S05E18: Crusaders of the Lost Mark

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Re: S05E18: Crusaders of the Lost Mark

Postby ilcane87 (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:48 pm

I haven't seen anyone mention it, but I really appreciated the irony of the clubhouse scene with DT, which mirrored exactly what happened at the end of Call of the Cutie, but in reverse.

CotC:
Twilight Sparkle: I for one think you are three very lucky fillies.
Diamond Tiara: Lucky? How can they be lucky?
Twilight Sparkle: They still get to experience the thrill of discovering who they are, and what they're meant to be.

Scootaloo: It means she could be great at anything. The possibilities are, [mocking] like, endless.
Scootaloo: And she's not stuck being stuck-up like you two.

CotLM:
Diamond Tiara: You three are... really lucky.
CMC: We are?!
Diamond Tiara: Yeah, you get to explore all these options, learning who you really are before you are stuck with something you don't understand.
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Postby Musings (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:56 pm

I woke up this morning and accidentally went to "equestriadaily.com" instead of "eurogamer.net" in my browser, and the episode's spoiler image was staring me in the face. :-/

I mean, yes, they're a news site, but I figured they could have kept it to the dedicated streams/discussions post for maybe 24 hours. :pinkieshrug:

(In hindsight I should have seen it coming, it being the five-year anniversary of the show, and all. But I've been so frazzled lately I never even considered the date...)

... Don't mind me; I'm just salty. :P I'll just wait for 1080p iTunes version, like normal, but for at least I have something to look forward to once I do watch it. :yay:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:00 pm

Eh, even our policy is to only keep new episode stuff in the episode threads until midnight Pacific on the day an episode airs.
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Postby Musings (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:08 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:Eh, even our policy is to only keep new episode stuff in the episode threads until midnight Pacific on the day an episode airs.


Yeah, I'm totally aware it was mostly my bad, but still... it stings that I could have had another second to escape the site if the banner image had been different. EDIT: To clarify, I was probably more bummed that I had the cutie mark designs spoiled so quickly, rather than the spoiler itself; I figured it had to happen this season, anyway.

Oh well, don't want to drag this off-topic! I still have no idea what the episode actually consists of, except that reactions have been positive. :party:

(Someone straight-up posted the spoiler on our convention Facebook while I was out, too... I missed some "fun", evidently!)
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Postby Highbrow Dash (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:20 pm

If it makes you feel better, I got it spoiled too. It was my own dumb fault for opening View your posts threads without realizing I was opening an episode thread, but whatever :v:

It's not worse than getting MMC spoiled, I guess, and that happened to everybody here. Now that would have been one hell of a surprise :-I
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Postby J. Jonah Jameson (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:26 pm

gonna copypaste what i already wrote about my thoughts

in general the episode had really weird pacing. Everything felt like it was being hurriedly shown and explained to the audience before moving onto the next thing. It didn’t help that I think the ep was trying to do too much at once - first it set up a situation of an election between two characters (which could well have filled an episode by itself), then it decided it wanted to turn into a character development and backstory exploration episode for one character (which also could have been its own episode - and probably should have, considering that stuffing it into less than half of an episode made it feel rushed and out of character), then it was yaaay we got our cutie marks everyone celebrate. Stuffing all of that into 22 minutes doesn’t seem like it was the best decision and considering how these are main characters you’d think they’d be able to dedicate a two-parter to them getting their magic butt tattoos that they’ve been clamouring after for five years.

Apart from that, the episode says that they’ve decided their special talent is helping others understand their own cutie marks - but this is something they’ve only started doing this season, so to use it as the justification for a big character development moment feels a bit like the current writers care more about their own plans for the characters than they do for keeping them consistent with their previous characterisation, if that makes sense. I feel like they should have waited longer and spent more time having the characters actually help other characters understand themselves if they were going to have them realise it’s their lives’ calling, you know?

Overall the episode didn’t feel very coherent; the character development was done too quickly to feel natural, and the plot had too much going on for too short a space of time. It felt less like an episode of a show and more like the writers begrudgingly throwing something together to appease someone.

that said, how funny would it be if the whole "our special talent is helping other ponies!" thing was because hasbro plan to kill twilight sparkle in the 2016 movie like optimus prime in the 80s transformers movie, and the cmc are gonna take over as the princesses of friendship :v:

kidcoelacanth wrote:Image

there i made the marks better


PaulloDEC wrote:Image

Alternate colour scheme.

:pinkieshrug:


these are both a marked improvement. not to be mean but the designs they went with are ugly as sin :bluh: they're over-detailed and complicated compared to the marks for the other main characters, and the matching colour schemes feel too uniform. the stripes in particular are an awful choice
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Postby JaneCV (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:51 pm

J. Jonah Jameson wrote:a marked improvement

:gotcha:
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Postby Musings (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:57 pm

Highbrow Dash wrote:If it makes you feel better, I got it spoiled too. It was my own dumb fault for opening View your posts threads without realizing I was opening an episode thread, but whatever :v:


Oddly, this does make me feel better, thank you. :twiright: (I guess I'm just in an evil mood.... :scheming: )

Highbrow Dash wrote:It's not worse than getting MMC spoiled, I guess, and that happened to everybody here. Now that would have been one hell of a surprise :-I


Haha, yeah, I remember those days. That was well before I joined TRS, but even outside of a pony forum it was impossible to escape the coming rule of our winged book dork. Princess Twilight was everywhere for like two months before MMC even aired. :v:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:14 pm

If MMC and this episode had been swapped, it sure would've been funny seeing Hasbro screeching for weeks on end about how the CMC were finally going to get their cutie marks.
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Postby acidtest (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:32 pm

I got spoiled by Hasbro's own facebook page! :smirk:

PaulloDEC wrote:Image

Alternate colour scheme.

:pinkieshrug:

Might be decent if you got rid of the shield's outline and make the inner mark bigger so it overlaps the shield.

They could have at least tailored them to the colour scheme. The marks don't read well from a distance, either. At best they just...look like the same cutie mark. No wrong way to be a girl...
Annoyed at the Diamond Tiara storyline. They did the 'rich kid has jerk parents and redeems herself' storyline very well in Gravity Falls and it really shows off how halfassed it was done here.
I am beginning to hate this constant 'cutie mark is centre of entire lives' drum banging. The S1 and 2 episodes didn't really bring it up as much more than a visual representation of the CMC wanting to grow up, and now it's the centre of the world in the same way fusion is the centre of SU and has had 2 villain plots centring on it.

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Image

Image

Image

All from broni. Feel bad, Hasbro artists.
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Postby Octavia (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:37 pm

acidtest wrote:Image

People would be throwing huge fits if these were their canon cutie marks. Scootaloo's is just Rainbow Dash's cutie mark with an extra wheel attached and Apple Bloom's looks like a toddler's drawing.
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Postby Soft Snow (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:40 pm

I think maybe the show's artists couldn't use a design that the fans came up with and after five years of people guessing what they could look like they ran out of all the cool designs to use.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:46 pm

Soft Snow wrote:I think maybe the show's artists couldn't use a design that the fans came up with and after five years of people guessing what they could look like they ran out of all the cool designs to use.

The animators have the convenient excuse of "well our contracts forbid us from reading fanfics/looking at original ideas in fanart/etc." to fall back on in this case.
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Postby Octavia (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:48 pm

My only beef with their marks is that the stripes make them look a bit busy. And complaining about something so insignificant is completely missing the point that THEY FINALLY GOT THEIR CUTIE MARKS. They could've all gotten the dolphin mark from Bloom & Gloom and I still would've been super happy for them. :flutterunsmith:
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Postby Adelor Lyon (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:49 pm

acidtest wrote:All from broni. Feel bad, Hasbro artists.

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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:51 pm

I get the feeling that, even though I have a couple minor gripes with the design of their cutie marks, I'm sure I'll get used to it just like how I got used to Twilight having wings and a slightly longer neck.

Hell, this episode overall left me with that same bittersweet feeling as MMC, like what you feel if some permanent life-changing thing has happened to a friend or family member.
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Postby Pocket (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:01 pm

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the songs. They were pretty meh, honestly; the lyrics weren't anything to write home about and the music was completely unmemorable. I'm worried that Ingram is starting to slip into a formulaic style that all blends together. I mean, I never would have guessed any of those influences Rogers mentioned, although admittedly I haven't seen Wicked so maybe that one is spot-on for all I know. I remember thinking "At the Gala" didn't live up to its hype, but in hindsight I can at least feel the sheer ambitiousness and... bigness, I guess, of it. I didn't get that from any of the songs in this episode; they all just felt like "yep, that sure is a My Little Pony song".

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This looks like something straight out of a Taskidog pic. Want.
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Postby acidtest (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:09 pm

I like how Filthy Rich went from kindly disciplining his daughter to.... becoming an abuse enabler.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:17 pm

acidtest wrote:I like how Filthy Rich went from kindly disciplining his daughter to.... becoming an abuse enabler.


I don't know if I'd go that far. He's often been shown as kind of oblivious to his daughter's behavior. Can imagine it might be the same with his wife.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:22 pm

The Doctor wrote:
I don't know if I'd go that far. He's often been shown as kind of oblivious to his daughter's behavior. Can imagine it might be the same with his wife.

That's the feeling I got, too. Calling him an abuse enabler seems like a bit of a stretch without knowing more about his personal life.
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:49 pm

Highbrow Dash wrote:
Fluttershy could have an episode about overcoming her shyness! :amazing:


:saddershy: :"You can't just wave a magic wand and wish away a life-long personality trait!"

Octavia wrote:My only beef with their marks is that the stripes make them look a bit busy.

That's the word: busy.

Twilight's six pointed star, Pinkie's balloons, AJ's apples show up fine even if they're so far in the the background that all you can see are blobs of color.
But they have a shield with stripes and two shapes on top of each other, it looks good blown up screen size, but they're illegible in any other case.

Bremen wrote:
For a brief moment I was like, 100% sure that they were going to wake up. And then DT and SS would come in and call them blank flanks :v:

But I'm sure that was just an acquired reaction from years of Hollywood treating the status quo as god.



Click for Fullsize


Click for Fullsize

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:annoyed: :sweetiefrown: :insomnia:

:shock: :"Why're you looking at me like that? Everypony is OK, right? It was a perfectly harmless levitation and light show, of no consequence what so ever... right?"
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Postby PonyHag714 (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:53 pm

Just seeing DT and SS with smiles instead of sneers is worth it all. :allears:
:speakest: The fun has been doubled!
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Postby J. Jonah Jameson (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 4:42 pm

if filthy rich is oblivious to his wife's behaviour he's the least perceptive horse ever born

"dad mum shouted at me in public again, this time in front of my entire class and my teacher. miss cheerilee called the police and now mum has to stay in custody overnight because she kicked one of them in the mouth"
"mmmhmm that's nice honey"
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Postby WandereringPony (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 5:46 pm

The Doctor wrote:I think we know what Scootaloo REALLY wanted for a cutie mark...


Well, she got the lightning part at least.

Also, who else got the cute bit about the newest Apple cutie mark?

It's the traditional fruit with a heart in the center, which means Love is in Bloom.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:31 pm

WandereringPony wrote:It's the traditional fruit with a heart in the center, which means Love is in Bloom.

I hope that there's eventually an episode where Apple Bloom starts getting a crush on someone entirely so that the show can make a "Bloom is in Love" joke.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:39 pm

Suddenly reminded how similar this idea of the CMC helping ponies who already have cutie marks realize the true meaning of their Cutie Mark is to the anime "Haibane Renmei", where characters names tend to have multiple meanings, and how they have to learn the true meaning of their name throughout the series.
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Postby Niels Olof (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 7:59 pm

As for cutie marks in this episode, I'm more worried about those lorry and tractor cutie marks… (which is to say, I'm not that upset, though they do not fit well within the overall scheme of pony society).

We can only hope for the day when the Apple parents will have served their full sentence in the Equestrian Space Prison (visible from the ground from time to time), finally able to express their pride in their little filly, who has done so well.
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Postby theGECK (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:04 pm

Ok, first this episode gets all my :yay: for finally giving the CMC their cutie marks. After the CMC voices were obviously changing last season, I assumed they would either need to write the CMC into the background or help them grow up quickly, and I'm glad that they chose the second option!

I'm not the biggest fan of musical episodes because I find it difficult to follow lyrics in music, which makes it difficult to really get into any episode where music is the primary plot delivery device unless it's done really, really well. Les Miserables is hard for me to follow and that's supposed to be really well done. So I ended up looking at the animation this episode and it's really weird. Maybe this was just the version I was watching, but mouths/motion seemed to go in and out of sync, poses were shifted oddly, and the whole thing looked...I don't know, just weird somehow! The cutie marks floated around on their flanks as they squash/stretched, but that will probably get worked out soon.

I was going to say that I didn't really enjoy the episode...but I want to go back and watch it again right away, which is the first time I've ever wanted to do that to any episode in any season! So I guess it was probably better than I remember it being. I'll wait until it's on Netflix when I can focus on the screen and not on a computer monitor while the siren call of the internet is calling to me :)
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:21 pm

Niels Olof wrote:As for cutie marks in this episode, I'm more worried about those lorry and tractor cutie marks… (which is to say, I'm not that upset, though they do not fit well within the overall scheme of pony society).

It wouldn't be the first time we've seen that. For example, back in Sweet and Elite we caught a few brief glimpses of Jet Set's cutie mark:
Image

Given that Equestrian aviation has focused largely on balloons and airships, it is a bit odd to see airplanes depicted like this, even if they would fit in with Equestria's tech level overall.
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Postby Niels Olof (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 9:43 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:It wouldn't be the first time we've seen that. For example, back in Sweet and Elite we caught a few brief glimpses of Jet Set's cutie mark:
Image

Given that Equestrian aviation has focused largely on balloons and airships, it is a bit odd to see airplanes depicted like this, even if they would fit in with Equestria's tech level overall.


Indeed, the animators have a thing for gags like this, which some fans will then run with, e.g., the existence of video games in Equestria based on a single gag (in a song, no less!). Still, with cutie marks such as these in a society that does not seem to have quite the matching tech levels, there clearly is a real and urgent need for three young ponies gifted in helping others come to terms with their puzzling marks.

Also, that is one amazing Rarity expression. She does not know quite what to say, eh?
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Postby Zuzie (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 9:52 pm

Now that they're adults in the eyes of the elder ponies, they might end up being given more responsibilities. Perhaps the same level that the Mane 6 have already.

Maybe the "Mane 6" might even expand to a "Mane 9"?
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Postby Soft Snow (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 9:57 pm

If you look at it from another way, each of the CMC did got their own unique and simple cutie mark. It is just that it is overlapped with the CMC theme which encompasses their lives.
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Postby Octavia (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:00 pm

Zuzie wrote:Now that they're adults in the eyes of the elder ponies, they might end up being given more responsibilities. Perhaps the same level that the Mane 6 have already.

Maybe the "Mane 6" might even expand to a "Mane 9"?

I don't think getting your cutie mark suddenly means that you're an adult. It's kinda like a bar/bat mitzvah in that it's more of a ceremonial passage into adult life, rather than meaning others will actually start treating them like adults. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Niels Olof (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:01 pm

Zuzie wrote:Now that they're adults in the eyes of the elder ponies, they might end up being given more responsibilities. Perhaps the same level that the Mane 6 have already.

Maybe the "Mane 6" might even expand to a "Mane 9"?


I certainly read this as indicating that they are at least junior partners:

Image

(Edit: They don't get full equity like Pinkie Pie, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, or Rarity, but at least half of what Applejack and Rainbow Dash get :gotcha: )
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Postby JaneCV (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:06 pm

The three of them together are worth one pony, or two worst ponies.
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Postby Mir (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:43 pm

Okay, so I was on vacation and........... :yay:

I mean, yeah, the pacing was weird and rushed and stuff coulda been improved but...
They finally got their marks and I'm actually feeling happy for them.

What can I say but: :ponydrugs:
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Postby Discord (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:52 pm

Well that was a thing :awesomedash:

I did get a little spoiled, but it was still really awesome. The story was a lot of fun, really touching and the payoff incredible. The music was solid enough and though this is a pretty busy episode on pacing (busier than MMC, even) I can tell they're basically taking the beats from MMC and I'm okay with it; the last part is a culmination of five seasons worth of stories, not the episode.

And personally, I really like the unexpected destiny. Because after all their adventures, all the struggles they've gone through with regards to identity and self-discovery, soul searching to never really find the obvious stuff...well, it'd be a kind of predictable and lame story beat to have Sweetie Belle sing a song and say "hey I really like singing!" and get her mark. I mean, I'm sure they could make it emotional and it'd be cool, but at this point I think it would feel out of left field and even a little hollow. Ditto for a "hey I like building things" and "hey I'm good at scooter stunts" or something. It's not that those destinies can't be awesome, but the show just hasn't really built towards them because the story possibilities were more limited.

But this was just way cooler, in my mind. Having their destinies be as guides to other people struggling with identity issues, after how much of those struggles they've gone through and learned from is an awesome idea that makes a lot of sense for the journey they went through. And having them have a unique, unified destiny is just all kinds of :allears: to me.

And a great way to celebrate five years. Kudos to you, pony show, still able to entertain and surprise five years later. :golfclop:
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:12 pm

Yeah, it seems they wanted to drive home the idea that these three particular ponies do in fact have a higher destiny than just some hobbies and creative skills.

I appreciated everything about this episode happening out of the blue in the middle of the season, not least the in-universe idea that something like this would just happen when you least expected it, once you've stopped really paying attention. If we'd heard that there was a 2-parter CMC episode upcoming, we'd all have basically assumed from the start that it would be their cutie mark episode, especially if it were a finale. (Just as we would have quickly seen the pattern if one of them got her mark first; we would have known that the other two would quickly follow suit with their own episodes, and we'd immediately have scanned the upcoming episode titles for clues as to when to expect each one.) But this way, it caught us all off guard, just as it did them in-universe. I love feeling like things are happening to me at the same time as they happen to the characters, and with the same level of narrative omniscience.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:17 pm

They might not necessarily be meant for heroics quite as much as they're just meant to really great friends all through their lives. In fact, that's something I've come to appreciate about episodes featuring any of them, since their problems and conflicts often feel more down to earth than the stuff the Mane Six have to put up with.
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Postby Perpetual Lurker (?) » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:46 pm

I've been thinking about how the Crusaders' marks weren't exactly built up in previous episodes outside of the one with Troubleshoes, but in the end I find it rather appropriate. The Crusaders have been spending their time throughout the entire series growing and learning about themselves. It then follows that that much introspection would lend itself to more insight into potential and talents of others. The fact that they had barely done it before getting their marks for it makes sense too. All that's needed for a mark to manifest itself is a realization of a calling or talent. When the Crusaders helped Diamond Tiara, it all just clicked. After all, the Mane 6 all got their marks by experiencing something for the first time, and realizing their calling in the moment.
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