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Post by bedinsis on Oct 15, 2022 23:38:04 GMT
Tea is a New Person. What? Shouldn't she speak with a New Person speech bubble in that case?
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Post by speedwell on Oct 16, 2022 11:25:10 GMT
Tea is a New Person. What? Shouldn't she speak with a New Person speech bubble in that case? Yeah, arguably. But if Tom had done that from the beginning, it would have given rise to a body of speculation as to what that meant, followed by a tidal wave of distraction when the NP started to use it too. Plus not ruling out that she could be a more advanced model from the middle-future without distinguishable speech anomalies. Also I'm at best being medium serious about this whole line of speculation, heh.
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Post by Eily on Nov 19, 2022 17:37:54 GMT
When I first saw Zimmy's red-light-leeking eyes on this page, it made me think of Moddey Dhoo and its departure message that seems so important in the Gunnerverse. Far from being a normal part of life, death is actually a necessary part of it, and maybe even what powers the whole process. I'm pretty sure I've seen some theories about how the reason why Loup would have to die might be to kickstart the Ether in the other planet. So here are my additionnal theories to build onto that : - Annie using the tooth won't actually be the end for Loup, she will actually just cut his connection to this planet's Ether, so that he can be reborn in the other world. - Zimmy's eyes looking like Moddey Dhoo's isn't a coincidence, and she will play a part in the transfer of Loup from this Court to the next. Which the people of the Court definitely won't like.
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Post by guntherkrieg on Nov 19, 2022 21:10:28 GMT
The tooth will split Jerrek from Loup thus resulting in a death. Death of course being a metaphor for huge change/reconfiguration.
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Post by guntherkrieg on Nov 19, 2022 21:12:05 GMT
Posting from another thread: UNLESS /wildspec the thing about " No return, One way trip" says to wildspec-me than this NotOcean IS the ship, BUT NOT THE FUEL. THE FUEL FOR INTERPLANETARY VOYAGE IS... THE ETHER OF A PLANET. Or a young fire elemental, tossed into the ship's reactor/steampunk furnace.
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Post by TBeholder on Nov 19, 2022 22:44:40 GMT
Posting from another thread: Or a young fire elemental, tossed into the ship's reactor/steampunk furnace. Too little. Now, add the whole Fooley House, and we are getting somewhere.
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Post by blahzor on Nov 19, 2022 23:31:42 GMT
I wonde rif the moutnainers are on the tunnel thing. And maybe the teachers were sent as scouts for the new world? Assuming they got skills like Eglamore does i mean the mountains have to be in the quantum/ether tunnel like most things in the Court that wouldn't make logical sense but i doubt it all the stuff is in the new world when that would mean fantasical things exist there when the entire point of it is no ether things at all full stop
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Post by madjack on Nov 25, 2022 9:27:06 GMT
I've been real disconnected from this loup arc but this thought was worth speculating on:
If the ocean is in space, how the heck did they get the cruise ship on it?
Did the Court just build the whole damn thing? Because the only other thing I can think of would be the matter transporter tech, but we've never seen anything that big being moved.
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Post by todd on Nov 25, 2022 13:20:36 GMT
I've been hesitating at sharing this wild speculation, since I know that Tom doesn't like "Doctor Who", but...
One of the early episodes of "Doctor Who" had a few people (such as a scientist and a high-ranking government official) believe that the world had become so heavily polluted that it was beyond saving, so they decided to solve the problem by developing a sort of time machine that would rewind the Earth to a much earlier period of history, before humans had made a mess of it, and start afresh. They duped a group of people who shared their concerns (but wouldn't have agreed with how they intended to solve the problem) into thinking that they were on board a spaceship on their way to another planet to settle there, when it was really the "rewound Earth" (the "phony spaceship" being actually their headquarters, the one part of the world safe from the "rewind effects").
What if the Court's got a similar plan involved (though in this case, to rewind to before humanity developed the kind of superstitious beliefs that produced beings like Coyote), with the "star ocean" and talk of voyaging to another planet being the same sort of cover story to dupe people like Kat (who wouldn't have agreed to the real scheme)? It would certainly ensure "no memories being left behind" - the people who would have stayed behind would be retroactively erased from existence.
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Post by pyradonis on Nov 25, 2022 15:44:59 GMT
What if the Court's got a similar plan involved (though in this case, to rewind to before humanity developed the kind of superstitious beliefs that produced beings like Coyote), with the "star ocean" and talk of voyaging to another planet being the same sort of cover story to dupe people like Kat (who wouldn't have agreed to the real scheme)? It would certainly ensure "no memories being left behind" - the people who would have stayed behind would be retroactively erased from existence. And then they realize that a lot of those mythical beings have, according to the beliefs that created them, existed for longer than Earth has, some even longer than the universe has, so even if they go back than the formation of the universe they're still stuck with meddling Gods. Probably encountering Coyote who's just busy placing some stars.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 25, 2022 17:42:11 GMT
If the ocean is in space, how the heck did they get the cruise ship on it? Did the Court just build the whole damn thing? Because the only other thing I can think of would be the matter transporter tech, but we've never seen anything that big being moved. I think it's reasonable to infer they have the ability to connect the Star Ocean to other bodies of water. It may still connect to other places than the Court and this really real new world at this point in the comic. Depending on how they sail it (and maybe some etheric nav tech hidden somewhere on the ships) they could, and maybe can, reach other destinations. Since they shouldn't need a whole fleet of ships, just a few and some support vessels, it would be more efficient to contract out than build their own... but the Court seem to be control freaks and they had a lot of real estate and resources. It wouldn't shock me if there was a full-size shipyard hidden somewhere in the Court. Not sure if they can mine iron in the Court but if they can there may be a steel mill as well.
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Post by blahzor on Nov 30, 2022 10:15:07 GMT
Thinking about the current page 2713. And the reminder of the ocean explanation page. Im starting to think Kat's god power wont be actually ether based. So the NP wont be in the ether cycle but their own and it be comparable power levels or abilities. The court has been studying ether for so long they can detect, extract, etc etc so i doubt they could be wrong ans selecting Kat when they state they dont even want people with the slightest ether powers/connection
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Post by jda on Dec 1, 2022 16:50:27 GMT
We all have seen that Zimmy is ashamed and remorseful, to the point of self-flagellation, of SOMETHING BAD, AWFUL that she did in her past.
What if that SOMETHING is to happen yet on this timeline?
I mean, maybe The Court tries to drain her, but damaging Gamma, so she kicks on Barbarian Rage/Unconscious Death Goddess mode, and kills all the Court staff that already was on the Ether Sea and beyond.
That would be a reason to feel ashamed of her future/our past.
Remember that once Zimmy expressed her love of Gamma in the terms "I would kill all the world and then myself if she wanted it!", or so.
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Post by Gemminie on Dec 2, 2022 18:03:33 GMT
A speculation that has been buzzing in my head (buzz).
It's been hinted that the Kat whose Annie died led the Court in a very dark direction. This has been mentioned in too many places for us never to see what that Kat would be like.
What about a Kat whose Annie never existed?
Suppose circumstances cause Annie to be transported to the Court's new world, possibly leaving behind all the Court people who were going to go there (and weren't there already), causing Kat and everyone else left behind to forget that she'd ever existed.
We'd have a Kat who couldn't think of any reason not to, say, use her current status as the object of an army of New People's fanatical devotion to subdue any threats to herself, such as the Court people who were going to leave but are now frustrated in their life's ambition. And perhaps she has other ideas for how they might accomplish their goals. Maybe she'd want to help them with that.
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 3, 2022 13:34:22 GMT
A speculation that has been buzzing in my head (buzz). It's been hinted that the Kat whose Annie died led the Court in a very dark direction. This has been mentioned in too many places for us never to see what that Kat would be like. What about a Kat whose Annie never existed? Suppose circumstances cause Annie to be transported to the Court's new world, possibly leaving behind all the Court people who were going to go there (and weren't there already), causing Kat and everyone else left behind to forget that she'd ever existed. We'd have a Kat who couldn't think of any reason not to, say, use her current status as the object of an army of New People's fanatical devotion to subdue any threats to herself, such as the Court people who were going to leave but are now frustrated in their life's ambition. And perhaps she has other ideas for how they might accomplish their goals. Maybe she'd want to help them with that. But even if Kat couldn't remember Annie any more, it wouldn't retroactively change the kind of person she became through her friendship with Annie, she'd still be the same Kat we know. I imagine the Kat we know would rather put her abilities and resources into finding out what's up with all the gaping holes in her memory. And she'd probably be able to find a way to regain those memories as well.
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Post by TBeholder on Dec 6, 2022 2:36:49 GMT
I imagine the Kat we know would rather put her abilities and resources into finding out what's up with all the gaping holes in her memory. And she'd probably be able to find a way to regain those memories as well. It’s the thing that turns into a running gag, isn’t it?
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Post by drmemory on Dec 7, 2022 5:51:06 GMT
A speculation that has been buzzing in my head (buzz). It's been hinted that the Kat whose Annie died led the Court in a very dark direction. This has been mentioned in too many places for us never to see what that Kat would be like. What about a Kat whose Annie never existed? Suppose circumstances cause Annie to be transported to the Court's new world, possibly leaving behind all the Court people who were going to go there (and weren't there already), causing Kat and everyone else left behind to forget that she'd ever existed. We'd have a Kat who couldn't think of any reason not to, say, use her current status as the object of an army of New People's fanatical devotion to subdue any threats to herself, such as the Court people who were going to leave but are now frustrated in their life's ambition. And perhaps she has other ideas for how they might accomplish their goals. Maybe she'd want to help them with that. But even if Kat couldn't remember Annie any more, it wouldn't retroactively change the kind of person she became through her friendship with Annie, she'd still be the same Kat we know. I imagine the Kat we know would rather put her abilities and resources into finding out what's up with all the gaping holes in her memory. And she'd probably be able to find a way to regain those memories as well. Yes, but if Annie had died on the bridge, she'd only have had a little bit of Annie exposure. Remember how stressed she was at the very thought that there might be a reality where she wasn't able to save Annie? Imagine how things would have gone if that had really happened! It might have even made her worse! Losing her one and only friend like that...
I think we'd have a very different kind of mechagoddess on our hands if she had no friends. Or at least no best friend like Annie. Annie is the source of all of her human connection, no? Without Annie, she wouldn't have opened her mind to Diego's stuff or even learned about Diego, and thus wouldn't have been working in her lab for the bird incident that led to her getting to know Paz. And so on. The Norns even warned about this - Kat was headed down a dark path without Annie.
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Post by TBeholder on Dec 13, 2022 9:11:23 GMT
« A little hacking could be in order, hehe.» Plot twist! Meddling with Omega Device is already done by every Court faction capable of this. With the best intentions, of course. We know that input of the oracular team who legitimately handles it has a very high weight in the decision-making process of the Court’s central authority (such as it is). Successful interference allows to affect their conclusions. Obviously, this creates incentives. Individually, the meddlers are smart enough to never try drastic changes (which would gamble on predicting the prediction process very well, too), and they have targets mostly on the level of “it looks like such and such needs to be explored” anyway, so there was no visible GIGO effect. For decades and decades. But all the “erring on the desired side” data was retained, and deviations accumulated with time, and growing complexity created connections, so by now the “starting assumptions” for predictions are an utter mess, half of which could as well be a randomly generated air castle. Disclaimer: all leaks of pure imagination into reality are entirely accidental, correlation is not causative connection, and coincidence is just cedence of coin.
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Post by jda on Jan 9, 2023 8:17:07 GMT
The Court needs Zimmy totally wild and unregulated to ensure the proper absortion of her "Etheric" energy, so they will kill Gamma to avoid her dampening effect and to enrage Zeta. Of course, they did not know that Annie makes for a temporal solution.
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Post by basser on Jan 9, 2023 17:11:51 GMT
Court wanted to use Surma's wacky ether-attracting vibes to collect ether for their purposes, but she was all "nah fam" so they cloned the lady. Either they already had their child-growing vats (Bugsy is an adult fairy who looks about in her 20s-30s, and they pop out the vats roughly pre-teen aged, so figure they've had this tech at least a decade) or they developed them for this purpose.
Cloning Surma doesn't work too good cause you can't clone the fire, they tried genetic modification but that didn't help much. So they got their boy Tony to fall in love with her and make a baby the old fashioned way. (Maybe they even grew Tony for this purpose which would be all manner of bad vibes.) Tony did a bunch of research on Surma's pregnancy too which is super convenient if you're trying to replicate it.
So Zimmy and Gamma are modified Surma clones (Gamma is a year older, remember, so that works out) and Annie is a regular baby. That's why they're all connected.
Maybe in a parallel of what Kat has been doing with the arrow they tried to siphon off a bit of the fire when Surma died but only got an ember, which made Zimmy (who is, as I stated before, themed as a glowing ember covered in soot).
I think you could also make it make sense how Zimmy combined the Annies this way too, if what she was doing was basically pointing out that both Annies had the fire soul and could just combine it. So that would be a misdirect here - Annie thinks Zimmy fixed that issue and is therefore as strong as Coyote, but actually all Zimmy did was get Annie to fix herself, making Annie the one who's actually that powerful.
And that would make perfect sense thematically because what started the technological revolution and diminished reliance on myth? Man's union with fire.
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Post by saardvark on Jan 10, 2023 5:12:57 GMT
So far, Annie has only seen Mecha-Angel Kat when both she and Kat were under the "influence"/using malign "Diego-(Court)-ether-tech" (green arrow-related stuff). Similarly, Paz (and the seraphs) could only see Mecha-Angel Kat in the ether-explosion following Kat's electrocution of the proto-whale-ship which was constructed under the "influence" of a Court-driven overdrive of Zimm's reality warping abilities. Zimmy can see Mecha-Angel Kat naturally, maybe seeing a possible future, or an underling reality? There seems to be some connection between the Court's warped use of ether-tech, Zimm's ether-based reality warping, and Kat's Mecha-Angel emergence/visibility. Maybe ties into Omega as well? There seems to be a major nexus of puzzles here....
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Jan 10, 2023 8:04:11 GMT
Gonna use this space to collect my thoughts on the Court and the Omega Device here.
We know that Omega Device work goes back to the 70s/80s, but as a broader concept I posit that it goes back to the beginning. While I believe the Court's goals shifted sometime in the fairly recent past, before that I think it was fairly unchanged from what the founders wanted. Which is to use the aether against itself to fully understand the world. They saw ways in which the aether could indirectly aid the work of science, like in Diego's automatons, and extrapolated how that could be taken to the extreme. If you tell the aether the story of a computer, and that story takes inputs that spit out the same results as a mechanical computer...then haven't you tricked the aether into being a computer? That was probably the conclusion they reached for quite some time, which lead to what appeared to be great progress. But what they started running into is Clarke's Corollary: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.
We're told by the Shadow Men that the purpose of the Omega Device was to create a kind of prediction engine. And that it seemed to work until it didn't, around when Annie got grandfather paradoxed. I don't think it ever worked. I think it behaved like the STORY of a device that predicts anything, and with the power of the aether - which has the ability to retcon - made it appear to be true. What undermines the device's output isn't the "fact" of Kat time travelling, but that Kat's time travel was a competing story. You can't have both the story of a causal universe and the story of a mutable timeline happening in the same place, they either cancel each other out or one wins over the other. The very concept of this is personified over and over again by the aether, in the strict domains of the Psychopomps, the Realm of the Dead's bureaucracy, and all the other magical rules lawyers we've encountered.
The Court has been experimenting with all the different ways they can augment their pursuit of knowledge via the aether: the seed bismuth, combining it with technology, cherrypicking humans with aetheric abilities, the highly controlled import of forest creatures, etc. The Omega Device should have been the ultimate expression of this, but in the end it's no different from Coyote. All these experiments were all equally tainted in a fundamental way, BY the aether. Once they realized this, their conclusion HAD to be that they needed to leave Earth. If your goal is to understand the universe using pure science, and this thing clings to everything around you like a logic disease that undermines and even mimics the results of all your work, preventing you from even knowing what's genuinely true and what merely looks true...then the only solution that makes sense is to find a location where that thing cannot reach.
The Omega Device, from this perspective, is not some formidable creation of ultimate power. It's a failure. It's a testament to the previous generation's hubris. The previous heads of the Court, perhaps all the way down the line, had been so blinded by how easy the aether made their search for knowledge, that they failed to see that it was feeding them lies. Or at least, what the current Court believes to be lies. Material, tangible, observable, testable lies. Maybe not truly lies at all, or maybe that's what makes them so insidious. Who's to say, but in any case the Omega Device is the inflection point. So now it, and all their findings and creations have been reprogrammed to aid in the sole purpose of helping them escape itself.
Or maybe not, I don't know
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Post by blahzor on Jan 11, 2023 14:23:46 GMT
Wild Spec is Omega Device is just Kat's final form after killing Zimmy and sending predictions back in time to the court so it will happen that she kills Zimmy. As this thing is the key to having Annie survive the entire time
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Post by Druplesnubb on Jan 11, 2023 14:46:29 GMT
And then in the next timeline Omega's predictions are accurate all the way up to this point in time, instead of only being accurate up to the moment Annie falls off the bridge?
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Post by mturtle7 on Jan 11, 2023 16:14:07 GMT
The Omega Device, from this perspective, is not some formidable creation of ultimate power. It's a failure. It's a testament to the previous generation's hubris. The previous heads of the Court, perhaps all the way down the line, had been so blinded by how easy the aether made their search for knowledge, that they failed to see that it was feeding them lies. Or at least, what the current Court believes to be lies. Material, tangible, observable, testable lies. Maybe not truly lies at all, or maybe that's what makes them so insidious. Who's to say, but in any case the Omega Device is the inflection point. So now it, and all their findings and creations have been reprogrammed to aid in the sole purpose of helping them escape itself. Or maybe not, I don't know You know, when you put it that way, it sounds like the Court is getting ready to just cut Omega loose. I wonder what Omega thinks about that, and what the consequences might be.
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Post by TBeholder on Jan 11, 2023 22:56:37 GMT
We know that Omega Device work goes back to the 70s/80s, but as a broader concept I posit that it goes back to the beginning. While I believe the Court's goals shifted sometime in the fairly recent past, before that I think it was fairly unchanged from what the founders wanted. Which is to use the aether against itself to fully understand the world. This implies one unified vision. But the context is always vague association of groups who only sometimes are on the same page. Thus, more like — I'd imagine there's a diversity of opinions over the centuries. Some dream of fully harnessing the ether. Some dream of fully taming the ether. And some dream of fully abolishing it. Which one of those encompasses "the Omega Project" is an open question. Therefore… The Omega Device, from this perspective, is not some formidable creation of ultimate power. It's a failure. It's a testament to the previous generation's hubris. The previous heads of the Court, perhaps all the way down the line, had been so blinded by how easy the aether made their search for knowledge, that they failed to see that it was feeding them lies. Or at least, what the current Court believes to be lies. Material, tangible, observable, testable lies. Maybe not truly lies at all, or maybe that's what makes them so insidious. Who's to say, but in any case the Omega Device is the inflection point. So now it, and all their findings and creations have been reprogrammed to aid in the sole purpose of helping them escape itself. This view is quite likely to be represented, too. But there’s self-selection: those who are disappointed in the given path and consider it a fool’s errand remove themselves from further participation.
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Post by maxptc on Jan 12, 2023 2:01:17 GMT
Has Zimmy being a previous timelines Annie been suggested? Like, Kat/Omega accidentally/for some unkown reason turns Annie into Zimmy, and each subsequent timeline has to deal with that, and life really sucks, enough that each timelines Kat eventually gets inspired to do somthing that would normally be deemed impossible, like making/using/hacking another timelines Omega, which of course turns her into Omega and then....
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Post by blahzor on Jan 12, 2023 6:57:22 GMT
And then in the next timeline Omega's predictions are accurate all the way up to this point in time, instead of only being accurate up to the moment Annie falls off the bridge? yes. Because effectively it is this Kat (with influence from the previous Kat) I'm assuming things in the comic world is if you are a high enough power time doesn't matter only actions. So the Omega Kat is manipulating actions through a timeline she's already in. But wouldn't have been able to do this if not for another Kat Alt Kat jumps in this timeline sometime before Annie falls Interacts with Kat from the future of this timeline and informs them of the plan Omega Kat agree's and helps fix things to the point after the fall as the Alt Kat wouldn't have access to the timeline for something that would never exist in her's?
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Post by blahzor on Jan 12, 2023 7:15:20 GMT
Has Zimmy being a previous timelines Annie been suggested? Like, Kat/Omega accidentally/for some unkown reason turns Annie into Zimmy, and each subsequent timeline has to deal with that, and life really sucks, enough that each timelines Kat eventually gets inspired to do somthing that would normally be deemed impossible, like making/using/hacking another timelines Omega, which of course turns her into Omega and then.... Would sorta make sense if Zimmy is a result of a Kat manipulating timelines to try and keep Annie alive. This is why Zimmy doesn't ever sleep but still considered human. And need a 2nd person to reduce the effects. Gamma is effectively a Kat for this new Annie.
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Post by maxptc on Jan 13, 2023 5:37:15 GMT
Has Zimmy being a previous timelines Annie been suggested? Like, Kat/Omega accidentally/for some unkown reason turns Annie into Zimmy, and each subsequent timeline has to deal with that, and life really sucks, enough that each timelines Kat eventually gets inspired to do somthing that would normally be deemed impossible, like making/using/hacking another timelines Omega, which of course turns her into Omega and then.... Would sorta make sense if Zimmy is a result of a Kat manipulating timelines to try and keep Annie alive. This is why Zimmy doesn't ever sleep but still considered human. And need a 2nd person to reduce the effects. Gamma is effectively a Kat for this new Annie. The Court's plan to leave also killing all ether sensitive people is a pretty strong speculation, not all that wild even. Annie is one of those threatened. Add that the whole plan seems like it could go wrong in a bunch of horrific ways with unpredictable magical consequences, and suddenly im almost a little convinced its not just wild spec. Almost.
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