#call of cthulhu ideas
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Incomplete list of movies and TV shows that would make great inspiration/settings for RPG campaigns, or one-shots (dungeons crawls), for DnD, CoC, or others:
The Mummy (1999)
The Fall (2006)
The Cell (2000)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972) / Poseidon (2006)
Baccano! (2007)
GoSICK (2011)
Ghost Ship (2002)
Fool's Gold (2008)
Blade Runner (1982) / Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Natsume's Book of Friends (2008-2017)
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Get Smart (2008)
Feel free to reblog with your own additions
#dnd#D&D#dungeons and dragons#dnd ideas#D&D ideas#campaign ideas#RPG ideas#coc#call of cthulhu rpg#CoC ideas#call of cthulhu ideas#I'm avoiding overly obvious things like LoTR or SW
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Idea
The Dungeon of Dorian Gray
Everyone remarked on how tidy and fashionable the Gray manor house was. Dorian Gray could host three demonic summonings each week, with a tragic spectacle of death on special occasions. And yet, his estate was not haunted in the least! It remained stubbornly free from ghosts or dimensional rifts, never showing the slightest sign of a toothy maw in the ceiling.
In one locked room, however, Dorian Gray kept a picture of his house. And for each dreadful thing that happened in the real building, a new streak of ichor or pallid face at a window would appear on the painted image. Eventually it grew to be a ghastly sight.
But progress marches on, and the wealthy Mr. Gray found the means to stave off the corruption of his home's soul. With a certain ritual, people can be sent into a painting, and he intends to hire some desperate and determined adventurers and pay them very well to exorcise the artwork. It will take a truly stalwart group to face what is probably a more haunted and eldritch mansion than any three other dungeons combined. But bragging rights and a million gold pieces are on the table...
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there is nothing more painful than the overwhelming urge to share all your campaign ideas with a friend both to infodump and also because you want critical feedback but also you really want to dm it one day and you want to invite that specific person to the campaign
#starposts#ttrpg#tabletop roleplaying#d&d#dnd#dungeons & dragons#dungeons and dragons#dungeon master#call of cthulhu#< it's specifically all for CoC campaign ideas right now#dming is hard#dming
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Loading screen tips for Call of Cthulhu . . .
#jrwi bitb#jrwi bitb fanart#rolan deep#timothy rand#kian stone#jrwi blood in the bayou#okay but. Blood in the bayou video game. plssspls if it existed omg I would play it#thankfully Call of Cthulhu is a very real thing I can play ^^ yayy#also Kians tip can be applied to real life! pro tip!#sorry for bullying u kian ur decisions were very in character and made for a awesome story thank you#even if they were terrible ideas#dawnsart
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I just think Lae'zel and Wyll could be great as The Call of Cthulhu rpg's investigators.
Lae'zel is the newbie who needs to prove herself. Wyll always wanted to be a cop, because he wants to be good, he wants to help.
Mizora is the traitor inside, she tells Cazador that he's on the radar for all the crimes that smell like cult-ritual killing.
Astarion is there, in the middle, being used by Cazador, in his cell when Wyll finds him after inspecting Cazador's mansion.
Gale is the One Who Knows Everything about the deity Cazador wants to Summon, and Karlach is his bodyguard.
And Shadowheart is another investigator but for another cult.
They all have to stop Cazador before he summons an awful deity like Nyarlatothep or whatever.
They all lose their sanity? Yes.
But before that we can enjoy the plot, the finding clues and old forbidden books, and of course, the romance between Wyll, the romantic young p i who believes in fairytales, and Astarion, the one who seeks revenge.
Anyway, all this happens in Faerun but it's like our 1920's.
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running in circles. im so excited for wills campaign guys
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I tried to ask this in the Delta Green Reddit but it was extremely unhelpful! What do you think is the difference gameplay wise between Delta Green 2017 and Fall of Delta Green. Besides being different systems do you think there is a different style of play? What is stopping someone using Gumshoe for a modern day game and 2017 for a game set in 1969? Thanks!
I love this question, I'd actually love to do a full breakdown of these two editions someday the same way AlfaBusa broke down the different editions of World of Darkness. I actually wrote *so much* the first time I got this question my phone died while I was editing it down and I lost all of it. So here's my second attempt. Bare with me:
I prefer GUMSHOE, regardless of time period. A lot of my players though like the classic D100 system. I think that mostly comes down to chance and progression. Classic Delta Green actually rewards you for fucking around and testing fate by granting you one or two percentage points every time you fail a role. I can understand why it feels like it encourages you to take more risks and play outside your characters comfort zone, and unlike GUMSHOEs point spends there's no reason not to try something you're bad at every time. You aren't going to run out of spends, and baring an alien parasite feasting on your brain your skills can only go up. Sure, you might fumble so bad that you blew yourself up with a claymore but... at least it'll be funny, right?
To most people GUMSHOE / Fall of Delta Green is the much more grounded hardboiled version of the two. You aren't a bunch of cowboy murderhobos, you're professional murderers. Your character knows their strengths and weakness, and they're one of the best in the world at what they do. Skills aren't so much how probable a character is to succeed at a task but "what skill does your character use to succeed." They have a tool belt of experience to fall back on, and they really are that good. But while most investigations will never leave your character at zero spends left, I can understand why people don't like the idea that your character can theoretically just run out ideas and use up that tool belt or point progression being something given out by the Handler in between sessions rather than something that can be earned in the moment to moment gameplay. Broadly though, on the surface Fall of Delta Green agents seem much more buttoned up (and, dare I say, flat) than their roudy D100 siblings who act like they just fell ass-over-teakettle into a Mi Go hive. And for some people thats not as fun.
EXCEPT THEY ARE TOTALLY WRONG BECAUSE GUMSHOE CAN BECOME 🤡 CLOWNSHOES 🤡 WITH THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK.
The best addition to Fall of Delta Green is actually Nights Black Agents. Here's four things from Nights Black Agents you can add to FoDG to COMPLETELY change how you play the game, give it a tier one operator high speed low drag coat of paint for any era, and WELL OUTWEIGH the perceived benefits of d100 DG:
Preparedness and Bureaucracy Rework-- Preparedness alone in Fall of Delta Green is a game changer by answering the dilemma of "man every time I need a new gun I need to roleplay going to the Gun-Carry, Gun-Ross army-navy surplus store and counting out our petty cash fund to determine exactly how many bullets I have. What if I just had an Uzi under my jacket with enough ammo to wipe out this entire bowling alley?"... or you know boring shit like "man I wish I had a crowbar RIGHT NOW, hey DM do I have one?" NBA has optional rules to take the same rules that govern Preparedness and apply them to Bureaucracy. Instead of a numerical value of "how good am I at arguing with my parent agency about the collateral I need to requisition the communal AC130" you can instead skip the arguing and treat it like an elevated preparedness role. Your character works within the system offscreen to retroactively get access to privileges only afforded to members of your organization. Simply think "boy I wish we had gunship cover right now" and with an appropriate Bureaucracy roll your character already filed the mission paperwork three weeks ago. Your patron organization is only going to stick their neck out for you so many times though, so unlike other stats Bureaucracy doesn't replenish at the end of a mission. Your character will have to invest progression points into Bureaucracy if they want to keep dipping into it, and can expect to get shit-canned if it hits zero.
Network-- What if you need something done off the books? What if you really wish you had a guy who knows a guy who's willing to move an ungodly amount of Crank no questions asked, and you need them right now without having to consult your character's tragic backstory? Wonder no more, by letting Agents put points into Network they can create Brampton the Hells Angel Biker on the spot for all their black budget needs. Like Beurocracy, Network doesn't replenish on its own but players are allowed to keep the contacts they spend points on between missions to create a web of off-the-books contacts, informants, and assets.
Cover-- Did one of your Agents get caught in a C O M P R O M I S I N G position? No they didn't! With Cover, that State Trooper didn't stop Agent Yancy Grange. They stopped Rusty Sheckleford, beloved member of the Galveston Texas community with the IDs and paper trail to prove it! There's no limit to the amount of aliases you have, but like Bureaucracy and Network Cover doesn't replenish on its own. Once you hit zero your covers blown-- someone somewhere put the pieces together and any future attempts at using your alias will get you recognized.
Roleplay based skill feats like TECHNOTHRILLER MONOLOGUE-- NBA is filled with a ton of these and I encourage handlers to pick and chose which ones to offer to their players to dial in the exact level of pulp they want in their campaign setting, and Technothriller Monologue is my favorite. With a sufficiently high Firearms skill Agents can get the equivalent of an Action Surge by describing in Tom Clancy-esque detail exactly how they squeezed the trigger before canoe-ing a cultist so badly they blow out their brains through the back of their neck.
#delta green#fall of delta green#gumshoe#the call of cthulhu#fodg#nights black agents#ttrpg ideas#field scribbles
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The Cthulhu boys don’t really have a concept of LGBT Pride, and have few words for what exactly they are, but this 1930s animation studio full of queer folks finding a way to be who they are and make a life with the ones they love anyway has just... meant so much to me this past couple of years, I wanted them to be able to celebrate it too. Happy Pride, you guys!
[ Peter: @haunted-hijinxer & @whatyouwantedmetosee; Jack: @whatyouwantedmetosee; Sammy: @inkdemonapologist; Joey: @inkyvendingmachine; Henry: @inkcryptid]
(flags under the cut!)
The cake Jack’s sharing with Peter is this MLM (men loving men) flag, his extra bite is Bisexual, and his other slice is Polyamorous on the frosting and Transgender on the cake. Sammy’s cake is Transgender with Bisexual on the frosting, Joey’s bite of cake is the rainbow umbrella of Gay, and Henry’s slice is Asexual on the cake with Aromantic on the frosting.
#call of cthulhu: haunted hijinx#peter sunstram#Jack Fain#sammy lawrence#joey drew#Henry Stein#Bendy and the Ink Machine#the cake was boo's idea and it is SUCH A GOOD IDEA#when in doubt just keep drawing#there were more people like us just living their lives than we realise
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my call of cthulhu campaign is crazy it's so investigation and roleplay based we've done entire sessions without character sheets and or maybe rolling maybe once or twice
#sam crying#we dont realize until the end of like#hey wait a second#im a lax GM for coc when it comes to rolls if theyre creative with their ideas#i like call of cthulhu's system that. if they describe it smart and in a way that works they shouldnt have to roll
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RPG Encounters: Trains
Need a one-session encounter as a bridge between larger story arcs in your Call of Cthulhu game, or Steampunk- or Roaring 20s-themed DnD/RPG game, and are looking for something unconventional? Or are you just a fan of trains (aren't we all?) and are looking for a way to incorporate them into your game in a way that isn't boring for your players? Here are a few session ideas, courtesy of various works of fiction:
Baccano!
The luxury express train on which your players are riding is suddenly commandeered by a group of terrorists (who boarded while masquerading as a wedding party), who take the train's passengers hostage. A prominent politician's spouse and children are aboard the train, and the terrorists hope to use them as leverage against the politician to force them to have the terrorists' leader released from jail. The terrorists have already sent their demands to the politician and are waiting for their response via radio/telegraph; if their leader is not released from jail, they will blow up the train, or blow up a bridge the train will soon pass over (GM's choice). Players must defeat the terrorists to secure the passengers' safety. Feel free to make the situation more complicated by making the terrorists freedom fighters, and the politician an asshole who's willing to sacrifice his family rather than acquiesce to the group.
The Lady Vanishes
(Depending on your player group's size, this may work best if you split your players up between several compartments, or have them riding together in an open coach)
In a foreign country, one or more of your players are sharing a train compartment with 3-5 strangers (six people per compartment), one of whom is a very friendly old woman from their country who makes friends with your players. This old woman accompanies your players to the dining car for lunch, and writes her name in the condensation on the window when the train's whistle drowns out their voice, but when the train passes through a tunnel and is momentarily plunged into darkness, she vanishes from the carriage. Your players will assume she went back to their compartment, but when they return to it she is not there, and the other strangers swear that there was no such woman in the compartment with them. When your players go back to the dining car to question the staff, the employees also swear there was no such woman. No one aboard recognizes the woman your players were with. When they return to their compartment, an entirely different old woman has taken the first woman's place, and the other strangers insist that she was the woman your players were with the entire time. Unknown to your players, the first old woman was a spy carrying information dangerous to the foreign country's government, and the other strangers are domestic agents sent to get rid of her before she reaches her home country. It is up to your players to find out what happened to the woman they met, and rescue her, before the train reaches its destination, and the woman is disappeared forever.
Murder on the Orient Express
(This may work best if your players have already achieved some renown)
Your players are riding a long-distance sleeper train which will spend one or more nights en route to its destination. On the first day aboard they are approached by a wealthy stranger with a dangerous aura, who tells them that they have been receiving threatening messages and fear for their life, and they want to hire them as bodyguards. Hint to your players that the stranger is up to no good to encourage them to decline. Either that night or the following night, the train is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift or a rockslide, something that blocks the tracks. The following morning the wealthy passenger is discovered murdered in their cabin by their valet and the carriage porter, who break the lock on the door when they don't answer. Have your players investigate the crime scene, and leave clues that indicate that the murderer was someone aboard the train, and that someone is still aboard the train (if in winter, the window is open but there is no snow on the windowsill, and there are no footprints leading out from the window. If in a warm season, the rockfall blocked the train into a notch or on a cliffside, with no room for the assailant to escape through the window). The sleeping carriages are sealed up at night, which means the murderer is one of the passengers aboard this very coach. Have your players interrogate the passengers to determine who the culprit is.
Demon Slayer
Your players board a train and settle in for a night of relaxation or boredom. Unbeknownst to everyone aboard, demonic forces are at work to commandeer the train and suck the life essence out from all of the passengers aboard to grow their own strength. Have your players discover and battle the monstrous forces lurking before they consume and kill everyone aboard. To spice things up, have your characters congregate in the lounge car after dinner, where, amid the dim lamps, several passengers make your players' acquaintances. As an icebreaker, one of the more gregarious strangers elects to tell the group of a ghostly encounter of theirs, and after them the other strangers start telling their own tales of woe or haunting. Soon after, one by one, the strangers start getting killed or injured in ways that resemble the stories they told, hinting that the monstrous evil aboard the train manifests as its victims' worst fears or trauma.
#Call of Cthulhu#CoC#DnD#D&D#RPG#RPG ideas#DnD ideas#CoC ideas#trains#encounters#DnD encounters#RPG encounters#roaring 20s#steampunk#Dungeons and Dragons
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Ok, just thinking out loud, but maybe we should let the Great Old Ones out.
I'm just saying. Lovecraft wasn't exactly an unbiased source. Maybe they're perfectly nice. Maybe they just want to stop people saying slurs. Maybe they're just Welsh.
I'm not saying I want the world to end, but I think that it would be a decent compromise to maybe unseal one or two of the smaller ones, just to see what happens. I bet we could put them back if there's a problem. And maybe they'll give us candy!
If it's just one of them, and maybe just for the weekend, it'll be fine. Come on, guys. What's life without a little risk?
Ritual! Ritual! Ritual!
#rpg#roleplaying game#call of cthulhu#horror#adventure idea#lovecraft cw#racism cw#like if we let Groth-Golka out we'd be fine#if it was so dangerous it would be more famous#right?
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Side Career Idea for Adventurers
Your Rogue or Fighter is also a popular author of picture books for children. This grants them a steady income and recognition among parents and young people, who may like or dislike their work.
"Glorna Krensharbane, you ruined my life! I had to read your story about the silly dragon getting lost at the beach fifteen times in one day before my children would go to sleep! Draw your blade and face me!"
See if you can adapt your adventures into a story that your character tries to publish! The average world-saving quest might require some sanitizing before you can let kids read about it. "Once upon a time there was a very lonely vampire..."
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So I've been playing Call of Cthulu with some siblings and extended family, and a while back we were introduced to these creatures called Nightguants. After a while, and after being given a basic description of them, I looked them up out of curiosity.
My exclamation of "Oh! They're cute!" got the attention of everyone else, who all also looked up pictures. The call was then filled with Aww's and "This is just a little guy!"
So needless to say, we greatly confused our Keeper. Thinking we'd found altered designs or cutesy drawings, he posted an official picture into the chat to show us what the Nightguants actually are.
Once again, there was a chorus of "He's cute!" and "It's just a guy!"
So anyway, we've all decided to summon and bind our own Nightgaunt as a pet and name him Scooby <3
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Best cosmic horror / eldritch horror movies??
ANNIHILATION (2018) was so good, I loved the Shimmer and the concept and the vibe, so interesting - a much better Colour Out Of Space film than COLOUR OUT OF SPACE (Nick Cage). But the body horror did get to me in COOS, I was eating my lunch while watching.
Error.
THE THING is obvs great, and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Love the John Carpenter trilogy. I can't decide which of the 3 I like best.
Some others that I keep thinking about:
JUG FACE - you never see the monster but it lives in a pit, cw for graphic miscarriage and incest among other things
THE CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU - I did laugh, I'm easily pleased
THE RITUAL - I wasn't sure about the Sami-coded cult (was it?? That felt ...off to me) but I loved the creature design and the atmosphere
SATOR - slowburn and more demonic entity, I wasn't sure about this film or if I liked it, but I keep thinking about it.
THE HALLOW - Irish eco-horror, so much parasitic fungi body horror and the fae creature design was great. Yes, I'm counting the fae as eldritch, that's where the word comes from! Not humans, not angels or fallen angels, but a secret third thing...
THE LURKING FEAR - 90s creature feature based on a HP Lovecraft short story, similar themes of heredity and concealed monstrosity as The Shadow Over Innsmouth, but this is about underground things.
HP LOVECRAFT'S THE DARK SLEEP - not great, actually pretty bad, but again the concept is something I keep thinking about.
THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970) - I haven't seen the 90s one, but I didn't mind the 1970 one. You can always trust the 70s to sex things up for no reason, and I quite liked it.
THE VOID - I do like this, it's got a lot of things going on in a besieged hospital
SACRIFICE - Norwegian cult and pregnancy horror, heredity and gods in the fjords etc, gave me big Ramsey Campbell The Inhabitant of the Lake vibes
I quite liked the Full Moon mini series THE RESONATOR even though ep 5 is missing and I'm not the biggest fan of The Reanimator as a story as I hate zombies and brain stuff. I have seen THE REANIMATOR though and it was fine.
UNDERWATER - loved this one, it starts off very The Shadow over Innsmouth and then segues into The Call of Cthulhu. Plus Kristen Stewart was good in it, I thought! I enjoyed it a lot.
HELLRAISER - I'm counting the whole franchise and the new film in this. All of it.
THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN - Yeah, I do think this counts, so little is explained (good) and it's a cultish conspiracy in NYC. Vinnie Jones has the best role. I liked the short story too!
STRANGER THINGS - yeah, I'd say this counts? Kinda?
NOBODY SLEEPS IN THE WOODS TONIGHT 1+2 - The sequel took me places I didn't want to go, but this is a solid Polish body horror concept. It's body horror and mutations caused by a meteor thing. I wouldn't rewatch them, I don't think, but it kept me on my toes.
MONSTERS (2010) - survival romcom? It was cute and I liked the alien thingys. I don't know if it really counts, it's dispassionate aliens invading accidentally creating an 'infected zone', which was similar to ANNIHILATION. I haven't seen the sequel yet.
APOSTLE - I might include this as there's some unexplained stuff going on with this island, and the whole 'prisoner of the landscape' thing that appears in Welsh Gothic fiction as a trope. In this case, if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm referring to.
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS - loved this the second time around. Saw it in the cinema and due to circumstances wasn't into it. Saw it again and realised it was more my thing than I remembered.
BLACK SPOT - This is a French series, folk horror, eldritch weird stuff in the forest, eco-horror, slowburn. Worth it, I thought.
REQUIEM - I think this does count, also a series, Welsh Gothic themes abound, it's classed as supernatural but it's much, much weirder than ghosts. Plus a lot of the Welsh Gothic themes - prisoner of the landscape (which also contains the haunted history and secrets relevant to the present), cultural disinheritance, music as language, etc, all pull through to create that folk horror/eldritch horror atmosphere. It also has weird cult playing with forces beyond their control.
SOCIETY - No idea where else to put this, but even though it's a cosy 80s teen body horror shocker, the themes are reminiscent of THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (same basic concept in fact in terms of conspiracy and cult and so on) but with added overt class discourse. I do love this film.
LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM - based on the Bram Stoker story but has Lovecraftian overtones, and then goes full on Hammer Horror THE REPTILE which doesn't belong in this list. LAIR is - not good. Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi carry the film and are so young, and it's not their best work ever. I made it 1min 30secs in twice and turned it off, but third time lucky. Now I can say I've seen it to the end. There was no prize.
THE STRANGENESS - abandoned gold mine and mysterious, people-eating slime creature that dwells within. Kind of "In The Mountains of Madness" but ... not.
THE WRONG HOUSE - This is weird, timey-wimey but not, inexplicable nightmare that's a lot more than a haunted or sentient house. It's the horror of being stuck somewhere that won't let you leave, and there are no rules, no explanations, and no way to figure it out.
DON'T BLINK - an extinction event that also goes completely unexplained, very weird, very unsettling concept. Life forms of all kinds just... stop existing when you stop looking at them.
THE CIRCLE (2017) - a stone circle on a remote Scottish island, a monster thousands of years old, a mystery that a group of archaeologist students try and solve (it doesn't end well).
I haven't seen a load of obvious ones, but would like some recs on which are worth watching? Anything with the above vibes (including the comedies) welcome!
#film recommendations#movie recommendation#looking for something to watch#looking for horror#looking for cthulhu#i only call Dagon daddy#give me your thoughts#give me your recs#give me ideas#horror films#movie night
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So I got kinda down a rabbit hole of researching both cyberpunk and gothic AU's at the same time.. because I’m horribly indecisive..
Anyway, I read The King in Yellow, which is I guess some prototype Lovecraft type mythos of dreamlands and monsters.. and through that I found the malevolent podcast in which a 1930s detective is possessed by an evil entity from the dark realms - a voice in his head that only he can hear.. who has control of his eyesight, and then gets control of his left hand.. and.. well you can imagine where the fanfic goes from there..
Okay, clearly I have a thing for delusional men suffering life threatening injuries, and becoming increasingly deranged whilst they're being possessed by gods with very dubious morality.. so I have been thinking about this as a Viravos scenario A LOT.. but I really can’t afford to be thinking too much about another totally niche crack AU.. so I drew this super scratchy art while listening to the podcast instead.. and I’m too tired to attempt to make it better.. but anyway if you happen to like some Cthulhu type monster vibes this is a cool show so far..
Well.. argh.. alright, ngl I totally do wanna write the Viren/Aaravos version of this but it’ll have to be shelved until like next year’s Halloween at my current rate of progress.. and honestly the more obscure and niche my interests grow, the more I question the sanity of trying to write any of them down...
#sometimes... I think... maybe I'm the one that's becoming deranged.. but that can't be right..#I’ll call this..#cthulhu crack AU#taking on two long fic ideas at the same time probably means I will finish neither.. but the research is fun.. shame it keeps branching..#cos sheesh sometimes I do feel ONE less thing to think about at a time would be nice..#art
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