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Post by hydraheadhunter on Jan 29, 2023 5:59:38 GMT
Whelp, I'm tired of scouring the internet everytime I need an essay on the color pie, so I might as well put a bunch of them in one place so I can reference them from a single source. If Y'all got other Color Pie stuff that ain't included yet, slide it in too. Starting simply with most of what Mark Rosewater has ever written or said publically on the subject. Pie Fights, on what each color dislikes about its non-neighbors Hate is Enough, another article expanding on the conflicts between enemy colors. Bursting with Flavor
Mechanical Color Pie 2017, on what the colors in the pie are wont to do, circa 2017. Mechanical Color Pie 2021, an update to what the colors are wont to do, circa 2021. Mechanical Color Pie 2021 Changes, Patch notes for the mechanical color pie article. Colorful replies, in which some tweets are responded to by 'the personifactions of the colors' the tweets are addressed to. Return of Colorful Replies, second verse same as the first: Little Bit Louder, A A Little Bit Worse. Let's Talk Color Pie, an listicle of Mark Rosewater's articles on the colors and color combinations, including podcasts. Mono-color, discussing the philosophies of each color Mono-color Revisited, discussing an updated perspective on the philosophies of each color Color Pairs, discussing each pair in the context of original ravnica Three Color, Wedges and Shards, formated like interviews with the colors Shards of Alara Bant (an interview with White) – Peace, Love, and UnderstandingEsper (an interview with Blue) – Striving for PerfectionGrixis (an interview with Black) – Looking Out for Number OneJund (an interview with Red) – Following Your HeartNaya (an interview with Green) – Searching WithinClans of Tarkir (Wedges) Abzan (an interview with White, Black, and Green) – We Will SurviveJeskai (an interview with Blue, Red, and White) – Smart ThinkingSultai (an interview with Black, Green, and Blue) – Whatever It TakesMardu (an interview with Red, White, and Black) – Finishing FirstTemur (an interview with Green, Blue, and Red) – What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger |
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Jan 29, 2023 8:22:51 GMT
Color Pie Friday is a series of weekly essays by tumblr user Loreleywrites (look into if Xe has more relevant credentials) about the color pie, circa 2014-2015 The first five essays each focus on one of the color's philosophy in depth, dicussing these six questions as they relate to each color. - What is this color’s goal?
- What does this color do to achieve its goal?
- What are this color’s strengths?
- What are this color’s weaknesses?
- What are the negative traits of this color?
- What are the positive traits of this color?
| The Philosophy of White | The Philosophy of Blue | The Philosophy of Black | The Philosophy of Red | The Philosophy of Green
| | Aligning the Colors, is the first in what became a series examining the colors of magic through the lense of a DnD alignment chart, for an era when WotC had, "vowed to not 'cross the streams'," with regard to MTG and DnD to avoid jeopardizing the integrity of each individual brands. A thing they later did. | Aligning Blue, is part of a mini-series discussing the DnD alignments of the colors, from Blue's prospective. | Aligning Black, is part of a mini-series discussing the DnD alignments of the colors, from Black's prospective.
| Aligning Red, is part of a mini-series discussing the DnD alignments of the colors, from Red's prospective. | Aligning Green, is part of a mini-series discussing the DnD alignments of the colors, from Green's prospective.
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The Whitest Christmas, discusses the christian holiday of Christmas through the lens of White mana.
Lithomancy, discusses rock magic as it relates to mono-white as a response to the idea that "rocks are Red's thing."
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The Blackest Friday, discusses the USA cultural event of Black Friday through the lens of Black Mana
The Dark Ally Rises, examines the structure of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, using Drana as the example of a mono-black anti-hero.
| Burnt Out, discusses red's trouble with keeping gas in the tank and clever solutions to that problem.
| Accepting Contagion, is an essay about why of the four non-black colors, green was the fastest to accept the Phyrexian contagion on Mirrodin.
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These essays take a look at another aspect of the colors not previously discussed as a group, It's Elementaly, My Dear Watson, discusses where each color draws its power, and how they tend to physically manafest.
Finding a Good Mechanic, discusses the mechanics of the colors circa 2014, similar to Maro's Mechanical Color Pie Articles but with much greater brevity.
The Mechanics They Are A-Changin', discusses how the way MTG mechanically expresses what the colors are about change over time.
Friday the 13th, discusses how each color 'reacts' to the superstition that 13 is an unlucky number.
Daaa Bears, discusses creatures of the color pie through the lens of the humble and common 2/2 for one and a generic grizzley bear.
Chaos Pie, examines the color pie through the Planar Chaos set, otherwise known as that time the pie was bent and broken as far as it'd go.
Aligning the Alignments, is an inverse to conclude the Aligning the Colors cycle of articles, which examine each color at their most and least, by examining each color at their best and worst.
Four Color Philosophies, from a time when the Nephilim were our only four color card examples, discusses the philosophies of the four color combinations.
Love is in the Pie, takes Valentines day as a springboard for discusses how each color experiences love.
Identity Crises, discusses how each color comes into conflict with itself, and how two entities of the same might come to disagree or quarrel.
No Laughing Matter, discusses each colors sense of humor through the lens of their indiviual philosophies.
I Ain't 'Fraid of No Zombie, discusses how the cultural idea of zombies relate to each of the colors.
The Color Of Cosplay, discusses fashion and cosplay through the lens of the colors.
Iconography, discusses the five colors' iconic races: Angels, Sphinxes, Demons, Dragons, and Hydras.
A Very Phyrexy Halloween, discusses the five colored factions of New Phyrexia as they relate to both color and human fears.
Facing the Music, discusses how each color experiences and expresses beauty (and relatedly—art).
The Five Faces of Art Vandelay, examines how each color will attempt to make itself appear more impressive by pursuing a specific aethetic of ideals.
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These essays discuss the two color combinations, seaking to ask and answer: - What are the conflicts between these two colors?
- Where are these two colors similar?
- What mechanics do these two colors share?
- How has the Ravnica guild of these two colors express them?
- What are real-world examples of these two colors’ philosophy?
These essyas, similar to their counter-part essays for two colors seek to answer questions about the three color combinations, using four different framing devices - Colors A-B-C with a Focus on A.
- Colors A-B-C with a Focus on B.
- Colors A-B-C with a Focus on C.
- A World without D and E.
These essays discuss the often forgetten and neglected aspect of the color pie from the prospective of colorless-ness. Colorless Mechanics, discusses the colorless mechanics as well as many of the themes and philosophies that inform them.
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These essays seek to discuss the color pie in the context of non-MTG media. Furthermore fore as long as tumblr continues to exist, here's an archive of everything Loreley has tagged #color pie which includes some of the above essays but also Arbitrary Card of Day, examining cards with interesting relationship to the color pie, and commentary on a comic by Andrew Weisel titled "A Good Villian".
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Jan 29, 2023 8:42:45 GMT
A useful diagram taken from the CDH discord server about what each color wants what each color pair wants, and what aspects of each color are diametrically opposed to their enemy colors.
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Jan 30, 2023 10:16:18 GMT
ESSAY IN PROGRESS Words have been written, as demonstrated above, what each color likes and dislikes about its ally colors and what it dislikes about it enemy colors. But I don't think enough words haven't been spared about what they like about their enemy colors, and forgive me for quoting homestuck in 2023, but... {Spoiler}[A6A6I5] ====> ( Page 7490) ...
JOHN: i was getting REALLY annoyed with terezi and her mind games.
DAVE: yuuup
JOHN: it definitely never crossed the line to "hate" though, because we were working together to try and fix a dire situation, and even though she's weird and insane, she's otherwise a pretty good friend.
JOHN: but all her needling and japes at totally inappropriate times, when there was so much on the line...
JOHN: argh, it was SO FRUSTRATING.
KARKAT: EGBERT, I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU.
DAVE: whoa hes back!
DAVE: all right side up and everything
KARKAT: I HEARD YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT QUADRANTS, SO I DECIDED TO PAUSE MY TANTRUM.
KARKAT: JOHN, ALL YOU'RE DOING HERE IS DESCRIBING THE SUBTLE FEELINGS WHICH PLANT THE SEED FOR HAVING A CALIGINOUS CRUSH ON SOMEONE.
JOHN: what??
KARKAT: YOU HEARD ME.
KARKAT: YOU ARE NAIVELY ADMITTING TO STRUGGLING WITH SOME BLACK FEELINGS FOR TEREZI.
KARKAT: SO, THERE YOU GO. QUESTION ANSWERED.
KARKAT: TURNS OUT YOU ARE PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF BLACK ROMANCE.
JOHN: n... no!
KARKAT: A FAIR REBUTTAL. HOWEVER, CONSIDER THIS COUNTERPOINT:
KARKAT: Y... YES???
JOHN: but i don't HATE her, and i'm sure i never will!
JOHN: i'm just saying i find her, like, somewhat annoying, and REALLY aggravating a lot of the time, but that's it!
KARKAT: BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE FEELING IS!
KARKAT: IT DOESN'T START OUT AS FULL BLOWN ANTIPATHY, AND IT RARELY EVEN REACHES SUCH AN EXTREME LEVEL OF HOSTILITY EVEN OVER LONG TERM BLACK RELATIONSHIPS.
KARKAT: THERE ARE PEAKS TO IT, BUT OTHERWISE A GENERAL EBB AND FLOW TO THE DARK FEELINGS, JUST LIKE WITH FLUSHED RELATIONSHIPS.
JOHN: ok, but...
JOHN: i don't know if i'm expressing myself clearly.
JOHN: i felt aggravated by her a lot, but that doesn't fully describe...
JOHN: like, there were those "negative" feelings, but also...
JOHN: but...
KARKAT: YEAH, THAT'S IT, RIGHT THERE!!!
KARKAT: THE "BUT" IS ALWAYS PART OF IT.
KARKAT: WHAT YOU'RE *TRYING* TO SAY IS, YOU HAD FRUSTRATED, NEGATIVE EMOTIONS TOWARD HER, BUT THEY DON'T COMPREHENSIVELY ACCOUNT FOR YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD HER.
KARKAT: MEANING, THERE ARE SOME THINGS ABOUT HER YOU ACTUALLY LIKE, BUT THE NEGATIVE FEELINGS MAKE IT HARD FOR YOU TO PUT YOUR FINGER ON THEM, OR EVEN WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEM.
KARKAT: THAT IS ABSOLUTELY STANDARD. WHAT GOOD WOULD IT BE HAVING A KISMESIS WHO DIDN'T POSSESS QUALITIES YOU ACTUALLY ADMIRED ON SOME LEVEL?
KARKAT: THAT WOULD BE BORING, AND IT WOULDN'T EVEN WORK. THERE'D BE NO TENSION, NO PUSH AND PULL IN THE TURBULENT EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE. THE SUBTLE POSITIVES ADD FUEL TO THE NEGATIVE FEELINGS, OFTEN GIVING THEM A REASON TO EXIST AT ALL. THEY INFLAME THE AGGRAVATING FACTORS, REMINDING YOU DEEP DOWN HOW MUCH YOU WOULD LIKE AND ADMIRE THIS PERSON IF IT WASN'T FOR ALL THEIR INFURIATING FLAWS, AND THE INCREDIBLE SENSE OF FRUSTRATION THAT CAUSES ALONG WITH ALL THE ASSOCIATED HOT-HEADED FEELINGS, THAT'S THE ESSENCE OF BLACK ROMANCE.
KARKAT: AND THE POSITIVE QUALITIES YOU SEE DEEP DOWN IN A KISMESIS ALSO SERVE AS THE BASIS FOR RED FEELINGS TOWARD THAT PERSON, ASSUMING THE RELATIONSHIP EVER STARTS TO VACILLATE.
KARKAT: IT'S ALL PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD, REALLY.
JOHN: no... this is messed up!
DAVE: i dunno john it all sounds pretty logical to me
DAVE: karkat knows his shit when it comes to quadrants
JOHN: argh!
JOHN: it can't be true though...
JOHN: it feels so fucked up!
JOHN: what if you're right though... erg! no...
JOHN: no, no, no, no...
KARKAT: THAT'S PART OF IT TOO!
KARKAT: THE "NO NO NO" IS ALL PART OF THE FEELING. THAT'S HOW IT *ALWAYS* GOES.
KARKAT: THIS SENSE OF SELF INCRIMINATION WHEN IT'S DAWNING ON YOU THAT YOU HAVE THESE CONFLICTING FEELINGS TOWARD SOMEONE WHO BUGS YOU SO MUCH.
KARKAT: OH MY GOD, THIS WHOLE REACTION IS SO FUCKING TEXTBOOK. IT'S HILARIOUS, REALLY.
JOHN: it's fucked up though!!!
KARKAT: IT'S SUPPOSED TO FEEL FUCKED UP!
JOHN: aw, man. :(
JOHN: i just wanted to have a nice catch-up chat, not get so transparently owned at the trollmances.
DAVE: it happens to the best of us sooner or later
DAVE: this crap is kind of old hat to me by now but i get why youre kinda freckling at the implications here
DAVE: you didnt have years of livin with trolls to kinda normalize this stuff
JOHN: i don't think i want it to feel normalized though!
JOHN: i'm not ready to...
JOHN: like, admit that... i have some warped spade crush on her, based on...
JOHN: some feeling i don't understand and makes no sense to me!
JOHN: oh god... what if it's true??
JOHN: i have to try as hard as i can to suppress this feeling and make sure i never think about it again!
DAVE: ok sounds like a weenie thing to do but sure have fun with that
JOHN: fuck.
JOHN: yeah, probably.
JOHN: just...
JOHN: please don't tell her about any of this, ok guys?
KARKAT: JOHN, YOU DON'T HAVE TO REMIND US ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL STATUTES OF THE BRO CODE, WHICH IS PRACTICALLY FUCKING SCRIPTURE ON MY PLANET, DATING BACK HUNDREDS OF MILLENIA.
KARKAT: DAVE AND I FUCKING SLEEP AND BREATHE THE BRO CODE AND ALL OF ITS CLAUSES, NO MATTER HOW FINE THE PRINT.
KARKAT: FEEL FREE TO COME AND TALK TO US ABOUT THIS ANY TIME. YOUR SECRETS WILL ALWAYS BE SAFE.
DAVE: dude that sentiment is well and good but
DAVE: when youre pledging a vow of secrecy maybe you should try to keep it down a little
KARKAT: DAMN. YEAH.
KARKAT: SORRY. |
Karkat argues that what makes the hate-based relationship interesting isn't an anymosity stemming from just digust, loathing, abhorrence, or rancor: pure-hatred is monotonous and boring. Instead, what makes the relationship interesting is the pull and push of emotion slack and tension as the partys' frustrations with each other as that anymosity stemming from that digust, loathing, abhorrence, or rancor ebbs against a soft undercurrent of admiration, respect, fondness, or delight. It is not the thing you hate in your enemies that make your relationship interesting: rather, it is what you consider their redeeming qualities. And, this topic hasn't had enough words put to it, so the enemy relationships between the colors feel rather flat to me. Let's fix that shall we? ESSAY IN PROGRESS.
What White Likes about....
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Black
| Red
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| White is a color about building a better system through slow and steady incrementalism. It's not able to react quickly to things when thinking on the structual scale. Which is why it sees and admires the decisive aspects of Red's philosophy and praxis. When White and Red agree that something is a problem, White will tend toward systemic solutions to the problem which are better overall but leave the problem unaddressed in the short term. Red, however, will take decisive direct action to address the problem in the short term while White builds it's systemic solution.
White admires that Red can produce results for the greater good on a shorter time-scale much shorter than White is used to working under.
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What Blue Likes about....
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Red
| Green
| Blue is the color of complicated solutions to complicated problems, and that means its also the color most often in need of having simpler solution pointed out to it, because when you've been looking at a problem for too long, a pair of fresh eyes will look at it and produce for you a common sense solution you overlooked or thought past. And sometimes what you need is a rubber duck with a tendancy towards arson to cut the gordian knot of logic you tied yourself into with a unique prospective or novel idea. Red is often happy to provide either, albeit with excessive sass.
If you've ever watched the Scifi channel's original series Eureka, first of all, I'm sorry; but second of all, this dynamic is the exact premise of the show with Jack Carter playing the Red common sense everyman to the Blue rest of the super-genius town. The town is uncomfortable about how to interact with Carter, but when there's a problem, Carter finds a simple solution the geniuses overlooked and the day is saved.
Blue values both the fresh prospective Red offers to whichever problems have managed to stump Blue, as well as the creative or direct solutions Red often demonstrates which Blue overlooked.
| Blue is the color of understanding. It studies everything it can find with rigor. It wants to do this to better its understand, but it needs to do it because it's intuition is inherently lacking; it doesn't understand things without rigorous study. Green thinks about the world through its intuititions; it has an understanding not earned through study but borne through evolution. Green beasts can know the answer to every question they'll ever ask within minutes of being born, while Blue scientists will spend years in a cradle before spending years in a classroom and still be ignorant of the answer to their biggest question. And while some aspects of Blue might scoff at Greens intuition as anything remarkable, saying things like "Green asks simpler questions," and "What does a beast truly even know," others must reluctantly admit that Green's understanding of the natural intuition of the world is more complete than Blue's constructed models will ever hope to be.
Blue is jealous of Greens broad intuition about its environment.
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What Black Likes about....
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Green
| White
| Black is a color of power. When green expresses the part of its philosophy best summarized as "might makes right," and pulls out a 10/10 with trample, sure Black can murder it. But in doing so, it's forced to acknowledge that a 10/10 with trample is, through a different expression of power than is typical to Black, a powerful threat warranting a response.
Black respects power and Green's often able to muster enough direct force to demand Black's reluctant respect.
| Black is a color of ambition. Set all that moralizing talk about 'the greater good' aside, and you'll quickly see that White makes big ambitious plans, and sets to executing on them as efficiently as they believe is moral; for example, Elesh Norn started developing her plans to bring New Phyrexia to the rest of the multiverse the moment she knew it existed.
Black can't just ignore that: it'd be foolish to ignore an opprotunity presented by White's ambitions and Black isn't foolish.
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What Red Likes about....
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White
| Blue
| Red is the color of compassion; it's sensitive to the suffering of others and can't sit still when it sees a problem it can do something about; but it's solutions tend to be short term solutions that either cause more problems in the long term or stop being solutions when Red stops applying constant effort to them. White approach to problem solving, while frustratingly slow and boreaucratic to Red, offer long-term systemic harm reduction that eventually match or exceed Red's efforts in that area or eliminate that area of suffering entirely.
Red is also the color of impulsive actions; which works great for it most of the time, but sometimes it does things that it later regrets and needs to find a path towards reconciliation and forgiveness; something that White being the color of redemption is good at establishing and building upon. White is a color with the greatest capacity to heal burns and rebuild burnt bridges, and sometimes, Red really envies that.
Red admires Whites ability to put long term solutions to problems in place: It also envies White's capacity to fix mistakes and mend what is broken because, Red the impulsive color it is makes a lot of mistakes.
| Red is the color of passion; it loves to feel the joy of loving something in its entirity; and you'll find few things as passionate as the Blue scholar speaking on or learning about their field of interest or expertise. Sure, Red would rather be doing things than learning things, but it sees something similar to the spark that drives it to action in the bookworm burrowed into the library walls; some strange reflection of it's passion: the idea that you can love something so throughly that you're driven to engage in what Red would consider a chore; well Red tends to hate chores, but it finds the passion at the heart of that obsession fascinating.
Red is fascinated by the strange,to Red, way it expresses passion through through study, examination, and understanding.
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What Green Likes about....
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Blue
| Black
| Green is the color of instinct; of knowledge so deeply engrained in your being that you are born with an innate understanding. To understand things so thouroughly as Green does is to engrain them in your body so deeply future generations will know them too; and while all the colors adopt learning as an instrumental goals, the need to understand important only so far as it aids them in their other pursuits, it is only Blue's which makes learning a termninal goal: Blue seeks what green has, a Green-deep understanding of everything there is to know, and though it passes that knowledge down through lectures rather than genes, it passes it down all the same.
Green admire's how Blue's pursuit of understanding mirror's instinctual knowledge.
| Green is the color of nature, and nature is an amoral web of interspecies relationships existing under specific material conditions. The ideas of "Good" and "Evil" are social constructs have no place in Greens understanding of the world; they are constructs that the other colors, especially White and Red, impose upon things, labeling things they like as "Good," and things they dislike as "Evil." The moralization of nature leads to ecologically destructive practices where entire families of species will be destroyed for no real reason causing trophic collapse as an entire food source or check on a 'good' species' population disappears and the web comes undone. And this sort of moralizing is something which Black simply doesn't engage with. Black is amoral in the pursuit of its ambitions, and considers morality fetters the other colors place upon themselves and others which get in the way of grasping the power you need to make your wants happen, and surrounded by moralizing allies, Green finds the amorality of Black a breath of fresh air.
Green admires Black's amoral worldview.
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Thanks to all the homies in the discord server, and the r/colorpie subreddit who contributed thoughts to this essay. And a special thanks to tumblr user hbhcgkycuovouoytftof for finally answering the question of what the fuck does green think, because I still ain't understand the fucking color. |
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Feb 9, 2023 19:24:01 GMT
Some color pie wheels each with slightly different takes. |
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Feb 9, 2023 19:31:37 GMT
A color pie wheel from an alternate reality where the colors were Yellow, Orange, Brown, Pink, and Purple by Art&Blue-Liberalism which reimagine a version of the color pie "based on the modern world... unlike the traditional colour wheel based on the ancient-medieval fantasy world."   Non-WUBRG color pies obviously aren't directly helpful in understanding WUBRG color pie theory, but looking at color pie theory from a prospective informed by different colors can sometimes knock somethings loose. Attachments:
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Feb 9, 2023 19:59:17 GMT
For video essays,
The Mana Source has a slowly expanding playlist on the colors and color combinations with increasingly high production values. Currently, circa 9 Feb, 2023, the playlist has introductory overview of the color pie from a mono-color prospective al well as studies into nine of the ten two color combinations (framed around discussing the guilds of ravnica specifically).
DiceTry is a youtube channel with a lot, and I mean a lot, of videos on color pie theory, including videos on their own person modification to the 5e DnD system which replaces 2d alignment with color pie alignment. Whenever I have the time to watch a substancial number of their videos, they'll probably get moved to their own post similar to LoreleyWrite's treatment.
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