20
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blastron posted:I think that qntm’s popularity comes mostly from their long-form fiction like Fine Structure Constant, Ra, and There Is No Antimemetics Division. Their short stories, articles, and weird programming projects are great, but whenever I hear about qntm, it’s always in the context of either one of their big works or of a specific smaller piece (usually Lena). As such, I wouldn’t really consider them to be an author that got big specifically due to their short stories, even if their short stories are popular. I guess I'm the weird one because I've read all of their short stories and have never made it more than a chapter or two into their longer works.
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