Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Fun

My gripes, big and small, with Elden Ring (part two)

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Let me preface this by saying Elden Ring (From Soft) is my favorite video game of all time. By a hair. My second favorite? Dark Souls III, also by FromSoft. In fact, I’ve gone back and forth several times as to which game is actually my favorite. I finally landed on Elden Ring, but that doesn’t mean it won’t veer back to DS III.

I’m saying this because I’m going to be very critical of Elden Ring, and I wannt it to be clear that it’s from love. Well, also frustration, but mostly love. I want them to be better, that’s all. Here’s my post from yesterday in which I talked about the frustration I had with fulfilling a small side quest, one that frustrated me several times when I’ve done it in the past.

I want to talk about a bigger issue with this game–and it’s an issue that happens in many of the From games. That issue is that a large portion or all of the second half is not good. Let me explain. In doing so, I’ll be spoiling some of the second half of the game, including a major area. I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but I need to talk about specifics.

*SPOILERS*

About a hundred hours into the game (I’m slow), I made it to the halfway point. Of course, I didn’t know it was halfway, and I thought it was more like two-thirds of the way there. Honestly, it should have been because the next area was my least favorite in the whole game. Hm. I can talk about it without naming it, I guess. It’s a meaningful area in the game as it’s talked about before I even reach it. An NPC talks about it, and it’s mentioned in at least one item.

This area is easily the worst in the game. Not even a later optional area that is harder and more frustrating is as bad as this area. Someone noted that there is not one single new enemy in this rather vast area, and they’re right. All the enemies are from earlier in the game, although some of them might be reskinned. And, yes, one type of enemy is from this area, but one shows up much earlier in a gaol as the boss of that jail. Yes, he’s much easier then, but it’s the same enemy.

This area (and the optional area that branches off from it) are the snowy areas, which makes me sad because I love snow. But why is it usually a bad sign in a game? Because devs love to make visibility limited or nonexistent in said area. It happened in Dark Souls II in what is almost universally agreed upon as the worst area in the game–and it’s in the last DLC. It happened in this game and this area as well. There’s a section where the wind is constantly blowing and you can’t see anything. It’s the only area of the game I don’t know at all becuase I was constantly hooning it through that area. It’s not fun. It’s not cute. It’s not exciting. It just…is. It feels, dare I say it, cheap.


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Loyalty is a four-letter word, part six

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Yesterday, I was going to talk about why I don’t do brand loyalty when I veered into my dissatisfaction with the newest Elden Ring Tarnished DLC. I’t was only five dollars, but it should have een free. All the spoilers here–it was two new classes with base weapons from the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, two invasions that give you a set of armour and a weapon each, and three skins for Torrent, my best boy. Unlike any other company, FromSoft does not just give you the skins–oh no. They make you work for them. I detailed all of that in yesterday’s post, and I’m still not ok with this DLC costing actual money.

Just because they’re my favorite developers, it doesn’t mean that they get a free pass.  This is something I’ve never understand–total brand loyalty. Or team loyalty. I don’t find it admirable to be loyal to something no matter what. To a person…well, to a certain extent. I am very loyal to my close friends, and I have a hard time imagining a situation in which I would walk away.

On the other hand, we are talking about less than a handful of people in that group. Other than them, I am loyal to other friends to a lesser degree. But I have walked away from friends in the past, and I could see m e doing it again.

Here’s the thing. Outside that handful of people, I don’t love anyone else to extent that I would be willing to help them bury bodies, so to speak. I listen to a content creator who makes it very clear that he considers loyalty no matter what one of the most important things in a friend. He’s got that “I’m joking, but I’m really not” tone when he talks about it.

Side note: I’m getting a bit tired of hipster whatever-ism. It just seems like a way to be able to say really shitty things with a veneer of ‘just kidding’ wrapped around it. You’re still getting to say that shitty thing with your full chest. I’m not ok with that. As someone who is besieged on all sides from the current administration of my country, I don’t need to hear the ‘jokes’ from people I’m giving money to.

Side note to the side note: I’m done with cishetwhitemen when it comes to content creation. I’m tired of it, and I need to expand my universe. So from now on, I will only watch people who are minorities and preferably in more than one way. I’ve talked about this in the past with friends. In my personal life, I am not against banging someone in that category, but they would have to be pretty exceptional. Like, really fucking (no pun intended) exceptional. I was talking to a friend who did not have much experience with people in that category, and she was all about it.

I did not blame her. She was new to the charms of men, and if I were in her shoes, I would be all up in it as well. But, for me, I’ve dated them all my life, and I was done. Not only because they exepcted certain things from Asian AFAB people, but just because…how do I put this politely…I’m tired of them.

I love the ones I know who are my friends and precious to me. But Now, I jsut do not want to seek them out. I’m pragmatic, though. I live in a state that is the vast majority white people.


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Why I’m against traditions and brand loyalty, part five

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I want to talk about brand loyalty, and I want to tie it into my musings on tradition. Will I be able to make connect them? I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to try. Why am I thinking about brand loyalty? Because From’s The Duskbloods is purportedly coming out soon, and I have been musing on it. Why? Because if there’s one ‘brand’ I’m loyal to, it’s FromSoft. And, this feels almost like heresy, I am starting to lose trust. But first. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talk about what traditions I eschewed when I was in my twenties.

Here me out.

I have never been the target audience for From games. I suck at them, and it takes me twice as long to finish one as it does most people. The first time through, I mean. Quickest I’ve done a playthrough is 10 hours to get the last achievement I needed to plat the game, and that was on NG+. It can be done in two hours or less, but I didn’t want to rush that much. I felt pretty accomplished doing the whole game in 10 hours when my first playthrough took 250+ hours.

I adore Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree. Put together, it’s my favorite game of all time. I’m doing my umpteenth playthrough beacuse FromSoft released…uh, it’s like this. They put the game on the Switch 2. Which, fine. Put it on as many platforms as possible. In addition, thouugh, they sold the Tarnished DLC on all platforms. It was five dollars for…horse arrmor. I’m not joking. Well, I’m making a pointed joke beacuse when Bethesda sold horse armor DLC for Skyrim there was an outcry.

In this case, I forgive it because I like being able to dress uup Torrent, my beloved spirit steed. He is best boy by far, and he deserves a ‘fit or two. I’m going to spoil what’s in the DLC because it’s relevant to this post, so this is your warning.

FromSoft is in love with making things as obtuse as possible. Most devs would just give you the armor and call it a day. Not FromSoft. This is the same devs who had to show jourrnalists how to access the DLC for Dark Souls, by the way, beacuse it was so obtuse. In this case, there are three Torrent armors, and where you find each makes sense in terms of areas. However, the exact place you find two of them don’t really make sense. And in the case of the first one, it’s put in a room I hadn’t been in since my first playthrough because there was nothing in it.


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Why I might be in my right mind, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how the almost universal opinion in the gaming industry was that it was a bad decision for Sony to dump Kojima. There were many reasons listed as to why this was a terrible decision, but they boiled down to he’s a respected figure in the gaming industry. So much so, that it’s almost verboten to even whisper a breath of dissent. It’s been a brutal year for layoffs, but most people were sure that Kojima was safe. Or if they talked about him being fired, they made it sound like it would never happen.

I, on the other hand, could very well see it happening. I’ll get to that in a minute.

It’s interesting to me that Hidetaka Miyazaki (head of FromSoft), is highly respected, but he doesn’t seem to get the same regard as does Kojima. As least in terms of being called an auteur. Don’t get me wrong. Miyazaki gets plenty of accolades and adoration. He’s considered one of the greatest living developers, and he created a whole new genre of games. But, auteur? No. Most people do not call him that, and I have to wonder why.

I have a few theories. One, even though he’s been the head of FromSoft for over a decade, there’s still a feel of the hired gun to him. From has been published by several different publishers, which seems unusual for someone of his stature. Two, he’s a very shy and retiring man. He rarely does interviews, and when he does, he doesn’t really say anything shocking or surprising. He sticks to blandishments for the most part, but also he’s a master of misdirection. I still remember that he (well, a public relations man in the company, but I’m sure it was at the behest of Miyazaki) said with his whole chest that you could finish Elden Ring in 30 hours. Or the main story, anyway.

Then when the DLC was being announced, Miyazaki himself said it was about the size of Limgrave, the starting area in the base game. Sure, if you don’t take into account how many layers there are to the game. And I mean it literally this time. I have not heard the word verticality used so often before this game or since, and it’s spot on. The base game took me 215+ hours to complete my first playthrough. The DLC took 75+ hours. That’s a third of the base game. Limgrave is maybe a tenth of the base game? Probably not that small, but there are several areas in addition to Limgrave.

Back to Kojima. He is not shy nor retiring. He is not diffident or cagey when he’s speaking. In fact, I would say that he says exactly what’s on his mind. Very un-Asian, in fact. I can’t speak for Japanese culture specifically, but I know that East Asian culture tends to be very much guess and not ask.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I am not a big fan of Kojima. I watched a Let’s Play of his first game, and it was gross and sexist. Then, his whole bullshit about Quiet needing to wear almost no clothes because she breathes through her skin (uhhhhhh) and that everyone would be ashamed of their reaction when they found this out.

I mean, no? First of all, his pseudo-scientific bullshit was still just that–bullshit. Secondly, he was the one who created the character. She didn’t HAVE to have whatever it was that made her have to be naked. She’s fictional! He was the one who wrote her that way! It was infuriating then, and it’s still infuriating now.


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I feel like I’m losing my mind

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So, a hot bit of news in the gaming industry right now is that Sony dropped Hideo Kojima and his upcoming game–googles it to make sure of the spelling–Physint. It was introduced on January 31st, 2024. Huh. I thought it was earlier than that. Still, though, that’s almost three years ago. Reports are that Kojima has missed important deadlines. I’ll get more into that later.

Sony was trying to do the diplomatic, “We are parting ways because–” but Kojima was like, “Nah, brah. I’m not going out like that. They fired me, yo!” He was pretty blunt about it, which is not how things are done in Japan. Skill Up talked about how pissed Kojima was in this clip. Skill Up, by the way, had one of the more measured takes on the situation. I’ll get to that in a second, too.

People were outraged. So outraged. I saw report after report about how unbelievable this was and how Sony fucked up. How no one saw this coming. And, as I think I mentioned this in a few posts ago, I could not help wondering how I, someone not in the industry, saw this coming from a mile away. In fact, when I watched content about it a few months ago when a flurry of Sony layoffs were happening and the host said with confidence that only Hideo Kojima was safe.

I thought to myself, “Is he?” I didn’t think he was because if Sony was looking to cut their budget, he was an obvious choice. His games are lavish extravaganzas that take forever to make and don’t make back that much money. (For the latter, I’m talking about post-Metal Gear Solids.)

I thought he wasn’t safe. In fact, I thought he was very unsafe. And I wondered if I had lost my mind because everyone said there was no way Sony would get rid of him. He was too vaunted, too revered, and too sacred to get rid of.

Me: Nuh uh!

Let’s remember back to when he was fired by Konami. It was revealed that he had blown the budget wide open and missed deadlines. He denies these claims, but they are widely held to be true. And, to be honest, he’s always rubbed me the wrong way. I found him arrogant and sexist, and I did not appreciate that the latter was breezily ignored (but, nor was I surprised. The gaming industry is rife with sexism).

I felt like he was both supremely creative AND overly self-indulgent when it came to his games. Like many creative people who have reached a certain height, he needs someone who can say no to him and rein him in.

This is my long-winded way of saying that while I don’t doubt Sony acted in their own self-interest in cutting the cord, I don’t exactly blame them. Yes, a lot of their current troubles are self-inflicted (oh boy are they), but I don’t think this is one of them. Except maybe in picking him up in the first place. I mean, I can’t blame them for that, but they should have been a bit more clear-eyed in going into the relationship.


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Schrödinger’s Call–A Quick Look, part two

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I’m back for the second part of A Quick Review of Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako) after playing the third chapter. I mentioned at the end of the last post how I would probably need a break before playing the third chapter, and I was right.

I love this game. I adore it with all my heart and soul. I wanted to state that upfront before I quickly add, I have such a rough time playing it. It’s nearly two months to the day I played chapter two, and I went in with a heavy heart. Not because I thought it was going to be bad, because I knew it would take a toll on me. In fact, Hamlet, the cute, round, and sarcastic black cat explicitly told me in the game that doing a certain action would cost me. It’s pretty clear that this game is trying to tackle some pretty hefty topics. Does it succeed? I’ll get to that later.

Let me get the frustrating parts out of the way firs. My biggest gripe with the game is the gameplay, ironically. The minor gripes: there is a lot of text to button through, and sometimes when I’m on automatic, I press the button one too many times. Fortunately, I haven’t missed anything too important, but it bugs me, anyway.

Two, it’s usually clear what the game wants from me, but occasionally, I don’t know which exact phrase they want me to input. There’s a lot of dialogue saved in my notebook, and the game can be pretty cryptic at times. I risked looking up the answer once when I got stumped and got a mild spoiler (I think?) and to add insult to injury, didn’t even get the answer I was looking for. I eventually figured it out, but I did not want that in my cozy game about death. Well, not so cozy, but definitely about death.

Oh, the third gripe is something I mentioned in the last post was that some of my choices don’t matter at all. The game wants me to go down a certain path, which I’m fine with! But then don’t allow me to choose and give me a stock answer if I make the wrong choice. I get why they do it, but it’s frustrating at the end of the day.

I mentioned that the game continues to break my heart, and chapter three completely broke me. I will not be talking about the chaarcters themselves because you really need to go into the game unspoiled.

I can talk about general themes, though. Despair, loneliness, grief, ousider-ness, and more. All the characters are broken in one way or the other, underlying the fact that no one is completely normal*.  I’m in a dark place right now, and this game isn’t alleviating that feeling. On the other hand, it’s the perfect feeling to really sink into this game, so who knows if it was a wise choice or not?

I think I’m getting close to the end. I’m not sure, though, because I have studiously avoided anything related to the game. You really need to experience it as fresh as possible, and even when I read reviews before playing the game, I stopped the second they started spoiling even the smallest thing. Oh, and I read them after I played the demo (which was the first chapter), but before I played the second chapter.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review, part four

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I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review (Spry Fox). I am aware of the irony of me calling it a quick review when I’m on the fourth part, but it’s funny (at least to me). Plus, the new season started today so let’s goooooo with new items! The game was released on July 15th, and the new season (fall) started on September 1. That makes me wonder if they shortened the seasons in this game (again, in the first game, a season was two months with a month between two seasons) or if it’s just because of when the game was released. My hunch is that it was the latter, but we’ll see when the next season starts.

I really like the start of a new season because it means a ton of new resources. New critters (bugs, insects, and butterflies), new trees and flowers, new seashells, and new fish. I had not gotten anything new in a while. The thrill of seeing that ‘new’ in the deescription in bold black ink really perked me up just when I’ve been dragging my ass in the game.

It’s the same as it was in the last game, yes (new resources at the change of seasons) except they cut out the in-between month this time. Again, we’ll see if that’s just because of the release date or if they choose to cut the seasons short. I think it’s the former because they like to have things link up with the real world. Which, again, I appreciate for the most part.

I talked in the last post, well, mostly about plats and why I hate them so much. It was related to this game, yes, but it was more me just needing to go off. I hate plats, and yet, I feel compelled to get them after I obtain a certain percentage of the achievements. Usually it’s around the 65% that I start noticing what I need to get the plat.*

Back to all the delicous new resources in a new season. If this game holds true to the first game, this means I’ll get new bears and new recipes, too. I’m not sure about the latter because the specificity of an ingredient doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is you don’t make anything with, say a blueberry. It’ll use fruit jam, wnhich you make by burning the fruits. Same with nuts. No recipe will ever ask for a pecan, for example. It’ll just need nut flour, which you get from burning the nuts.

I actually like this because it makes the cooking fairly simple. I just have to gather all the resources and burn the ones that can be born. Easy-peasy. I don’t like how intensive some of the  master recipes are (highest tier), but that’s not unexpected.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review, part three

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I have more to say about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). In the last post, I mentioned my issues and frustrations with the resource gathering/management as well as my excitement for a mystery thhat is happening.

I do think if someone has not played the first game, this is a fine place to start. But, I also think overall the first game is better.

Here’s the thing with sequels. They are in a Catch-22 because they need to have the same charm as the original to appease the fans, but they also need enough new and fresh ideas in order to expand that appeal. I saw it happen with Dark Souls II (FromSoft) (which was a good game, even if ti wasn’t a good Souls game, per se), and I have seen it with other games, too. I liked Torchlight (Runic Games) better than Torchlight II, and I liked Hades (Supregiant Games) better than Hades II. Dark Souls is a more original game than the successor, obviously, but is it better? I would say the first half is, but not the second half.

All of that is to say that so far, I would say that I prefer OG Cozy Grove to the sequel. It was so fresh with its real-time gameplay, and I really gelled with the format. I couldn’t wait to play every day and to learn more about the bears. Even the excessive resource gathering (and the tiny inventory space). I only started getting frustrated when I went for the plat, which had some truly egregious achievements. So far, this game has tedious ones, but not any that are terrible. There are four locked achievements, though, which means that I’ll hold out as long as I can before giving in and looking them up.

Side note: I don’t really like hidden/locked achievements, though I understand why it evolved for them to be a thing. It’s because they are related to the story, and the devs want the players to be able to have those moments organically. At some point, though, I start worrying that I’ve missed an achievement–which means I will usually look up the full list before I get too far in a game.

FromSoft games have scarred me in this respect. I like to experience them unspoiled as much as possible, but I also don’t want to miss out on NPC questlines. Which are byzantine, obtuse, and really difficult to figure out without a guide–at least fgor me. But if I look up an NPC questline, I will get spoiled on other questlines. That’s just how it works.

It’s the same for locked achievements. I will hold out as long as possible, but at a certain point, I will give in. Otherwise, I’ll hit the achievements and get mad at how I wasted time by not looking them up earlier. That happened in Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) with a very specific achievement that meant I had to play the whole game again just to get it. Well, not all of it, but a good chunk of it. Which infuriated me and left a sourr taste in my mouth. I still loved the game, but my enthusiasm for it was very subduued by the end of the plat run.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review, part two

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I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). This is the second part of A Quick Review, and we’ll see how many posts I write about it. I have a lot to say, so strap in and let’s go.

In the first post, I voiced some of my frustrations at the way the game deals with inventory and resource management. It’s similar if not exactly the same as the first game, and it frustrated me then, too. I detailed how the upgrades work, and it’s tedious AF. As I said in the first post, give me a permanent upgrade to an unlimited inventory. Make it astronomical like a million coins, but just do it. I hate having to go back to the  fire (Flamey) to endlessly stash things, usually after burning them. (That upgrades a lot of the items to a higher tier.)

Also, and, yes, this was also something that happened in the first game–the placement of items is so frustrating. It starts with being hard to click on the item or the NPC if the NPC is near lots of items. And, given how limited space is, most of the NPCs are near a lot of items*.

I said yesterday that the cooking machine was the same as in the first game. That is not quite true. In the first game, you had to talk to an NPC bear in order to cook things. This is much easier, and I appreciate that I can just go to the cooking machine to make what I need/want. That’s a definite upgrade from the first game.

Let’s take a minute to give praise to the changes that I appreciate. One, there are ghosts/apparyitions of your troop members (who are also lost somewhere like you) that show up to help you farm resources. They help with the same chores you have to do anyway, but if they help you, you get a ton more resources. I like that.

I also like some of the different things that you can turn your basic resources into via fire or recycling. In fact, I wished they had done more in this vein.

One thing I’m very curious about is…hm. How do I put this so that it’s not spoiler-ific? There is a mystery that started at a certain point of me doing one of the new things. Which I’m not going to say exactly what it is because it’s very different and unexpected. After doing it for several days (like weeks), I got a letter in the mailbox admiring my work. And encouraging me to do more. Which, despite my misgivings, I did. And I got another letter commending me for what I was doing. And I felt even worse about it. They said they’d send me another letter soon, but I have yet to hear from them.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Look, part three

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(And other indies). That’s the subtitle, but I didn’t want to make the actual title too long.

I have one thing I need to say right away. Get rid of limited inventories. Completely. In the year of our largess, 2026, there is no reason for a limited inventory. When I played Skyrim (Bethesda), I only installed one mod. Well, two. One was to add snow because I love snow. But the other more important one was the infinite inventory for the horse. You can bet I downloaded that mod tout de suite.

If I remember, that game was especially egregious. It’s a vast open world game, and you could only dump your stuff at one of your houses? I think? And the fast travel was limited. I felt like I could only go two steps before filling up my inventory. Oh, and you could loot everything in every house.

Once I installed the endless inventory horse mod (you just dumped everything into your horse), it made the game 100% more enjoyable. I didn’t have to worry about picknig things up and where I was going to put them.

In Coze Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), the inventory is so limited when you start out. So is the storagce in your tent/the fire. This is the same as the first game, and it was just as annoying then. There is no reason for it. I mean, I get that there’s an emotional reason for it, but all it does in make me irritated/mad/upset. Oh, and here’s the post from yesterday in which I explored my mixed feelings about the game.

I do wonder if it’s just that it’s easier to code that way than to make it endless? I don’t know why that would be, but jI know roughly nothing about coding. I will say that in this game, my motivation dwindles and dives when it seems like every three seconds I have to  stop and move things into my storage or sell a bunch of stuff.

In the first game, at some point when I was rolling in money, I could max out my storage and buy chests to plac e them around the island. That was a stop-gap solution that I didn’t like because I never knew what was in which chest. I think you could access items from the main chest from any of the chests if you already had them in the main chest (the storage at the fire).

It was a mess, though. I really was hoping it would be one of the things that would be improved for this game. Alas, it was not. As far as i can tell, it’s exactly the same. A frustratingly small inventory that fills up in about five minutes. At least you can stack the same items, but only up to a certain amount of them.

It really disturbs the flow when I have to stop every five minutes or so to sell off a bunch of stuff or stash a bunch of items. Another small gripe is that when you run out of space, you simply cannot pick up the new item–so it lays on the ground where it is. And there is no marker to let me know where that is. I have in the past not been able to find something that I could not put in my inventory. It’s not a big deal when it’s a common resource, but if it’s one of the spirit logs (the reward a bear gives to you when you finish a quest for them. You give it to Flamey to make him stronger), then, of course, I want to find it again.


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