GhostRider5289
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Post by GhostRider5289 on Jan 16, 2021 17:35:13 GMT -5
Finally watched The Mandalorian over the past few days and I fucking loved it. More of this please.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Mar 11, 2021 19:43:43 GMT -5
Picard is excellent so far! 7 episodes done. It made me happier than I'd have imagined to see Jean Luc meet up with Deanna and Riker again.
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S. Griffin
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Post by S. Griffin on Mar 18, 2021 18:48:30 GMT -5
I think that was the only good episode of the series. And it really was damn good. If you're liking the whole thing, more power to ya.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Mar 19, 2021 12:44:32 GMT -5
I think if the story had been in the original series in a 2-parter, the idea of a syntheticverse wouldn't have turned out so damn cheesy. It felt like more of a video game plot than one for a whole season of TV. But everything that revolved around it was well done and enjoyable. And I think the second season will have a more familiar feel. And the visuals were all very good.
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Post by S. Griffin on Mar 19, 2021 23:25:18 GMT -5
The visuals were very good (aside from Data's puffy too-dark wig and the ill-fitting TNG-era uniforms) and very cinematic, but I think the story-telling (and I'm not talking about the synth stuff really) had some HUGE issues and there were a lot of little mistakes that added up, I think. This is unsolicited and will contain spoilers for something over a year old, so if any of you haven't seen Picard or don't want to know why I think it sucked, stop reading here. . . . . . . . . . . . Seriously . . . . . . . . . . I warned you . . . . . . . . . . . Since Frin acknowledged that the synth stuff plays out like a video game plot and is cheesy, I won't really talk about it, so I'll start with this: There is no decent reason for Dahj and Soji to be two different characters. To Picard they serve almost exactly the same purpose. To the story, they serve almost exactly the same purpose. The only thing that differentiates them in any substantive way at all, and I'm using that term a bit loosely here, is that Dahj only exists to be killed off in a gruesome way so that Kurtzman, Goldsman, and Chabon can remind the audience "This ain't your daddy's Star Trek." And I have no problem with a gruesome death if it serves the story or doesn't seem like some fucking gotcha: Elnor decapitating that black Romulan? Totally cool with it. It made sense. Icheb being mutilated? Cool with that, too. Made sense. That Dahj exists essentially only to be killed doesn't maker her a character at all. It makes her a device. And it makes her extraneous. Very. Consider that Picard makes it his mission to find Dahj, let her know that she's an android, and then protect/save her. He fails. She's killed. It's tragic. But apparently it's also kinda okay because it turns out she had a twin named Soji. So now Picard makes it his mission to find her, let her know that she's an android, and then protect/save her. Sounds familiar. A very simple rewrite could have and should have made these two one character, and unfortunately, it seems pretty obvious that one sloppy rewrite made them two.
Second: The Zhat Vash is stupid as fuck. Their introduction is even moreso. "Who did this, the Tal Shiar?" "No. It's an even more secret organization that you've totally never heard of before after serving fifty plus years in Star Fleet and despite having extensive interactions with Romulans."
Two episodes in and it feels like it's being told by an eight year old saying, "And then...And then...And then...And then...And then..."
Third: pretty much every character is given a tragic backstory as a cheap-ass shortcut to not actually spend the time to develop them. I hate that. It's lazy.
Fourth: As I said above, there are a lot of little canonical mistakes and things that could be brushed off as nitpicks, but when there's dozens of them in a ten episode season, they add up to a much bigger issue.Here are the most prominent examples: -The Federation and Starfleet are separate but connected entities. The writers seem generally aware of this but frequently had a hard time differentiating between the two. -The writers don't seem to understand that phasers and disrupters are not guns, and they do not fire bullets. They are particle weapons. A phaser (at least a hand phaser) does not have trigger to pull, and when someone puts it in his mouth and presses that trigger, it will not "splatter his brains all over the bulkhead" but instead vaporize his head or possibly all of him, burn a rather nasty hole in the back of his head, or just kill him neatly, depending on the setting. -A Romulan spy pretending to be a (full-blooded) Vulcan should not be walking around Golden Gate park wearing fucking sunglasses. Vulcans (and probably most Romulans, too, for that matter, since they were Vulcans only 2000 years ago, and evolution doesn't typically work that quickly) have a third eyelid to protect their eyes from the harsh sands and sun. Even if Oh needed sunglasses, somebody should be asking her, "Why do you need those? Aren't you Vulcan?" It's a great way to blow her cover. When asked about this, Chabon had stated that it was a way to intimidate Jurati. Okay, smart guy, but that doesn't actually explain anything. It doesn't work around shit. In fact, that's even crazier if she's undercover as a Vulcan, because no Vulcan would find that logical. Just admit you fucked up. You thought it would look cool, but it came off as silly, and it makes no sense in the canon. -Even at the end of the Dominion War, Starfleet had multiple fleet yards across Federation space. Utopia Planitia isn't even the closest to Earth. There's one right in San Francisco. The destruction of the Utopia Plantia Fleet Yards would be a shocking Pearl Harbor type thing, sure, but as depicted, it seemed like its destruction utterly crippled Starfleet, and that should absolutely not be the case. -The Borg have definitely assimilated Romulans before (we've seen them), and the idea that one would be so upset or crazy that she would break a whole cube is silly as fuck.
Fourth: Narek and Narissa being all incesty with each other was completely unnecessary, hacky, and would probably have never happened had Game of Thrones not been so popular.
Fifth: Narek's plan makes no damn sense. And why the hell does he change allegiances so easily and so quickly in the last episode?
Sixth: They bring Data back to life (essentially) only to kill him again. Unnecessary.
Seventh: Similarly, they kill Picard only to bring him back to life (essentially). It's not only unnecessary, but it takes the piss out of his sacrifice, too.
I forgot to mention above that I liked "Stardust City Rag," too, btw. Also Picard speaking in a cheesy French accent reaffirms my head canon that the UK takes over the part of France where he grows up some time in the next 300 years. So that and the one with Riker and Troi were the only good episodes, IMO. 20% is a shitty average. Sorry if it seems like I'm pissing in your Cheerios, Frin, but I really wanted this show to work, and I just don't think it did. But I really (so damn much) liked what the show did with Seven of Nine, and I did like spending time with Picard again.And those fanbois whose criticism of the show seems to amount to "Picard wouldn't do that!" They can go fuck themselves. His motivations are generally explained very well. Plus, twenty years is a long time, and even old men change. I also liked that Rios had a crew made up of holograms based on himself. It expanded on the EMH and ECH concepts in a very fun and logical way.
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Post by S. Griffin on Mar 20, 2021 1:07:45 GMT -5
I'm not going to say too much about it after my above critique of Picard (I really soured on that show over the last year, huh?), but Resident Alien is the best fucking thing that's been on television (not streaming) for well over a year. It's brilliant dark comedy at its best. Alan Tudyk is amazing, and the rest of the cast is also really damn good, although some of them are a bit too Canadian for Colorado. Several episodes were also directed by Robert Duncan McNeill (executive producer) and the Broken Lizard's Jay Chandrasehkar who were two of the directors who helped make Chuck what it was.
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Post by frinspar on Mar 21, 2021 11:33:20 GMT -5
I don't disagree with most of that. I'd say that Dahj and Soji both existing made enough sense in that it made it more personal for Picard. Yeah, it was gratuitous how she ended, but it defined his passion in solving the mystery. And it allowed them to have the story overlap at the same time across the galaxy. Though Dahj living even a little longer would have supported that idea better. Retrofitting the super secretest of secret orders was silly. It could have easily just been the Tal Shiar, a group of them who conducted their own mission. I loathed that every time Raffi called him JL. He is most definitely NOT a JL, but they had to find a way to show the depth of their familiarity and history together quickly, and I guess giving him a dumb nickname was their answer. Maybe there's a burst setting on a disrupter. But, yeah, the forced retro-cool affectations Rios liked to use made for some cringing. Though the EVH paint job on his ship was really cool. The bro/sis incest vibe was really gross and unnecessary. If they had just introduced her by having Narissa let a spider crawl around on her hand until she crushed in her palm and licked it off would have done the same job establishing her broken character. And Narek's loyalty swap was really clumsy. There was a good deal of glossing over or rushing of things to fit in more of the rest of the story, and it made for a number of things that had to be taken for granted. I did hate the deaths of Data and Picard. Both unnecessary. But since they had the time bomb of Picard's condition from the original series to deal with and didn't feel like just wiping it away with a really new amazing magical medical treatment, he got a new body. There was just no tension or drama in the result, though it did support much of what Picard did up that point. And giving fans a window into seeing Data get as close to human as possible, I get that. But it would have been stronger if they had cut that part out. His presence as a thought and a memory in the series worked without making him still alive in a box. But, shit. It was just a lot more fun than it wasn't for me.
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Post by S. Griffin on Mar 21, 2021 14:12:39 GMT -5
It was already personal for Picard. Because of Data. And because he died. And because through a daughter (or two), he lives on in a way (the writers/producers should have fucking left it at that). The mystery is important to him for the same reason, and it could have been drawn out a bit longer with only one girl, too. Soji could have started to come to the same realizations that Dahj does about her phony life while she's on the Borg Cube (oh shit, wait, she does), and Picard could have just decided to go find her like he does, anyway. Two virtually indistinguishable and almost completely interchangeable characters are completely unnecessary. Aside from Dahj's death and the death of her boyfriend who was even more extraneous to the story, almost everything that happens to her also happens to Soji. Picard's quest to find, warn, inform, and protect/save both girls is the same. Plus, the impact of Dahj's death is lessened by the fact that she has a twin that Picard can go and find, warn, inform, and save/protect after failing to do that last bit correctly, which also takes away from her being her own character. Hey, Jeanny, You fucked up? Try again! Here's an identical girl with an identical problem. It reminded me way too much of when you fail during a "choose your own adventure" novel and then you go back to the point you know you messed up and choose the slightly different option that you know will take you further. With all the cybernetic stuff: Borg, synths, androids, etc, the cure for Picard's Irumodic Syndrome (can't refer to it by name or CBS would have had to pay Ron Moore and Brannon Braga) could have easily been some kind of cybernetic implant. Or just let him die, let his sacrifice stand, and let stakes exist. But they couldn't do that last thing, because the show would obviously be a hit and need a second season, so...If the producers/writers are smart (they aren't) they'll do something philosophical with the fact that Jean Luc Picard is dead. His consciousness ended. The biological android that woke up with his memories and face is him for all intents and purposes, but still a copy. His consciousness simply picked up where the original left off. He should have major issues with this. At the very least, his dog should have issues with the way he smells. Anyway, like I said before, Frin. If you liked it, good. There's some really likeable stuff in there. I'm just gonna warn you that last April I thought I liked Picard overall, despite its flaws, too. Given 11 months to think about what I saw, I now think it was trash. I still like what I liked, but I've had more time to evaluate what I didn't and weigh things against each other. One more thing: Seven pushes Narissa off the ledge into the chasm of the Borg Cube and says, "This is for Hugh!" Did she and Hugh interact at all on the show, or are we just supposed to assume that she khows him the same way she probably knows Picard-through a Borg assimilation recovery group that met twice a week somewhere on Earth? (I 100% choose to believe this is how they all know each other) They didn't did they? Would have more impact if they did.
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Post by okcomputer on Mar 22, 2021 10:19:09 GMT -5
I like that one movie where Data learns how to curse.
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Post by frinspar on Mar 22, 2021 18:48:24 GMT -5
I just thought I'd missed how Seven and Picard knew each other, as each other. Or her and Hugh. It's easy enough to have created 10 seconds of dialog establishing their histories. It kinda was like that. The writers will surely explore the idea of consciousness and memory and life and humanity next season with the new body angle. You mentioned Resident Alien. I still need to check it out. Have interest but so much shit to try to watch now it may be a bit.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Mar 23, 2021 0:50:24 GMT -5
A guy with a drone flew over the flow and through splattering lava in Iceland and it was amazing to watch over and over.
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Post by BeefEaster on Mar 26, 2021 5:36:52 GMT -5
That new cartoon invincible on amazon starts out like a typical kids super hero show for most of the first episode then things go from zero to mach 7 real quick.
I was waiting on something crazy to happen since it's rated TV MA and yeah, it doesn't disappoint.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Mar 27, 2021 12:32:56 GMT -5
I'll have to watch it later somehow. But the comic was fantastic. Just reread it last year.
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Post by frinspar on Mar 27, 2021 13:12:09 GMT -5
Gonna wait for The Falcon and The Snowman to finish before diving in. But these look a lot less like Stan and Mackie as much as they look like Mickey from Shameless and Angela Bassett with a mustache.
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S. Griffin
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 12, 2021 1:18:45 GMT -5
I have no fucking clue if we're going to stick with this, but Mrs. Griffin and I watched the first episode of The Nevers tonight. It is, essentially, almost exactly what one might expect from Joss Whedon if HBO threw a bunch of money at him and said, give us a superhero show. It's almost exactly the X-Men, but with mostly women, and in 1890s London, and with f-bombs and tits. There are an unknown number of British subjects, mostly in London, who have unexplained special abilities and in some cases, deformities or other afflictions. These people carry a stigma, are persecuted and in some cases hunted down, and the powers that be (all men, btw) consider them to be a threat to the Crown and the Empire. There is a group of heroic "touched" people, mostly women, who operate out of a rather swanky orphanage owned by a woman who is bound to a wheel chair. There is also a group of much less heroic "touched" people who are causing mayhem, murdering "normal" people, and kidnapping (recruiting?) "touched" people. And because HBO, there is also a guy who is torturing and dissecting "touched" people to find out how and why they have their abilities and where they come from and a young English lord who fucks every woman he sees and also runs an underground sex party club, which he also uses to blackmail other men of repute and authority. There is a ton of steampunk shit, but you get the idea that it's not a regular thing, but a result of one of the "touched" women who is part of the team that operates out of Professor Charles Xavier's school Lady Lavinia Bidwell's orphanage, and her ability is seeing electric potential (sounds like that could be a thing, right?) and inventing shit like electric horseless carriages. There was also a guy with a gatling gun on his arm, but he's one of the bad guys. The guy who played Leonardo DaVinci on Davinci's Demons is in it, and so is the woman who played JK Simmons's wife on Counterpart and Nick Frost. I've never seen the others before. Apparently Whedon left partway through production, and while it's less quippy and wannabe clever than one might expect, his stink is of course all over this thing, and why wouldn't it be. He created the show and wrote and directed the first episode. Jane Espinson is also an EP. The new showrunner is Phillippa Goslett, who wrote some British movies people seem to think are just fine. I have a feeling we're not going to know the extent of her influence until at least five episodes in, and who the fuck knows if it will get any better or even worse. I don't have great feelings about this thing, but we'll stick with it as long as we can stand it.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Apr 12, 2021 11:46:23 GMT -5
^ That does sound like X-Men. Seeing electric potential is one helluva specific yet vague fucking power. Isn't that not much different than just having a really good imagination?
Shameless ended last night. It was a great benefit to watch the series in chunks over the last several months. I can't imagine investing a decade of my life in all those miserable motherfuckers.
It was the perfect copout closing with the final perfect stinger for Frank.
It was good to watch, but they are not characters I give much of a shit about. I did enjoy Carl's arc overall. And Mickey turned out to be probably the greatest character on the series for me. His and Ian's story was something quite different from the norm and they carried the series the last couple of seasons. Although Ian on his own is an insufferable douche, and Mickey is a criminal piece of shit. But they elevated each other and that was handled quite successfully by the writers and the two actors.
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S. Griffin
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 12, 2021 15:41:43 GMT -5
I quit watching Shameless after Kevin stopped being funny.
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Post by frinspar on Apr 23, 2021 18:09:14 GMT -5
Man, halfway through The Stand miniseries on Paramount and it's hard to watch. It started out rough, then got a little better, and is now a goddamn slog again. But I've gotta see it through. Pretty sure Marica gave up on it early and is just hanging on enough to catch the general direction of things.
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S. Griffin
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 27, 2021 14:04:20 GMT -5
With each episode, The Nevers gets more unnecessarily overcomplicated with its own bullshit. The show has no fucking clue what to do with Tom Riley's character, and while I'm happy to see tits on my tv, the underground sex club is just so completely unnecessary and extraneous. Also, as a reminder as to just who made the show, the main character winds up in her bloomers at some point during every episode, but you know, through adventure...because Joss Whedon. Anyone who says this show is "great" or "awesome" or "so good" or whatever should either be ignored or at the very least have their opinions on everything heavily scrutinized.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on May 16, 2021 21:24:51 GMT -5
Restarted Handmaid's Tale after watching several episodes last year on a watchathon week, and it makes me want to kill myself a lot still.
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Post by S. Griffin on May 16, 2021 22:05:55 GMT -5
Well, stop doing that.
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Post by frinspar on May 17, 2021 12:57:33 GMT -5
It's interesting. But there are 3 more seasons of this same impotent misery. And it's much too reflective of a potential looming near-future, particularly in light of today's backwards SCOTUS revelations.
Yeah, not sure why this is so loved. Appreciated, I can get that. Loved? Anticipated? Maybe that comes next season. I dunno. It's good, but it's horrible. I don't need more horrible.
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Post by ravenmaniac on May 19, 2021 7:42:35 GMT -5
It's interesting. But there are 3 more seasons of this same impotent misery. And it's much too reflective of a potential looming near-future, particularly in light of today's backwards SCOTUS revelations. Yeah, not sure why this is so loved. Appreciated, I can get that. Loved? Anticipated? Maybe that comes next season. I dunno. It's good, but it's horrible. I don't need more horrible. I enjoy it, mostly for the "I'm glad we're not at this point in this country" feelings, but it's getting too close to reality to be comfortable. Some great acting in it.
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S. Griffin
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Post by S. Griffin on May 20, 2021 19:32:29 GMT -5
We gave up on The Nevers. I think we saw three of them, which is usually what I'll give a show before calling it quits. With every episode it got more convoluted and unnecessary and less interesting. Mrs. Griffin seems to be a bit remiss that we've stopped, but if she really wants to watch it, she can do it on her own time. I can't honestly imagine she found that dogshit impressive enough to actually want to see more.
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Post by okcomputer on May 21, 2021 9:33:46 GMT -5
It's interesting. But there are 3 more seasons of this same impotent misery. And it's much too reflective of a potential looming near-future, particularly in light of today's backwards SCOTUS revelations. Yeah, not sure why this is so loved. Appreciated, I can get that. Loved? Anticipated? Maybe that comes next season. I dunno. It's good, but it's horrible. I don't need more horrible. I feel the exact same way about that show. It's good and really well-made, but it's the kind of misery porn I just don't need right now. It says a lot about a show when the biggest "Fuck yeah!" moment is a suicide bombing.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on May 21, 2021 22:11:47 GMT -5
Will avoid The Nevers for sure.
Anyone ventured into Jupiter's Legacy on Netflix yet? Might give it a whirl soon.
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okcomputer
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Post by okcomputer on Jun 5, 2021 20:21:38 GMT -5
Jupiter’s Legacy got canceled. I guess it wasn’t any better than the comic which had beautiful Frank Quitely art but typically shitty Mark Millar everything else.
And I just finished watching Mare of Easttown. It’s fantastic and heartbreaking at once. Highly recommended.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Jun 10, 2021 19:27:38 GMT -5
I saw that the cast of Jupiter were released from their contracts, figured it was ass and got ditched. They stopped promoting it pretty fast.
I've decided that Handmaid's Tale is just a piece of shit. It's very dumb and lazy and not very good at all. The first season was fine and a good cautionary tale. As long as you don't dissect it much, and just take for granted that things are shit in the real world and likely to get worse and this near-future makes about as much sense as any other outcome.
But the soap opera mess that it became after that is just bad. I'd like to give up, probably would have before now, but Mrs. still enjoys it. Maybe next season June can just fucking go into Gilead with an armored assault vehicle and blow the shit out of the place.
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S. Griffin
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Post by S. Griffin on Jun 10, 2021 22:15:39 GMT -5
Let us know if "The Good Man," John Farson ever invades with an army of Troitans and Slow Mutants and kills everyone.
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Post by frinspar on Jul 9, 2021 22:11:15 GMT -5
About 6 episodes into Resident Alien. It's reeeealllllly good. Had a few issues that haven't sat quite right, but I'll see how the season resolves first.
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