!!Self-deprecating characters
* Rob in ''Literature/AnOutcastInAnotherWorld'' occasionally makes jokes of this nature, although mostly internally. Alternate perspectives have shown that other people think more highly of Rob than he thinks of himself. They're quick to shoot down his self-deprecation when he verbalizes it externally.
* Claudia and Mallory from ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'', for very different reasons, are the most prone to this.
* In ''Literature/ThePleasureIsMine'' the main character Prate constantly believes he is not taking care of his wife, or spending enough time with her, believing he is not good enough. [[spoiler: This changes when his son has him babysit Jackson, Prate's grandson, who teaches him to believe he is a good person for his family.]]
* As first-person narrator of the Literature/JeevesAndWooster stories, Bertie often cheerfully [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] his UpperClassTwit status. He may be stupid, but at least he's self-aware.
* ''[[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Jedi Versus Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force]]'' contains an essay that Luke Skywalker, by then a Jedi Master, gave as a speech to some of his Jedi students. In it he talked about an event from ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'': building the green lightsaber he has in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', how he worked slowly and carefully in full awareness that getting something wrong would be a disaster -- at best it wouldn't work, at worst it would explode. He tells his students that only Artoo was with him as he finished, and he told the droid to wait inside.
--> "It may sound ridiculous, but I thought if something went wrong, I needed someone to tell Leia that Luke Skywalker, the galaxy's biggest idiot, had flash-flamed himself into a black crisp because he couldn't follow an elementary circuit diagram."
* In ''[[Literature/AuntDimity Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince]]'', Lori and Dimity are discussing the diverse exhibits at Skeaping Manor when Dimity writes: "You and I are living proof--more or less--that some people prefer the pretty to the icky." As she writes this, Dimity Westwood has been dead for about a decade.
* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': Peeta Mellark is said to have this.
* ''Literature/TheDinosaurLords'': Emperor Felipe confides to his daughter that he likes to repeat all the platitudes his nobles bestow upon him to his toothless, old and blind pet T-Rex, stating that the beast would be venerated as much as he is, was it elected.
* ''Literature/TheCatWhoSeries'': The ''Pickax Picayune'', Moose County's newspaper when Qwill comes to town, falls into this. To call something ''picayune'' means to say that it is trivial or has very little worth, so the paper's name is essentially claiming that the news it reports is unimportant -- or that the newspaper ''itself'' is unimportant. Or both.
* ''Literature/LesMiserables'': Grantaire is a skilled orator, quotes classical literature at length, and is a dab hand at painting, dance, tennis and any number of other physical pursuits, but describes himself as a complete ignoramus who only understands "love and liberty".
* ''Literature/TheHuntForRedOctober'': Jeffrey Pelt, the National Security Advisor claims that he is "... a politician, which means that I'm a cheat and a liar and that when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollipops."

!!Self-deprecating authors
* In ''Literature/OnlyYouCanSaveMankind'', Sigourney remarks that her mother has no ambition and settled for marriage when she was only twenty...the same age Creator/TerryPratchett was when he got married.
* Creator/JasperFforde's ''[[Literature/NurseryCrime The Fourth Bear]]'' introduces the setup early in the book for a ridiculous tongue-twisting punchline much later. One character [[BreakingTheFourthWall comments on]] what an elaborate setup that was for such a lame joke and the other sadly agrees, "I don't know how he gets away with it.", which was a line from ''Radio/TheGoonShow''.
** The [[http://www.jasperfforde.com/subindex/tn7features.html online "making-of wordumentary"]] for ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext The Woman Who Died A Lot]]'' describes Fforde as "surrounded by dogs, children and unsold copies of ''Literature/ShadesOfGrey''" and also includes this gem:
-->'''Hatchett''': I like the title, Mr Fforde, 'The Woman Who Died a Lot'. Where does it come from?\\
'''Fforde''': I'm not sure. It's been on my list of titles for a while, along with 'Seven Things to do before you Die in Talgarth', my faux misery memoir 'A Fork of my Own' and 'The Life Debt of Phoebe Smalls'. The title just seemed so perfect for the book. Not only does it conjure up the notion of a noir thriller, but also a, well, ''rubbish'' noir thriller. The sort of title an idiot who can't write to save his life would come up with. Hmm. Worrying. I wonder if it's an ironic thing?\\
'''Hatchett''': Yes, Mr Fforde, I'm sure that's the case.
* Fforde has nothing on Creator/RobertRankin, who constantly [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaks the fourth wall]] to self-complain about {{plot hole}}s, stupid {{running gag}}s, and absolutely ridiculous plot devices (Elvis with a time-travelling sprout in his head has to kill the Antichrist! Yeah!). At one point he actually inserted himself, writing the novel in a bar, in the novel itself.
* The ''Literature/CairoJim'' books (starring a CaptainErsatz slash AffectionateParody of ''Franchise/IndianaJones'') by Geoffrey [=McSkimming=] regularly quote negative reviews on the back cover... said negative reviews written by the author himself from the perspective of the books' main villain.
* Similarly, some of Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books have a quote from Creator/TheBBC's Late Review: "Doesn't even write in chapters... a complete amateur... hasn't a clue..."
** In ''Literature/MovingPictures'', one of the few things known about Achmed the Mad, author of ''[[TomeOfEldritchLore The Necrotelecomnicon]]'' is that he also wrote a book of humorous cat stories. The LemonyNarrator implies that this either proves he was indeed "the Mad", or drove him that way. ''Literature/TheUnadulteratedCat'' was published the previous year.
* Creator/IainBanks's ''extremely'' controversial first novel ''The Wasp Factory'' went one better, by reprinting ''every'' negative review the book had received, alternated with more positive reviews. Some of the negative reviews were hilariously extreme, with one critic claiming that the decision to publish the novel showed that [[SeriousBusiness civilization had come to an end.]]
* In one of the books of the ''[[Literature/TheTamuli Tamuli]]'', Creator/DavidEddings takes the opportunity to have one of the heroes describe heroic fantasy as being written by sub-par authors. Guess which genre contains vast numbers of very thick books with the name "Eddings" prominently emblazoned on the cover?
* OlderThanPrint: Creator/GeoffreyChaucer does this all the time; many of his dream poems include a moment (or three) where his AuthorAvatar narrator is castigated for being fat, dorky, and a writer of love poetry although he doesn't get any himself, and in ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' his pilgrim persona, when it's his turn to tell a tale, tells first a mock-romance [[StylisticSuck that's so silly]] that the Host cuts it off before he can finish, and then a long, boring moral tale.
* Chaucer's inspiration and near-contemporary Creator/{{Boccaccio}} did this a fair amount. The most famous is in his epilogue to the ''Literature/{{Decameron}}'', an extremely funny but also obscene defense of his work. He responds to those who accuse him of being "light" by saying that he had been "weighed many times"--a clear reference to the fact that he was rather fat--and pretends to be flattered by the claim that he had the "sweetest tongue" in Italy by playing up the DoubleEntendre (to be brief, he has a conversation with a woman who talks of his "sweet tongue", by which they actually mean "he totally ate her out").
* ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'' by Creator/CSLewis has the story of [[EccentricMentor a magician called Coriakin]] who was assigned to govern [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame a bunch of dim-witted dwarves known as Duffers]] (an obvious metaphor for God and humanity), and eventually turned them into one-legged creatures called Monopods as a PrankPunishment for disobedience. The Duffers were initially unhappy with their new form, but eventually found advantages in it, such as using their giant foot as a boat for swimming. This is a humorous parallel to Lewis' own life story: he was born with only one functional joint in his thumbs, which rendered him incapable of sports and other physical activities, and led to him becoming a writer. I. e. it was his God-given handicap that eventually led him to prosperity and the fulfillment of his talent.
* ''Literature/TheIlluminatusTrilogy'' features, as a running plot thread, a dialogue between a book reviewer and his editor about a book full of "conspiracy nonsense" and "gratuitous sex scenes" which seems to ''strongly'' parallel the novel itself.
** In ''The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy'', a SpiritualSuccessor written solely by Creator/RobertAntonWilson, several AlternateUniverse version of RAW appear, none of them particularly flattering, while a critic's extremely negative review of ''Illuminatus'' is quoted.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''
** From ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'', but it sums up the series' attitude to "Britishness":
-->"It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what's that strange thing you British play?"\\
"Er," said Tricia, "cricket? Self-loathing?"\\
"Parliamentary democracy."
** In ''Literature/AndAnotherThing'', Creator/EoinColfer gets [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall meta]] about it: after describing the five entries in the Guide about the Guide itself as "a lengthy article, accompanied by many hours of video and audio files, and some dramatic reconstructions by some quite well known actors", it adds that there is also "a ''text only'' appendix, with absolutely no audio and not so much as a frame of video shot by a student director who made the whole thing in his bedroom and paid his drama soc mates in sandwiches."
-->''This is the story of that appendix.''
* Creator/DanBrown in ''Literature/TheLostSymbol''. Robert Langdon refers to a book heavily implied to be ''Literature/DigitalFortress'' as a "mediocre thriller".
* Creator/IsaacAsimov often had his characters belittling him.
** It's especially JustForFun/{{egregious}} in the ''Literature/GeorgeAndAzazel'' stories, which always begin with the author having lunch with a character named George, who constantly insults him -- and then proceeds to run out on the check (sometimes even borrowing money from Asimov) at the end of the story. In fact, just in case the reader missed it (the stories never explicitly state that the narrator is Asimov himself), he makes a point of saying so in the introduction to the anthology.
** In the foreword to one of the ''Literature/BlackWidowers'' stories, he acknowledged that when he portrayed the character of Manny Rubin as constantly insulting his "friend" Dr Asimov ("Just because I lend him some money, that makes him a friend?") the person he was ''really'' being unfair on wasn't himself but Creator/LesterDelRey (who Rubin was based on).
** The novel ''Literature/MurderAtTheABA'' includes several insult exchanges between Asimov ([[AuthorAvatar self-inserted]] as a minor character) and the protagonist Darius Just (who is based on Creator/HarlanEllison).
* The second book of Matthijs van Boxsel's ''Encyclopedia of Stupidity'' consists of a list of the most stupid scientific theories published in the Netherlands and Flanders. He has included his own books on the list.
* Robert Goldsborough wrote a number of ''Literature/NeroWolfe'' novels after [[DiedDuringProduction series creator Rex Stout's death]]. The final one features a victim who had [[{{Continuation}} been writing another author's character]]. At one point, Archie Goodwin slams the victim's writing. [[spoiler:The motive for the murder is that said victim plagiarised his last novel.]]
* As a challenge, try to find a Creator/JamesHerriot book in which the author does not mention how slow he is.
* ''Literature/IAmACat'', Natsume Soseki's social satire of late Meiji-era Japan, not only features a major character bearing more than a passing resemblance to the author who comes off about as well as any other character in the book (i.e. not at all), but has a passage in which this character and several others directly bash Soseki's other work. (Since none of these characters are at all likeable, it may be that we're supposed to disagree with them, which would make this either a TakeThat at critics or a roundabout form of self-praise. It's hard to tell.)
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein takes a shot at himself in ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast''. At a point when the four main characters are polling each other on their favourite authors, one asks about Heinlein. Another promply snorts and admits to having read ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand''. "My God, the things some writers will do for money!"
* Creator/EdwardLear engages in a few pot-shots directed at himself in his nonsense-filled poetry. At least one of his poems is a spot of this trope -- "How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear", which acknowledges that a ''few'' people find him "pleasant enough", but others think him "ill-tempered and queer" and says "His visage is more or less hideous/His beard it resembles a wig".
** Creator/TSEliot took it a step further in his pastiche "How Unpleasant to Meet Mr Eliot", which portrays him as uniformly disagreeable to everyone.
* Bunny Manders, the narrator of the ''Literature/{{Raffles}}'' stories, tends to downplay his part in the various adventures he chronicles and his own skill as a writer. Even his abominable cricketing (which is bad enough to earn him an unflattering nickname) is revealed to be not too terrible: the one time he plays cricket in the books, he's far from the worst player on the field.
* The loser protagonist of ''Literature/AConfederacyOfDunces'' is, when you know his life story, very very clearly based on the author, John Kennedy Toole.
* Creator/BrandonSanderson, via the good ol' RecursiveCanon in ''Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones'', the second book of the Literature/AlcatrazSeries. Just after revealing a major spoiler [[spoiler:which is, in fact, completely false]], Alcatraz narrates thusly:
--> You didn't want to hear that? I'm sorry. You'll just have to forget that I wrote it. There are several convenient ways to do that. I hear hitting yourself on the head with a blunt object can be very effective. You should try using one of Brandon Sanderson's fantasy novels. They're big enough, and goodness knows, that really is the only useful thing to do with them.
** In Sanderson's novel ''Literature/{{Elantris}}'', there's a stealthy version of this trope. Apparently a while back Sanderson wrote a Beowulf-style epic called ''Wyrn the King'', then decided it was pretty horrible and abandoned it. In ''Elantris'', ''Wyrn'' shows up as the national epic of the evil Fjordell Empire, and the heroes at one point discuss its literary merits (or rather, lack thereof).
** In ''Literature/{{Firefight}}'' Sanderson mocks his noteboard planning sessions from ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}'' by putting [[BuffySpeak Mizzy]] in charge of taking notes.
* Creator/StephenKing:
** He does this to himself in ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'', as his AuthorAvatar character is a lazy {{Jerkass}} who can't be bothered to finish the Dark Tower series.
** In ''Literature/TheTommyknockers'', it's noted that Bobbi writes books you could read, "not all full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words, like the books that fellow who lived up Bangor way wrote."
** He's also commented that critics have accused him of having "diarrhea of the word processor", given his tendency to write {{doorstopper}}s.
* The Author's Note at the beginning of Dave Stone's second Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures novel, ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresDeathAndDiplomacy Death and Diplomacy]]'', describes his first, ''Sky Pirates!'', as just a joke book, "gags being the lowest form of tragicomedy, but the highest tragicomic form of which this author is capable." He goes on to say that ''Death and Diplomacy'' is a comedy, which is different from jokes because "for one thing, a comedy doesn't have to be funny". The following 280 pages prove him more than capable of doing something that isn't ''just'' gags, while at the same time being extremely funny.
* Creator/RichardKMorgan, author of the ''Literature/TakeshiKovacs'' trilogy about a future where the mind can be digitised and transferred to other bodies, also wrote ''Literature/MarketForces'', which takes place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture. The protagonist in ''Market Forces'' is trying to relax and so picks up a book in which the main character digitises his mind and swaps into other bodies. He decides the book is too weird and unrealistic to bother reading and discards it.
* Creator/HarryTurtledove is pretty fond of this. His characters frequently disparage the genre of alternative historical fiction. In [[Literature/WorldWar Colonization: Aftershocks]], one of his characters also describes the study of Byzantine history, the field in which Turtledove earned a Ph.D., as "uselessly arcane."
* In the ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'' novel ''A Singular Destiny'' by Keith R.A. [=DeCandido=], a character looking through another's PADD finds a complete collection of ''Battlecruiser Vengeance'' novels. She can't understand why anyone would read novels based on a drama series.
* ''Literature/HaltingState'' by Creator/CharlesStross has a scene in a ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons]]''-based MMORPG, where the characters fight a slaad (i.e., a giant chaos frog) and then discuss what a ridiculous monster it is. Stross wrote the magazine article for 1st-edition ''D&D'' that slaadi originally appeared in.
* Creator/AnthonyTrollope, in his role as a Post Office Surveyor, was responsible for introducing pillar boxes to Britain. In ''He Knew He Was Right'', the character of Miss Stanbury considers the pillar box outside her house to be "a most hateful thing", and has rants against "chucking [letters] in an iron stump" rather than entrusting them to a postal employee.
* Literature/SisterhoodSeries by Creator/FernMichaels: In ''Payback'', ''Sweet Revenge'', and ''Hide and Seek'', the South is essentially derided for being sleazy and stupid while pretending to be genteel and high-class. What makes all these instances this trope is the fact that the author is a Southern woman herself, and it's possible that she is only showing what other people's opinion of the South is.
* In ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov'', of all places, when Mitya is interrogated, he claims that to give the full story of the crime would "take you three volumes and an epilogue." How long is the book at this point? Three volumes!
* The Hermit from ''Literature/{{Hieroglyphics}}'' is skeptical that Machen is a good enough writer to attract any kind of readership, let alone a wide one.
* The characters in Creator/DouglasCoupland's novel ''Literature/JPod'' lament that they're turning into characters in a Douglas Coupland novel. Later, as the characters are drinking Zima, one opines, "Drinking Zima is something Douglas Coupland would make a character do". There are also a couple of mocking references to Coupland's first book, ''Generation X.''
* In ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'', Creator/CSLewis introduces himself as a character, so the protagonist can explain things to him (and hence the reader). Lewis in the book spends most of his time being frightened and confused, often thinking cowardly thoughts he barely manages to avoid acting on.
* An entire category of poems in the poetry collection Literature/RavingLunacy is called "The Deprecation Shelf" and is about the things the author hates about himself.
* ''Literature/ArlyHanks'':
** Joan Hess once had her small-town police chief protagonist read a mystery novel about an amateur sleuth whose daughter Talks In Capital Letters, while remarking that its plot seems ridiculously contrived. The bookstore-owner sleuth of Hess's ''other'' mystery series, ''Literature/ClaireMalloyMysteries'', is the mother of a teen with this very VerbalTic.
** In ''Martians in Maggody'', a character snarkily suggests that one of the UFO "experts" may already be planning a new book with some really stupid title, like "Martians in Maggody".
* In one of Ed [=McBain=]'s Literature/EightySeventhPrecinct novels, it's stated that cop Meyer Meyer didn't like ''Film/TheBirds''; in another, recurring BigBad the Deaf Man singled it out as the only Creator/AlfredHitchcock movie he didn't care for. ''The Birds'' was scripted by Creator/EvanHunter ([=McBain=]'s real name).
* On more than one occasion in his stories, Creator/PGWodehouse included comments about what brainless chumps writers tend to be.
* The ''Literature/CaptainUnderpants'' series frequently has George BreakingTheFourthWall to remark that the author is running out of ideas, or commenting on plots that only happen in [[HypocriticalHumor bad children's books.]]
* Creator/ThomasPynchon, in the introduction to his collection of early short fiction ''Slow Learner'', commented that in his second novel he seemed to have forgotten almost every lesson he'd learned from writing his first one. He also remarked that re-reading his early fiction caused him "physical symptoms which we don't dwell on".
* ''Literature/FromTheNewWorld'': The narrator remembers that in her primary school days, her friend Satoru used to make scary stories to make his friends freak out: "At this time, I admired Satoru for his oratory skills. [[{{SelfReferentialHumor}} If there were ever a job for making scary stories]], he would be the first to be picked for it. Though of course, I can’t think of [[{{RealLife}} any society]] that would have such a dumb job."
* In Creator/GKChesterton's ''The Paradoxes of Mr Pond'' he separates Mr Pond's paradoxes from the flashy paradoxical epigrams that writers come up with, giving the examples of Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw's "The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule", Creator/OscarWilde's "I can resist everything but temptation" and "a duller scribe (not to be named with these and now doing penance for his earlier vices in the nobler toil of celebrating the virtues of Mr. Pond)" writing "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly", which is from ''What's Wrong with the World'' by...
* In Creator/RaymondChandler's novel ''Literature/TheLongGoodbye'', the alcoholic novelist Roger Wade is partly based on the author. So is the emotionally scarred World War veteran Terry Lennox. They're not very flattering portraits.
* The back cover of ''Literature/TheStinkyCheeseMan and Other Fairly Stupid Tales'' has the Little Red Hen ranting about how silly the book is. "Who will buy this book anyway?! Over forty pages of nonsense, and I'm only in three of them!"
* ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'':
** Several times in ''Purgatorio'', Dante meets someone and tries to show off some of his poetry, but Virgil rushes them along, saying his poetry doesn't matter.
** While Dante expects a tender and loving reunion with Beatrice, she angrily lambasts him and tears him apart, calling all of heaven to bear witness to the fact that Dante doesn't love her like he thinks he does.
* Early on in Creator/NealStephenson's ''[[Literature/TheBaroqueCycle Quicksilver]]'', one of the characters asks another what the ''Cryptonomicon'' is. "A very queer old book, dreadfully thick, and full of nonsense," is the reply. "[[Main/{{Doorstopper}} Papa uses it to keep the door from blowing shut.]]" (''Cryptonomicon'' exists in-universe as a nonfiction book [[DontExplainTheJoke but it's also the title of Stephenson's]] [[Literature/{{Cryptonomicon}} previous novel.]])
* The [[https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/618qKgc8RhL._SL500_SX315_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg front cover]] of ''The Cynic's Dictionary'' by Russell Ash (essentially an updated version of ''Literature/TheDevilsDictionary'') presents the usual bump a publisher would give about a new book, and then applies Ash's "translations" to it, concluding with "A load of old piffle cobbled together for a fast buck by an unknown hack with the improbable name of Russell Ash".
* ''Literature/AsimovsGuideToShakespeare'': (DiscussedTrope) Dr Asimov explains that ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' was being written around the same time as ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'', and the subplot of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Pyramus and Thisby]]'' shares similarities to ''Romeo and Juliet''. Dr Asimov wonders at the order; did Shakespeare write the satire and decide to rewrite it seriously, or did he write it seriously first, and satirize his own work? The records are insufficient for a conclusion.
* Deconstructed in ''The Mask of Masculinity'' by Lewis Howes. He refers to what's called 'The Joker Mask' where a person mocks their own poverty, appearance or any other flaws as a defence mechanism to prevent other people from joking about them or as a form of ComplimentFishing.
* From Creator/GrahamNelson's "Literature/TheCraftOfTheAdventure": "A plant which can be grown into a beanstalk is now, perhaps, rather a cliché. So naturally no self-respecting author would write one." Note that Nelson's own game, ''VideoGame/{{Curses}}'', contains exactly this.
* In ''Literature/UnderHeaven'', by Creator/GuyGavrielKay (emphasis added): When the narration discusses the importance of the timing of a certain pair of events (along with the movements of a different character being deemed "not part of any pattern that signified"), "Only a tale-spinner, not a true scholar — [[LeaningOnTheFourthwall someone shaping a story for palace or marketplace]] — would note these conjunctions and judge them worth the telling, and '''storytellers were not important either'''. On this, the history-mandarins could agree."
* Creator/AgathaChristie does this in ''Literature/CardsOnTheTable'', with Ariadne Oliver, a dotty old lady and a bestselling author of mystery novels who is an obvious AuthorAvatar of Christie herself. Mrs. Oliver outright calls her many successful novels "tripe" and frequently makes jabs about herself and her writing habits. She admits to recycling plots and sometimes resorting to NeverOneMurder to stretch out a story that isn't making it to book length. She admits to using {{Inspector Lestrade}}s ("idiotic police inspectors") to make her detective look good.
* ''Literature/SolarPons'': In "The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders", Pons tells Parker that the catalogue of a sale of supposedly rare occult books is fake because the books listed are from the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, or, as he puts it "All of these books have a precarious existence only in the writings of certain minor authors of American origin, all apparently followers, in a minor way, of Creator/EdgarAllenPoe". One of these "minor authors" is Creator/AugustDerleth.
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