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CommandanteLemming

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  1. @Robinski Glad you liked the head trip :-) Figuring out where to go after the head trip, and how far to rewind before the head-trip is the fun part. And you'll get to see more of this as well as Millenial - the goal is to have two projects going so that one can marinate while the other is on the stove, so to speak. Two weeks working on Haruwin really made me want to get back to Millenial and helped me figure out the next few chapters. I figured a few more weeks working on Millenial and I'll know what happens to Prax and Anna. Millenial is the main project but you'll definitely see more Haruwin.
  2. So, back to the main project,and I've got a much clearer idea where it's going and who Nina is. Previously - our heroine, Nina Constantinos, has just started as a correspondent for the WorldWide News network in the year 2034. She has just shockingly been sent to cover the death of the Pope. We've met the network's powerful editor and evening news anchor, Priscilla Davis (who we're pretty sure is not a nice person), her mean-girl secretary Sinead Szerbiak, evening show host Dan Dragovich (who was friends with young Priscilla in the prologue but has somehow become her enemy), and ace gossip correspondent/"sexiest name in news" Madison Rylander (who we suspect is a bit of a drunk). (Sorry for the long intro.) This week the team heads to Rome. It is an airport scene, so they're getting somewhere rather than doing something, but they all had to meet at some point. My goal here was to push the entire rest of the ensemble onstage, because I'm going to need all of them in the toolbox going forward. Let me know if it works because I can see the pitfalls. This was the piece I've been struggling with because you meet both Nina's co-protag Vinya Jain, and another really important character Aiden Healy. So their intros have to do them justice. Vinya in particular is hard to trot out, because I know her as a mature character, and boiling her back down to her elemental self is hard.
  3. Either that or this That's the "Millenial Reign" theme song - I'be decided that's it's an HBO Series that I watch in my head - it has a theme sequence, soundtrack, and episodic story arcs. That might be overly grandiose but if it helps get stuff on the page I'll indulge it.
  4. Lol I think I was listening to this on loop: Country-western probably isn't great W&S mood music, but I always use musical qeues to get myself in writing headspace and I was planning on writing when I got home - and that's a song I assigned as part of a character's inner monologue.
  5. I know I always jump early, but I have a busy weekend so I'll just flag now that I have a submission for Monday. Otherwise I'll forget. End of week housekeeping I guess - I do almost all my writing on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and don't have much time between Thursday and Sunday, so I'll always know by Thursday whether I'm submitting or not lol.
  6. Also I think you need to establish the exact cost of fire in your magic system. I can go with the hair and fingernails - but I would think that massive room-engulfing fireballs take more fuel than the doorknob trick - yet neither hurt Dyllis and she still doesn't seem to need more than a few stands of hair. I don't know if you've done this yet - but I would consider actually making yourself a spreadsheet of how much catalyst is required for certain magical acts. That way you have a desk-reference that tells you how Dyllis is going to behave when she needs to collect fuel from herself. It may also tell you that in certain situations, she's not going to have time to get enough, and that's when she gets hurt.
  7. I'm going to echo Andy in that this seems more rushed than your normal work. More typos, more short/simple sentences than usual - but that's not a huge point. I'll also agree with him on the pacing, which was very good and had me reading pretty fast. I don't have a lot of specifics - seeing as I read half of this as a printout on a bus while listening to loud music - so in this case count me as the type of person who will actually be reading your book on a bus after you've published it, rather than sitting at a computer taking notes. Sorry about that, but it's one of those weeks at the office. :-P SOOOO... Now we have the big "A-HA!" moment with Dyllis. Excellent job with that. It does explain her timidity, and if you've done this right her timid behavior will throw us off the path but there will be red-flags that we won't catch until later. I haven't gone back and re-read it, so I don't know if there are. Obviously you had me faked out for several weeks complaining that she was too timid for someone with such power - and now I'm debating whether that works for me. On the one hand, it makes a lot more sense as a facade, on the other hand it still doesn't quite work for me. If I were to try to reverse engineer it myself, knowing what I know now, I'd consider making her a bit more of a needy damsel in distress - or have her make some other moves that we as readers would later recognize as conscious attempts at manipulation. Just thoughts - I like her being timid - but maybe a bit more "actively timid". Not sure. Anywho - I like that she's an empath. If you've never read Azimov's "Foundation" Trilogy, they deal a LOT with an empath who has the ability to emotionally re-program people in the second book "Foundation and Empire". That character spends half of the book faking out both the other characters and the audience a la Dyllis, and the "A HA!" moment is absolutely tremendous. (It also makes total sense when you go back and piece together his otherwise nonsensical actions). So you have a huge opportunity here, and I hope on revision you spend some time carefully laying the trail of crumbs that makes the reader think they should have picked up on this earlier. As for the actual reveal of her plan and the nature of Sphere - I did think it was a little maid-and-butler - the dialogue read a little bit like an encyclopedia entry, so on revision I think you should go back and think about all of this information in terms of how Dyllis sees it and how it affects her, not how you would describe it as an author. You already have a start in that direction, as the dialogue on your last page is really good Dyllis is shorter, more defensive, the conversation is more stunted and awkward. I feel like that's how the whole conversation should be, because both participants are nervous and thinking about how much they want to say. Apologies if this is more stream-of-conciousness than usual - but hopefully this is helpful.
  8. For those that want the answer, here it is. For those that don't, I'll make it clear eventually.
  9. Also it's not only "halfway decent" - it's actually pretty cool. More please.
  10. Since you want grammar I will try and make notations as I read: "The sky has gotten so filthy that he could not see the sunrise anymore, as it was blocked not by mountains but by the air, thick with pollution. It was not like that just yesterday." "Has" is present tense, "could not" is past tense. It seems this is in past tenet so I would do "had gotten so filthy that he could see the sunrise anymore". I would also put a period after "anymore" so it reads "could not see the sunrise anymore. It was blocked..." (Present tense would be "has gotten so filthy that he cannot se the the sunrise anymore) Non grammar note - I like your term "overwater". "And he finally got rid of the mental images" Never start a sentence with a preposition if possible - unless you're in first person in which case bad grammar is fine. I'd go with something like "He had finally rid himself of..." "but they will not die from it, not too much." One would think that even a little dying is too much Not sure what "too much" references. Too much unheated air. Right now it references "die from it". "Maybe this place would not just produce the plastic plague and would not pollute the cities as any other place TONY tried polluted everything" This needs internal punctuation. With the current structure, the comma would go between "cities" and "as any", but even that reads a little clunky. I would try rewriting this as two separate sentences and maybe explaining a bit more that TONY pollutes a lot of things. "He trusted the underground better, too." I would eliminate the word "too", and better does't work with trusted. "he trusted the underground more." " earth-coloured grass growing everywhere" Dead grass, by definition, does not grow. " The expeditions were successful, after almost three thousand years since the original breakthrough." I would eliminate the word "since" and move "after" - "successful, almost three thousand years after the.." Personally I would reverse it for dramatic effect "Almost three thousand years after the original breakthrough, the expeditions were finally successful." - but that's a style choice not a grammar or flow issue. "Vajez remembered hearing of days when sun was captured to electricity without losing more than 98.573% of the power." Love this sentence. "They soon will grow so small in numbers" Say "the colonists" or "the settlers" or something - right now they references "efficiency" and that doesn't work. "make them of only one gender" This is clunky - I'd go with something more colorful like "wipe out the fertile females" or something like that. (Granted my suggestion just sounds weird lol) " It provided too little a place for garbage gardens for the million on it, You use "for" twice here - I'd be more flowery - "too little space for the waste gardens. The refuse of a million people could never fit so small a footprint" (just a suggestion - but something like that) "It often fell, killing people sometimes." BEST. LINE. EVER!!! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh at this, but it's hilarious in it's understatement. Almost like it's an afterthought. "Oh yeah, and sometimes our garbage falls back on us from space and kills people...no big deal"...LOVE IT! "Door riddled with holes, air started rushing out." I'm assuming something punched the holes - so maybe "the door was riddled with holes"...not sure ON THE WHOLE: I like it, it needs polish but I like it. Haven't figured out the nature of TONY but not sure if you want me too. Vivid imagery. Felt the world, like the progression. Good start.
  11. @Tal "I see you did not yet have the time to incorporate any of the changes we discussed experimenting with. Just to make sure - we still do need to figure out a bit more about Anna, and redirect her towards her proper country of origin. Feel free to contact me whenever." Yeah - did not get a lot of editing time on this at all. My brain burned out on Haruwin and flipped back to Millennial Reign and started piecing elements of THAT together - this is the problem with having a writer's brain. But I guess the entire point of working on Haruwin was to have two projects to alternate so that one could marinate while the other was working. I'll PM you with some other thoughts on Anna - I'm thinking on directions to take her that keep her consistent with both her character as she came to me and her location. Making significant alterations to her persona is going to take some "marinating" and research time, and I can't re-write her until she comes to me more fully formed.
  12. Thanks so much for the feedback and especially for the tracked changes. Hopefully it gets moving at a better clip from here on out. I think the "shmaltz chapters" are going to have to get relegated to flashback later in the book and heavily re-written. It's good background for me as an author but for the readers it slows things down - and I have other (less shmaltzy) Appleton flashbacks planned, so this could easily be one of them - that or I could shorten it to one chapter. Either way - future drafts will jump in faster. And it's not just about the election of the pope - that certainly plays a role but it's not the main plot. Actually I've already dropped a lot of main plot intrigue, you just have to be looking for it. I'm not sure how much to drop here - but the main plot is internal to WWN. The stories they cover are catalysts.
  13. @molah Thanks for chiming in and welcome! I definitely agree that the "Donald Duck" reaction needs to go - honestly it's only still there because my last pass edit was so late at night that I was too tired to come up with an alternate reaction :-P And I can see that I need to work a bit more on the back and forth about booze and such, especially defining Prax's attitude on such things. As for Anna, I'm not sure you're supposed to like her - she has some pretty serious anger issues - still trying to decide whether I want her to be sympathetic at this point. Also since Adah's Jonah comment came up - how many people picked up on what I was doing there? Genuinely interested in what people thought was going on.
  14. Regarding points mentioned by multiple people: Thanks for the chatroom feedback, I will definitely work to make the voices more distinct, as I'm planning to eventually use this chatroom to illuminate the stupid "strategies" that led to real historical events in our world. On the number of voices, I'm definitely going to have to work on that one - the real chatroom on which this was based was an assault on the eyes to read. There were usually about 15 people talking over each-other, often mixing multiple games along with random other insertions - so painting that anarchy without getting out of hand is something I need to think about. On footnotes: I'm getting mixed feedback on those - I think they work best when they are comedic rather than just info-dump, so I'm going to experiment with that and maybe with substituting endnotes. Because it's satirizing historians, I kind of like that it's copiously footnoted. But we'll see. @Mandamon No offense taken. You've seen mostly what I consider the "worst parts" of Millenial Reign - it speeds up considerably later. But I've also found (by shopping this through a decidedly un-SFF in-person group) that people who hate Millenial Reign have the strongest positive reactions to Haruwin (not implying that you hate it - but I got a really interesting response from one guy who really does not like Millenial Reign) . I want to show this to one of the guys who thinks Millenial Reign is brilliant because my guess is that he will hate it. @Andyk - Glad you like the writing, always interesting to get feedback from readers, as I usually get the most props on what I think is my worst stuff (maybe I should write while sleep-deprived more often...or not...). And glad you think inserting Anna works. @Jagabond I definitely have to give thought to names and how straight to play it compared to the actual game - especially as the naming conventions for in-game Selk'nam got pretty twisted and unpronouncable (I had a running gag where upper-class Selk'nam kept adding syllables to their names as a way of making themselves sound important, in the same fashion as European royals added more given names - by the end of it I had royals whose names took up entire lines of text). That and you ended up with a lot of people with first names like Icarus, Aethylthryth, Scholastica, Atticus, Perpetua, etc. Painting the place without inundating readers with proper nouns is going to be a big challenge. Thanks!
  15. Lol - I threw the long name in for an unseen background character just to see how people reacted. I guess I got my answer :-) In the actual game, "Ichin'K'onip'nam" would be a pretty short name for an Ona Yagichite but I can take SOME literary lisence.
  16. Due to some of the positive feedback on got on this one, I decided to stick with it for another week - although "Millenial Reign" is definitely coming back next week, as this one needs more time to marinate and I've had enough of a break to get back to the main project. Anyway, last week you met two grad students (Praxedes and Tacitus) researching history in a trippy alternate reality where the Selk'nam tribe in South America has survived to become a prosperous modern nation (the gag being that their reality was created by a wiki-based internet game). This week I did a little more "concept art". It's not directly after the last scene but close, and I'm submitting it to get thoughts on whether you like this direction as a potential plot. I've gotten feedback both in the direction of acknowledging the constructed nature of this world and playing it off the real one (which is what I do here), but also suggestions that I just stay inside the world and use it for social satire. This probably isn't my best work, but I do like the "Adah" sequence and it gets me where I'm going. I definitely would appreciate input if anyone has thoughts on how to portray chatroom conversations and online activity without being clunky. That was a struggle here.
  17. I'll jump first. Definitely have something this week.
  18. @mandamon - funny enough I lost track after Season 2, so I can't comment. I plan on binge watching at some point to catch up, but I figured out that I have time to keep up with exactly two weekly TV series, I can't pull more even if I'm interested, so if I add one, I have to drop one. Slot 1 goes to Game of Thrones Slot 2 was Once Upon a Time but is now reserved for The Blacklist Oh the choices we must make. Oh and @Robinski - just because we make a critique doesn't mean you have to take all of it. Dyllis' timidity and semi-innocence is clearly a major part of her character, so clearly that has to stay. The question is how do you write a grown character with those traits who doesn't come off as sounding younger than she is. There should be examples in literature or cinema to draw from in terms of how such a person behaves....trying to think... Don't have one coming to mind right now, although any "trainee" character might be a starting point - Luke Skywalker on Dagobah, Kitty Pride in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" had both confidence issues and physical cost to power, Ariadne in "Inception" is constantly questioning the viability of the mission and their ability to pull it off (Yes, I'm aware that I got two Ellen Page roles there - maybe something there in that Page tends to be cast as young people with great power who are painfully aware of their own limits). All three of those are flawed examples - Skywalker is male and too proactive, any Ellen Page character is probably going to be too snarky and self-confident for Dyllis. Although in a Waifs and Strays movie, Page would probably make a kick-butt Dyllis :-)
  19. Thanks! Right now I'm thinking of getting even more trippy with it and using the world a jumping off point into the ethics of authorship - do we desensitize ourselves to what we are putting our characters through? Basically the plot I'm working on is that Praxedes is playing the same game I did - except she's gaming our world, and all of our nasty historical tragedies are just strategic or comedic ploys by a bunch of bored college students in an alternate reality. Then that opens the door for weird dimension shifting stuff where Praxedes meets the gamer who created her reality (not me - but rather a fictional real-world clone of herself), and eventually sees all of the suffering she caused in our world. Prax would be my main POV character and I'd stick pretty heavily to the perception that her world is real and it's we who are the fakes (her history would be told in flashback - ours as flippant chatroom strategy sessions). That gets me entirely away from this as fantasy universe and presents me with some challenges in terms of portraying internet activity as action on the page, and of explaining a very obscure sector of geekdom to a wider audience, but it could be a fun sandbox.
  20. Jagabond - thanks for the comments. I definitely agree the characters need strengthened after this test drive. Character is the entire reason I'm going back to this world - the worldbuilding is long since over with in the proper sense. Prax is forming herself pretty well after marinating, Tacitus not so much. There are a couple ways I could go with this that have come to mind - may ask about those after a few more comments come in. If this continues, they will probably stay history nerds for a number of reasons (I always wondered about history nerds in this world and the garbage they had to sort through, plus the plot requires access to said garbage). But they'll probably be working their way through grad school so Praxedes is going to need a real job - probably at one of the casinos, there are lots of those in Ona Yagich. Tal - The "eerily natural" comment makes me VERY happy! That was the idea. It's not meant to be a short story and this is only the beginning. If it ever matures, it's going to have to trace the whole history of this civilization to make sense of itself. If I were to keep working on it, then it's going to be at least a long-ish short story or novella, maybe more. But it's also a side project for when I get bored with Millenial Reign and need to cleanse the brain - so I'm not stressing about it at the moment. As for the naming conventions - I know they are a problem. Since this is game-derived, I had a very complex (and decidedly un-literary) system of naming conventions for this society. They were un-pronouncable, sometimes absurdly long, often had many diacritics, and always referenced obscure saints and mythology figures. For now I decided that maintaining the integrity of the source material (and mocking it) is better than simplifying it.
  21. Writing as I read - haven't read past comments so if I'm redundant I apologize. Page 1 - Is it just me or did we head hop from Lily into Cameron? Good if it's in omniscient, bad if not...I'll keep reading. Like the setting so far....Toto, I don't think we're at Hogwart's anymore (mixed metaphor, I know). Either way...Seige-based dystopia...cool. Page 2 - Use of present tense is starting to bother me - but that's a personal thing. What's not a personal thing is that you stay in present tense when describing whats on the list and to "by the time Lily arrives"...when you're describing the past in a present tense story, past tense might make it cleaner. Page 3 - Like the description of romances. Chilling. "Which is, of course, the whole problem. "...Hmmm, now you have me thinking. Really getting curious about these implants. "This is how she dies: learning the capital asset pricing model " - now I'm really interested - what the h*ll is going on here. "“Also, the Exulted are riding velociraptors.” - Umm, velociraptors aren't that big. I mean I'm sure these are genetically-engineered freakoraptors, but the dino-nerd in me isn't buying it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor#mediaviewer/File:Vraptor-scale.png Page 4 - Feel like this is getting too preachy and obvious - show don't tell. That and I feel like their arguments and thoughts are too formulaic and simplistic. It's straight up preservation of knowledge vs. immediate survival - feel like there needs to be more to it than that. Now the implant...THAT I'm interested in! More of that, please! "Lily even knows a few from those nights hunger drives her from the Archives" - had to read this three times before I figured out what it said. perils of present tense. I think the nights are in the past, so we need "those nights when hunger drove". Page 5 - So has she had contact with people or not. We have a "something resembling contact" on the last page and a "shared her bed" on this one. So is she participating in the "tomorrow we die" orgy or not? Otto is weird - but you knew that already... "Looking into the Library of Alexndria for". For what? Or is she just looking into it. Might be a typo but not sure. Page 6 - Otto is actually extremely endearing, but trying to figure out what he and his plant add. Because you mention the people of New Seran you might note that we are not actually back in New Seran for this new scene. Thought I was for some reason. Anyway, "People back home" might work better. Like Nate's bit about avoiding questions. Really getting to like Lily's sarcastic, rapid-fire inner monologue - wish that was more present earlier. Page 8 - Ooooooh, Intrigue! Read this page very fast - which means it's good! Page 9 - Aaaand suddenly I remember that Cameron exists. Might mention her a few times after the first page or two because I had forgotten her. Feel like the revelation that it's all a game comes too quick. Wait, why did she want to fail? Didn't catch this from her earlier - either I missed the foreshadowing or it wasn't there. Got that she was tired but not that she wanted to fail. Page 10 - Okay so the plant is definitely a big deal then.. this is a really cool climax, but maybe the beginning should emphsize that lack of plants in this world so that I see this earlier. "She wonders if there’s a roster at New Seran, if the Archangel will strike their names. " - LOVE THIS! Electric migraines? Ouch! Page 11 - Like the ending. The Archangel's disappearance feels abrupt. Left wondering what exactly the Archangel wanted or who he is - and what the heck is going on back in New Searan OVERALL. Good piece, very engaging. Feel like a few things could have been foreshadowed better, and the ending doesn't give me quite enough closure - but on the whole I really like it.
  22. Writing as I read - I'm more interested in plot than line edits, so I'm going to keep those to a minimum to save space. You can fix your own sentence construction I'm sure... In the last few paragraphs of the second page you say "harried" several times. I like that word too but you can only use it once ;-) On the third/fourth page - Dyllis' protestations still come across as child-like. Are you going for scared teenager or young woman coming of age? If you want scared teenager, you're okay although I would make her a little more pithy/eloquent (maybe "I'm not going up there" instead of "I don't think I can). If you're going for young woman, she just needs to be more confident than she is - maybe a little worried, but not timid...also this brings up the question of how good of a caster she is. Are we talking about a rookie or a seasoned veteran - I'm assuming rookie based on her reluctance. On the magic itself, I feel like the fingernails alone shouldn't be enough to prevent Dyllis from suffering any ill effect from her casting. Maybe they can dull it, but I feel like she would still burn her hand on the doorknob or something. We can talk about Sanderson's law's of magic - but I like Rumplestiltskin's law: all magic comes with a price. The cool thing about your entire magic system is that the price is physical and can cause literal, immediate pain. The more we see of that, the better - and the more reason for Dyllis to be reluctant about actually using her powers ("I don't know if I can do it" is a weak fear..."I don't know if I can do it without burning myself" is stronger - the question isn't the ability, it's the control to be able to do it without paying for it). Speaking of which - if you haven't watched the TV show "Once Upon a Time" - you should. Your magic system and theirs bear some similarities in terms of magic having a degrading effect on those who use it. On page six, I feel like Covelle inventorying the stuff he finds slows down the pace - especially since Dyllis is by far the more interesting character in this sequence. I feel like you have a lot of long sentences - so I would go though this and figure out where you can replace commas with periods. Page seven - like the twist! Page eight - Now Dyllis loses her pouch and still doesn't burn herself, gets away with just hair? Page nine - Good action sequence, not clunky, and I usually think action is clunky. Although I could probably deal without the description of the corridor - also don't like the phrase 'sense of layout'...too technical. Love the quip about flying - feel her response should be stronger and more sarcastic, ("Sorry to disapoint you!"..."Not on the first date!"..."I'm a caster not a bloody fairy!") "pushed in and let out a yelp" - yelp is the wrong word. If she smacks into the door she expects the pain, and I associate yelp with unexpected pain..but that's a minor point. ...oh there are men already in the room upstairs? Might want to make that clear earlier - or say, "The room was anything but empty"...something...let me know they are there before they attack. LOVE the end - even if you're planning more chapter after this. If you want, you can make this into a very good cliffhanger. I think I know what's going on (Dyllis is having a Jack Jack moment), but just having Covelle conk out in the middle of it would be pretty awesome. On the whole, good stuff - just really want more of the visceral element of your magic system. You dealt yourself a great hand, and your underplaying it by letting Dyllis get away with all of this hair and nail-clippings stuff. If magic hurts, and especially if she's not a master, then we need to see the magic hurt.
  23. Whenever confronted with a piece of writing like this, I have a standard catch-phrase that I always apply: "It's like modern art...I have no clue what it is, but I like it." I'm used to longer pieces, and as a relentlessly linear thinker obsessed with clarity and brutal honesty, I have difficulty approaching or critiquing that which is abstract. That said, your prose is vivid, and while I have absolutely no clue what you are getting at - I was certainly able to immerse myself in the scene. And the raw emotion came through. The one thing that threw me out was the smell of cleaning fluids - not sure if that's intentional, but that's certainly something that I don't associate with orange fields. The best part was probably the tree with "her" voice and the fact that he acts out against it. Anything beyond that is a bit above my pay grade, as I usually don't engage things that are quite this trippy - but it's interesting for sure.
  24. Hello all, "Millenial Reign" will return next week, but in it's absence I wanted your thoughts on a setting I'm experimenting with. This is a beginning - not sure for what or for how long of a piece - it's concept art essentially. Mostly I'm interested in comments on how you think the setting works - it's drawn from a text-based free-form roleplaying game I was involved in on an Alternate History Wiki last year. And it got me thinking about the morality and ethics of authors engaging their characters (or in this case entire nations) wars, genocides and the like - and I wanted to write a worm's eye view from the "real" people who had to deal with our crap. How do children of such capricious gods perceive their own existence? It's an alternate present based off a deviation point about six-hundred years ago, and I'm not even bothering trying to make it plausible (it's inherently implausible) - but I'm wondering what people would make of themselves in such a fundamentally twisted world. Most of the details of the worldbuilding are so strange because the history was crowdsourced, so I'm interested to see if it works, or if it's just nuts. That, and suggestions on where to go. I don't know what happens next - at least not for Tacitus and Praxedes - don't know whether it's going to be dramatic, or how long the end piece will be.
  25. I'll submit something if there's not a lot of other interests. My main story is going to need another week before I have a submission ready, but I randomly wrote something entirely different today that I'd like to run by some people - especially since it's more SFF than my normal stuff. tl;dr - only put me in if you need filler, but I definitely have something.
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