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Oh wow, finally found and binged this thread after not noticing it for 2 years. Really glad I caught up here because I really like this book.
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Jul 6, 2022 23:02
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:54 |
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It's phrased like 'don't give technology' is a separate directive from their pacifism one. Probably to help paper over why we haven't gone to the Chee for tech stuff in the past.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:07
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Didn't he build a distress beacon from RadioShack parts and they called a bug fighter down and got captured? Maybe that wasn't a z space thing though. Yeah, so far the only time he's done a Z-Space thing he piggybacked onto the powerful radio telescope. The RadioShack stuff has mostly been to facilitate stuff for things like the distress call, or building his own super-computer and stealing cable.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:58
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Marco having conflicting feelings about Nora especially rings pretty true here. She's someone his dad cares a lot about, but emotionally he's been preparing on some level to rescue his mom since before she came into the picture and I have the feeling that even if he had more time and a choice in the matter he probably would have let the Yeerks take her. And also for all they're framing this as letting Visser 3 get the promotion... he's already gonna get it. Visser 1 is sentenced to death (and Visser 2 is still 'Yeerk not appearing in this Narrative') for things entirely outside of their control already and its not clear how they could realistically stop Visser 3's ascension and the change of plans for the invasion at this point. It does kind of make me wonder why they're killing Eva though, she should still be a pretty good host body. You'd think one of the Taxxon Council of 13 members would be itching to trade up into her even if they don't want any lower level Yeerks to learn her secrets. Zore fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jul 9, 2022 |
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Jul 9, 2022 04:56
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freebooter posted:I agree with this - but without a doubt, he would have taken the risk and tried if it had been his dad or his own mum. And part of the reason he's beating himself up is because he knows that. Yeah, and to be clear this is mostly what I meant about Marco feeling guilty. Because he can absolutely make the choice not to save Nora here but there isn't a chance in hell he'd make the same decision for his own mother or father. Compounded by the fact that his dad cares about Nora a lot more than he does and realizing the pain he's gonna cause his dad.
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Jul 10, 2022 03:37
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Fuschia tude posted:...have they exhibited such caution before? Yeah, we've seen the Animorphs use Human/Hork-Bajir/Yeerks as shields before, especially if Visser 3 isn't there to push the issue. Besides him very few Yeerks really seem into casually killing their compatriots or underlings. The only people everyone seems willing to always sacrifice is Taxxons 
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Jul 12, 2022 07:36
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Yeah, what Marco does here is completely understandable but also probably the coldest thing he does in the series. At least on an interpersonal level, not going to count all the mauling and mass murder
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Jul 15, 2022 05:59
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freebooter posted:Aside from the fact that acquiring and morphing other humans is, as has been pointed out, a lesser crime than many others they've already committed - I'm pretty sure all of them have morphed other humans without their consent before? The boys morphed those Secret Service agents in the David trilogy, Ax has morphed Jake, Marco morphed that office worker and Cassie morphed Rachel in the alligator book. (Though I guess you can argue morphing a fellow Animorph is different.) TBF they just acquired the Secret Service guys, I don't think they ever actually morphed them. Marco morphing the office worker is the first real time any of them actually broke the taboo (and he did so secretly) except for morphing each other in situations where consent was inferred. And I think they're so hung up on it because its one of the big redlines they set for themselves at the beginning and they've been holding onto it like an anchor up until now. Strictly speaking they've definitely done a lot worse, but they've built this up as a taboo and stuck to it for a couple years now. Taking the step is a much bigger symbolic deal than anything else. I think it also matters that most of the worse things they've done have been in the heat of battle and usually aren't pre-meditated. Its probably part of why they're so hung up on not stealing and not morphing other people, a sort of divide they can put up where they don't do 'bad' things if they're not in life-threatening danger which has been slowly eroding away. Their experience with David probably also helped reinforce that. By breaking a lot of their taboos he cemented their importance as a way to keep some semblance of normalcy. Zore fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Jul 19, 2022 |
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Jul 19, 2022 08:15
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freebooter posted:Yeah, fair, I think all of that makes sense. Especially the David part. Its basically the first thing they decide on back in book 1. They also keep bringing up parallels to how its similar to what the Yeerks do in terms of 'stealing' someone's identity and autonomy, but I always thought that was a weird argument. Honestly the big reason to have it be taboo for them is because there are a lot of unsavory things they could get up to if they started casually morphing other people. And I think Applegate/Grant realized it would open up a lot of uncomfortable doors and take the focus off of the 'kids turning into animals' hook of the series and built it up from that.
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Jul 19, 2022 09:22
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lmao, I forgot Chapman ended up on the aircraft carrier. Now I kinda want to see the series from the POV of a Fox Mulder style government agent trying to piece together why this seemingly unimportant Vice Principal keeps popping up in bizarre locations right before some kind of wild animal attack.
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Jul 22, 2022 03:57
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WrightOfWay posted:I don't see why they needed to fake an attack on the George Washington in the first place. If the Yeerks have an American nuclear sub crewed by Taxxons, why not just have them fire without going through doctoring up a justification? It's not like China wouldn't consider a nuke launched at Beijing by an American submarine an act of war and retaliate even if the Americans denied that they ordered it. I think the idea here was to layer a bunch of attacks so any of them failing still means they have a bunch of backups still going on. Plus it makes the war a lot murkier and more likely to draw in the rest of the world the more you have America and China convinced that they were attacked unprovoked. Plus I imagine at this point they're expecting the Andalite Bandits to foil at least part of their schemes
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Jul 25, 2022 05:45
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Huh I thought I remembered the whole series and I do recognize the first chapter. But all the Civil War stuff here is completely throwing me for a loop, I don't remember this at all 
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Aug 3, 2022 03:34
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JesusSinfulHands posted:I've always imagined that in the completely unrealistic scenario where Animorphs ever got a Game of Thrones level TV adaptation, it would be around 6 seasons, with a slow and leisurely, character-building adaptation of most of the first 26 books or so, while skipping obvious filler like 14 with the Yeerk-infested horses or 25 with the adventure to the North Pole. After that a ton of filler books in the 30s and 40s could be skipped, not skipping the important Aftran/Yeerk Peace Movement stuff, everything with Marco and his mom, and the Tobias & Taylor stuff. Then nearly everything from 45 onward is basically an entire big-budget last season on its own...actually 45 would be a great episode to end the previous season on. You could do Andalite Chronicles and Visser probably, it wouldn't take that many setpieces and you could do them as interstitial movies between seasons. Hork-Bajir Chronicles would almost definitely be completely cut if for no other reason than that there are no human characters at all. Ellimist Chronicles would work best as a post series cap that got adapted into an actual movie if you could ever convince people to film it. Or hell build it out into its own prequel series (which again would never be made because of the whole 'no human characters' stuff. The Megamorphs could mostly just go into the pile of unadapted stuff, though the first one is actually probably a good season finale to sneak in for Season 1 or so considering it doesn't get nearly as weird as the later ones. I would also riot if we didn't get to see Tobias ice Hitler.
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Aug 12, 2022 00:42
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Removing the Ellimist isn't a good idea imo. It has too many knock-on effects and completely sidelines Tobias for the series. It also removes a ton of the more interesting conflicts he has with being Elfangor's son, the Hawk vs Human stuff and the plots of his last 4 books which are all highlights of the series. Like what do you even do with a theoretical nothlit Tobias after the initial horror and first 'Hawk v Man' we cover in book 3? It does make things a bit weirder and more complicated, but the series as a whole does a lot of weird and experimental things. Adapting it should keep at least some of that intact.
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Aug 12, 2022 18:31
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The Ketrans permanently plugged themselves into the crystal internet which feels like its a special circle of hell. Especially when you consider the only time they get to not be constantly spammed by various alerts and messages is a small break for free flying that most adults don't even bother with. Feels a hell of a lot more relevant and prescient now than it did when the book was published
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Aug 23, 2022 02:52
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Yeah, I think the games are a really cool and evocative idea. I'd definitely be down for it but I can't imagine it ever being popular.
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Aug 25, 2022 03:30
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Look all I'm saying is that we'd have our versions of Menno immediately get the game changed to that to chase popularity
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Aug 25, 2022 04:08
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And here's the core of the Ellimist revealed, an absolute refusal to die no matter how many taboos he needs to break or fears he needs to conquer. You put Toomin in a corner and he will absolutely shank you.
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Aug 27, 2022 03:46
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I forgot how smug Menno was even to the end when he was pointing out how he and the Polars were responsible for the complete genocide of his people. Also totally forgot it was because of violent video games being broadcast and not standard Dark Forest stuff.
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Aug 29, 2022 01:44
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Fuschia tude posted:I feel like Menno made way too much of an assumption there. (Possibly an error by the authors; they don't seem like super techies.) I wouldn't trust anyone even from my own species and culture would be able to decode a real-time stream of data and turn it into some kind of viewable video format, at least not without a lot of training on the software and video file formats involved, on top of all the software engineering and general technological baseline knowledge they would need. An alien species from a completely different biochemical legacy, working purely from a radio stream, converting not into sound but to some video format for a computer system that might not even be based on binary? Not a chance. Realistically they're throwing it in for thematic relevance here more than hard science. The story works better if the game that defines and created the 'Ellimist' is also responsible for the destruction of his people, and the book is short enough that we got a bunch of exposition crammed into Menno at the end there. If you want a more Watsonian explanation, they might have sent some physical media literally replaying it on some kind of screen or hologram which is why Menno is so sure of the reason. Presumably as some sort of weird Polar power play.
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Aug 29, 2022 07:29
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Man, I forgot that apparently the Skrit Na have been around since before the Ellimist's ascension. That is a mind-boggling period of time to be the weird scavengers of the galaxy.
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Aug 31, 2022 04:30
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And yeah, The Ellimist is now an insanely advanced composite mind that bootstrapped itself through a technological singularity driven entirely by Toomin's refusal to ever say die.
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Sep 2, 2022 03:26
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I always wondered if Andalites eventually evolved Thought-Speech because of the Ellimist's Andalite body introducing some kind of genetic mutation into the population. Because as it is we see them in basically a modern configuration a couple million years before present day... except missing Thought-Speech and only having some sign language.
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Sep 6, 2022 02:30
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If we imagine the Andalites he lived with are the equivalent of like Homo Habilis it kind of works? Especially if you consider Ax's history lesson from earlier in the series where he says Andalites took several times longer to develop from flight to spacefaring than humans did and extrapolate it out a bit. Culturally we see that they're incredibly slow to change as well if we take Aldrea's thoughts on how the Andalite military works into account. Add onto this that in general there aren't that many Andalites, at least not compared to humans. Even now they probably top out at fewer than a billion across all their colonies and the homeworld. Its still a bit wonky and clearly just because they wanted to line up the scene where the Ellimist saves Earth circa the Triassic period from Crayak.
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Sep 8, 2022 16:37
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Oof, I still feel that ending. “I did not cause you to be one of the six. You are … you were … a happy accident. An unwitting contribution from the human race to its own survival.” Also based on what we know about the Ellimist and Crayak's machinations this hugely foreshadows out who our dead Animorph is. Jake was picked by Crayak and the Ellimist maneuvered Cassie, Marco and Tobias into the group for different reasons. And its clearly not Ax based on the whole 'a contribution from the human race' thing.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:23
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I think you might have the wrong name for this one, book 48 is 'The Return'. Book 53 is 'The Answer'
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Sep 10, 2022 06:19
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I also really like how Rachel has essentially gone through an inverse of Tobias' arc. Rachel, as the series has progressed, has gone from being the most self-assured and confident to the one who has the most doubts about herself. And she's even bringing up her own parallel to Tobias' previous shame about hunting and eating like a hawk and deliberately shuts down and refuses to reach out to him about it. Its an interesting way that you can see the war clearly breaking and changing them.
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Sep 13, 2022 06:01
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Yeah, I remembered the human minions and completely forgot David managed to wrangle up an army of rats.
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Sep 15, 2022 07:16
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Vandar posted:This last chapter, to me at least, is probably the hardest hottest thing in the entire series. Its up there but there are like 3 upcoming bits I think hit even harder.
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Sep 26, 2022 05:30
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freebooter posted:Agreed. The beginning and the very ending are good but the middle is not. It's still unclear to me what was actually happening there - was Cassie actually there, did V1 get teleported in there, did Rachel actually transform into a giant mutant, or was it all illusory mind games? Yeah, only 2 was on my list but I absolutely agree with the others. I was thinking specifically Again, major spoilers 3. Literally everything to do with the Auxiliary Animorphs 2. Jake and Erik 1. The Hague
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Sep 26, 2022 08:36
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Mean and buff as poo poo!! The game isn't limited to Earth or even the Yeerk conflict as a whole, its a pretty minor part of it overall. They're presumably trading various terms and conditions for it all the time with the Ellimist being slightly more invested in the Animorphs with how carefully he put them together. My guess is for every event like this where Crayak gets to do the devil thing you get an event like book 13 where the Ellimist gets to play the same role but with Tobias. And this might be a direct repayment/reciprocal event to that. The Ellimist definitely gets more interactions with the cast but that may be because he's trading out letting Crayak influence poo poo on the other side of the galaxy in exchange for putting his finger on the scale harder for the Hork-Bajir and Humans. I think, counting their appearances, overall the Ellimist gets one more than Crayak because outside of this book and 7+13 they always appear in tandem iirc. And even then you get a tiny Crayak cameo in book 6 when Jake's hallucinating as the Yeerk is dying. So 7 is presumably something Ellimist traded to Crayak for a different opportunity elsewhere and they agreed to give each other the opportunity with Rachel/Tobias to play out in 13/this book in my headcanon. Every other interaction I believe we know the stakes. Zore fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Sep 26, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2022 18:47
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Yeah, there's definitely a few relationships that are really threadbare. Cassie-Tobias, Rachel-Ax, and Marco-Cassie just don't get a lot of focus or real connective tissue. Having said that, the last few books do massively expand on one of those pairs in an interesting way.
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Sep 30, 2022 08:36
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Capfalcon posted:When I was younger, being around animals always made me nervous. I was always worried about the inhuman mind inside of them. Who knew what they could be thinking? Maybe dogs were just playing along and desperately wanted to bite you Maybe birds would try to dive bomb your carr of the road. Animorphs to this day makes me feel uneasy about squashing bugs thanks to the mutiple horrifying almost deaths they have in insect morph sticking with me
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Oct 1, 2022 05:33
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This is one of those pieces of body horror seared into my mind. Marco's beak being torn off completely is just horrifying.
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Oct 3, 2022 04:32
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Let's count some of the worst stuff that's happened to all of them so far ignoring all the big events where everyone got hosed up like constant morphing so they didn't freeze to death in the arctic; Jake; Infested by a Yeerk then had to go through it dying in his head Got pasted as a fly and almost bled out on a plane Was about to kill his brother to stop him from killing their dad Rachel; Stayed to watch David become a nothlit Killed him or brought him back to his own personal hell later Got literally cut in half Tobias Horribly tortured by a deranged Yeerk "involuntary" nothlit Everything about his family situation is insane Cassie Became a caterpillar nothlit Aldrea possessed her and almost took over her body Killed a dude back in book 1 Marco Most severe injuries I can remember (this one, dying as a Gorilla and having Erik restart his heart, that time he got rabies and almost died) Had to deal with his mother being the host for Visser 1 Ax Got infested by a yeerk while delirious Met other Andalites 3-4 times, betrayed by at least some of them literally every time Zore fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Oct 4, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 02:17
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On the plus? side they only need to get like 7-8 people out. Cassie's parents, Jake's parents and Rachel's mom and sisters (her dad probably lives too far away to reasonably extract) and they know the Yeerks haven't pinged them yet. But still, goddamn they should be getting them out tonight if at all possible.
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Oct 5, 2022 03:32
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Fuschia tude posted:Isn't what's his name like 60 elf-years old or whatever Yeah, no one is really a kid in The Hobbit. The youngest dwarves and Bilbo are all firmly in the 'young adult' age bracket and like half or more of the party is middle aged or older. Even in The Lord of the Rings everyone is an adult, like the book opens on the combination 111th and 33rd birthday party for Bilbo/Frodo respecitively and the actual plot doesn't even kick in till a few years later.
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Oct 7, 2022 05:59
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Yeah, I was a fan of Loren from the Andalite Chronicles so this was definitely one I read a bunch of times.
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Oct 9, 2022 07:58
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Outside of the horrifying event with the Water Buffalo, the dinosaurs they killed in the Megamorph books and the innocent Red-Tail David killed I can't really think of much animal murder. Tons of Animorph injuries in animal form, but very rarely do we see actual animals suffer.
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Oct 9, 2022 08:18
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:54 |
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Yeah, this is definitely one of Ax's best bits in the series Especially since its also basically the last time he gets a real comedic scene, Jake's parents being taken and their cover getting blown is about the lightest plot we're gonna get from here to the end
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Oct 12, 2022 00:13
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