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Twin Peaks


tristy

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Apparently in the last shot of the Palmer house, before the lights go out, the creature from the Box in New York ("Mother"? Judy? Something else entirely?) is visible in one of the upstairs windows - presumably Laura's bedroom. It seems that, for whatever reason, the story has to centre there, and the Black Lodge spirits inhabit it no matter what else has changed, no matter what "universe" we inhabit.

I'd always assumed that Sarah's predicament was brought on by the sheer amount of grief and distress - of Garmonbozia - that must have built up in that house over the years, which drew Black Lodge spirits like scavengers to feed on it. But it seems like they may have taken a more conscious, active interest.

Mrs Chalfont sold the house to Alice Tremond...the names are clearly significant, but in the past, Tremond and Chalfont appeared to be the same person. There's clearly Black Lodge significance to those names, in any case, and it was Mrs Tremond who gave Laura Palmer the painting that seemed to serve as a portal to the Lodge - between Sarah Palmer being inhabited by Judy (and I agree that this was probably what we saw when the cockroach-thing crawled into the girl's mouth in episode 8), BOB abusing, and later possessing Leland, BOB's pursuit and eventual murder of Laura, and Laura's creation (?) by the Fireman, and subsequent influence in the Red Room...whatever seemingly endless conflict between the Lodges is going on, it centres on the Palmer house, but why?

 

I still think something was up with the Cooper that left the Lodge - I don't think it was Mr C per se, but he seemed to have the black eyes of Mr C when talking to Diane. Equally tellingly, Mr C was refused a cup of coffee in the Sherriff's Department - something very un-Cooper - and the Richard/Cooper seemed similarly unenthusiastic about a cup of coffee at Judy's Diner. Even when trapped in the body of Dougie Jones, Cooper's love of black coffee shone through - so the Cooper we were with in the end was a broken, incomplete Cooper, in my view. Not quite Mr C, but not wholly Dale Cooper either.

 

I'm wondering about MIKE, too. We know - or at least, we were told - that MIKE has devoted his life to stopping BOB, but that assumes MIKE's honesty, and his behaviour with the seed (as I mentioned earlier) makes me doubt that his motivations are entirely pure. That he seems to still keep close council with The Arm, which he allegedly removed to escape from BOB, seems odd, too. In Fire Walk With Me, his motivation seems to be solely around possessing Garmonbozia that he feels he is owed by BOB, rather than stopping him for noble reasons.

I had thought that, maybe, on some level, MIKE is Cooper - though I can't really rationalise that.

 

Still pondering the significance of The Arm repeating Audrey's line - or is it the other way around? - and what that means for where Audrey is, and who or what Charlie is. Is Charlie another manifestation of Judy, or a similar entity? He threatened to "end Audrey's story" - could that mean the universe she was presently inhabiting, that Charlie had the power to bring to an end, in the same way that Judy perhaps ended, or at least altered, (what I'll call) Universe A by preventing Cooper from saving Laura Palmer?

Was "Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane?" a way of asking what universe - what "story" - we're currently inhabiting? "The little girl who lived down the lane" being Universe A's Laura Palmer? Does this line sit alongside "Is it future, or is it past?" as a means of exploring when and where we are?

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18 hours ago, Phobolip Jeffries said:

I keep periodically checking the Twin Peaks reddit and something interesting popped up about Judy.

Jiao Dai is Mandarin for "to explain" and also recording tape.

Jiao Dai meaning "to explain/make clear" ties in with my over-arching theory about this series being deeply personal for David Lynch - Lynch thinks explanation kills creativity, so what other name would he give to the most negative force in his universe?

A lot of this series has been self-indulgent - I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing - and full of references to Lynch's wider work. I think he's made a conscious effort to explore his own legacy in this work; through the casting of Lynchian regulars (the shot of Cole, Diane and Cooper walking together out of the dark stands out), to recurring motifs like the long, dark driving shots akin to the opening of Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway, to lines that directly reference Inland Empire and the unmade Ronnie Rocket movie ("The Absurd Mystery of The Strange Forces of Existence"), to Kafka posters on Gordon Cole's wall, the choice of music, Bushnell Mullins being (presumably) named after Lynch's friend and one-time mentor Bushnell Keeler, explicit reference made to Sunset Boulevard, and probably countless other things I'm missing.

Even just the prominence of Gordon Cole as a character in this series seems a significant choice. Similarly, I've said before that I think Dougie was specifically a subversion of the expectations that a new series would just be a cosy nostalgia trip, by taking a beloved character and literally reducing him to nothing but a mindless vessel spouting catchphrases and being saved by deus ex machina. I think a lot of this series has been an exploration of Lynch's art, and challenging the audience as to their relationship with it.

Also, as Hobo said, the woman playing Alice Tremond at the end is the person who owns the house in real life - perhaps that's something as simple as a courtesy gesture from Lynch to thank her for allowing him to film there, but I suspect it's another layer of this meta-narrative. Some question of the nature of reality, or of artificiality.

 

Back to less meta concerns, though, just how much information was buried in Gordon Cole's exposition speech?

Quote

For 25 years, I’ve kept something from you, Albert. Before he disappeared, Major Briggs shared with me and Cooper his discovery of an entity: an extreme negative force called in olden times “Jiāo Dài.” Over time, it’s become “Judy.” Major Briggs, Cooper, and I put together a plan that could lead us to Judy. And then something happened to Major Briggs. And something happened to Cooper. Phillip Jeffries, who doesn’t really exist anymore—at least not in a normal sense—told me a long time ago he was on to this entity. And he disappeared. Now the last thing Cooper told me was, ‘If I disappear like the others, do everything you can to find me. I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone.’ And now this thing of two Coopers. And recently, a paid informant named Ray Monroe sent a cryptic message indicating that the Cooper we met at prison is looking for coordinates—coordinates from a certain Major Briggs.

The thing most people picked up on was, obviously, the significance of Judy, and that Cole, Briggs and Cooper have known all along. But look what else is in there - Cole is, on some level, aware of the current state of Phillip Jeffries, and Ray - the guy who bust Mr C out of prison, and led him to Jeffries - was an FBI informant all along!

 

Apparently Showtime have said there's been no discussion about another series, but "the door's always open to David Lynch". I suspect that's probably it, though - I'm not sure I want another series, though may change my mind based on the next book. Wouldn't turn down another movie, potentially.

What I'd be interested in now is if Lynch could follow this up with a brand new TV series - what would he come up with free from the constraints of a story he already started 25 years ago?

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With the Palmer house, the fact The Fireman says at the start of the series "it is in our house now" must mean The Mother/Judy (also didn't Mike's Tattoo say MOM which I just realized). Everything converges on the Palmer house. Then at the end we have lodge associated names attached to the house. It's incredibly important to the Lodge spirits for whatever reason.

I 100% agree that the Cooper we see at the end is some sort of midway point. Maybe he gave up something when Dougie #2 was made?

The scene where The Arm repeats Audrey's "little girl who lived down the lane" line makes me think that MIKE and The Arm are linked to Audrey and Charlie more than Cooper. The Arm is now rooted to the waiting room and can't move anywhere. Audrey also spent most of the season stuck in one place. As well as the fact they both have their own music that they dance to. Charlie and MIKE both have some sort of physical disability and dress rather similarly.

We never, not once, get a mention of Audrey Horne from anyone other than Richard Horne. Ben never mentions her. I don't think there's even a photo of her shown in her mother's house in the brief glimpse we get of that. You would think that someone who was involved in something as notable as a bank explosion would come up once in a while. Yet, nobody talks about her. Why is that?

I wish I was well versed enough in David Lynch's overall work. I only know Twin Peaks/Blue Velvet/Mullholland Dr/The Elephant Man. I did think that perhaps Freddie was some sort of nod to Elephant Man purely by being an British character sharing a name with a character from that film.

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On ‎29‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 14:33, Phobolip Jeffries said:

A theory I've heard on the Woodsmen that I kinda like is that they exist just to do tasks for lodge spirits and other than that are completely neutral.

Thinking about this...I'm not sure it fully explains the "Got A Light?" Woodsman, who seems to have more purpose than any of the others. He actively kills people with seemingly no purpose, which I don't think we've seen another Woodsman do (I assume there was some purpose to the death of Hastings, anyway), and recites the "this is the water, and this is the well..." poem(?), which links him to the white horse, and makes him the only Woodsman (as far as I remember) with a speaking part. Maybe he's a kind of Ur-Woodsman, that the others have grown from, or maybe they were once more powerful than they are today (though that doesn't really equate to the Lodge's negligible relationship with time)...or maybe the Woodsmen had one important task, and have since been reduced to scavengers and servants for other Lodge spirits?

The Episode 8 Woodsman seemed to have a purpose that was likely overlooked by people fixating on the frog-cockroach (as an aside, in one of the Inland Empire short films, Lynch talks about encountering "frog moths") - the words he spoke sent people to sleep, potentially including the young girl (Sarah Palmer?) that swallowed the creature. Was that it? Was his role to condition people to be open for the entry of Judy and/or BOB into the world?

The first appearance of the Woodsmen appears to coincide with the first appearance of BOB - are they specifically servants of BOB, or tasked with facilitating his role in the world? Are they linked? But then some of them seem to, in some way, facilitate Jeffries' existence in the Dutchman, so maybe not? I also suspect the Woodsmen have to be linked to the Log Lady - her husband having been a literal woodsman - and perhaps to Ghostwood in general, or to the symbolic role of forests in Twin Peaks. Maybe that's all it is: Forests, Good; Woodsmen, Bad.

Episode 8 is, obviously, one of the more abstract and confusing episodes of the series, but probably holds as many answers as any other. From the mantra of the Woodsman, to even the use of music - "My Prayer" played in Episode 8, and again during the sex scene in the finale (and, perhaps coincidentally, a member of the Platters was actually called David Lynch), and in a series where sound design and music choices seem to be hugely, if not always obviously, significant, that must mean something, right? Even if it's just an aural cue to remind you of the earlier episode for some reason?

I still think the Woodsmen are a spiritual twin of the Hobo in Mulholland Drive, too, if that means anything; and the latter half of the finale definitely had echoes of Mulholland Drive.

 

Also harkening back to episode 8, in that episode, the Woodsmen remove an orb with BOB's face from Mr C, and seemingly bring him back to life after he was shot. In episode 17, the Woodsmen again salvage a BOB orb from Mr C, but this one is far larger, and seems to represent BOB in its entirety - did the Woodsmen intentionally save Mr C, or were they trying to do something else entirely by removing BOB from him? Were Mr C's powers weakened after part of BOB was taken from him? Would Mr C have again returned to life if Cooper hadn't placed the green signet ring on him?

Also, episode 8, Trinity Tests, nuclear bombs. Dougie Milford, according to the Secret History, worked at White Sands - the location of the Trinity nuclear tests - and was later the commanding officer who sent Major Briggs to Twin Peaks to monitor the town's mysteries. So, somewhere along the line, there may be some more direct knowledge of the connection between the nuclear tests and what happens in Twin Peaks - though we know that the Lodges themselves massively predate (as far as anything existing largely outside of linear time can be said to predate anything) the nuclear tests, as they are tied in to the local Native American folklore. And if the nuclear testing was somehow responsible for the creation of BOB, and of assorted weirdness in Twin Peaks, why? Why not in New Mexico, why countless miles away instead? Or was it the convenience store that harnessed the power of the explosion, and later became able to move around through electricity a la any other Black Lodge entity?

....it's just occurred to me that the store is called The Dutchman in reference to the Flying Dutchman, and I'm amazed I didn't get that sooner.

 

Was the Laura orb created by the Fireman not actually Laura Palmer, but an entity that, through its mere existence, acts as a buffer for the worst intentions of Judy, of BOB, and so on, and is spread across time, and across dimensions? A buffer whose essence existed in its purest form in Laura Palmer, but also existed in Maddie, and in Carrie, and perhaps any number of others? And Judy/BOB are spending their time trying to possess/destroy that essence in all worlds, at all times, just as Cooper is trying to save her in all worlds?

 

 

Going back, as ever, to numbers - I read the final symbol Jeffries showed Cooper as an infinity symbol with a world within it, the suggestion of infinite worlds that Cooper would have to traverse to find Laura Palmer. But before it became an infinity symbol, it was an 8, as the last in a sequence of numbers - 708. "This is where you'll find Judy". 708 is the address of the Palmer house; so we can assume that, as we've suspected, Judy is the entity in Sarah, or else the entity in Sarah is something directly connected to Judy, which occupies the house itself and perhaps always did.

The question is how long Judy has been occupying Sarah - if the frog-moth-whatever climbed into Sarah's mouth back into the '50s, then it seems like this has been a long time coming; BOB targeting the young Leland, Judy targeting the young Sarah, specifically to bring them together so that Laura can be born in Universe A, under circumstances BOB and Judy can then exploit towards her death? Or did Judy only come to occupy Sarah much later, once she was already vulnerable from the grief of losing Leland and Laura? When she has her breakdown at the store, it almost seems like Sarah was momentarily free from Judy's influence, recognising something was wrong, in a similar fashion to the Diane tulpa recognising that she wasn't herself. How aware, at any given time, was Sarah of Judy's existence?

 

So that's a couple of number questions answered - 708 is the Palmer house, 450 was the number of miles Cooper and Diane had to travel...but some still frustratingly vague. Repeated shots of a telephone pole with the number "6" on it, any ideas?

Do we think there's significance to the fact that the Diane that Cooper meets when leaving the Lodge has red hair and black and white colours; the colours of the Red Room? Given that we've previously seen the Diane tulpa emerge from behind red curtains, I don't think it's a coincidence.

Another interpretation of the ending - as the lights go out, Carrie screams, and Sarah Palmer's voice calls out for Laura, in an echo of the pilot episode...is that in fact the timeline in which Laura Palmer dies correcting itself, and the realisation hitting Carrie first?

1 hour ago, Phobolip Jeffries said:

With the Palmer house, the fact The Fireman says at the start of the series "it is in our house now" must mean The Mother/Judy (also didn't Mike's Tattoo say MOM which I just realized). Everything converges on the Palmer house. Then at the end we have lodge associated names attached to the house. It's incredibly important to the Lodge spirits for whatever reason.

The scene where The Arm repeats Audrey's "little girl who lived down the lane" line makes me think that MIKE and The Arm are linked to Audrey and Charlie more than Cooper. The Arm is now rooted to the waiting room and can't move anywhere. Audrey also spent most of the season stuck in one place. As well as the fact they both have their own music that they dance to. Charlie and MIKE both have some sort of physical disability and dress rather similarly.

We never, not once, get a mention of Audrey Horne from anyone other than Richard Horne. Ben never mentions her. I don't think there's even a photo of her shown in her mother's house in the brief glimpse we get of that. You would think that someone who was involved in something as notable as a bank explosion would come up once in a while. Yet, nobody talks about her. Why is that?

From what I understand, MIKE had a "FIRE WALK WITH ME" tattoo - but Philip Gerard, when not under the influence of MIKE, said his tattoo said "MOM". I wonder if that's significant or not.

I'm not sure about "it's in our house now", though I can't think of another interpretation - I just can't see The Fireman referring to the Palmer house as "our house". I'm going to have another scan through Secret History soon and see if anything jumps out as possibly explaining the significance of the Palmer house in hindsight, though I suspect I may have to wait for the Final Dossier, and I'm not expecting much in the way of answers there.

MIKE and the Arm being connected to Audrey and Charlie makes sense. The boring behind-the-scenes answer for Audrey's limited role is that she didn't fully commit to the series until quite late, and required a lot of rewrites, but plenty of other characters got self-contained stories not nearly as infuriating as Audrey's. I think she, somehow, must be the key to what's happening, but I really can't figure out how. The connection to the Arm makes sense, I just can't fathom why.

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3 hours ago, Phobolip Jeffries said:

wish I was well versed enough in David Lynch's overall work. I only know Twin Peaks/Blue Velvet/Mullholland Dr/The Elephant Man. I did think that perhaps Freddie was some sort of nod to Elephant Man purely by being an British character sharing a name with a character from that film.

There are definite echoes of Eraserhead. A bunch of Episode 8 and pretty much anytime something remotely industrial appears. (i.e. Jeffries as a kettle, etc.)

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I've seen people suggesting that the continuity errors in Secret History (names changing, dates not adding up, etc.) are actually intentional - introducing the idea that the reality we see is not necessarily set in stone, that it's changeable, and nothing is quite as it seems. I often think that with Lynch, like Kubrick, nothing is done by mistake, and nothing is coincidence, that every seemingly innocuous moment carries some meaning...but I'm not sure I'm willing to extend the same courtesy to supplementary material by Mark Frost. I think sometimes a mistake is a mistake.

I do think that time, and perhaps memory, are key to understanding this series, though - "Is this future, or is this past?". We know that scenes, and whole episodes, weren't necessarily presented in a linear order. But was that a directorial choice to better express the story, or was time out of joint for the characters within the story too? Was everybody in Twin Peaks, to some extent, caught in the same kind of loop as Sarah Palmer watching the same thirty seconds of television endlessly? Ed's reflection being out of sync with him, the diner customers in episode 7 changing, what was going on?

Did that conversation between Cooper and MIKE take place twice, or did we just see it twice? Was the change in The Arm's dialogue a sign that it was a new conversation, or that we were seeing the same thing again in an altered timeline? Was Gordon Cole suddenly remembering meetings with Cooper and Briggs a cheap plot contrivance, or a sign that Cooper was already altering the past to bring everyone together in Twin Peaks at the right time? When could Cole possibly have had that conversation with Cooper otherwise, how did he know what happened to Jeffries? The last thing Cooper said to Cole was apparently "two birds with one stone" - something the Fireman said to Cooper much later; was Cooper, the last time Cole saw him, actually relaying a message from the Fireman he wouldn't himself hear for 25 years in linear time? Was the Cooper that Cole met with not, in fact, Cooper before he disappeared, but present day Cooper appearing to Cole in the past in the same way he appeared to Laura Palmer?

I've been unsure about the relationship between Judy and Sarah Palmer - initially I had assumed that whatever was possessing Sarah seized on her grief after the events of the original series, but since the finale I'd been working on the assumption that Judy had been dormant in Sarah for decades, working together with BOB to bring Sarah and Leland together, giving Judy the best chance at targeting Laura. But maybe the little girl in episode 8 wasn't Sarah. Going back to the earlier theory that Judy seized on Sarah Palmer's grief and possessed her after the death of Laura Palmer, it would make sense why Cooper felt he had to save Laura - if Laura was never murdered, Sarah would never have suffered the grief and heartbreak that created the opening for Judy to enter the world. But preventing Laura's death 25 years earlier also removed Laura from the Red Room at the beginning of the series, and perhaps that is what re-shaped everything? Laura Palmer needed to die so that she could enter the Red Room and shape events from there - through Cooper's dreams, his own journey in the Lodge, and so on.

Perhaps the Tremonts/Chalfonts owning the Palmer house in the Laura-less timeline is a sign that Judy, or the Black Lodge, won. That they had a far greater hold on Twin Peaks in this universe. Or maybe it really was just the past, and we're all overthinking this?

 

So many other questions unanswered...how the hell did Dougie's wedding ring end up in the body of Major Briggs? What actually happened to Major Briggs? Who is the New York billionaire actively monitoring the Black Lodge, and how do they know about it?

Above all, how's Annie?

 

Overall, the idea I'm most happy with is my theory of Twin Peaks as the thread connecting all of Lynch's work, and of this series as a conscious subversion of expectations and of TV in general - from murder mysteries that go nowhere, major characters killed off in an instant with no pomp and circumstance, and little narrative significance, to my interpretation of Dougie as a critique of nostalgia and catchphrase-heavy expectation-driven TV. So many subplots went nowhere, so many seemingly significant moments seemed to have no bearing on anything by the end, the barely hidden subtext of Norma's stand for art against commercialism (perhaps significant to note that, like Gordon Cole, Norma's name is taken from Sunset Boulevard) - it seemed like a conscious effort to thwart, undermine and frustrate audiences, knowing that we would spend all our time theorising and guessing at what comes next, and throwing a thousand and one red herrings our way. The first series was built on a question - "Who Killed Laura Palmer?", that Lynch & Frost were pressured into answering too early; this series consciously gave us considerably more questions than it ever intended to answer. It seemed like Lynch trying to tell us that theme, atmosphere and presentation are more important than straightforward plot. David Lynch's Wild Ride!

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Showtime would be incredibly dumb not to pursue a fourth and final season. What are they going to do, rely on Ray Donovan? Twin Peaks drove up interest in Showtime a lot more than any of their other shows, and it did pretty good numbers when you combine first-air viewing, DVR, streaming, etc.

I'm almost positive it'll happen.

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I think it comes down to what Lynch and Frost want, more than what Showtime want. The official word from Showtime is that discussions haven't happened, but the door is always open to David Lynch.

If Lynch saw this series as offering closure (ha!), he might not want to do it again - and where do you go from here?

 

I said it earlier, but I think I'd actually be more interested in seeing what Lynch would come up with if they offered him a brand new series to start from scratch.

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Something I thought about the numbers is that Jefferies exits a lift numbered 7. The electrical poles are 6 or 9 when inverted. The door to the motel room where Jefferies is is 8.

So there you have 6, 7, 8, 9. The Palmer house is 708. 

I dunno if that is anything but then, you can say that about all of it. 

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I figured I would watch this whole thing twice, the first time not putting much thought into theories and meanings and just kinda viewing it as it is without thinking about the why and the how, and in that regard I loved it. Having said that, it is very hard not to view the ending as the bleak victory of darkness over good, which really is a motif that is always present in Lynch's work. 

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A friend of mine has formed a group on Facebook wherein the members will all watch the full series again, one episode per week, and discuss as we go. We'll likely choose a podcast to follow along with that in concert as well. Then we'll discuss each week's viewing/listening. Some people have seen it all, some are brand new, so we're discussing it spoiler free as we go. We start the week of October 1st.

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I believe he said it took four and a half years to write season 3 so I guess it would make sense that it would take roughly four years to do the next one?
 

I'm pretty happy with how things ended now that enough time as passed.  I kinda like the idea that all of Twin Peaks is Laura Palmer's dream and I also still kinda like the idea that Fire Walk With Me is the actual ending.

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I finished Twin Peaks tonight. While I don't have the energy to start going through theories right now, I will say it was a beautiful series and I loved every moment of it. The final 20 minutes of episode 17 may be a contender for the best David Lynch sequence ever - equal parts mind-blowing and emotional. Okay, it gives you the happy ending before jamming a fork in your eye by going even deeper, but that's a moment 25-years in the making and the sort of release fans have looked for since then.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

The Final Dossier is out. I've not read it only browsed the Reddit thread and a few articles and nothing of the spoilery stuff I gleaned from that really really rubs me the wrong way about it. I did read a spoiler about Annie and now I can't stop thinking about it.

Is anyone going to read it?

 

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I'm expecting my copy to arrive any day now - it's between that and Mike Quackenbush's new book as to what's next on my list. I was contemplating re-reading The Secret History with the context of having seen series 3 now, but I'll see what the Final Dossier has to offer first. Going into completely spoiler-free - the only thing I know is that it deals with what happened to Annie, but I don't know any specifics.

EDIT: And I just got an email to tell me it's been delivered!

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