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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by hungrycrow View Post
    I think this whole conversation started with pointing out that V should feel guilty in the most recent comic about how V treated Elan. Specifically that V threatened to murder Elan during an argument after killing Kubota. Then we went on a tangent about how V's PTSD caused them to make that threat, and eventually that tangent wrapped around to using the word guilt again in a different context.
    Did V ever apologise for their boat-sequence behaviour to Elan? I remember an apology of sorts to Durkon.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Riftwolf View Post
    Did V ever apologise for their boat-sequence behaviour to Elan? I remember an apology of sorts to Durkon.
    I suspect you are remembering Durkon apologising to Vaarsuvius.
    But I might be wrong.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Good Coyote View Post
    Unfortunately.. I don't remember seeing one. If I had to theorize, I'd guess some people might think "V is intelligent enough to know whether or not they should feel guilty"? Which is not how intelligence works, hence why it's not my argument.
    Seems to me that that's a WIS thing, not an INT thing.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by dancrilis View Post
    Somehow I remembered V making a counter-apology during that conversation, but they really didn't. V has a lot of apologies to make.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by ziproot View Post
    It took me a while to understand what you were talking about until I re-read this strip. I at first thought the events were happening simultaneously, but after further inspection I realized that it is a memory brought up during V's trance. It probably is, as V said, "the same memory, over and over." That explains a little bit more of why V isn't trancing and I have no idea why I didn't get that before.
    Thank you for reading 623, and for taking the time to reconsider (especially given the sheer weight of my rants on this topic). The latter especially is an unmerited gift. (^_^)


    Quote Originally Posted by Dion View Post
    When people speak of V’s guilt in the sense of “the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime”, they are referring to familicide, not the sacking of Azure City.
    I've made too many long posts to fairly expect people to read them all, so just a heads-up: I've clarified in other posts that I'm talking about this having happened previously (specifically wrt surviving Azure City). I have absolutely no doubt V has earned immense externally-judged guilt over the Familicide.

    (segue)Thinking about how to respond to your post helped me figure out something: Is it just me, or are V's responses to the two different types of internal guilt an incisive commentary? V's (false) survivor's guilt resulted in disaster, far more than it led to anything good. V's recognition of their (true) earned guilt has resulted in good more than it has in bad.(/segue)


    Quote Originally Posted by hungrycrow View Post
    I think this whole conversation started with pointing out that V should feel guilty in the most recent comic about how V treated Elan. Specifically that V threatened to murder Elan during an argument after killing Kubota. Then we went on a tangent about how V's PTSD caused them to make that threat, and eventually that tangent wrapped around to using the word guilt again in a different context.
    Thank you for the affirmation. The driving force for my re-tangent was having previously seen people imply/assert that V should feel guilty (i.e. bears guilt) for surviving Azure City, but this was part of what brought it to mind.


    Quote Originally Posted by Good Coyote View Post
    I actually stopped myself from adding on a "they only feel guilty, they aren't actually culpable" answer because I did realize after some thought that it didn't answer your question.
    Spoiler: collapsed for space
    Show


    Unless I'm misunderstanding, I think your question isn't "why does that make V culpable" it's "why do some people say that it makes them culpable." The only possible answer I could have (with the opinions that I have) to the first one is "it doesn't," and I think that's where a lot of the people who did reply are coming from.

    In order to get the answer to the second question from the first question, you'd have to ask someone who did believe that V was culpable. And then they'd give the answer that matched their opinions. But you could ask anyone the second question, and they could give the answer provided that they'd previously heard someone give an argument.

    Unfortunately.. I don't remember seeing one. If I had to theorize, I'd guess some people might think "V is intelligent enough to know whether or not they should feel guilty"? Which is not how intelligence works, hence why it's not my argument.

    Personally I've used that action as an example of Neutral behavior a few times. I think there are a few scenes where we're maybe deliberately shown a spectrum of similar behavior with Good and Evil but also Neutral examples. Elan, Tarquin and Julio being another one. That's not so much a moral judgment on my part even, as what I think we're being shown about the way alignments are used in the story. But even so, Neutral behavior is definitionally not Evil.
    Thank you for your thoughtful response.

    Spoiler: collapsed for space
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    Not at all sure, but we might define Good, Neutral, and Evil similarly... for brevity, my grossly-oversimplified version would be
    Good: Tends to put others' needs ahead of their wants
    Neutral: Can go either way, heavily depends on the situation
    Evil: Tends to put their wants ahead of others' needs

    I'm a big believer in my own version of horseshoe theory, though... the farther you go toward any extreme pole of a spectrum, the more likely* it is that the results of the behavior will end up being the same. For example, by my definition it would nominally be a Good motivation to do terrible harm to yourself in order to make sure your family has the money to buy a fancy TV. But the actual results would be to hurt them badly, especially if they found out the motivation. And on a subconscious level, such a martyr complex might actually be an Evil motivation: In order to feel righteous, you badly hurt other people.
    * - Absolutely not a sure thing. For example, someone sacrificing their life to save thousands is an extremely-Good motivation with extremely-Good results.

    Which is why I'm not sure whether V's survival is a Neutral act. V did all they could to make sure the soldiers knew V couldn't save them, shy of letting themself be killed to prove it. If V lets themself be killed just to avoid the unfair condemnation of the soldiers and provide one of them with one more round of life, that harms V's loved ones (who will probably always hope against hope that someday V will return).

    Probably just me, but the more I think about the alignment spectrum the more I wish the word "Neutral" could be replaced by "Ambiguous" or just a blank space, and a separate category created for "Moot" (e.g. a non-sentient tsunami killing thousands, or a non-sentient sun providing life for an entire planet full of organisms). In my alignment system a "decision" where the complexity has been functionally reduced below the level where sentience is required to respond would be "Moot" -- such as an animal deciding whether to stay hidden or to jump out into the jaws of a predator, if there's nothing to be gained or lost by so doing (aside from its own life).



    Quote Originally Posted by hungrycrow View Post
    Somehow I remembered V making a counter-apology during that conversation, but they really didn't. V has a lot of apologies to make.
    And deeds that no verbal apology** will ever make better, like the Familicide.
    ** - In some cases, YMMV if even subsequent deeds will ever be enough of an apology.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by arimareiji View Post
    I've clarified in other posts that I'm talking about this having happened previously (specifically wrt surviving Azure City).
    Hmm... if this is something you really need to figure out, perhaps it would help to reply directly to the post by the person who said this, and directly ask the specific person who said it to give an explanation of their thinking?

    Because if some poster has submitted the hypothesis that V is "guilty" (in a factual sense) of some wrong or immoral act in Azure City, I don't think 99.99% of us have any idea what evidence that poster might believe they have.

    By all accounts, V is just suffering perfectly normal and completely valid survivors guilt. Survivor's guilt usually has nothing to do withy any action anyone took (except in the apophenia sense).
    Last edited by Dion; 2021-04-11 at 09:43 PM.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Dion View Post
    Hmm... if this is something you really need to figure out, perhaps it would help to reply directly to the post by the person who said this, and directly ask the specific person who said it to give an explanation of their thinking?

    Because if some poster has submitted the hypothesis that V is "guilty" (in a factual sense) of some wrong or immoral act in Azure City, I don't think 99.99% of us have any idea what evidence that poster might believe they have.

    By all accounts, V is just suffering perfectly normal and completely valid survivors guilt. Survivor's guilt usually has nothing to do withy any action anyone took (except in the apophenia sense).
    I agree that trying to ask this particular question was probably pointless from its inception despite being sincere, but for different reasons* than you give. I can't think of any other productive way to respond, so I'll leave it there.
    * - a handful, but primarily "undue optimism"
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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by arimareiji View Post
    Thank you for your thoughtful response.

    Spoiler: collapsed for space
    Show
    Not at all sure, but we might define Good, Neutral, and Evil similarly... for brevity, my grossly-oversimplified version would be
    Good: Tends to put others' needs ahead of their wants
    Neutral: Can go either way, heavily depends on the situation
    Evil: Tends to put their wants ahead of others' needs

    I'm a big believer in my own version of horseshoe theory, though... the farther you go toward any extreme pole of a spectrum, the more likely* it is that the results of the behavior will end up being the same. For example, by my definition it would nominally be a Good motivation to do terrible harm to yourself in order to make sure your family has the money to buy a fancy TV. But the actual results would be to hurt them badly, especially if they found out the motivation. And on a subconscious level, such a martyr complex might actually be an Evil motivation: In order to feel righteous, you badly hurt other people.
    * - Absolutely not a sure thing. For example, someone sacrificing their life to save thousands is an extremely-Good motivation with extremely-Good results.

    Which is why I'm not sure whether V's survival is a Neutral act. V did all they could to make sure the soldiers knew V couldn't save them, shy of letting themself be killed to prove it. If V lets themself be killed just to avoid the unfair condemnation of the soldiers and provide one of them with one more round of life, that harms V's loved ones (who will probably always hope against hope that someday V will return).

    Probably just me, but the more I think about the alignment spectrum the more I wish the word "Neutral" could be replaced by "Ambiguous" or just a blank space, and a separate category created for "Moot" (e.g. a non-sentient tsunami killing thousands, or a non-sentient sun providing life for an entire planet full of organisms). In my alignment system a "decision" where the complexity has been functionally reduced below the level where sentience is required to respond would be "Moot" -- such as an animal deciding whether to stay hidden or to jump out into the jaws of a predator, if there's nothing to be gained or lost by so doing (aside from its own life).


    Our thoughts on alignment do seem pretty close, though with a little variation that I find interesting. I got to the same point when it comes to things like tornados, but by a different route.

    Basically, I've seen some interpretations at times that things like "having a value system" or "caring about things" are aligned in themselves. Sometimes it leans towards Good alignment, as in "well he's a tyrant but he's doing what he believes is best for the country" and sometimes it leans in another direction like "well he saved all those people but he cared about some of them so it's not really Good." I don't think that really works, because "having values" and "acting on them" is instead what allows an alignment system to exist at all. They are the stuff that alignment is made of. And tornados don't have it.

    However, I'm not really sure I follow your point about V in Azure City because whether or not the soldiers knew that V was out of magic didn't strike me as an important aspect in the first place. I will think about that some more.
    Last edited by Good Coyote; 2021-04-12 at 10:07 AM.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Good Coyote View Post
    However, I'm not really sure I follow your point about V in Azure City because whether or not the soldiers knew that V was out of magic didn't strike me as an important aspect in the first place. I will think about that some more.
    If they thought V might save them, it could be argued V had a duty to warn them that wasn't true so they could keep running (in case it helped, which seems unlikely). V had already done so, back in 452, and speaking up in front of the hobgoblins chasing them would have been like yelling "I GOT A 4!" on your Move Silently roll.

    Personally, I think their decision to stand around waiting for V to save them was 100% on them -- and that V felt (if not feels) otherwise, but did (does) so in error.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by arimareiji View Post
    If they thought V might save them, it could be argued...
    Yeah, now we’re back to Apophenia again.

    It’s very very common for people to second guess things after the fact, and say “if I had done this, or you had done that, or they had done the other thing, then...”

    It’s all just a way for human beings to maintain the false illusion that we control what bad things happen to us.

    They wouldn’t be dead if the hobgoblins hadn’t killed them. The blame for their murder lies on the murderer.
    Last edited by Dion; 2021-04-12 at 12:19 PM.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Dion View Post
    Yeah, now we’re back to Apophenia again.

    It’s very very common for people to second guess things after the fact, and say “if I had done this, or you had done that, or they had done the other thing, then...”

    It’s all just a way for human beings to maintain the false illusion that we control what bad things happen to us.

    They wouldn’t be dead if the hobgoblins hadn’t killed them. The blame for their murder lies on the murderer.
    If you think I was making that argument and thus again need to be proven wrong, you're mistaken. I was making clear why I had made a case for the opposite.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Metastachydium View Post
    Hard disagree. Were they short stereotypical Norsemen, they would be mead-drinking raiders rather than beer-drinking industrious artisans and miners.
    If anything, the stern, hard-working, hard-drinking dwarves seem more stereotypically German. Even then, it's not like Germans generally live underground.

    A fantasy culture may borrow most heavily from a particular historical culture, but that doesn't make the former a stand-in for the latter. (I believe someone mentioned apophenia?)

    Quote Originally Posted by Quizatzhaderac View Post
    Well to be precise, I'm not sure at all about how long those specific things have been associated with dwarves.

    More that the association of dwarf to Nordic things is very old. I'll let others answer the questions of which things are genuinely Nordic and which specifically Nordic things dwarves didn't or didn't do.
    I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that dwarves were primarily if not exclusively the source of amazing, frequently magical items (such as Thor's Hammer). Rather like James Bond's Q, including typically not being heavily involved in most of the "onscreen" action. While one would expect a dwarven civilization to excel in warfare due to the unsurpassed excellence of their weapons and armor, that requires dwarves to have a civilization. I don't think that they were even clearly a race instead of just a bunch of exceptional item-crafters. Fleshing dwarves out into a race with a civilization was Tolkien's innovation, to my understanding.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quizatzhaderac View Post
    Although, I will suppose that a few writers have decided that they didn't care how authentic the fantasy stories they were creating were.
    Consistent fidelity to the source material is an obstacle to creating an interestingly original fantasy world. Sometimes the source material doesn't even have enough to go on to do much. Dwarves, if I've got things right, were an example of this. They're standardized now because Tolkien did a great worldbuilding job to the extent that we can just copy his work and instead innovate in other, neglected areas that haven't been successfully expanded on already.

    That said...

    Quote Originally Posted by hroþila View Post
    Oh man, that aspect of the Warhammer Fantasy worldbuilding is embarrassingly lazy.
    Fantasy more often than not is based on either real things or preexisting fiction. A typical setting is an "alternate Earth" with all sorts of familiar flora, fauna, environments, societies, etc. I don't see how borrowing Earth's general layout is any lazier than is entirely usual. It's not like a more original map can't be fairly slapped-together.
    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Abstract positioning, either fully "position doesn't matter" or "zones" or whatever, is fine. If the rules reflect that. Exact positioning, with a visual representation, is fine. But "exact positioning theoretically exists, and the rules interact with it, but it only exists in the GM's head and is communicated to the players a bit at a time" sucks for anything even a little complex. And I say this from a GM POV.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that dwarves were primarily if not exclusively the source of amazing, frequently magical items (such as Thor's Hammer). Rather like James Bond's Q, including typically not being heavily involved in most of the "onscreen" action. While one would expect a dwarven civilization to excel in warfare due to the unsurpassed excellence of their weapons and armor, that requires dwarves to have a civilization. I don't think that they were even clearly a race instead of just a bunch of exceptional item-crafters. Fleshing dwarves out into a race with a civilization was Tolkien's innovation, to my understanding.
    The dwarves are their own race in Norse mythology from what I've read of it, as they are described in one of the Eddas as coming from Ymir's corpse. They also might be the same thing as dark elves, since the gods go multiple time to Svartalfheim to find dwarves.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1230 - The Discussion Thread

    But, like, do they ever have baby dwarves? I remember hearing that dwarves sometimes have daughters but it's not clear that these are also dwarves, nor that there are female dwarves.

    Quote Originally Posted by Goblin_Priest View Post
    One can be held to account with uttering things than a reasonable person could find offensive.
    Quote Originally Posted by Goblin_Priest View Post
    However, this should not be construed as an argument that goes along the lines of "thus Elan should be prohibited from saying these same things again" or "Elan should be punished for saying these same things again". Just because free speech is an important fundamental right, doesn't mean that it's every use is righteous. I think it important that Elan be able to repeat those same jokes if he wills it, but that'd kinda make him a jerk, even if I think V should just grow the hell up and not be so fragile about it. It should also not be interpreted in a way that would suggest that knowingly saying something that will cause offense is always wrong, because justification is possible, but in this case, I can't really imagine what justification there could be to make your friend feel like crap about his life choices for a laugh like this.
    Quote Originally Posted by arimareiji View Post
    Imo, a censure >> a censor.

    Censoring offensive words, as with any other form of coercion, requires an extremely high bar to to justify.
    Wrt censuring their use, if someone acts like a boor then people have every right to view them with disdain and express it. People generally aren't keen on obeying Because I Said So, but are keen on having others' approval.
    I don't see a super clear line between "holding someone to account" or "censure" and "punishment" or "prohibition" or "censorship". If one arranges negative consequences for speech of some sort in order to prevent that sort of speech, well, that sure seems like punishing speech one disapproves of in and an attempt to control what people say. The punishment may be more proportionate than other potential consequences, and the control less iron-fisted, and those are important distinctions, but there very much are comparisons as well as contrasts to be made here.

    Quote Originally Posted by arimareiji View Post
    But perhaps more to the point, it's ultimately futile because if someone wants to act like a boor there are a million ways to do it. If you ban a specific way, expect them to invent a few new ones. The issue that has to be addressed is their motivation to be a boor.
    The classist origins of your choice of terminology seem appropriate to your sentiments. The very concept of someone being "excluded from polite society" brings to my mind the idea of a privileged elite sneering at those whose mannerisms are, presently, out of fashion. Active hostility -- even restrained hostility -- towards others' ways of speaking and even ways of thinking is liable to provoke much the same in response. You can attempt to spin what you oppose as being hostile, but those charges won't necessarily stick. If a quote really is obviously bad, then correctly attributing it should be sufficient. And people who don't think that a statement is obviously bad aren't likely to change their minds because you denounce that statement, rather than because you argue effectively against it. Censure seems useful mostly for preaching to the proverbial choir to me. But it works by setting yourself up as someone's enemy. It's not conducive to an open-minded exchange of ideas between people with different points of view. If that's your goal, then trying to understand others' motivations is a good idea. But starting by assuming that their behavior is meant to be hostile probably isn't the best way to go about that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Good Coyote View Post
    Basically, I've seen some interpretations at times that things like "having a value system" or "caring about things" are aligned in themselves. Sometimes it leans towards Good alignment, as in "well he's a tyrant but he's doing what he believes is best for the country" and sometimes it leans in another direction like "well he saved all those people but he cared about some of them so it's not really Good." I don't think that really works, because "having values" and "acting on them" is instead what allows an alignment system to exist at all. They are the stuff that alignment is made of. And tornados don't have it.
    This post was hard for me to follow. If I understand correctly, you think that values are aligned, despite seeming at the start to present that as an idea that you disagree with, and what you disagree with is that the idea that values in general are all one specific alignment or alignment component (e.g. Good). Is that right?

    Bit confusing, in no small part because I don't think that I've ever seen anyone claim that caring about things is inherently Good or non-Good. You seem to be arguing against a rather obscure extreme minority position. Or, frankly, quite possibly just a misinterpretation on your part. As with the idea that Vaarsuvius should be blamed for abandoning the soldiers at Azure City, I'm skeptical that anyone actually meant to express that sentiment. (Difficulty getting across what one intends to be arguing against seems like supporting evidence that one interprets some of the relevant language unusually.)

    But a character having values at all does seem to be treated as an excuse to call a character Lawful sometimes.

    Quote Originally Posted by BloodSquirrel View Post
    Does a character follow the rules even when they don't want to? If so, then it's a code.
    Man, what? Something that makes a character engage in behavior that she doesn't want to engage in is a mind-affecting compulsion, not a code of conduct in the normal sense.

    And a code of conduct can totally have one principle take precedence over another all the time. The Three Laws of Robotics is a classic example. So what's left is whether someone's priorities have some sort of consistency at all, which is basically the same as whether someone is well-characterized.

    We can, I suppose, distinguish between characters regarding their own priorities as "rules to be followed" and not, but whether or not one thinks of one's highest priorities as rules makes about as much practical difference as a gnat's fart, so it's downright silly to call that a difference in alignment. A difference in alignment should correspond to a difference in priorities.

    Regardless, in the case of the Order of the Stick's bard, Elan's devotion to narrative convention is rather less than zealous, so I'd hesitate to call that Lawful even under the absurdly broad "personal code" standard. ... On the other hand, he's not really Chaotic either, is he? Like, Elan doesn't seem to have any sort of general issue with authority and is quite happy to do whatever Roy asks most of the time from what I can remember. Huh.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quizatzhaderac View Post
    Spoiler: Responding to Devil's advocate about philosophy
    Show
    There's seems very much to me like you believe Kant was mistaken.

    He didn't decide "retributive justice is good" and then try to stop retributive justice.

    A refutation to my point would be somebody who agrees with you on what good and evil are and desires evil for it's own sake.

    Perhaps you believe that Kant essentially reversed the labels of "good" and "evil" and called what he desired "good" (when it was actually evil) and what he detested "evil" (when actually it was good). However, you still agree with Kant on most things; for example you'd both say it's bad for people to steal what the don't need from people who do; that we shouldn't blow up the world so we "know how it ends"; and a huge set of other things that are so uncontroversial that they don't merit discussion.
    Words mean different things in different contexts. In the context of the alignment system, causing suffering for its own sake is Evil. In real-world modern discourse, calling something "evil" is understood to include condemnation of said thing, so of course one doesn't normally see someone both endorsing something and calling it "evil". In a D&D world where "evil" is used in the alignment system's sense, the word probably doesn't carry that connotation. But that's a linguistic difference. It doesn't mean that people in the real world are never pointedly malevolent in any way to any extent; they just don't usually use the word "evil" to describe it.

    Again, popular Evil is usually part of an overall non-Evil philosophy favored by at least some non-Evil people. Favoring Evil in general really is fantastic. But that's not even remotely common in D&D! The various fiends are extremely partial to their own favored brands of Evil. The Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission are very much weirdos for working together for The Greater Evil, and even them I fully expect to each have several possible betrayals lined up, if only in case one of the others tries something. They didn't get to where they are by ever trusting their peers entirely. And I strongly doubt that Qarr has ever seriously sacrificed his own personal advancement in the service of Evil.
    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Abstract positioning, either fully "position doesn't matter" or "zones" or whatever, is fine. If the rules reflect that. Exact positioning, with a visual representation, is fine. But "exact positioning theoretically exists, and the rules interact with it, but it only exists in the GM's head and is communicated to the players a bit at a time" sucks for anything even a little complex. And I say this from a GM POV.

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