Little Busters - Game Discussion (Little Busters & Ecstasy!)

[Ceral]

Hmm outside of the H-scenes? What exactly were the scenes that they added in EX, if you remember? Sorry for being so inquisitive, but when I played a little bit of Kud Wafter, it seemed so much different than the end of Kud's Route (what with all the drama and romance turning into super moe in KW, which I think is great, but...). I felt like I shouldn't play anymore of it, like I was watching a sequel to a movie without watching the original... It almost makes me want to play the original to see what I should forget. But, more importantly, do I even need to forget anything for Kud Wafter? Or maybe i need to play more EX and beat Refrain... Man I feel like just playing KW... I am so hopelessly confused...

[Ceral]

Spoiler for ALL of Kud's Route(MAJOR SPOILERS):

I can't believe that they made the reader have to choose to let Kud go back to her home country during a state of turmoil to advance the story. She's so small, cute and precious! How anyone could harm her or even place her in a dangerous situation, I don't understand that, it even makes me a little angry... I kinda wish you had the option to stowaway and go with her or something. The fact that you let her go off by herself, to experience war, the death of her parents... and then to be locked up and left to die. That kills me! I can't believe some of you would say that was a mediocre storyline... Hearing the song for friends instrumental for the first time especially during that moment might have helped sway me... but damn, I thought it was awesome, really well done. The only thing that could have been done better was to give all the details of Kud's trip. I liked how they switched perspectives... with all the background between her and her mother, the meeting up with and then the death of them, if they included all of it, I know that would have really ripped my heart in two. And before that, with all the angry kissing while Kud is the most vulnerable, the ritual, forget the H-scene, they already seemed so comfortable physically, it seems like a different story from Kud Wafter. I would expect Kud to be depressed during Kud Wafter, and perhaps get more details about what happened after her excursion. How she got back, whether her grandfather was able to escape, etc. Instead, it seems like none of that happened. Which is why I am asking, are these two stories really tied together? It seems like there's a second version of Kud's script, that I haven't read that is being used for Kud Wafter?

Ah, nevermind, after playing some of Rins' route, I realized that I won't be anymore Kud crazed than I am right now, and I would probably get the most out of KW by playing now...

Spoiler for BIG Difference between the routes (Kuds' Routes, MAJOR SPOILERS, I suggest you read the original if you don't want to find out the differences in the original and EX):

Just did a speed run on the Original. I didn't read every single line nor did I make the same exact choices as I did on my EX run(I chose Komari in the original instead of Haruka for the roommate suggestion, quite possibly a big mistake on my part...). That said, there were not so many differences at first. The only difference I noticed leading up to Kud leaving, was that you were not given the option to go investigate more about Kud's Home Country(While studing for the tests) everything else is pretty much the same excluding the H scene up until Kud leaves to go back home. They even have the french kiss while Kud is panicking about her Mother and Riki even caresses her hair at about the time the player is given the option to view the H scene(Although no french kiss after that).

Now after Kud goes to Tebua (sp?) there are HUGE differences. First off, there is no First Person Account from Kud here while Riki is watching the news. A LOT of the drama, angst and heartache is really missing but which is added in EX IMO. Without Kud's POV, we do not get to hear Kud talking to Ojii-sama, so we do not hear about her Mother realizing their cruel reality and "jumping". We also do not get to hear the part where Kud talks to the traitor and subsequently imprisoned. Much of her soliloquy after being imprisoned is also missing. Pretty much all first person from Kud is eliminated, we do not hear from her at all except from the cell phone and after Riki establishes his "link". This part takes away a lot of the drama IMO and a lot of the pain one would seemingly except in Kud Wafter. Also omitted was the scene after the credits where they watch the video of her Mother. So here, we miss the part where Kud talks about her mother using the past tense form. So... one could very well expect that Kud's mother is still alive during Kud Wafter... Quite a mystery we have here, do we believe what we see in EX or the original? Or maybe a mix? Hmm... Guess that makes Kud Wafter that much more interesting to play.

[Ceral]

Originally Posted by Skyfall

That said, i would suggest you do continue for a while. Personally i haven't finished all the routes yet (though i do know what to expect from all of them), but i can say that Komari's route is probably the weakest of them all, and a fair bit of people seem less than impressed with it, so you are not alone in the crowd there. Kudo's was not all that impressive either, though it did have some nice parts ... not the end though.

If you want to see how it handles more emotional stuff, i suggest you go for Haruka's route - which is a quite emotional ride from beginning to end, and probably the most emotion-inducting of LB routes. Yuiko's is not bad on that aspect as well, and Mio's route has a pretty nice melancholic mood to it.

All that said, are you going to enjoy LB ? I am not sure, and neither can anyone else be - just don't give up on the game yet. It is no masterpiece, but it is generally quite good enough, you just happened to stumble in to worst of it from the get go

Originally Posted by Klashikari

The routes are "disappointing" if you have too much expectations.
From a neutral point of view, if you cast aside Kudo and Komari, the rest is pretty fine, so long you have an interest/fancy about the character.

Forgive me for necro'ing this old thread again. I just finished Refrain and I need an outlet for the passion I have for this game . On the contrary, I found Kud and Komari to be my two favorite routes(Besides Refrain of course). Refrain really is awesome, and I thought because of it's focus on friendship, the game ended up having a considerably different feel than Key's past works. The writing for refrain was awesome, I ended up liking the male characters more than some of the girl characters, that was certainly unexpected.

Spoiler for Babble about Jun Maeda :P:

Jun Maeda has cemented his spot as my Idol after playing the game , I noticed all my favorite songs (mostly the emotional ones in nature) are all done by him. That man is a friggin genius. After hearing "Song for Friends" I started to get curious about who composed it. I learned that it was Maeda. I would have been impressed solely by that. But later on, while I was playing, I would hear another song I liked, and I would look up the author... Maeda, soon enough everything I heard a song I liked, I would think "This is gotta be Maeda's work", and I would go to the title screen, go to the music section, and sure enough Maeda would get the credit . Everytime I saw his name pop up on those music credits for the songs I liked I became more and more impressed, as if Clannad After Story wasn't enough...

So after finishing refrain, I removed my self-imposed ban from reading posts and the wiki on Little Busters! , much to my chagrin, I see that Kud and Komari aren't very popular here? Without knowledge of other's rankings or any sort of major spoiler, I actually found Kud's and Komari's routes to be my favorite of all the individual routes. I won't lie, I did find Komari's route to be a little sluggish in the middle and her "always happy personality" to start to get a bit bland during the route. So if I had to ask myself why I liked her route so much, I would probably say:

Spoiler for Spoiler for Komari, Refrain, and Clannad:

The last half had me shedding tears. I guess I am sucker for lost love in any form, whether it's filial or romantic. I found it very easy to believe that Komari loved her Big Brother... There's something about losing someone forever. It was similar to the scene from Refrain where Kyousukes' time is just about up. You know he's going away, and never coming back(Well I believed that at the time since I wasn't spoiled). So, In that way Komari's Route was very emotional for me, the scenes that gradually had Tatsuya getting weaker and weaker until the end... I felt helpless, and the sadness would be permanent. I didn't feel any sort of that despair in the other routes except for Refrain and a little bit during Kud's trip back home. Komari's route was one of the most emotional I thought. And especially the resolution for Komari's route at the end was very well written too. I think I cried just as hard as I did when Riki and Tatsuya delivered that message to Komari to "cure" her as I did during some of the tougher scenes during Refrain, the way they tied her illness to Tatsuya's picture book, that was great writing, I thought. Great song at the end too, I cried just as hard there than I did during many of the sad points of Refrain.

Like everyone said, Refrain really is awesome, In a way I kind of wish that they didn't have a good ending, the same way that Clannad After Story's bad ending was so powerful but then got cheapened by the good ending. I also wish that they had continued the story a little longer with Just Riki and Rin. I'm sure that would have been a cry-fest.

Kurugaya's scenario was actually one of the biggest surprises, I ended up liking her more than I expected. I knew absolutely nothing about her scenario, I don't think I even knew the character existed before I started playing, her personality was actually pretty funny and I enjoyed a lot of her jokes. Like a lot of you, I didn't have the concrete feeling, or full understanding of why she felt like she was robot-like. I actually thought she was one of the more sane ones! I mean with Mio being so taciturn, Haruka being perpetually loud, Komari always being 200% optimistic, and Rin being so inept at communicating with others, I think I would have bought the scenario of "I lack emotions and empathy" from almost any of the other characters if written in the right way, even more so than Kurugaya!

Spoiler for Kurugaya:

With the running in the rain scene, the taking care of Riki afterwards, the confession, I thought that she had many different sides to her personality. And that she was very human! Those scenes showed she could be fun-loving, caring, and even a bit romantic at times. IMO, she really seemed to be a well thought out character. I agree though, that her scenario ended way too abruptly. Although I do see some merit in that it should end just like a dream and not have any afterword. It is like the author wanted to convey that feeling to us. So I don't get the feeling to rage against it.

I am probably a bit biased to Kud, I've always adored Kuds' character design before I even started playing, so I've always been curious about her. Also with Kud Wafter out(I only started playing LB two months ago), I had the sequel in mind and probably put in extra effort in trying to remember her scenario. So I actually had very high expectations for her character, for better or for worse(If I didn't like her scenario, I'd probably be yelling right now). High expectations are usually a recipe for disaster, but Kud's route ended up being my favorite individual route, she met my expectations. What really sold me, was really just her character, of course she's very cute on the outside, but her reactions, were just too perfect! During her route, she always knew when to be surprised/angry/sad/embarassed/happy/romantic/shy.

Spoiler for Kud:

The way she reacts when you choose "Boku", had me grinning for an hour, and the way she confesses to Riki, that really just melted my heart. I am not sure what feeling you guys got when reading Kuds' route, I am guessing that the extra scenes in EX, as well as my point of view, lead me to not have a "WTF?" feeling at the end of her scenario, haha. I was actually very immersed in her scenario, seeing her chained up while she delivered that inferiority-complex soliloquy, and wasting away, all alone, put a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes. The whole transporting of the explosive metals through space, I didn't think too much of, I mean this is Key right? So I am expecting a little magic here and there and an explanation later. Besides, at the time, I was really buying into the "I believe" and "We are connected" thing, I was wowed by the whole thing. I am thinking about re-reading her scenario before moving onto Kud Wafter.

Haruka and Mio were my two least favorite routes. My first impression of Haruka, was that I loved her character design, she seemed so... pretty-cute... so... for lack of a better word, girly. I thought about pursuing her route first, but then her loudness got on my nerves and I found her shouting minimally amusing most of the time. Her storyline was indeed very angsty, but I was lacking the feeling that I genuinely cared for this character. The storyline seemed to drag as well, her route seemed to be like 5 times longer than Kurugaya's!

Spoiler for Haruka, Kurugaya:

I didn't really share the feeling why she absolutely needed to know who her real father was either... My Japanese isn't so great, I just thought she wanted to know... out of curiousity, it seems like a similar plothole to Kurugaya's emotions, (was that the same writer?)

I found Mio to be boring during common route, I felt the writing tried too hard to be romantic at the wrong times. Still, when I went for her route, I actually started to warm up to her, at least for awhile. I found her BL jokes to be pretty hilarious. I thought the whole sharing an interest in literature was sweet... romantic. Her dead pan humor was OK. If she did more unexpected things, I think I would have liked her character more. But, her scenario, if I had to sum up her scenario in one word, I would have to say...

Spoiler for Mio:

PSYCHO! I should probably be more forgiving. It is Key, and I should be expecting some super-natural things to happen. I don't have a problem with the whole Imaginary Sister forming out of a shadow thing, I just think the way it was written, it was neither fun, or romantic. I didn't feel it was very mysterious or thrilling either, the whole time I read her scenario after Midori appeared, the only thing that I could think was, "I am reading a very weird story". The story just didn't follow very well.
I also thought this was the general feeling, I saw a joke about an imaginary sister in Seitokai Yakuindomo and somewhere else too.

I don't think I am in the minority in this sort of ranking, I finally read the Little Busters wiki that I had forbidden myself to read for the past 3 years , and over there it says that there was some poll done on a Japanese Website? That had Rin, Kud, and Komari ranking in the top heroines of 2007 in that order. To each his own. I guess that's a good thing that there are scenarios available that everyone can like, or at least have a good choice from...

I don't agree with the poll entirely though, because of Rin. I only started to like Rin after Refrain. Throughout the whole novel Rin always felt like she was just part of the background, I never felt that she did anything out of the ordinary, I would say her personality was kind of one dimensional, almost like Masato. I never really liked the pairing of Riki and Rin, they seemed so indifferent and passionless. She never had a will of her own, and always followed Kyousuke. After reading refrain though, I think I ended up liking her, the same way you would end up liking a main character (even if he/she is a little bland) as long as he is involved in a great storyline. I think that her personality was a result of Maeda needing a character to be used as plot device more than the thought that this character's personality would be interesting. He needed a weak willed character that had a lot of room for growth, in that regard Rin is the perfect character. I also think they did a good job in not letting her character be too cute and fall into that sort of Moe stereotype. With her Masato Tsukkomis, and the way she she gets embarassed like shes been scolded, she makes for a unique character, that is for sure.

I still got the after refrain scenario's to go, but so far I would rank the heroines in order of how much I like their personalities+character designs as such: 1. Kud, 2. Kurugaya 3. Rin 4. Komari 5. Mio 6. Haruka. For the scenarios, I enjoyed the scenarios as such: 1. Refrain 2. Kud 3. Komari 4. Kurugaya 5. Rin(If we count her scenario before Refrain as a separate Scenario) 6. Haruka 7. Mio. All in all, great game , I really love the new Key character designs, those chins on the previous Key Games, I never found very attractive. The storylines were a mixed bag, but I enjoyed the common route tremendously, I thought Refrain and some of the storylines were masterpieces as well. Although, for the individual scenarios it took some time to settle in from focusing on nine characters, to only one. This was my first VN that I read entirely from start to finish, I attempted Air/Kanon/Clannad before, but always lost interest due to poor Japanese. I can say that I enjoyed Little Busters! the VN more than I enjoyed the anime versions of Air/Kanon/Clannad. The descriptions, the writing, introduced me to a new world, it felt so surreal at times.

Update: Now that I've had a long period to let my thoughts stew, I actually have significantly different opinions now. Six months later, the most memorable character from LB is actually Komari, I actually find myself wanting to replay some of the scenes when you are getting to know her before her main route. Her character might be a little predictable but for the most part she was very refreshing and her absolute optimism backed up with her reasoning during conversations made her a very intelligent and original character, I thought. Refrain was very good and very climactic, but after distancing myself from the ending, I actually feel Kud's route with the updated scenes from EX was the most "Gripping" route. I would actually say right now my favorite routes were 1. Kud, 2. Common Route 3. Komari, 4. Refrain, 5. Kurugaya. The common route was such a joy to play. Kud and Komari's route both ended with a big bang, but I felt Komari's route had too many lulls. However, when I think about characters fom LB, definitely I think that Komari was the most interesting one, her theories on happiness and her cheerful personality are the characters traits i remember most out of all of the chracters of LB. Kud's shyness, insecurity, kindness, and awkward weirdness (Especially the weirdness!) are things that I enjoyed most at the time I read LB. Maybe playing Kud Wafter, since the weirdness, which I thought made her so funny and charming in LB, seem to be gone in KW, influenced my change of opinion... As of now I would rank my favorite characters (Judging by most memorable + most enjoyable) 1. Komari, 2. Kud, 3. Kurugaya, 4. Rin, 5. Mio (Beats out Haruka from the BL jokes), 6. Haruka.

Also, for those of you who have trouble reading Japanese, but want to read Little Busters! I suggest you use denshi jisho's website, and play in windowed mode. Just stick the webpage above the text, and use kanji by radicals. Once you get comfortable with the radicals, you'll be able translate fairly quickly, enough to be interested in the text and hold your train of thought. In my own experience after doing enough searching by radicals, I started to understand the meanings for the kanji that get repeated and then the pronunciations should follow. You'll find many of the writers like to use the same words as well. Not as good as studying in earnest, but much more interesting :P, I definitely improved my Japanese more in two months reading the VN over taking two months worth of classes, just because of the sheer volume that I spend reading the VN.

[RegalStar]

If I remember correctly, the writer of Haruka's route were the same one who wrote Kud's.

Spoiler for Haruka route:

Unless that route got changed over the transition over to Ex, Haruka was very much hurt at how Kanata always rides above her, and directed all the sorrow inflicted on her by her extended family as anger at Kanata. She was hoping that by proving that she was born from the other father, she could one-up Kanata on something at least.

[Ceral]

Ahh, that's interesting. Strange. I would think if they were the same writers, I would be able to have emphathized better with Haruka.

Spoiler for Haruka & Kud:

If I think about it, both routes seem to focus on the same subject matter. Family ties, with a bit of romance. If I think about why the route didn't seem to be a big hit with me; Above all, I remember thinking, she always overreacted with her fits. Such as when her parents tried to make conversation with her at the dinner table but always asked the same questions. That brattyness turned me off, moreso than the angst. Come to think of it, I kind of enjoyed whenever a conflict would finally arise during a route :P. So maybe it was the personality moreso than the writing or the scenario.

Originally Posted by RegalStar

Spoiler for Haruka route:

Unless that route got changed over the transition over to Ex, Haruka was very much hurt at how Kanata always rides above her, and directed all the sorrow inflicted on her by her extended family as anger at Kanata. She was hoping that by proving that she was born from the other father, she could one-up Kanata on something at least.

Yea, I remember that she was very caught up on finding something that she was better at than Kanata, such as cooking with eggs. That seemed trivial to me though, that seemed to serve only the purpose of helping her ego out.( I guess the whole despairing about being inferior is another main theme she shares with Kud.) I could understand that she was angry from the abuse and that she would even hold a bit of a grudge, but still, I just couldn't fully agree or cheer her on with the way she reacted to things. I thought it seemed a little overboard to hit and break things. And she seemed to be in a fairly decent place that would allow her to fix the other things at the time we meet her in the game. In the end I thought she came off as a bit of a brat, but with some justification. If I had to make a comparison, I would say that her breaking things was not needed, but justified, in the same way if someone got pushed in a very direct way and then punched the person back for it. Getting into a fight with the other person isn't neccessarily right, but it's justified in a way... I dunno, I just don't agree with that sort of kneejerk reaction. That personality of breaking things when you're angry, I kept thinking that she was a brat, lol. Did most people think she was pretty bratty?

[RegalStar]

Originally Posted by Ceral

Ahh, that's interesting. Strange. I would think if they were the same writers, I would be able to have emphathized better with Haruka.

Spoiler for Haruka & Kud:

If I think about it, both routes seem to focus on the same subject matter. Family ties, with a bit of romance. If I think about why the route didn't seem to be a big hit with me; Above all, I remember thinking, she always overreacted with her fits. Such as when her parents tried to make conversation with her at the dinner table but always asked the same questions. That brattyness turned me off, moreso than the angst. Come to think of it, I kind of enjoyed whenever a conflict would finally arise during a route :P. So maybe it was the personality moreso than the writing or the scenario. Yea, I remember that she was very caught up on finding something that she was better at than Kanata, such as cooking with eggs. That seemed trivial to me though, that seemed to serve only the purpose of helping her ego out.( I guess the whole despairing about being inferior is another main theme she shares with Kud.) I could understand that she was angry from the abuse and that she would even hold a bit of a grudge, but still, I just couldn't fully agree or cheer her on with the way she reacted to things. I thought it seemed a little overboard to hit and break things. And she seemed to be in a fairly decent place that would allow her to fix the other things at the time we meet her in the game. In the end I thought she came off as a bit of a brat, but with some justification. If I had to make a comparison, I would say that her breaking things was not needed, but justified, in the same way if someone got pushed in a very direct way and then punched the person back for it. Getting into a fight with the other person isn't neccessarily right, but it's justified in a way... I dunno, I just don't agree with that sort of kneejerk reaction. That personality of breaking things when you're angry, I kept thinking that she was a brat, lol. Did most people think she was pretty bratty?

Spoiler:

She had a really good freudian excuse, though. She was both physically and mentally abused from birth for being inferior to Kanata by everyone in her family (you can see more of what her youth's like in Kanata's route), and was repeatedly told that her existance serves no purpose - when a child grows up with that impression, it's going to leave a pretty big mental scar. Her actions against Kanata were about proving that she has a place in the world as much as revenge. And then of course, the whole "Saigusa's father broke into a house and almost killed people" news spread across the school, and Haruka believed that Kanata did it to corner her (and cornered she was, considering that her only friends were all in the school). It would take a lot of mental strength to take that kind of thing lying down, something that you really don't realistically expect from someone with a past like Haruka's.

[Newprimus]

Maeda Jun is I believe one of the co-founders of Key and is member of the leadership. He does the best music, AND did the best of all the writing in Key's games. Being incredibly good in one craft is one thing, but this guy is genius for both music and story. Truly remarkable.

[Watanuki-kun]

Hi, I wanted to ask if anybody could make a detailed plot summary on Kud's route, Mio's route, Haruka's route and the Refrain (not in ecstasy, in the original game).
I need these summaries because there is no translation in them in the game and I really want to know all the plots of the games (and of course the Refrain)' so I'll be happy if anyone could help me.
Thank you very much

[Nihokon]

Originally Posted by Watanuki-kun

I need these summaries because there is no translation in them in the game

TLwiki's translation will be finished sooner or later anyway. Why bother spoiling the fun?

[Watanuki-kun]

Hi, I just wanted the plot of these routes because I can't wait for the translation to finish, I just play the game in Japanese and then read the plot of the route that I played so I would understand the plot of the game.

[Watanuki-kun]

Hi,
I finished Komari's route, and now I want to head to the next route which is translated-Kurugaya's route.
I tried for a whole day to capture Kurugaya's route without a success. I even looked for walkthroughs, but they didn't work either. So, I wanted to ask if anyone could help me in capturing Kurugaya's route.

Thank you very much

[Jze0]

To be honest its quite easy to get into Kurugaya's route (or any of the other characters for that matter). Just like with any of the other girls all you have to do is pay attention to her and ignore the rest. If your not sure if any of the chooses lead to meeting Kurugaya, just choose and if she not the first character you meet go back to previous choose and choose again (remember not all chooses go to her).

Now, once your in her route, heres the tricky part. You can't make one bad choose or the game ends right away for you. Look at my previous post in this thread and you should reach the end smoothly.

Originally Posted by Jze0

I ran into that problem too but the object to get into the Kurugaya route is to not let her know what is happening with you. Go back to the last choose you did and chose other option and you'll see what I mean. If it happens again along the route then go back to that previous choose and chose the other again until the end. I hope that helps.

[Watanuki-kun]

Never mind, I tried again and succeeded in getting to her ending, but thank you for your reply

[Matheson]

Originally Posted by Watanuki-kun

Never mind, I tried again and succeeded in getting to her ending, but thank you for your reply

I'm having trouble with her route. If you can, could you please put the decisions for her route starting on the 14th (in a spoiler tag)? That would help me so much!

[Matheson]

Never mind, I got it working.

If anyone wants to know the how to get to the routes for the heroines that have been translated by TLWiki, just PM me and I'll send you a message with the decisions that you should make. This way it will be easy for everyone.

[alpha69]

anyone have a complete save for LB? not EX.
I want to play Kurugaya's route with the true ending, I've already played LB completely using ATLAS so I already know the "secret of the world" so no risk of spoiling, just back then I never knew there was another ending to Kurugaya's route so I didn't play it again after finishing Refrain =D

On another note... God... I can't wait for Mio's route to be translated, it's so close.... 88% D:

[9Fires]

Hi guys
i have two questions about the komari route
(i use the EX ver. + translation patch 3.1).

Spoiler for komari route:

quite at the end of the komari route (Naoe decided to make a book on his own) there somebody wrote the message ''--Don't read from here if you don't wanna be spoiled!--''

What does that mean ??

and the second question

Spoiler for bad end:

how can i get the h-scenes in komari's route ? i played the good end and i suppose that i finish the bad one too. what's my fault ?

and thx for answers

[spawnofthejudge]

Originally Posted by 9Fires

and the second question

Spoiler for bad end:

how can i get the h-scenes in komari's route ? i played the good end and i suppose that i finish the bad one too. what's my fault ?

An effect of the translation patch on the EX version is that it removes all EX content, including H-scenes. Among other issues.

[9Fires]

nooooo

but thx for your reply

is the saya route removed as well ?
is there any chance to fix this ?

Spoiler for bad end:

In my opinion komari's h-scenes don't fit into the bad-end-route, because the bad end was really short (embrace than rooftop>bad end)

Is there another bad end i don't found yet?

[spawnofthejudge]

Originally Posted by 9Fires

nooooo

but thx for your reply

is the saya route removed as well ?
is there any chance to fix this ?

The translators currently plan to do a patch that works for EX (including the new characters' routes) after they have completed the full 100% patch for vanilla LB!. Until they get to it, there is no solution that any of us have found (and shared).