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New television


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Tags: carla, ruth

133 thoughts on “New television

  1. rain, rain, come wash away the pain,
    with demons in my eyes, vengeance is the only waaaaaaaaaaaaaay D:<

    1. What song is that from?

      1. “Vengeance” by coldrain it’s the opening song of the anime Ninja Kamui :p

        the song slaps but the show itself is basically an overproduced energy drink commercial XD :/

      2. “Vengeance” by coldrain, it’s the opening song of the anime Ninja Kamui :p

        the song slaps but the anime itself is one long over-produced energy drink commercial XD :/

        1. ugh, please don’t mind the double comment, I see the site is still under maintenance X-X

        2. Overproduced Energy Drink Commercial just makes me think of Death Stranding

  2. It’s okay, Ruth. You have to play the straightman every so often.

    Well, proverbially straight.

  3. Never not a good time to say don’t trust cops. I should probably just type that every strip instead of anything else.

    1. i actually find that cops are extremely trustworthy

      you can always trust them to be bastards

      1. Sometime you need a cop who is enough of a bastard to quash the bad guy.
        In my apartment building a man who had beaten his mom to death tried to hide with his girlfrend, a fellow tenant. The police found him and got the girl away safely then he
        started firing randomly thru the wall, floor, ceiling and then tried to set fire to the
        building while holding off the firefighters. A LEO of the SF Swat with a modern
        rifle that looked like a toy killed him with a head shot. Here is soo liberal and even
        progressive San Francisco.
        I hope no one ever needs a LEO so much as the tenants did that night.
        Carla is one of my favorites and I have known poor transgender who had
        the same sort of attitude.

      2. Oh sure; let’s see if you still hate cops when you get robbed, and need someone to show up hours later and shrug. 😉

        1. Hey, that’s not fair!

          You forgot that they’ll also misgender my family, after they shoot my dog.

    2. The A is for All.

      1. Yes. And not for “assigned” as my brain keeps trying to convince me

      2. Well, one of them is anyway. The other stands for what is commonly mistaken as a pirate’s favorite letter!

        1. Aye, ye’d think t’would be ‘R’, but me heart belongs to the ‘C’. 🏴‍☠️

  4. I wonder how they knew it was Carla’s room, and used that as an excuse to trash it.
    .
    Also, I feel awful for Carla right now. I’ve kept my bisexuality to myself because I live in a red state, so I can’t fully understand what Carla is going through. I cannot imagine being so openly hated by people that they would destroy my property. Can anyone in the comments relate to something similar that happened to them?

    1. I didn’t come out until i was well away from the shitass catholic community i was a part of, but i saw at least 6 teachers fired on rumors they were gay

    2. I’m an annoying faggot and someone doxxed me and sent a cop to my home. The two things might not be related.

    3. Door has her name on it.

      1. Dunno if we’ve seen it on-panel (it doesn’t look like we’ve seen much of Carla’s room), but it wouldn’t exactly be unusual for her to have a trans flag somewhere in her room as a decoration.
        .
        (And yes, she’s also somewhat famous, but if they knew whose daughter she was, they would’ve been less likely to attack her property, I think.)

        1. There were at least 4 strips that were in Carla’s room, when she contacted her mom and dad via video call on her TV. 3 of those said strips were mostly panels of her and the wall behind her and the tv with her parents on it. This is the strip we can see the most of her room though: https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/connecting/. No flag visible in what we can see. Mostly just the tv, her computer, an Ultra Car sticker, and some papers. Wall behind her is bare.

        2. I looked at those exact strips and I completely disagree that we can see “most” of her room in them. We can see a tiny segment of the wall behind her and we can barely see the wall the screens are in front of.

        3. I mean… the promise of anonymity and legal protection has emboldened people to do dumber things.

        4. I personally think it makes more sense that even with her name on the door and Carla’s general fame they didn’t know for sure it was her room but just broke the tv anyway because they could. It’s not exactly a hard puzzle even if there isn’t a giant trans flag hanging on the wall. It makes a lot of sense they would just not care and hurting the rich trans girl is a nice consolation prize for not finding AG in their illegal search. I do kind of wonder how a cop would think they’d get away with targeting the billionaire and destroying her property but I guess cops have been given even more unilateral authority and immunity over these past years. 9/10 times they will get away with it. Hopefully this is the 1/10 they won’t.

        5. Yeah, it’s kind of weird and hard to tell what the intent is here. If they knew she was trans they’re probably more likely to break stuff, but if they knew who Carla was, which would be the obvious way to know she was trans , wouldn’t they have been warned off messing with the billionaire’s kid? ACAB, but part of that bastardy is letting rich people slide because they’re not easy targets.
          The whole arc still seems off to me. All the damage really was done off panel. The scenes we did see with them searching they seemed pretty mellow: not messing with the “science experiment”, letting Walky bullshit them.

        6. @thejeff-That confused me too. The depiction of the cops seemed a bit inconsistent. Having jokes about them respecting science and getting played by Walky kinda clashes with the aftermath of them wrecking rooms and flat out destroying stuff, especially since we didn’t see them in the act. Were they bumbling and incompetent or threatening?

        7. They’re searching the entire dorm building – I would presume, especially given their new fear of Amazi-Girl, that the cops sent more than two guys to do the project. And other than ACAB, cops aren’t a monolith.

        8. @Sirksome: That’s basically the confusion
          And to Jon’s point, sure there were more than two. We even saw a grim troop of them marching in.
          It’s perfectly reasonable some were more serious about it than others. Or just more malicious and destructive. But the story in the moment focused on the incompetent bumbling ones, but the aftermath is shifting to the unseen destructive ones. It’s an issue of narrative choices and tone, not of whether the individual events were reasonable.

        9. Re-read my post. I said “This is the strip we can see the most of her room though:” Not “we can see most of her room. As in “this of the strip that we see her room the most in because other strips are just of the wall behind her and the tv with her parents on it.”

    4. they wouldn’t have to know it’s Carla’s room; Carla’s room is just visibly the room of a trans person. that’s enough.

      the extreme tinfoil hat stretch is, since Amazi-Girl has regularly beaten up grown men, they also assume the trans student must be Amazi-Girl, and this was a more deliberate warning to stop being a problem for them. Anything to protect the fragile male ego of the state-sanctioned violence brigade.

      1. Tinfoil hat theory seems plausible enough.

      2. “Carla’s room is just visibly the room of a trans person.”
        .
        I’ve never been in the living quarters of someone I knew was trans. (Heck, I’ve never known if someone I know is trans, much less been in their room.) Help the old straight white guy out – what about Carla’s room sends that message?
        .
        Thanks.

        1. The obvious one is that she has a trans flag (or did at one poing) if I remember correctly

        2. I don’t remember a trans flag in her room, and haven’t seen a link to a trans flag there yet. It would make sense for Carla to have and display one, but, this may be an invented memory that everyone is now agreeing with.
          .
          It’d be a privilege to automatically know that a violent crime isn’t a hate crime, vs. receiving that same act of violence *and* having to wonder whether it’s because the bigots hate who you are.

        3. It’s just extremely normal and typical for people her age who are openly trans to hang up trans flags if they feel remotely safe to do so. Logical extrapolation, that’s all.

      3. People, her name is on the door and she is a known figure, she doesn’t have the benefit of choosing who knows she’s trans its public knowledge because of her parents being well known.

        I’m really confused by all the people confused by this.

        1. The confusion is because “trans” and “billionaires’ kid” are aspects that pull the expected cop reaction in opposite directions, which doesn’t entirely rule it out, but it does complicate the theory that it was because they knew who she was individually.

    5. I assume they got the list of residents in the dorm from university management, one way or another.

    6. i wonder if she’ll tell her parents, it would be cool if it could lead/get some kinda lawsuit filed against them

    7. I don’t remember most of elementary school into high school because of what I went through, and I’m in my 50s now. And the people who I thought were friends, were just happy they weren’t the target and could be part of the in-group against the outsider.

  5. Interesting that it was punched through, I would have assumed thrown to the ground. Point in favour of it being a specific targeted slight against her, I suppose

    1. Maybe they tried but couldn’t figure out how to unlatch the wall mount.

      1. this tracks, they are dumb as bricks

      2. Not sure how Carla’s is set up, but my 72″ teevee is attached to its mount with four screws, and the mount is secured into a wall stud with two 1/4″ lag screws. It would not pull down easily.

  6. Always bet on cops being bigots.

  7. If the past decade of Dumbing of Age has taught me, if anyone suggests that the police destroyed her property because she’s trans then there will be at least 20 comments about how there’s literally any other explanation than them being bigots. See Walky and Sal about their mom for example.

    1. You’re not wrong, but I wish you were. Wading through hate comments is generally not much fun.

      1. I agree in this specific circumstances, but “this commenter had a different interpretation about a fictional character’s bigotry” seems like a very broad definition of “hate.” To be fair I haven’t read the comments in question.

        Is this comment a hate comment?

        1. Feel free to delete this comment, don’t mean to start a flame war.

        2. Feel free to delete this comment, don’t mean to start a flame war. Doesn’t look like there’s an option for me to delete it; apologies if I missed one.

        3. Different opinions are good, but when different opinions are: used to insult someone, said to intentionally cause a fight instead of a debate, gaslight someone, or to attack a belief, then it becomes hate

    2. Yeah, nah. I come from a country where police are much more reasonable, and I’m also known for comments about jumping to conclusions. But even I think, yeah, nah, they did not do this to other people, and fist thru TV is pretty damn blunt. I’d say probability for bigot hate crime is pretty high. Plus these are fictional cops, so they are standing in for cop bad behaviour in general, and get no leeway.

    3. I usually try to wait until the comments have already been moderated…

  8. indirectly it was also because of her parents being war profiteers.

    1. The only pro-trans and LGBTA rights war profiteers of all time.

      1. I don’t think Willis really thought out the implications of transposing Ultra Car/Carla’s Shortpacked backstory into it’s Dumbing of Age equivalent.

        1. By contrast, I think Willis is very thoughtful on this. It’s just its a highly unusual situation that is an interesting thought experiment. What if, instead of the usual grossly homophobic and awful parents, you got fully supportive and loving ones…who are still awful people in another way. The, “Artemis and Cheshire’s parents are great parents but shitty people” scenario to use Young Justice as an example.

        2. What implications? That people can be right on one issue while terrible about another?

      2. Ah, but do the Ruttens see themselves as war profiteers? Or do they tell themselves that they’re selling defense systems which keep their country safe like how they keep their daughter safe?

        People are messy and complicated and those sorts of internal tensions make for good stories.

        1. It’s kind of a pedantic point I guess, but once upon a time “war profiteering” was an actual specific crime rather than just “has something to do with making things for the military”.

      3. Reality is not that simple, defense industry workers are queerer than you might think because multiple American arms manufacturers are in fact very LGBT friendly. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon all score 100/100 in the Human Rights Campaign’s employer rating system, and at this point Raytheon’s history of being a trans-friendly employer is decades long: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-protects-transgender-employees

      4. Are you aware of Sam Altman who is gay and has a partner, is a billionaire
        who has just turned his LLM over to the Department of War(should be Defense)..
        Only those confused Gay Republicans are happy with him.

        1. Still is Defense. Only Congress can change the name of an official department of the government.

        2. Peter Thiel, founder and chairman of Palantir, is another gay billionaire with department of defense contracts, and is generally thought to be the man responsible for Jack Vance being Vice-President. He started dating financier Matt Danzeisen in 2007 and married him in 2017.

        3. it’s been the department of war for decades, “department of defense” is a euphamism to get you to support murdering wedding parties in Afghanistan and farmers in Viet Nam.

          And pinkwashing isn’t that complicated.

    2. i mean, wouldn’t the cops be on her parents side in that case? i mean they showed up to ‘stop’ the protest, not join it

      1. Cops aren’t an actual hivemind, and they take orders from above. It’s possible that a cop present sympathized with the protests, and/or had it in for a rich kid.

        I’m not betting on it or arguing it as likely, but it’s hardly impossible.

        1. It’s got an asymptotic relationship with impossibility. A cop willfully destroying a wealthy person’s property is going to get the book thrown at him, and they know that. This is clearly bigotry in action- the devil does not need an advocate in this instance.

  9. *grimaces at the hate crime, then goes back to writing yuri*

    1. The best way to cope

  10. Since i don’t know where else i ever could bring it up: Anyone here olays the game Mewgenics? It has become my latest obsession.

    1. I don’t, but I’ve got a friend who seems to love it. He hasn’t said anything about in a week or two, but he’s probably still playing it.

      1. I’m just going to assume that this is a game playing a genetic scientist that has partially turned themselves into a cat.

        1. Without spelling it out, I was made by Edmund Mcmillen; who also made Super Meat Boy, and The Binding of Isaac. His style is pretty consistent, so do with that info what you will.

        2. or a “cute eugenics” game

    2. Looks fun! I am definitely going to check that out thanks!

      edit: and then I saw the price :’). oh also just remembered I don’t have any working computers at the moment, have not had the energy/focus to fix mine. Oh well, maybe later I guess!

    3. No because of the racists in the voice cast

  11. Aw, Ruth. You tried.
    .
    Carla……. yeah. :(

  12. Has anyone else noticed how difficult, and slow, this site is? I used to be able to load a page in5-10 seconds, but now it can take over a minute or give you an error after making you wait.

    1. I don’t have that issue myself, but iirc the site has been undergoing some backend changes lately. Have you tried clearing your browser cache?

  13. Not too sure about all that pink and purple and red-headedness. But it makes a good symbol for clashing and angry and sarcasm and general discord.

  14. Mmmmmmmmmhm.

    mind, the cop in question probably justified it with Well Who Cares Rich, but the tv woulda been broken if she’d been publicly disenherited, too. yanno.

    What i like- what keeps me coming back, on top of what a generally good comic this all is. Is knowing I get the power fantasy that a trans woman could be able to get fucking back about it. And I need that right now.

  15. Seriously, Ruth wasn’t thinking for a moment there.

    1. I get it, given Ruth’s own issues regarding family its a natural bias for her to have.

  16. I see that Ruth is celebrating the Maple Leafs getting eliminated again.

  17. It seems odd to me that the cops would damage Carla’s property if they knew who she was when they went into her room. Cops usually are a lot more careful around the property of rich people. If you’re poor they’ll break your stuff without worry, but Carla is the child of billionaires.

    1. My guess is they didnt know it was Carla. They saw trans flag and other LGBT signs but didnt know about her specifically

      1. Or you know, she’s a public figure, her name is on the door and they just didn’t think this could come back to hurt them.

    2. Did anyone get their names? Did they even have a warrant, or did the university administration just knuckle under? They might well have been operating under an assumed cloud of anonymity (“assumed” because if Carla’s parents really get mad about this, they could almost certainly force the names out of someone), and smashed the famous trans girl’s TV because they could.

      1. We’ve got no idea.
        Ruth said something about a warrant but was ignored.
        We’ve got no idea whether they need a warrant, whether they had the university’s permission, whether that was enough.
        The implication from several comments by characters is that they didn’t have a warrant and that they needed one, but nothing definitive.

        1. Yes, they still require a warrant. Only the students occupying said dorm can give the police permission to search it as they are the occupants. The college is more like a landlord, they can’t give that permission either.

  18. Huh, thought it was going to be because she was trans, now its bc other students who knew her parents broke in and destroyed it. Didn’t see that happening.

    1. Is that’s what happened? I genuinely thought it WAS the cops.

    2. I think you are missing that Carla’s statement here is angry sarcasm. She has reasonable belief that it was the police that smashed her TV because it was found smashed after the police raided the dorms (see this comic and the next one: https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/upanabout-2/). Given that police are not exactly known for their progressive political leanings, Carla also has a reasonable belief that she was targeted for being trans. The only question is how they would know that was her room, but we may find out as the story progresses.

      1. Her name is on the door.

        1. Well, that’s funny. The entire time I thought her door said Ultra Car, but yeah it’s evidently Ultra Carla.

        2. That’s what I’ve been saying!

          People have been inventing Pride flags we never saw while her name is on the door, in the very comic we’re reading and we already know her being trans isn’t a secret due to her parents being public figures.

      2. M. Night Shyamalan twist: It was Mary, who snuck in right after the cops left.

    3. Think you’re taking a bit of a leap here.

    4. I think the implication is that it was the cops, because she’s trans. There’s a possibility for Willis to slip in another explanation, but Carla is behaving like it was the cops here.
      Another student breaking in and damaging the tv would be doing it when either Carla (or other students or Ruth) could catch them or when cops might catch them.

  19. So this would imply the cops didnt know it was Carlas room.

    Like they knew the room belonged to a trans person (I think she has a flag) thus bigotry.

    But if they knew it was Carla specifically they likely would have known about her parents and thus behaved differently out of fear of an army of lawyers suing them into the ground.

    Speaking of which. Said army of lawyers would probably be better revenge than egging a car or whatever petty vengeance is brewing in her head right now.

  20. Honestly, I was thinking that Carla should have called herself Ultra Carla in this continuity, so I’m glad to see it here.

    (If it was already mentioned in a previous comic, I forgot and I just noticed it now.)

    1. Turns out the cop didn’t know she was trans or that she was rich.
      This particular cop just really hates Ultra Car.

    2. I forgot that detail too but apparently yes! It was quite early in the comic but Ultra Car is very important to her in part for identity-related reasons (talked about over the next few comics from the link).

  21. I’m a little surprised to see Ruth misjudge the situation like this, she’s usually more on the ball.

    1. Honestly I think its probably because she see’s Carla’s parents as the most controversial thing about her personally. That she thought war profiteer parents first isn’t that surprising given Ruth’s own history with family.

  22. NGL, if I was at this college, I’d seriously consider transferring. This is clearly not a safe environment for their students and the decisions of the college have lead to that environment not being safe.

  23. Given Carla’s sarcastic response, I believe she thinks it was actually students which hate her parents who are actually responsible for the damage to her TV.

    1. “Do you think it was because of your parents?”
      “Oh, yeah, cops love destroying the property of rich folks. That’s exactly it.”
      .
      She was addressing the cause, not who did it. She knows damn good and well it was one of the cops. And her vengeance shall be both elaborate and epic, after which she’ll probably let her folks know so they can destroy the rest of the department.

  24. Another explanation crossed my mind, but I think it’s unlikely. But presenting it here, in case there’s a reveal later: Carla broke it herself

    First, a problem with the current explanation (a cop did it because she’s trans). We’ve seen a little inside Carla’s room. Not all of it, but from what I’ve seen double checking, there’s no trans flags or other signs of her trans-ness I recognized. The cop would have to have known she was trans from her (parents’) fame for being extremely wealthy. A cop destroying property despite knowing it was a wealthy person’s property, if they’re also a minority, isn’t that big of a problem with the current explanation, though.

    background of the “Carla broke it” scenario: Two recent scenes in her room, in the first Charlie tells her that Ruttech (her parents’ company) is one of the military contractors the protestors want the university to divest from. We see Carla troubled by it, and Charlie encouraging her to talk to her parents about it.
    The second, Carla is alone in her room. No visible trans flags, but a copy of the newspaper about the protest is on the bed. She talks to her parents, tells them about Charlie, but doesn’t broach the Ruttech being a military supplier during a genocide. After she hangs up, she looks dejected.

    This is what might have followed, but I think would have been doubly out of character:
    Dejection turns to frustration and Carla punches the screen she was just talking to her parents on (uncharacteristic of Carla #1). Neither Charlie nor anyone else sees the room until after the cops do a sweep. Charlie checks the room and notices the broken TV. Carla has plausible deniability (call-back to one of the strips from Charlie talking to Carla about the protest), and misleads anyone who notices into thinking a cop broke the old one (intentionally false hate-crime accusation; uncharacteristic of Carla #2)

    1. I had assumed this when she first got the new TV (because I have the memory of a goldfish). However, it’s pretty heavily implied that the cops broke it.

      1. Yes. I’d be disappointed if this is what happened. Punching the tv out of frustration feels like a Jennifer or even a Dorothy-on-her-worst-day thing. And Amber might throw it through a window. But the false hate-crime accusation is like a Mary only thing.

        But I’ve seen other characters go in different directions than I thought.

    2. There is no problem with the cop knowing she’s trans.

      By the sounds its actually unusual for someone to NOT know and she doesn’t need Pride flags when she literally has her name on the door.

  25. I know I shouldn’t, but here I am.
    .
    How could the cops have possibly known she was trans without a big trans flag on the wall? It would be weirder if they didn’t. They ransacked the room. Maybe she had a trans flag on an article of clothing like stripy knee socks. Maybe she had it on a bit of streamer merch by her desk. Maybe, depending on the specific details of her transition, they found a gaff or a dialator or her hormones. Maybe they found queer media like a copy of Fallout New Vegas. Maybe Mary decided to be “helpful” and give the cops a tip that the big scary trans woman at the end of the hall was extra suspicious because her single room made it easy to hide. There are so many possibilities that you can probably just pick whichever option floats your boat.

    1. Yeah, this is basically where I am.
      .
      I also just… don’t understand the impulse to play devil’s advocate, or even detective, here. Carla has told us that her TV was broken by the cops, on purpose, because she’s trans. Why are we not taking her at her word?
      .
      It just… reminds me of the comment section when Sal told us Linda had treated her badly her whole life out of racism, and so many of us turned into attorneys for the defense of a character who… hadn’t even appeared in the strip yet. Now it’s happening again, in defense of “characters” who don’t even have names.
      .
      Like. On the one hand, speculation is fun! On the other hand, why are we so unwilling to take for granted things like “Sal probably knows her mom, and especially her mom’s relationship with her, better than we do” or “Carla probably isn’t assuming the cops were psychic, and has reason for thinking they could have targeted her on purpose for being trans”.

      1. I would beat that it’s almost entirely because of a personal dislike for Carla as a character. Think that she is too “full of herself” and privileged, so they looking for reasons to dismiss something bad happened to her.
        Also might be a general discomfort with transphobia as a subject so they looking for ways to not have to talk about it.

        1. @nadamás I appreciate seeing you. I know you said recently that this place isn’t so great for your head space so I hope you’re taking care of yourself.
          .
          I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of malice towards Carla. That’s certainly how I read a lot of the criticism of Joyce lately. People here are clearly capable of a strongly motivated reading.

        2. Thanks, i am trying to not read as many comments, especially from people i know i dislike/strongly disagree with.

        3. I think this is for sure a factor! Just as I think “Sal was a villain in the Walkyverse” and “Carla was a troll in the Walkyverse” are factors.
          .
          Seconding Dandi on being glad to see you. Hope you are taking care of yourself. <3

      2. I’m inclined to assume the questions are more about examining the text for flaws than to excuse a hate crime, but it’s still a bit confusing. Can we really not imagine that a trans woman would have *something* identifying in her room? Is a big flag on the wall the limit of what we know about trans people?

        1. If we’re talking about the average cis person? Yeah, that’s about the limit you can usually expect, on the best of days. However, I would have thought the average cis person in this specific comment section might be at least slightly more aware? But I don’t think we can take that for granted.

        2. Not even needed, her name is on the fricking door and she is a publicly known figure.

          What else is needed?

        3. Her first name is on the door and, again, if they knew who she was specifically, her rich parents make her a less likely target.

        4. Like you are acting as if this is the only possible reason, rolling your metaphorical eyes at the idea that maybe her room held visible clues to being trans because we’ve “never seen” that the all of one time we saw a limited slice of the inside of her room, while actively ignoring that Carla sarcastically rejecting the idea of cops targeting the daughter of a rich kid is explicit text.
          .
          It’s very silly of you. Both theories have equal amounts of evidence for and against.

    2. There is a high chance politically inclined people are aware the daughter of Rutten Technologies is Trans. They are rich, powerful, and not shy of media. They probably do huge donations to the cause. I have no doubts that one of the several policemen is aware of Carla or clued in to it being THAT Carla from a family picture on the wall.

    3. A Celeste time of 27:49 was open on her computer and they figured that was good enough.

  26. Morbid curiosity makes me wonder… who do cops oppress more per capita of victim? Blacks, Muslims, or Trans people?

  27. Am I the only one assuming that Carla actually did it herself? After everything that wend down, and the non confrontation with her parents, she just got upset and put her own fist through her own TV and doesn’t mind letting others assume something else happened?

  28. “Oh she has a flag!” “Oh she’s publicly outed by her parents!”
    The cops kicked her out of her room like they did everyone else. And if they didn’t clock her that way, there’s always Mary willing to ask the cops to get rid of the ‘boy in the girls’ wing’.

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