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{{quote|''Break, damn you! Break! You've never had a [[Spanner in
After the Seventh Doctor's [[Expanded Universe]] tenure in the [[Virgin New Adventures]] came to an end in 1997, BBC Books picked up the licence to produce new ''[[Doctor Who]]'' literature from Virgin Publishing. Realising Virgin had the right idea, BBC decided to have an honest crack at it, moving on from [[The Chessmaster|wiley ol' McCoy]] onto the [[The Nth Doctor|newly regenerated]] [[Doctor Who/Recap/TVM the TV Movie
Running from 1997 to 2005, a series of 74 novels revolving around the exploits of the Eighth Doctor and his companions. These books, commonly referred to as the EDAs, were notable for fleshing out the character of the Eighth Doctor after his short run in the television movie, for having several interconnected [[Story Arc|Story Arcs]], for having been [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made
The tone of the novels is a bit [[Darker and Edgier]] and more mature than the television series (usually not as "edgy" as the New Adventures, but arguably "deeper"). [[No Hugging, No Kissing]] is averted, [[Bloodier and Gorier|people get hurt,]] [[Black and Grey Morality|the 'right thing' is often not cut and dried,]] [[Ho Yay|the Doctor happily snogs his male companion just because he feels like it]], and [[Hotter and Sexier|there's a quite a bit of sex,]] albeit not explicit.
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As with the Virgin Books, a companion range featuring the previous Doctors (i.e. One through Seven) was published alongside the Eighth Doctor novels, doing much the same thing. This line was called the slightly-more-clunky "[[Past Doctor Adventures]]" (as opposed to the "[[Virgin Missing Adventures|Missing Adventures]]" that Virgin had called their similar line).
The title "Eighth Doctor Adventures" was also used for several series of [[Big Finish Doctor Who]] audio dramas starring the Eighth Doctor.
[[Eighth Doctor Adventures/Characters|Has a character page.]] Please keep most of the character-specific tropes there.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Absurdly Youthful Mother|Absurdly Youthful Father]]: {{spoiler|The Doctor is reunited with his daughter Miranda when she's caught up to his [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|apparent age]] and seems to have more grey hair than he does.}}
* [[Adaptational Sexuality]]: This series marked the first time that the Doctor was not portrayed as straight, which very much carried over to ''[[Scream of the Shalka]]'' and, shortly afterwards, to the television series proper.
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* [[Alternate Reality Episode]]: The Obverse, from ''The Blue Angel'', where the Doctor is a [[Through the Eyes of Madness|mentally ill]] human with two hearts who has dreams about the events in the main universe, and his companions are [[Landlord|his tenants]].
* [[Alternate Universe]]: Several.
* [[Ambiguous Disorder]]: Erasmus in ''Timeless'' is a [[Gentle Giant]] who's generally perceived as having something wrong with him, but basically all it amounts to is being naive enough to think his ward, who [[Older Than They Look|looks]] and generally [[Immortal Immaturity|acts]] about eight years old, [[It Seemed Like a Good Idea At
* [[And the Adventure Continues...]]: After spending the entire novel haphazardly tying up the series' leftover plot threads, the final book ''The Gallifrey Chronicles'' ends just as the Doctor and friends finally set off to confront the [[Monster of the Week]].
* [[Animal Motifs]]
** The Doctor is repeatedly compared to a cat, possibly because [[Cats Have Nine Lives]], or some sort of allusion to the ability of a cat to land on its feet, or because cats are [[Cats Are Magic|mysterious]] and [[Cute Kitten|cuddly]] at the same time. He's represented by a stray cat in ''Seeing I'' and [[Going Native|goes native]] among the tigers in ''The Year of Intelligent Tigers''. In ''EarthWorld'', Anji tries to decide which animal from ''[[The Jungle Book (Disney film)|The Jungle Book]]'' he reminds her of, and after initially thinking of and then dismissing the tiger, can't decide between the snake, the bear, and the panther, but is quite sure Fitz is the orangutan<ref>This initially seems like she's making fun of Fitz because he's a, [[Punny Stuff|ahem]], [[Butt Monkey]], but note that this takes place in the book when he finally starts to come to terms with being an [[Artificial Human]], and the orangutan wants to be human</ref>.
** Apparently, Sabbath is some sort of canid; he's compared at one point to a mastiff, and at another point Anji, talking about how he's an ineffective, annoying villain, compares him to [[Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner
** Trix's [[Green Eyes]] are repeatedly described as "catlike".
** In "Frontier Worlds," Compassion says that she and Fitz are like the Doctor's pets. She compares herself to a cat, which thinks "My owner loves me and feeds me and takes care of me so I must be god." Fitz, she says, is a dog, thinking "My owner loves me and feeds me and takes care of me, so he must be god."
** In "Fear Itself," Fitz and the Doctor are asked what animals they think they are most like. Fitz says he is a dog, "probably a golden retriever," while the Doctor thinks of himself as a unicorn.
* [[Armed
* [[Ascended Fanfic]]: Portia da Costa's erotic fiction novel The Stranger sees her heroine having lots and lots of sex with an amnesiac hero who's a blatant [[Expy]] of the Eighth Doctor (or just Paul McGann himself, given the flashback with the [[Withnail and I]] slash) - the last EDA [[Shout-Out|namechecks this book's main character]] in a list of the Doctor's offscreen 'companions'.
* [[Asleep for Days]]: In ''The Adventuress of Henrietta Street'', the Doctor sleeps for a week after losing one of his hearts.
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* [[Bloodier and Gorier]]: Quite a lot. The Doctor is injured in probably a majority of the books, sometimes in ways that would [[Good Thing You Can Heal|kill a normal person]].
* [[Bride and Switch]]: In ''The Book of the Still'', [[Ho Yay|between Fitz and the Doctor]]. {{spoiler|Well, it never really happened; it's actually a virtual reality world where the Doctor is a [[Card-Carrying Villain]] trying to [[And Now You Must Marry Me|force some poor girl into marriage]], but gets a [[Disguised in Drag]] Fitz instead. It's a sort of [[Lotus Eater Machine]] for Fitz, since he gets to be a swashbuckling hero... wearing a [[Fairytale Wedding Dress]] and marrying the Doctor isn't actually stated to be part of the appeal for him, but one never knows.}}
* [[Brief Accent Imitation]]: Fitz and Trix both make a bit of a habit of it, although Trix sometimes takes it to unsettling excess. Even Sabbath gets in on the fun. In ''The Domino Effect'', he puts on a fake [[
{{quote|
* [[Canon Immigrant]]: [[The Brigadier]]'s American counterpart, General Kramer, who appears in ''Vampire Science'' by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, originated in one of Blum's fanworks.
* [[Cartwright Curse]]: Fitz, the poor dope. The Doctor tends toward this with the few love interests he has, but {{spoiler|it was subverted in ''The Adventuress of Henrietta Street'': Scarlette [[Faking the Dead|faked her death]] just because [[Love Cannot Overcome|she knew he should leave]]}}.
* [[Can't Live
* [[Catfolk]]: The tigers in the novel ''The Year of Intelligent Tigers''. They're just intelligent tigers who have [[Bizarre Alien Biology]], lay eggs, and have two opposable thumbs on each paw.
* [[The Chick]]: Notable because in most team set-ups, this role falls upon [[Gender Flip|Fitz]] and ''not'' the female companions.
* [[Children Raise You]]: Where do all these little [[Hair of Gold|blond]] Time Moppets come from, anyway? {{spoiler|The Doctor seems to be too [[Oblivious to Love]] for the matchmaking element of the trope to really work out. In Anji's case, Chloe seems to [[Genre Savvy|actually realize]] that as the adopted daughter of a slightly lonely and troubled businesswoman, she's supposed to help her find a love interest, so she wanders off and gets escorted home by an eligible bachelor who Anji ends up engaged to.}}
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* [[Continuity Nod]]: Stacy and Ssard, companions of the Doctor from a relatively obscure line of comic strips in the [[Radio Times]], feature in ''Placebo Effect.'' It's revealed in the story that the Doctor had those Radio Times adventures while Sam was dropped off somewhere, but returned for her before she knew he'd been gone.
* [[Creator Provincialism]]: YMMV, but taken to extremes with end of the Earth Arc. ''Escape Velocity'' author Colin Brake seemed to bend over backwards to make sure the Doctor didn't actually have to go to America to get to "St. Louis."
* [[Depending
* [[Denser and Wackier]]: In relation to the TV series: more [[Talking Animal|Talking Animals]], more breaches of the laws of physics for cheap tricks, more [[McDonald's|McDonaldses]] in [[Ancient Egypt]], more [[Badass Normal|Badass Normals]] who do things that seem like they [[A Wizard Did It|should involve a wizard somewhere]], more [[Rule of Funny]], and far, far more [[Meta Fiction]]. Yet it still manages to be ''at least'' as serious, in other ways, as the TV series, especially relative to the TV series that preceded it rather than the new one. Sure, the Doctor coming across as manic-depressive is nothing new these days, but the EDAs did it first!
* [[
* [[Dreaming the Truth]]: The Obverse!Doctor. [[Mind Screw|Or maybe not.]]
* [[Easily Forgiven]]: {{spoiler|Karl Sadeghi at the end of ''The Year of Intelligent Tigers''. A week after committing mass murder on their fellows, Karl is fielding requests from tigers to join his orchestra. The Doctor's reaction, on the other hand, seems totally proportionate.}}
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* [[Expendable Clone]]: Particularly evident in ''The Last Resort'', where {{spoiler|almost everyone gets [[Immortal Life Is Cheap|extremely prone to dying]], just because almost everyone suddenly has all these doppelgangers. Or else can teleport and therefore safely make fun of everyone else's mortality rate.}}
* [[Eye Scream]]: ''Seeing I''. The ordinary implants needed to use INC technology are bad enough, but in OBFSC prison an invasive contact lens becomes the stuff of nightmares -- especially for {{spoiler|the Doctor}}.
* [[Face Heel Turn]]: Romana, and to a lesser extent Original!Fitz in The Ancestor Cell. Some fans were annoyed by the former, and a bit confused by the latter.
* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: For a while, it seemed like there are three constants in the EDAs: Fitz will [[Off the Wagon|always smoke]], the Doctor will always have [[Trauma-Induced Amnesia|amnesia]], and Anji will [[You Can't Go Home Again|never get back home]]. {{spoiler|But eventually the Doctor gets Anji home. And then she comes back, mostly for [[Not Love Interest|Fitz]]. And then the Doctor gets her home again. And in ''The Gallifrey Chronicles'', the Doctor seems to be regaining his memories. But Fitz will always smoke.}}
* [[Fate Worse Than Death]]: Becoming TARDIS breeding stock, being vaporized into the Time Vortex, turning into a monster with a clock for a face, madness-inducing brain slugs... etc., etc., and so forth.
* [[Fictional Document]]: ''The Adventuress of Henrietta Street'', in a way, is one, since it's supposedly a piece of nonfiction involving the Doctor. And it also [[Scrapbook Story|contains]] a number of ''other'' fictional documents, which end up showing that the Doctor [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made
* [[Foreshadowing]]: Around the end of the run and the time when the new series was being announced, the Ninth Doctor was getting mentions and small cameos.
* [[Future Imperfect]]: The theme park on New Jupiter, ''EarthWorld'', is filled with this. It's meant to put different eras of Earth history on display. [[Hilarity Ensues|Their research needs a little work.]]
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* [[Historical Domain Character]]: Surprisingly rare; they all seem to be concentrated between two adjacent books; ''The Turing Test'' and ''Endgame''. The latter seems to mostly use it as an excuse for gratuitous [[Info Dump]]. Oh, and ''The Domino Effect'' reintroduces an [[Alternate Universe]] version of a previously seen [[Historical Domain Character]], to fairly sad and touching effect, and then {{spoiler|more or less [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|Shoots The Shaggy Dog]] at the end}}.
* [[Hotter and Sexier]]: A bit.
* [[Hurt
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: Actually justified in ''Time Zero''. [[Bag of Holding|Clothes that are bigger on the inside]] are useful for more than just super-effective Spanx. Although they are [[Mundane Utility|useful]] for that, too.
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: Fitz and the Doctor are both occasionally guilty of these, and, probably unsurprisingly, Fitz's name makes him a bit of a [[Phrase Catcher]] for bad puns. He even mentions a [[Stealth Pun|reasonably subtle]] one his mum made once in ''Frontier Worlds''.
* [[It Makes Sense in Context]]: For many stories, the authors seemed to have taken a twisted glee in just honestly summarising the premise of each novel in the blurb. This being ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the results are...[[Mind Screw|unique]]. For example, ''The Year of Intelligent Tigers'' starts with:
{{quote|
* [[It Runs in The Family]]: There's a reason Fitz's family is like this. But that's not a reason for why he's sometimes a bit of a [[Cloudcuckoolander]].
* [[It's Been Done]]: The fandom takes much glee in pointing these out.
** [[Doctor Who
*** This book also has [[Doctor Who
** {{spoiler|[[Where I Was Born and Razed|The Doctor being forced to destroy Gallifrey?]]}} ''Ancestor Cell''.
** [[Doctor Who
** [[Doctor Who
** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
** {{spoiler|A TARDIS in a human body?}} Sorry, [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
* [[Jewish Mother]]: The Doctor's mother in ''The Blue Angel'' comes across as a little [[My Beloved Smother|controlling]], and has a thick [[The Old Country|Eastern European]] accent, creating an impression of [[Ambiguously Jewish|Ambiguous Judaism]]. She also fusses a lot over his health, although since he's [[Ambiguously Human|technically human]] but has two hearts, you can't blame her.
* [[Lady Drunk]]: The Doctor's mum, again. She also [[Disco Dan|never really left the 1920s]]. She's basically a [[Shout-Out]] to [[Bette Midler]]'s Delores Delago, so she's implicitly a [[White Dwarf Starlet]]. Oh, and she's a mermaid.
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* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: In ''The Tomorrow Windows'', Prubert Gastridge is a large, bearded, bellowing actor best known for playing Vargo, the King of the Buzzardmen. [[Brian Blessed|Ring any bells?]]
* [[No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel]]: Anji has clearly had it up to here with people who want to know about [[Sim Sim Salabim|the wonders of the mysterious Orient]]. In [[Victorian Britain]], conforming to social expectations by wearing a sari seems to help, but she has some hangups about her heritage and doesn't like it. And Fitz's lower-middle-class accent is also a bit of a problem.
* [[Not So Harmless]]: ''Alien Bodies''. Just for starters, their leader arrives in [[Make Way for
* [[Oblivious Adoption]]: Inverted with Miranda. Everyone who sees her and the Doctor think they look [[Strong Family Resemblance|very, very similar]], and they're the only two of their species around, but she's just his adopted daughter and as they see it that's all there is to it. She's implied to be his [[Kid From the Future]].
* [[The Omniscient Council of Vagueness]]: In ''Sometime Never...'', and a paragon of vagueness and sitting-aroundness. They also [[Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering|bicker a bit]].
* [[Only a Flesh Wound]]: Mentioned by name by the Doctor in ''Frontier Worlds'', about, not very surprisingly, being shot in the shoulder. Of course, it's his mild [[Healing Factor]] that makes the wound so easy to shrug off, not just [[Artistic License: Biology|a writer leaning too heavily on artistic license]].
* [[Pop-Cultured Badass]]: Almost everyone. Fitz has been known to reference [[
* [[Politically-Incorrect Villain]]: At least two villains have made disparaging remarks about the Doctor's apparent sexuality (he's [[The Dandy|rather dandyish]], and whether this has anything to do with [[Bi the Way|his sexuality]] is his own affair). He always handles it with complete savoir-faire: in one book, a villain shouts "Queer!" at him and then beats him up for good measure, and he shags the guy's wife, which was almost certainly not intended as a [[Take That]] but would have been a pretty awesome one if it was. He endeavored to convince a [[Mook]] who'd called him a "poof" [[Clipboard of Authority|that he was a cop and would write him up for discrimination]], and [[Cutting the Knot|when that didn't work]] he poked him in the ear with his pencil and shoved him off a boat. So, homophobes take warning: the Doctor bashes back.
** Generally averted when it comes to Anji: the bad guys might brainwash her and kick her around and whatever else, but have not been noticed to say anything about her ethnicity, even though various minor characters sometimes do. Also, despite the fact that Sabbath, one of only a scant few recurring villains, is from the 18th century, he also usually averts this trope.<ref>Maybe he's learned something from people picking on his weight all the time, maybe he's just [[Ubermensch|above all that]] the same way he's above having hair, or maybe the fact his closest known relationship was with a [[Little Miss Badass]] from a remote Polynesian tribe made him less bigoted than the average 18th-century bloke.</ref> There is one instance where he tells Anji to [[You! Get Me Coffee!|go put the kettle on]]. Like [[wikipedia:800 lb gorilla|the proverbial 800-lb gorilla]], he gets away with it even though she's seething.
* [[Pragmatic Adaptation]]: In the audio play ''The Company of Friends (Fitz's Story)'', the only story to date from another medium to take place within EDA continuity, Anji spends the whole adventure sleeping off a strong drink in the TARDIS so the story can focus on the Doctor/Fitz team.
* [[Pungeon Master]]: Fitz, the Doctor, and everyone who's introduced to Fitz.
* [[Right
* [[Rear Window Witness]]: Fitz, in ''Timeless'', witnesses a woman being brutally attacked while snooping through the window of her house. Shaking and horrified, he [[Cowardly Lion|works up the courage]] to go into the house, and finds {{spoiler|seemingly the same woman, denying that anything happened. Hmm...}}
* [[Roger Rabbit Effect]]: ''The Crooked World'', wherein the TARDIS lands on a cartoon planet. The cover suggests that the normal characters have been cartoonified, but they never remark on any such thing, suggesting they haven't been.
* [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]]: Theoretically impossible, or, more accurately, just an ''extremely bad'' idea, so the Doctor has to keep reminding people not to even try it. In ''The Janus Conjunction'', {{spoiler|the Doctor manages it anyway.}}
* [[Shout-Out]]: In ''Camera Obscura'', a group of circus freaks exhibit [[Sherlock Holmes|"The Giant Rat of Sumatra"]]. It also seems that the Doctor [[True Companions|and company]] are subletting their flat from [[Sherlock Holmes]], which Sabbath lampshades in typical [[Enigmatic Minion|enigmatic]] fashion. Also, in the same book, Sabbath uses the pseudonym "G.K. Thursday", a reference to [[
* [[Stealth Hi Bye]]: It's a bit of a bad habit for the Doctor. Aside from him, this trope is apparently easier the less probable it seems. The narrator constantly belabors the point that Sabbath is ''holy crap so huge'', especially when he employs improbable sneaking abilities to suddenly show up while you're not looking. Even aside from when he could teleport in ''The Last Resort''. And in ''Vanishing Point'', Fitz has a six-and-a-half-foot-tall [[Disabled Love Interest]] with a congenitally malformed leg that causes her to hobble along slowly and noisily. But she gets around pretty well anyway, and Fitz notes her "uncanny" ability to "just appear".
* [[Slipping a Mickey]]: In ''Timeless'', the Doctor gives everyone else on the TARDIS drugged hot cocoa just because he has to pilot the TARDIS through the Big Bang and he's not sure it'll make it, and he doesn't want his companions freaking out about it because they'd get in the way and he doesn't want to put them through that. Also, if they don't make it, he doesn't want them to die scared. Still... it's a bit of a dick move.
* [[The Slow Path]]: Both Father Kreiner and the Earth Arc. ''The Sleep of Reason'' contains a rather sensible and convenient solution to this.
* [[Something Only They Would Say]]: In book two of ''Interference''. Kode asks, ‘[[Surrounded
* [[Spoiled
* [[Starving Artist]]: Averted in ''The Year of Intelligent Tigers''; Hitchemus has a system in place whereby all musicians get enough money to get by. It's not very much, but starving isn't an issue.
* [[Story Arc]]: Apart from the series-long character arcs, the series can be divided up as:
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* [[The Teaser]]: The first chapter of any given book is generally something thrilling, spooky, and/or cryptic that won't make much sense until later, and the main protagonists usually don't appear in it. ''The Book of the Still'' lampshades this; the first chapter is titled "Obligatory Spectacular Opening". However, {{spoiler|it turns out at the end that, for once, it does feature a main character.}}
* [[There Is Another]]: Fitz mentions it by name in ''Mad Dogs and Englishmen'', when the Doctor realizes Iris has a TARDIS, so he's likely not the [[Last of His Kind]].
* [[Time Travel for Fun
* [[Transplant]]: Iris Wildthyme was originally a Time Lord [[Writing Around Trademarks|in all but name]] from some [[Magical Realism]] novels by Paul Magrs. When Magrs began writing for the [[Whoniverse]], he transplanted Iris into it as the Doctor's [[New Old Flame]].
** Iris was later spun ''back'' off by Magrs and Big Finish into a new line of audio adventures and novels which have since gone right back to writing around the ''Doctor Who'' trademarks.
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* [[Walking the Earth]]: The Doctor, during the Earth Arc. And by Earth, [[Creator Provincialism|I mostly mean England]], but we are later told he also became a sailor in the South Seas and traveled through China and Thailand.
** There are shades of the [[Wandering Jew]] as well, since it doesn't seem like he particularly wants to be traveling around alone like this.
* [[We Have to Get
* [[Weird Aside]]: Fitz sometimes casually brings up his [[Dark and Troubled Past]] without fully realizing it's awkward, then tries to pass it off [[Sad Clown|as a joke]]. Anji eventually stops giving a damn whether people in the future or the past understand her [[Turn of the Millennium]] [[Shout-Out|references]], causing them to come across like this. And the Doctor has a tendency to namedrop improbably; in a modern-day setting, he might suddenly start talking about his dear old friend [[William Shakespeare]]. In ''The Year of Intelligent Tigers'', Karl Sadeghi happens to mention his "surviving family", which might be an odd distinction to make if you've got about as many living family members as anyone else, implying he has a difficult backstory which [[Cryptic Background Reference|never really comes up]].
* [[What Could Have Been]]: The villains from the second major [[Story Arc|arc]] of the series, Sabbath's allies, were originally meant to be {{spoiler|the Daleks, reappearing after 52 books and 6 years absence}}. The Council of Eight was a last minute replacement, meaning some of the clues as to their identity ended being a bit misleading.
* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: Fitz is the begonia, right?
* [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made
* [[Where I Was Born and Razed]]: {{spoiler|Let's just say the TV revival wasn't the first to pull the Doctor blowing up Gallifrey trick.}}
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: Sometimes explored in relation to the Doctor, actually.
* [[Writing Around Trademarks]]: A Grace Holloway [[Expy]], some thinly-veiled Daleks...
* [[You Are Fat]]: The Doctor knows that if you want to upset a human, just tell them [[Portal 2
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[[Category:World War One]]▼
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[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
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[[Category:Tie-in Novel]]
[[Category:The Full Name Adventures]]
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