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zabchan · 7 months ago

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Big Moana 2 Spoilers ahead. Beyond the cut is the Samoan to english translation of maui's 2nd song for moana. (And the context it appears in)

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ladies and gents of the moana fandom, thanks to the effort of samoan speaker @yuki685 on youtube, and my buddy @rykierykerman for hooking me up with the text and screenshots

what i'd like to discuss with yall today is not only sharing the translation for this song, but some of the character implication this has for maui, especially when you look at how his OG legends depict him.

LYRICS:

(Maui singing in Samoan):

Aue, aue, le faigata / Aue, aue, how difficult it is

Ua pa'ū fa'anoanoa / Falling into sadness

Aue, aue, fa'ataga ola / Aue, aue, please allow this life to continue

Lenā La'u talosaga / This is my prayer

---

(E manu malo) / May there be blessings

(Opataia Foa'i and Te Vaka singing in Tokelauan)

Tele tele mana e o te vavau (Vavau) / Great, great power of mana

Tau ke tu ke Manumalo / Fight, stand tall and be victorious

Ke Manumalo / Be victorious

---

(Grandma Tala)

Aue, aue, mana e o te vavau / Aue, aue, the power of mana

Tau ke tu ke Manumalo / Fight, stand tall and be victorious

Ke Manumalo / Be victorious

_____

The piece that made me flip my shit when I read it was the confirmation that this song is a PRAYER

when I first heard this song before the movie I assumed it was a funeral rite. a dirge, followed by a choral revival. during the film, when maui and then the ancestors sang it over moana's lifeless body and I had no subtitles to go on, I thought perhaps it was a spell, or maybe a lullaby from Maui's far distant past, then taken up by the ancestors as a comfort to the grieving Maui- then back to the spell theory as Moana awoke to the powerful music and emotion channeled by tala and her crew.

even my first google translate search of the lyrics missed the word prayer, which goes to show that AI translation is no match for native human insight.

Maui's song being a prayer is a friggin big deal.

Maui's stories span the width & breadth of the pacific islands, and each culture arising from those island tells variations on that legend. some emphasize his rebellious side, others his inventiveness, still others his drive, his humor, his ingenuity, his pride. But a common theme in most is that this man, this demigod- he does NOT get along with the majority of his ancestors or the gods. Even when he's not outright malevolent to them, he's tricking them or undermining their effort. He's usually stubbornly self-sufficient, if he gets help from someone divine, its usually because he tricked them into doing it. Maui does not beg, he does not plead. (at least, not with any lasting sincerity). he's a charmer, a schemer.

But here he is, his tattoos stripped away, his hook gone, his beloved Moana growing colder and colder- he's out of tricks. he's out of time, out of power. he's as helpless as the day he was thrown into the ocean to save her. rock bottom, figuratively and literally.

he does the absolute last thing he can, born of pure desperation. pure grief, pure need. He prays.

he prays not expecting an answer. he prays, knowing that the gods and all his family would relish the chance to tell him to fuck all the way off. he prays, even if to no one but moana's lifeless body.

i often joke that maui is bad at feelings. but really what i mean is that maui is bad at regulating his feelings. he represses them as hard as he can, denies them, wraps them in humor and when that fails he straight up tries to out run them. its a maladaptive coping skill he's had to pick up over his immortal 3000 year lifespan because otherwise, he'd be wallowing in endless grief as friend after friend either dies or lives long enough to become his antagonist. boy has some serious trauma built up and no good examples of how to handle it in a healthy way.

until moana.

moana provided an example of how to be vulnerable without being weak. a safe space where he could share his heart and be met with understanding and validation. we see him mature, even fractionally, and in the sequel he's not nearly so closed off. he worries openly about moana, admits his concerns about the mission, even returns moana's favor from the first film and gives her a sincere, supportive pep talk.

but all his progress in processing his emotions seems to backfire in this moment. the first time he'd opened his heart to a fragile mortal friend and here he is, exactly as he feared, devastated at her passing. He had invested real time and care and attachment into this human and he's utterly shattered that its all coming to an end so fast. that he'll never experience her voice or her smile or her wit ever again.

she's precious to him. he cant bear to lose her. his sadness in more crushing than the ocean he's surrounded by, denser than the rock he kneels upon. even if he got his powers back, even if he pulled up a million islands, if Moana isn't there to land on them...there's no point.

less than 10 minutes ago he was ready to die for her.

3 minutes ago in movie time, maui faced his own mortality. powers stripped bare, down to his last ounce of strength, frying in impossible lightning heat, he kept struggling. the first look he gives moana is fear, raw and unfamiliar on that handsome face. but in this penultimate moment, his eyes meet moana's. his grimace gentles, eyebrows lift, gaze softens into a regretful, heart melting smile. he finds small comfort in seeing moana for one last time, seeing her unhurt, hearing her call his name. the rope slips from his grip, and somewhere in the milliseconds between lightning flashes, he relaxes, relief skitters across his features. perhaps he thinks "ahh, at least she's ok." "at least she'll outlive me". perhaps he has a moment of acceptance for his fate, knowing she's proud of him, knowing he did his very best. maybe he thinks ,"this way ill be sure to meet her again, in the afterlife. its for the best."

or maybe, just maybe, he thinks

"see you out there, moana."

but now, 3 minutes later, its once again the worst case scenario. any relief he had in that last smile at her is obliterated in the wake of his grief. its once again the worst case scenario. he's not thinking now of the curse being broken or his hook or his tattoos. a world that she's not in, whether he be human or demigod, is not a world he can stand to exist in. he cant do this without her. he needs her.

so he digs deep inside himself, through the pain or losing her, through his own family trauma and antagonism towards authority, and pride, to beg, on his knees for help from a higher power. its unclear to us if he's intending to pray to the gods or to his own ancestors or both or neither. to anyone who can help. to anyone who will listen.

and its neither of those sources who answer, at least, not as directly as matai vasa or tala do. its moana's kin, her loved ones, (eventually including the ocean), who answer from the great beyond. he looks them in the eyes and they weep with him. they sing power over moana and the impossible happens.

(salacious handholding occurs)

the stars are put back in maui's eyes, the sun back into his sky.

does this mean...

yes.

his tattoos are still cooler than hers.

even when theyre mad at him. (same, little guy, same.)

bruh.

now kiss

#moana #maui #moana 2 #moana 2 spoilers #hooked wayfinder #moaui #maumoa #moana x maui #maui x moana #essay #shipping essay #cultural context #big honkin spoilers

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month ago

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AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers

HEY SEATTLE! I'm appearing at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival NEXT SATURDAY (May 31) with the folks from NPR's On The Media!

On a recent This Machine Kills episode, guest Hagen Blix described the ultimate form of "AI therapy" with a "human in the loop":

https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/405-ai-is-the-demon-god-of-capital-ft-hagen-blix

One actual therapist is just having ten chat GPT windows open where they just like have five seconds to interrupt the chatGPT. They have to scan them all and see if it says something really inappropriate. That's your job, to stop it.

Blix admits that's not where therapy is at…yet, but he references Laura Preston's 2023 N Plus One essay, "HUMAN_FALLBACK," which describes her as a backstop to a real-estate "virtual assistant," that masqueraded as a human handling the queries that confused it, in a bid to keep the customers from figuring out that they were engaging with a chatbot:

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/essays/human_fallback/

This is what makes investors and bosses slobber so hard for AI – a "productivity" boost that arises from taking away the bargaining power of workers so that they can be made to labor under worse conditions for less money. The efficiency gains of automation aren't just about using fewer workers to achieve the same output – it's about the fact that the workers you fire in this process can be used as a threat against the remaining workers: "Do your job and shut up or I'll fire you and give your job to one of your former colleagues who's now on the breadline."

This has been at the heart of labor fights over automation since the Industrial Revolution, when skilled textile workers took up the Luddite cause because their bosses wanted to fire them and replace them with child workers snatched from Napoleonic War orphanages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

Textile automation wasn't just about producing more cloth – it was about producing cheaper, worse cloth. The new machines were so easy a child could use them, because that's who was using them – kidnapped war orphans. The adult textile workers the machines displaced weren't afraid of technology. Far from it! Weavers used the most advanced machinery of the day, and apprenticed for seven years to learn how to operate it. Luddites had the equivalent of a Masters in Engineering from MIT.

Weavers' guilds presented two problems for their bosses: first, they had enormous power, thanks to the extensive training required to operate their looms; and second, they used that power to regulate the quality of the goods they made. Even before the Industrial Revolution, weavers could have produced more cloth at lower prices by skimping on quality, but they refused, out of principle, because their work mattered to them.

Now, of course weavers also appreciated the value of their products, and understood that innovations that would allow them to increase their productivity and make more fabric at lower prices would be good for the world. They weren't snobs who thought that only the wealthy should go clothed. Weavers had continuously adopted numerous innovations, each of which increased the productivity and the quality of their wares.

Long before the Luddite uprising, weavers had petitioned factory owners and Parliament under the laws that guaranteed the guilds the right to oversee textile automation to ensure that it didn't come at the price of worker power or the quality of the textiles the machines produced. But the factory owners and their investors had captured Parliament, which ignored its own laws and did nothing as the "dark, Satanic mills" proliferated. Luddites only turned to property destruction after the system failed them.

Now, it's true that eventually, the machines improved and the fabric they turned out matched and exceeded the quality of the fabric that preceded the Industrial Revolution. But there's nothing about the way the Industrial Revolution unfolded – increasing the power of capital to pay workers less and treat them worse while flooding the market with inferior products – that was necessary or beneficial to that progress. Every other innovation in textile production up until that time had been undertaken with the cooperation of the guilds, who'd ensured that "progress" meant better lives for workers, better products for consumers, and lower prices. If the Luddites' demands for co-determination in the Industrial Revolution had been met, we might have gotten to the same world of superior products at lower costs, but without the immiseration of generations of workers, mass killings to suppress worker uprisings, and decades of defective products being foisted on the public.

So there are two stories about automation and labor: in the dominant narrative, workers are afraid of the automation that delivers benefits to all of us, stand in the way of progress, and get steamrollered for their own good, as well as ours. In the other narrative, workers are glad to have boring and dangerous parts of their work automated away and happy to produce more high-quality goods and services, and stand ready to assess and plan the rollout of new tools, and when workers object to automation, it's because they see automation being used to crush them and worsen the outputs they care about, at the expense of the customers they care for.

In modern automation/labor theory, this debate is framed in terms of "centaurs" (humans who are assisted by technology) and "reverse-centaurs" (humans who are conscripted to assist technology):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

There are plenty of workers who are excited at the thought of using AI tools to relieve them of some drudgework. To the extent that these workers have power over their bosses and their working conditions, that excitement might well be justified. I hear a lot from programmers who work on their own projects about how nice it is to have a kind of hypertrophied macro system that can generate and tweak little automated tools on the fly so the humans can focus on the real, chewy challenges. Those workers are the centaurs, and it's no wonder that they're excited about improved tooling.

But the reverse-centaur version is a lot darker. The reverse-centaur coder is an assistant to the AI, charged with being a "human in the loop" who reviews the material that the AI produces. This is a pretty terrible job to have.

For starters, the kinds of mistakes that AI coders make are the hardest mistakes for human reviewers to catch. That's because LLMs are statistical prediction machines, spicy autocomplete that works by ingesting and analyzing a vast corpus of written materials and then producing outputs that represent a series of plausible guesses about which words should follow one another. To the extent that the reality the AI is participating in is statistically smooth and predictable, AI can often make eerily good guesses at words that turn into sentences or code that slot well into that reality.

But where reality is lumpy and irregular, AI stumbles. AI is intrinsically conservative. As a statistically informed guessing program, it wants the future to be like the past:

https://reallifemag.com/the-apophenic-machine/

This means that AI coders stumble wherever the world contains rough patches and snags. Take "slopsquatting." For the most part, software libraries follow regular naming conventions. For example, there might be a series of text-handling libraries with names like "text.parsing.docx," "text.parsing.xml," and "text.parsing.markdown." But for some reason – maybe two different projects were merged, or maybe someone was just inattentive – there's also a library called "text.txt.parsing" (instead of "text.parsing.txt").

AI coders are doing inference based on statistical analysis, and anyone inferring what the .txt parsing library is called would guess, based on the other libraries, that it was "text.parsing.txt." And that's what the AI guesses, and so it tries to import that library to its software projects.

This creates a new security vulnerability, "slopsquatting," in which a malicious actor creates a library with the expected name, which replicates the functionality of the real library, but also contains malicious code:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/12/ai_code_suggestions_sabotage_supply_chain/

Note that slopsquatting errors are extremely hard to spot. As is typical with AI coding errors, these are errors that are based on continuing a historical pattern, which is the sort of thing our own brains do all the time (think of trying to go up a step that isn't there after climbing to the top of a staircase). Notably, these are very different from the errors that a beginning programmer whose work is being reviewed by a more senior coder might make. These are the very hardest errors for humans to spot, and these are the errors that AIs make the most, and they do so at machine speed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

To be a human in the loop for an AI coder, a programmer must engage in sustained, careful, line-by-line and command-by-command scrutiny of the code. This is the hardest kind of code to review, and maintaining robotic vigilance over long periods at high speeds is something humans are very bad at. Indeed, it's the kind of task we try very hard to automate, since machines are much better at being machineline than humans are. This is the essence of reverse-centaurism: when a human is expected to act like a machine in order to help the machine do something it can't do.

Humans routinely fail at spotting these errors, unsurprisingly. If the purpose of automation is to make superior goods at lower prices, then this would be a real concern, since a reverse-centaur coding arrangement is bound to produce code with lurking, pernicious, especially hard-to-spot bugs that present serious risks to users. But if the purpose of automation is to discipline labor – to force coders to accept worse conditions and pay – irrespective of the impact on quality, then AI is the perfect tool for the job. The point of the human isn't to catch the AI's errors so much as it is to catch the blame for the AI's errors – to be what Madeleine Clare Elish calls a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

As has been the case since the Industrial Revolution, the project of automation isn't just about increasing productivity, it's about weakening labor power as a prelude to lowering quality. Take what's happened to the news industry, where mass layoffs are being offset by AI tools. At Hearst's King Features Syndicates, a single writer was charged with producing over 30 summer guides, the entire package:

https://www.404media.co/viral-ai-generated-summer-guide-printed-by-chicago-sun-times-was-made-by-magazine-giant-hearst/

That is an impossible task, which is why the writer turned to AI to do his homework, and then, infamously, published a "summer reading guide" that was full of nonexistent books that were hallucinated by a chatbot:

https://www.404media.co/chicago-sun-times-prints-ai-generated-summer-reading-list-with-books-that-dont-exist/

Most people reacted to this story as a consumer issue: they were outraged that the world was having a defective product foisted upon it. But the consumer issue here is downstream from the labor issue: when the writers at King Features Syndicate are turned into reverse-centaurs, they will inevitably produce defective outputs. The point of the worker – the "human in the loop" – isn't to supervise the AI, it's to take the blame for the AI. That's just what happened, as this poor schmuck absorbed an internet-sized rasher of shit flung his way by outraged social media users. After all, it was his byline on the story, not the chatbot's. He's the moral crumple-zone.

The implication of this is that consumers and workers are class allies in the automation wars. The point of using automation to weaken labor isn't just cheaper products – it's cheaper, defective products, inflicted on the unsuspecting and defenseless public who are no longer protected by workers' professionalism and pride in their jobs.

That's what's going on at Duolingo, where CEO Luis von Ahn created a firestorm by announcing mass firings of human language instructors, who would be replaced by AI. The "AI first" announcement pissed off Duolingo's workers, of course, but what caught von Ahn off-guard was how much this pissed off Duolingo's users:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/25/0347239/duolingo-faces-massive-social-media-backlash-after-ai-first-comments

But of course, this makes perfect sense. After all, language-learners are literally incapable of spotting errors in the AI instruction they receive. If you spoke the language well enough to spot the AI's mistakes, you wouldn't need Duolingo! I don't doubt that there are countless ways in which AIs could benefit both language learners and the Duolingo workers who develop instructional materials, but for that to happen, workers' and learners' needs will have to be the focus of AI integration. Centaurs could produce great language learning materials with AI – but reverse-centaurs can only produce slop.

Unsurprisingly, many of the most successful AI products are "bossware" tools that let employers monitor and discipline workers who've been reverse-centaurized. Both blue-collar and white-collar workplaces have filled up with "electronic whips" that monitor and evaluate performance:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/#virtual-whips

AI can give bosses "dashboards" that tell them which Amazon delivery drivers operate their vehicles with their mouths open (Amazon doesn't let its drivers sing on the job). Meanwhile, a German company called Celonis will sell your boss a kind of AI phrenology tool that assesses your "emotional quality" by spying on you while you work:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/processmining-algomanage

Tech firms were among the first and most aggressive adopters of AI-based electronic whips. But these whips weren't used on coders – they were reserved for tech's vast blue-collar and contractor workforce: clickworkers, gig workers, warehouse workers, AI data-labelers and delivery drivers.

Tech bosses tormented these workers but pampered their coders. That wasn't out of any sentimental attachment to tech workers. Rather, tech bosses were afraid of tech workers, because tech workers possess a rare set of skills that can be harnessed by tech firms to produce gigantic returns. Tech workers have historically been princes of labor, able to command high salaries and deferential treatment from their bosses (think of the amazing tech "campus" perks), because their scarcity gave them power.

It's easy to predict how tech bosses would treat tech workers if they could get away with it – just look how they treat workers they aren't afraid of. Just like the textile mill owners of the Industrial Revolution, the thing that excites tech bosses about AI is the possibility of cutting off a group of powerful workers at the knees. After all, it took more than a century for strong labor unions to match the power that the pre-Industrial Revolution guilds had. If AI can crush the power of tech workers, it might buy tech bosses a century of free rein to shift value from their workforce to their investors, while also doing away with pesky Tron-pilled workers who believe they have a moral obligation to "fight for the user."

William Gibson famously wrote, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." The workers that tech bosses don't fear are living in the future of the workers that tech bosses can't easily replace.

This week, the New York Times's veteran Amazon labor report Noam Scheiber published a deeply reported piece about the experience of coders at Amazon in the age of AI:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/business/amazon-ai-coders.html

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is palpably horny for AI coders, evidenced by investor memos boasting of AI's returns in "productivity and cost avoidance" and pronouncements about AI saving "the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years":

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andy-jassy-8b1615_one-of-the-most-tedious-but-critical-tasks-activity-7232374162185461760-AdSz/

Amazon is among the most notorious abusers of blue-collar labor, the workplace where everyone who doesn't have a bullshit laptop job is expected to piss in a bottle and spend an unpaid hour before and after work going through a bag- and body-search. Amazon's blue-collar workers are under continuous, totalizing, judging AI scrutiny that scores them based on whether their eyeballs are correctly oriented, whether they take too long to pick up an object, whether they pee too often. Amazon warehouse workers are injured at three times national average. Amazon AIs scan social media for disgruntled workers talking about unions, and Amazon has another AI tool that predicts which shops and departments are most likely to want to unionize.

Scheiber's piece describes what it's like to be an Amazon tech worker who's getting the reverse-centaur treatment that has heretofore been reserved for warehouse workers and drivers. They describe "speedups" in which they are moved from writing code to reviewing AI code, their jobs transformed from solving chewy intellectual puzzles to racing to spot hard-to-find AI coding errors as a clock ticks down. Amazon bosses haven't ordered their tech workers to use AI, just raised their quotas to a level that can't be attained without getting an AI to do most of the work – just like the Chicago Sun-Times writer who was expected to write all 30 articles in the summer guide package on his own. No one made him use AI, but he wasn't going to produce 30 articles on deadline without a chatbot.

Amazon insists that it is treating AI as an assistant for its coders, but the actual working conditions make it clear that this is a reverse-centaur transformation. Scheiber discusses a dissident internal group at Amazon called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, who link the company's use of AI to its carbon footprint. Beyond those climate concerns, these workers are treating AI as a labor issue.

Amazon's coders have been making tentative gestures of solidarity towards its blue-collar workforce since the pandemic broke out, walking out in support of striking warehouse workers (and getting fired for doing so):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/14/abolish-silicon-valley/#hang-together-hang-separately

But those firings haven't deterred Amazon's tech workers from making common cause with their comrades on the shop floor:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/deastroturfing/#real-power

When techies describe their experience of AI, it sometimes sounds like they're describing two completely different realities – and that's because they are. For workers with power and control, automation turns them into centaurs, who get to use AI tools to improve their work-lives. For workers whose power is waning, AI is a tool for reverse-centaurism, an electronic whip that pushes them to work at superhuman speeds. And when they fail, these workers become "moral crumple zones," absorbing the blame for the defective products their bosses pushed out in order to goose profits.

As ever, what a technology does pales in comparison to who it does it for and who it does it to.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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nostalgebraist · 3 months ago

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Anthropic's stated "AI timelines" seem wildly aggressive to me.

As far as I can tell, they are now saying that by 2028 – and possibly even by 2027, or late 2026 – something they call "powerful AI" will exist.

And by "powerful AI," they mean... this (source, emphasis mine):

In terms of pure intelligence, it is smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields – biology, programming, math, engineering, writing, etc. This means it can prove unsolved mathematical theorems, write extremely good novels, write difficult codebases from scratch, etc. In addition to just being a “smart thing you talk to��, it has all the “interfaces” available to a human working virtually, including text, audio, video, mouse and keyboard control, and internet access. It can engage in any actions, communications, or remote operations enabled by this interface, including taking actions on the internet, taking or giving directions to humans, ordering materials, directing experiments, watching videos, making videos, and so on. It does all of these tasks with, again, a skill exceeding that of the most capable humans in the world. It does not just passively answer questions; instead, it can be given tasks that take hours, days, or weeks to complete, and then goes off and does those tasks autonomously, in the way a smart employee would, asking for clarification as necessary. It does not have a physical embodiment (other than living on a computer screen), but it can control existing physical tools, robots, or laboratory equipment through a computer; in theory it could even design robots or equipment for itself to use. The resources used to train the model can be repurposed to run millions of instances of it (this matches projected cluster sizes by ~2027), and the model can absorb information and generate actions at roughly 10x-100x human speed. It may however be limited by the response time of the physical world or of software it interacts with. Each of these million copies can act independently on unrelated tasks, or if needed can all work together in the same way humans would collaborate, perhaps with different subpopulations fine-tuned to be especially good at particular tasks.

In the post I'm quoting, Amodei is coy about the timeline for this stuff, saying only that

I think it could come as early as 2026, though there are also ways it could take much longer. But for the purposes of this essay, I’d like to put these issues aside [...]

However, other official communications from Anthropic have been more specific. Most notable is their recent OSTP submission, which states (emphasis in original):

Based on current research trajectories, we anticipate that powerful AI systems could emerge as soon as late 2026 or 2027 [...] Powerful AI technology will be built during this Administration. [i.e. the current Trump administration -nost]

See also here, where Jack Clark says (my emphasis):

People underrate how significant and fast-moving AI progress is. We have this notion that in late 2026, or early 2027, powerful AI systems will be built that will have intellectual capabilities that match or exceed Nobel Prize winners. They’ll have the ability to navigate all of the interfaces… [Clark goes on, mentioning some of the other tenets of "powerful AI" as in other Anthropic communications -nost]

----

To be clear, extremely short timelines like these are not unique to Anthropic.

Miles Brundage (ex-OpenAI) says something similar, albeit less specific, in this post. And Daniel Kokotajlo (also ex-OpenAI) has held views like this for a long time now.

Even Sam Altman himself has said similar things (though in much, much vaguer terms, both on the content of the deliverable and the timeline).

Still, Anthropic's statements are unique in being

official positions of the company

extremely specific and ambitious about the details

extremely aggressive about the timing, even by the standards of "short timelines" AI prognosticators in the same social cluster

Re: ambition, note that the definition of "powerful AI" seems almost the opposite of what you'd come up with if you were trying to make a confident forecast of something.

Often people will talk about "AI capable of transforming the world economy" or something more like that, leaving room for the AI in question to do that in one of several ways, or to do so while still failing at some important things.

But instead, Anthropic's definition is a big conjunctive list of "it'll be able to do this and that and this other thing and...", and each individual capability is defined in the most aggressive possible way, too! Not just "good enough at science to be extremely useful for scientists," but "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner," across "most relevant fields" (whatever that means). And not just good at science but also able to "write extremely good novels" (note that we have a long way to go on that front, and I get the feeling that people at AI labs don't appreciate the extent of the gap [cf]). Not only can it use a computer interface, it can use every computer interface; not only can it use them competently, but it can do so better than the best humans in the world. And all of that is in the first two paragraphs – there's four more paragraphs I haven't even touched in this little summary!

Re: timing, they have even shorter timelines than Kokotajlo these days, which is remarkable since he's historically been considered "the guy with the really short timelines." (See here where Kokotajlo states a median prediction of 2028 for "AGI," by which he means something less impressive than "powerful AI"; he expects something close to the "powerful AI" vision ["ASI"] ~1 year or so after "AGI" arrives.)

----

I, uh, really do not think this is going to happen in "late 2026 or 2027."

Or even by the end of this presidential administration, for that matter.

I can imagine it happening within my lifetime – which is wild and scary and marvelous. But in 1.5 years?!

The confusing thing is, I am very familiar with the kinds of arguments that "short timelines" people make, and I still find the Anthropic's timelines hard to fathom.

Above, I mentioned that Anthropic has shorter timelines than Daniel Kokotajlo, who "merely" expects the same sort of thing in 2029 or so. This probably seems like hairsplitting – from the perspective of your average person not in these circles, both of these predictions look basically identical, "absurdly good godlike sci-fi AI coming absurdly soon." What difference does an extra year or two make, right?

But it's salient to me, because I've been reading Kokotajlo for years now, and I feel like I basically get understand his case. And people, including me, tend to push back on him in the "no, that's too soon" direction. I've read many many blog posts and discussions over the years about this sort of thing, I feel like I should have a handle on what the short-timelines case is.

But even if you accept all the arguments evinced over the years by Daniel "Short Timelines" Kokotajlo, even if you grant all the premises he assumes and some people don't – that still doesn't get you all the way to the Anthropic timeline!

To give a very brief, very inadequate summary, the standard "short timelines argument" right now is like:

Over the next few years we will see a "growth spurt" in the amount of computing power ("compute") used for the largest LLM training runs. This factor of production has been largely stagnant since GPT-4 in 2023, for various reasons, but new clusters are getting built and the metaphorical car will get moving again soon. (See here)

By convention, each "GPT number" uses ~100x as much training compute as the last one. GPT-3 used ~100x as much as GPT-2, and GPT-4 used ~100x as much as GPT-3 (i.e. ~10,000x as much as GPT-2).

We are just now starting to see "~10x GPT-4 compute" models (like Grok 3 and GPT-4.5). In the next few years we will get to "~100x GPT-4 compute" models, and by 2030 will will reach ~10,000x GPT-4 compute.

If you think intuitively about "how much GPT-4 improved upon GPT-3 (100x less) or GPT-2 (10,000x less)," you can maybe convince yourself that these near-future models will be super-smart in ways that are difficult to precisely state/imagine from our vantage point. (GPT-4 was way smarter than GPT-2; it's hard to know what "projecting that forward" would mean, concretely, but it sure does sound like something pretty special)

Meanwhile, all kinds of (arguably) complementary research is going on, like allowing models to "think" for longer amounts of time, giving them GUI interfaces, etc.

All that being said, there's still a big intuitive gap between "ChatGPT, but it's much smarter under the hood" and anything like "powerful AI." But...

...the LLMs are getting good enough that they can write pretty good code, and they're getting better over time. And depending on how you interpret the evidence, you may be able to convince yourself that they're also swiftly getting better at other tasks involved in AI development, like "research engineering." So maybe you don't need to get all the way yourself, you just need to build an AI that's a good enough AI developer that it improves your AIs faster than you can, and then those AIs are even better developers, etc. etc. (People in this social cluster are really keen on the importance of exponential growth, which is generally a good trait to have but IMO it shades into "we need to kick off exponential growth and it'll somehow do the rest because it's all-powerful" in this case.)

And like, I have various disagreements with this picture.

For one thing, the "10x" models we're getting now don't seem especially impressive – there has been a lot of debate over this of course, but reportedly these models were disappointing to their own developers, who expected scaling to work wonders (using the kind of intuitive reasoning mentioned above) and got less than they hoped for.

And (in light of that) I think it's double-counting to talk about the wonders of scaling and then talk about reasoning, computer GUI use, etc. as complementary accelerating factors – those things are just table stakes at this point, the models are already maxing out the tasks you had defined previously, you've gotta give them something new to do or else they'll just sit there wasting GPUs when a smaller model would have sufficed.

And I think we're already at a point where nuances of UX and "character writing" and so forth are more of a limiting factor than intelligence. It's not a lack of "intelligence" that gives us superficially dazzling but vapid "eyeball kick" prose, or voice assistants that are deeply uncomfortable to actually talk to, or (I claim) "AI agents" that get stuck in loops and confuse themselves, or any of that.

We are still stuck in the "Helpful, Harmless, Honest Assistant" chatbot paradigm – no one has seriously broke with it since that Anthropic introduced it in a paper in 2021 – and now that paradigm is showing its limits. ("Reasoning" was strapped onto this paradigm in a simple and fairly awkward way, the new "reasoning" models are still chatbots like this, no one is actually doing anything else.) And instead of "okay, let's invent something better," the plan seems to be "let's just scale up these assistant chatbots and try to get them to self-improve, and they'll figure it out." I won't try to explain why in this post (IYI I kind of tried to here) but I really doubt these helpful/harmless guys can bootstrap their way into winning all the Nobel Prizes.

----

All that stuff I just said – that's where I differ from the usual "short timelines" people, from Kokotajlo and co.

But OK, let's say that for the sake of argument, I'm wrong and they're right. It still seems like a pretty tough squeeze to get to "powerful AI" on time, doesn't it?

In the OSTP submission, Anthropic presents their latest release as evidence of their authority to speak on the topic:

In February 2025, we released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which is by many performance benchmarks the most powerful and capable commercially-available AI system in the world.

I've used Claude 3.7 Sonnet quite a bit. It is indeed really good, by the standards of these sorts of things!

But it is, of course, very very far from "powerful AI." So like, what is the fine-grained timeline even supposed to look like? When do the many, many milestones get crossed? If they're going to have "powerful AI" in early 2027, where exactly are they in mid-2026? At end-of-year 2025?

If I assume that absolutely everything goes splendidly well with no unexpected obstacles – and remember, we are talking about automating all human intellectual labor and all tasks done by humans on computers, but sure, whatever – then maybe we get the really impressive next-gen models later this year or early next year... and maybe they're suddenly good at all the stuff that has been tough for LLMs thus far (the "10x" models already released show little sign of this but sure, whatever)... and then we finally get into the self-improvement loop in earnest, and then... what?

They figure out to squeeze even more performance out of the GPUs? They think of really smart experiments to run on the cluster? Where are they going to get all the missing information about how to do every single job on earth, the tacit knowledge, the stuff that's not in any web scrape anywhere but locked up in human minds and inaccessible private data stores? Is an experiment designed by a helpful-chatbot AI going to finally crack the problem of giving chatbots the taste to "write extremely good novels," when that taste is precisely what "helpful-chatbot AIs" lack?

I guess the boring answer is that this is all just hype – tech CEO acts like tech CEO, news at 11. (But I don't feel like that can be the full story here, somehow.)

And the scary answer is that there's some secret Anthropic private info that makes this all more plausible. (But I doubt that too – cf. Brundage's claim that there are no more secrets like that now, the short-timelines cards are all on the table.)

It just does not make sense to me. And (as you can probably tell) I find it very frustrating that these guys are out there talking about how human thought will basically be obsolete in a few years, and pontificating about how to find new sources of meaning in life and stuff, without actually laying out an argument that their vision – which would be the common concern of all of us, if it were indeed on the horizon – is actually likely to occur on the timescale they propose.

It would be less frustrating if I were being asked to simply take it on faith, or explicitly on the basis of corporate secret knowledge. But no, the claim is not that, it's something more like "now, now, I know this must sound far-fetched to the layman, but if you really understand 'scaling laws' and 'exponential growth,' and you appreciate the way that pretraining will be scaled up soon, then it's simply obvious that –"

No! Fuck that! I've read the papers you're talking about, I know all the arguments you're handwaving-in-the-direction-of! It still doesn't add up!

#ai tag #no matter how things go i'm sure this will be fun to revisit in 2 years...

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remotejobsearchtips · 1 month ago

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Remote Jobs: The Remote Job Search Hack You’ve Never Heard Of

Remote Job Search Hacks: Ever since the pandemic, remote work has shifted from a niche perk to a global standard. Millions of professionals have either transitioned to working from home or started actively searching for remote opportunities. But here's the truth: finding a legitimate remote job isn't always easy. With endless applications, no responses, and intense competition, the process can quickly become overwhelming. So, is there a smarter and faster way to land a remote role?

In this article, we're sharing a powerful remote job search hack that most people have never heard of, and it's changing the game for job seekers around the world.

Get Hired Remotely Without Even Applying

A Reddit user recently shared a unique strategy that helped them receive multiple remote job offers, and it quickly gained traction across the platform. Instead of applying to individual job listings one by one, they sent their resume directly to hundreds of recruitment agencies and headhunting firms around the world. The idea was simple: let the recruiters come to you.

Soon after, recruiters began reaching out with roles that matched the user's skills and job title. By the end of the process, they had received several remote job offers without going through the usual grind of endless applications. After the post gained popularity, many others tried the same method and reported similar results over time. You can check the full Reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemoteJobseekers/comments/1fdpeg2/how_i_landed_multiple_remote_job_offers_my_remote/

When using this strategy of sending your resume to recruitment firms, you have two options: do it manually or use an automated system. Some people prefer the manual approach, while others take advantage of the Rabbit Resume Builder's Boost feature, which automatically sends your resume to over 300 recruitment agencies with just one click. This feature makes it easy for recruiters to find and contact you quickly, helping you get your resume in front of the right people faster, so you can start receiving offers sooner.

That said, if you choose to send your resume manually, we strongly recommend ensuring it’s ATS-friendly. Automated systems will scan your resume before it reaches a recruiter’s database. Without this, your resume may not make it past the initial screening, and you could miss out on valuable opportunities.

If you’re using RabbitResume to create your resume, you won’t have to worry about ATS compatibility. That’s because not only will you be using ATS-friendly resume templates, but the platform also includes an ATS-Hack feature. This feature scans sections of your resume, like skills, work experience, and job titles, and, with the help of AI, generates relevant keywords. These keywords are then added invisibly to your resume. This ensures that your resume ranks higher in ATS scans, increasing your chances of being noticed by recruiters.

By embracing this innovative approach, you can streamline your remote job search, enhance your visibility, and accelerate your journey to landing the perfect remote role.

#Remote Jobs #Remote Job Search Hack #Job Search Hack

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riflesniper · 6 months ago

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spent enough time cooking up this guy behind the scenes and now i feel like i can toss him out here now. this big boy is aegis :3 a sapient mech that ran from his makers to a resistance militia, who plopped a gay little pilot (green) into his hands. more details below the cut

patreon | commissions

his storyline takes place a few centuries in the future, where a small-scale war has kicked up between a newly socialist canada and a dystopian oligarchical US. aegis comes from a particularly powerful corporation called valkyrie machines, who definitely pioneered sapient AI tech some hundred years prior and definitely didn't just steal the tech from somewhere else before stealthily bribing the actual inventors into a silence or death deal

on the other side of the border is the canadian shield alliance, though most people just call it the alliance or the shield. they've played a lot of roles since their inception that was also some hundred years prior, notably aid programs, disaster assistance, fighting for land back/secure human rights/immigrant protections, scaring corporations into NOT being shitty, better economic policies, etc.

unfortunately the US did NOT like any of that. when canada's economic system is officially changed from mixed to socialist, the oligarchs of the states kick off a race to try and see who can annex it the fastest. fortunately, the shield doesn't give them an inch.

aegis is one of valkyrie's newer warden models; nimble, fleet-footed mechs with sapient AI cores to enhance battle prowess. valkyrie is Very strict about what their mechs and pilots do and don't know, and are not above both executing pilots who try to rebel and wiping AIs whose thoughts stray too far. aegis and his last pilot were able to keep sneaky about their plans to escape, but said pilot was disposed of before it could be carried out, aegis made a break for it on his own, racing from the montana base he was stationed at to the albertan border.

despite broadcasting a plea for the shield to find him, he didn't get out unharmed; valkyrie's air fighters were eventually able to catch up to him before he scaled the wall. they plucked at him for a couple hundred kliks until the shield managed to find him near a small town. a skirmish broke out to claim him, ending with one shield mech being non-fatally damaged and all of the valkyrie fighters being shot down.

aegis, battered from the run, was hoisted to a shield base near calgary for major repairs before being shipped to the edmonton for external repairs and retrofitting. it's here that he's assigned a new pilot; green reinhart, a skilled, kind man with a underlying justice-driven rage to match the heart on his sleeve. a man who would not be killed so easily, not with the transhuman tech that's available. it's here that aegis would actually get his name, and so much more that he never would have had back in the states.

the world was opening up to him now. his pilot wasn't the only one talking to him like he was a person anymore. green gets him a proxy frame to explore with. the two of them spend hours together, on and off the field; perhaps this is the best thing that's could've happened for either of them.

(first image is when they've already been partners for a long while; green's organic body does eventually get killed in a battle, and his transhuman body is activated. im still kinda fleshing out the details, unsure if i'll get much deeper into the socio-political-economic shitshow behind the worldbuilding, since i originally made this guy to just have a gay mech/pilot thing w/ green, but its kinda feeding off the current shitshow of the US wanting to annex canada in this day and age. i gotta focus more of that energy on makin characters WAUGH

if anyones got suggestions for like. videos or audiobooks that Could help add onto the worldbuilding though, im all ears. just keep in mind that i struggle with text only stuff, so audiovisual is heavily preferred)

#sprite.art #ocs #green reinhart #aegis #robot art #robot artist #robot #robots #digital artist #digital art #artists on tumblr #trans artist #mecha oc #mech art #mecha #mouthless

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fyeahaudiodrama · 27 days ago

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Wolf 359 Characters as D&D Classes

Wolf-359 Characters as D&D Classes

Eiffel: College of Lore Bard; easy enough to see this one - Eiffel’s strength is in his communication skills, both from a technological standpoint and his ability to Never Stop Talking; bards are also known for being solid in pretty much every skill, playing into his ability to back the play of his much more specialized companions; lore bards, in addition to specializing in a broad catalogue of stories (helloooo encyclopedic star wars knowledge), are noted as being likely to tell it like it is, even to people ranking far above them, and Eiffel rarely minces words when he’s got a complaint to air; the idea of Eiffel with cutting words, diminishing everyone else's usefulness with endless jabber, also feels apt

(rest under the line for Long Post)

Minkowski: Oath of Glory Paladin; the paladiniest pal to ever din; rigid in her adherence to her sworn duty and willing to do whatever it takes to see that through to the end; i originally considered giving her oath of the crown, as that might relate to loyalty to the rules as set by Pryce & Carter, but i realized this would likely cause her to go oathbreaker at some point as her faith in that waned, so i decided on glory instead, which focuses more on her bonds with her immediate circle and desire to see them become the best versions of themselves

Hilbert: Circle of the Moon Druid; okay, hear me out - Hilbert may not come across as too mystic/nature-focused, but druids are known for being both solitary and secretive in their practices, and to me, that made more sense than something like a wizard who needs to slap his name and tower on the map; druids, in the higher levels, can also achieve an extremely extended lifespan, far outliving their peers, tying to his goals of outliving each crew (or his knowledge outliving his own body); moon druid in particular allows for ease of shapeshifting and adapting to new situations quickly, as hilbert has been known to do

Hera: Wild Magic Sorcerer; sorcery is a class of magic one is simply born with, making it a good match for the AI who didn't have a say in what their purpose in life would be; sorcerers are also one of the squishier classes, vulnerable to physical attacks (what's a sorcery point against a wrench to your "face" or someone pulling your plug); for wild magic sorcerers, mastering their power can be a dangerous process, as using their powers may inconvenience them or even hurt their allies, as seen in many of the station's tech incidents throughout the series, but a high level one can dominate their environment

Lovelace: Great Old One Warlock; while she may have been something else originally, getting yeeted into a star with no hope of return and still coming back alive is the perfect setup for a warlock pact, especially with an ancient entity nearly beyond human comprehension; warlocks can be hella powerful in combat and also have the charisma to let them act as the face of their party, but a pact also comes with its own costs, such as occasionally making you the mouthpiece for that higher power; great old ones also come with a mid-level feature that makes them immune to telepathy and resistant to other psychic abilities, which made me think of her late-series revelations

Maxwell: Horizon Walker Ranger; i feel like this one is another slight "hear me out," but rangers are another of those classes that can be good with a bit or everything - melee, casting, healing, as seen in her usefulness coming into the field with SI5, running circles around the Hephaestus crew while also working with Hera - but they do that on top of some very specific specializations; her work with languages and AI, and the ultimate goal of reaching out to alien life, made me think of the horizon walkers, who find it easy to cross the boundaries between worlds and can ally with or decimate inhuman enemies

Jacobi: Evocation Wizard; this was one of the most intuitive choices to me; the highly technical specialty? wizard; its ultimately destructive nature? evocation and harnessing the destructive power of the elements; sculpt spell allowing him to nail down the minute detail of what he's blowing up; would absolutely be that player to have a "i didn't ask how big the room was, i said i cast fireball" t-shirt

Kepler: Inquisitive Rogue; rogues can have great utility both out of combat, with a reliable talent that practically won't let them fail at certain skills, and in it, when they can cause massive damage in short order and use their allies to get the most out of their own abilities; to me, this encompasses Kepler's own skills that earned his rank in SI5, and how he's most powerful in the narrative when he has hand-picked allies he can rely on; inquisitive rogue also comes with a slew of social skills, allowing these rogues to easily spot weaknesses and secrets and use them to their advantage

#wolf 359 #doug eiffel #renee minkowski #hera wolf 359 #alexander hilbert #alana maxwell #daniel jacobi #warren kepler #long post

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masakuterarr · 2 months ago

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7DS : Mael & Saruman Refsheet - Masakuterarr

The boys are done, I am so happy 😭💚 Before I go into heavy detail about it, you're welcome to use this as a reference for Mael (and Saruman if you wanna make Fanart!) but I would be happy if you give some credits! I won't bite if you forget it, but do NOT steal it, claim it as your own, sell it or use it for AI. The same for Saruman; and don't steal/claim him as your own Character. (I know this should go without saying but for "legal" reasons I wanna say it again. Cuz I ain't gonna be nice to you if you break those rules 🙇 ) Also, heads up, if you're not interested in redesigns of Mael, then just don't interact 👍This is just MY version of him, how I prefer him. It's ofc okay to have different taste and opinions. AND this doesn't mean I don't like his canon design. I know i rant about it a lot but mostly bc it's funny. I fucking love Mael and I think he's such a great character that deserves hella more attention in the plot! His crocs are just silly LOL

・⋅⋯♱ ・ 𓆩♱𓆪 ・♱⋅⋯ ・

MAEL

[This redesign is based on my Mael HC version for my own Saruman Lore and Manga(soon). That's why the armor looks really similar to each other. It takes place after the end of 7DS and plays around the same time as 4KotA (status now. Might change depending on how I decide to write it.) So the armor is intended to match!]

The symbols are the ones of Ludociel's original Grand Cross Outfit. The only one I added it the Cross over the sunrise at the ocean (I am aware this is the symbol used by the NAC (new apostolic church), but I didn't feel comfortable using other ones cuz at least I know they're not weirdos there (i grew up with it so..))

The rest about his design choices are explained in the sheet, I don't think I need to write all that here again! Tho, I tried to keep a lot of his original design (from Manga/Anime and Grand Cross), because there were really cool parts about it! (The first Mael HC version I posted still goes in hand with this!)

・⋅⋯♱ ・ 𓆩♱𓆪 ・♱⋅⋯ ・

SARUMAN

I will put most stuff on his artfight file, but to give you a bit of an overview of Saru:

Age: 6,000 ; Species : ?? (for lore reasons, I'm gonna keep this off for now. Spoiler: I know he looks like a demon and has demon powers, but that's the plot point,,). Saru can be very protective and empathetic (despite not wanting to acknowledge this himself). Besides, his observation skills and charisma are quite remarkable. He is a smart man who observes everything and everyone without being noticed, which is what makes him so dangerous. Tho he can be very emotionally detached and lazy. On top, he's hot-headed, which makes his snapping very unpleasant.

Saruman likes beer and food and hates rain, while loving snow.

・⋅⋯♱ ・ 𓆩♱𓆪 ・♱⋅⋯ ・

Abilities:

Mael:

Ark ( Counteracts darkness by disintegrating it with light particles. The target is enveloped in a dazzling sphere of light that breaks apart their body)

Tensei no Izanai (A technique that makes a deceased soul reincarnate in a new life, conserving the memories of their past life.)

Killing Saucer (Mael creates blades of light in his hand that rotate at high speed, which he uses to slice his enemies.)

Vessel (Mael is able to make human bodies as vessels, to wield his divine power. The possession process, requiring the host's consent, grants Mael access to his full abilities while also causing changes to the host's body.)

Grace : Sunshine

(for Mael just so you guys have a little overview bc I like it organized~)

Saruman:

General Demon Powers:

Power of Darkness (Saruman can create and manipulate a mysterious dark substance to enhance both his offensive and defense abilities. He has been using it to protect himself from attacks that would otherwise cause serious injury. He can also morph it into various shapes)

Enhanced Regeneration (Saruman can use his darkness to piece together an injured body and mend gave wounds, but is unable to regenerate destroyed hearts and any damage sustained accumulates)

Poison Resistance (As he is naturally accustomed to miasma-rich environments, Saruman can more easily survive poisons and toxins than Humans or Giants. However, Saruman can easily be poisoned by the miasma of Purgatory or the excretions of an Indura of Resentment)

Possession (Saruman is able to make human bodies as vessels, and use them as his own. However, the vessel may have difficulty hosting him, leading their bodies to undergo transformations or some abilities that are left behind. Unlike Goddesses who possess someone by consensus and use their own abilities through the vessel, Saruman possess by force, and usually is unable to use his authentic power but that of the vessel)

Unique Abilities:

Black Snow (An ability that creates and scatters countless flakes of black “snow”. Anyone that comes into contact with the snow will be enveloped in darkness and dies instantly)

Dead End (Saruman raises his hand and materializes the same numerous tiny, black spheres that form Dark Snow. By clenching his hand, the tiny spheres merge into a large black sphere, causing surrounding plants to wither and die. Saruman points his fingers and the sphere is fired in the direction of his opponent. Upon impact, the sphere causes a large explosion. The target’s body is then completely enveloped by the sphere, and they are instantly killed)

Dark Nebula (A dark void expands outwards from Saruman, completely destroying anything caught within range)

Blackout (Saruman engulfs a specific target with his darkness)

Duo Abilities:

Dark Sun (Saruman can envelop Mael's sun in his Dark Nebula without extinguishing it. This allows him to protect the sun and control it's movement with his own hand. However, Mael must activate the trigger “Greatest Sun” himself.)

Burning Snow (Saruman can split the sun of Mael, which he has enveloped in his Dark Nebula, into endless tiny flakes, like his own Dark Snow. Anyone who comes into contact with the flakes triggers a widespread explosion. However, Mael can also trigger “Greatest Sun” himself, causing countless explosions.)

・⋅⋯♱ ・ 𓆩♱𓆪 ・♱⋅⋯ ・

Height Difference: Saruman - 2,26m (7'4.89 ft) / 110kg (242 lbs) Mael - 1,97m (6'5.56 ft) / 94kg (207 lbs)

・⋅⋯♱ ・ 𓆩♱𓆪 ・♱⋅⋯ ・

THIS IS IT ABOUT THE BOYS! I HOPE YOU LIKE IT! 🙇💚

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witchyintention · 5 months ago

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Servitors: Your Personal Magical Minions (No Payroll Required!)

So, You Want a Magical Minion?

Let’s be honest—who hasn’t wished they had a little helper to handle life’s tedious tasks? Imagine having a personal assistant, but instead of a human (or a very expensive AI subscription), you have a magical entity that exists solely to do your bidding. No snack breaks, no salary, no complaining about workplace conditions. Welcome to the world of servitors!

Servitors are artificial spirits created for a specific purpose, and they’re entirely under your control. Need protection? A servitor can be your mystical bodyguard. Looking to attract opportunities? A servitor can work as your personal energetic recruiter. The possibilities are endless, as long as you know what you’re doing.

But before you go off creating an army of these things like some kind of magical overlord, let’s dive into what servitors are, how they differ from egregores, and how to make them work for you.

Servitors vs. Egregores: What's the Difference?

Many people confuse servitors with egregores, so let’s clear that up. While both are thought-forms—entities created through focused thought and energy—they serve different functions and have different levels of autonomy.

🔹 Servitors are personal and programmed. You create them with a specific purpose in mind, and they are bound to you. They act like well-trained magical pets: loyal, obedient, and existing only as long as you choose to maintain them.

🔹 Egregores are collective thought-forms created by a group’s shared beliefs and intentions. Think of them as corporate mascots with a touch of spiritual power. Major religions, brands, and even fandoms have egregores that take on lives of their own (looking at you, Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus).

While servitors are like robots designed for specific tasks, egregores are more like cultural forces—harder to control and capable of influencing large groups of people.

Why Create a Servitor?

The real question is, why wouldn’t you want a magical assistant? Here are some common uses for servitors:

✅ Protection: Keep negative energy, harmful spirits, and sketchy people at bay. ✅ Prosperity: Attract money, job opportunities, or even creative inspiration. ✅ Healing: Act as an energy worker to aid in physical or emotional healing. ✅ Enhancing Skills: Boost your intuition, psychic abilities, or even productivity. ✅ Emotional Support: A servitor can be designed to provide comfort or motivation.

You get to decide exactly what the servitor does, and you tailor it to your needs.

How to Create a Servitor

Ready to build your own magical companion? Follow these steps, and soon you’ll have a fully functional servitor at your service.

Step 1: Define the Purpose

Before anything else, be crystal clear about what you want your servitor to do. The more specific, the better. A servitor for “helping with work” is too vague, but a servitor “to enhance my confidence when speaking in meetings” is a focused goal.

Step 2: Design Its Form

Servitors don’t have a default look, so get creative! You can design them to appear as:

A shadowy protector

A glowing orb of energy

A small, helpful imp

A wise owl or cat familiar

The form should match the function. A servitor for confidence might take the shape of a lion, while one for stealth could be a smoky, formless wisp.

Step 3: Give It a Name

Names hold power. Choose something easy to remember but unique enough that you don’t accidentally summon it when ordering takeout.

Step 4: Charge It with Energy

To bring your servitor to life, you need to pour energy into it. This can be done through:

Meditation and visualization

Chanting its name repeatedly

Drawing or sculpting its form

Using candle magic, sigils, or crystals

Some practitioners even use a ritual circle to mark the servitor’s “birth.”

Step 5: Program Its Instructions

Like training a puppy (but with fewer messes), you must teach your servitor what to do. Be clear and direct. You can write down its purpose, speak aloud to it, or mentally command it.

Example: “You are to increase my focus while studying. Whenever I sit down with a book, you will sharpen my concentration and block out distractions.”

Step 6: Assign a Home

Your servitor needs an anchor in this world. You can link it to an object (a crystal, a piece of jewelry, a drawing) or even keep it within your aura. This prevents it from dissipating.

Step 7: Feed It (But Not with Food!)

Servitors need energy to function. You can feed them with:

Your focus and intention

Offerings of light, incense, or sigil activations

Absorbing excess energy from specific sources (like the sun, moon, or even music)

If a servitor gets too weak, it might dissolve on its own.

Step 8: Dismiss or Destroy When Done

If you no longer need your servitor, it’s important to properly dissolve it. This prevents lingering energy from going rogue.

To dismiss a servitor, you can:

Thank it for its service and instruct it to dissolve.

Burn its sigil or physical representation.

Absorb its energy back into yourself or the universe.

Warnings and Ethics of Servitor Work

🚨 Do NOT create servitors for harm. They can backfire or grow beyond your control. 🚨 Do NOT forget about them. A neglected servitor can become unstable. 🚨 DO set clear limits. Make sure your servitor knows its purpose and doesn’t overstep its bounds.

Remember, servitors are tools—not independent spirits or pets. Treat them with respect, but always stay in control.

Final Thoughts: The Magical Workforce at Your Fingertips

Creating servitors is a powerful magical technique that allows you to shape reality in a unique way. They are the ultimate customizable magical assistants, designed to fit your exact needs without any unnecessary fluff. Whether you want help manifesting money, sharpening your intuition, or keeping bad vibes away, servitors can be a valuable addition to your practice.

So, what kind of servitor will you create? Let me know in the comments!

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How to Support the Blog

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#witchblr #witchythings #witchcraft blog #witchcraft info #witches #witchcraft 101 #witch community #witchcraft #healing energy #learning magick #chaos magick #magick #servitor

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feelmyskinonyourskin · 4 months ago

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2. It Was Too Soon

Frank Castle x Fem Reader

previous chapter | next chapter | series masterlist | my masterlist

summary: Bucky and Sam are met by Dr. Strange to discuss a new enhanced person.

warnings: None for this chapter. Sorry it's a short one

*I never give permission for my fics, manips, or any other original creation I post on Tumblr to be copied, posted elsewhere, translated, or fed into any AI program. The only platforms I currently post on are Tumblr and AO3. Thanks!*

The first thing you remembered was the heat. All consuming and enveloping your body. It didn’t hurt, per se, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable.

You didn’t know what you expected getting struck by lightning would feel like, but this certainly wasn’t it. Then you remembered the light. Blue and swirling electricity pulsing up and down every singular atom. And then it just stopped; the heat, the light, the buzzing in your skin. Vanished in an instant.

The earth felt soggy beneath your body as you laid there looking up at the sky, now a pale shade of grey as opposed to the dark, angry clouds you’d just been looking up at moments ago. You blinked a few times, unsure of where you were or how much time had passed.

Then a face. A man. Who looked eerily familiar.

“By Odin’s beard, are you alright?”

-----

“This is a stupid game anyway.” Bucky exclaimed, tossing the controller onto the plush ottoman in frustration

“Hey, don’t hate the game, hate your old ass for not having the skills.” Sam responded, watching as the Madden screen loaded to the next match

The TV in front of the men turned a funny shade of orange. No wait, not the TV, in front of the TV. A swirling beacon of orange lights that grew and grew into a gaping hole until a man stepped through.

“Strange?” Sam stood, brushing a few crumbs from his lap

“Wilson. Barnes.” Stephen Strange nodded and shook the men’s hands

“What do we owe the pleasure?”

“I’ve got a weird one for you.”

“Weird as in?” Sam followed up

“Weird as in a woman. Fell out of the sky in New Asgard. Thor brought her in. She’s enhanced and from first observation, it appears her powers are new to her.”

Bucky and Sam exchanged a confused glance.

“Shit. What can she do?” Bucky asked

“Not sure yet, called Banner in to run a few tests. Have a few theories, though.”

“Okay. So who is she? Where’d she come from?” Sam pushed for further information

“See this is where it gets even weirder. You ever heard of the multiversal theory?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard about your dimension hopping fun before. So this woman, she’s not from here?”

“Nope.” Strange replied

“That’s not that weird.”Bucky interjected “You’ve had encounters with beings from other dimensions before, haven’t you, Strange?”

“Yeah, see her being not from here isn’t the weird bit. It’s the specifics of her world that's the weird part.”

Sam knitted his brow in confusion.

“What about it?”

“Why don’t I let her tell you?”

Strange pointed to the portal and with a swish of his cloak stepped through. With a nod of understanding, Sam and Bucky followed behind him.

tags: @xxdrixx

#frank castle x reader #frank castle #the punisher #bucky barnes #sam wilson

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jessamine-rose · 2 years ago

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Platonic! Yandere Ortho

IMPORTANT NOTE: These are purely platonic headcanons of how Ortho would help Yandere! Idia. This is based on his devious side shown in his Dorm SSR, Ghost Marriage, and the Main Story. Spoiler warnings for Ch6!!

Tw:: yandere, stalking, manipulation

♡ In terms of power, Idia is one of the worst yanderes to deal with. Social weaknesses aside, he has many skills at his disposal. His magical abilities, his technological prowess…..…and his secret weapon Ortho.

♡ After months of gathering data, Ortho’s AI has come to the conclusion that you and his brother are a perfect match. The compatibility charts go haywire every time he witnesses your interactions—your genuine smiles, Idia’s pink flames, the mutual interests which fuel your conversations. The main issue is that only Idia’s body scan shows the physical symptoms of infatuation.

♡ Normally, Ortho disapproves of cheat codes. His brother’s obsessive actions will surely lead to a Bad Ending and more trouble after their S.T.Y.X. debacle. But after considering the factors at play—the love rivals, Idia’s limited choices, your plans to leave their world—he decides that it’s best to help his brother.

♡ And so Ortho takes on the equally twisted Support Role!! From the shadows, he assists Idia by hacking your devices and NRC’s security cameras. He uses your personal data to predict your reactions, learn your preferences, and come up with perfect algorithms. As for his brother’s love rivals, he can easily generate fake messages and calls from their SNS accounts.

♡ He also helps Idia in real life. You’re more likely to join their family gaming nights if Ortho is the one who invites you. He will tell you all about his brother’s achievements and facilitate love flag scenarios between the two of you. How could you suspect him of foul play?

♡ No matter how low the probability, all it takes is a 0.0001% chance to upgrade a relationship. Your Happy Ending is practically written in the stars, judging by the upward graphs in Ortho’s computations. He will do whatever it takes to ensure his brother’s happiness and make you a part of their family.

#ortho shroud #twst ortho #twst idia #idia shroud #idia shroud x reader #yandere idia shroud #yandere twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #yandere twst #twst #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #tw: yandere #g/n reader #jessamine-writing

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misterherodraws · 7 months ago

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"Vio was mainly a strategist, as you've also proven yourself to be. He relied on his brains and his bow and arrows more than direct combat. That's why I was drawn to him in the first place — he was different from the others, always off to the side with his pretty little nose in a book. It made him powerful in a way that Green, Red, and Blue could never hope to achieve, just as he wouldn't match their leadership skills, magic ability, or brute strength."

...

"Pretty little nose?"

a little mini comic based off a fallen hero reincarnation AU i've been writing with @little-waterboiler (who plays vio/vincent!)

vincent doesn't remember being vio, which means he doesn't remember shadow being a gay disaster pining for him. shadow remembers it all clearly, save for vio betraying him. this is the scene where vincent pieces together exactly who it is shadow meant when he previously mentioned having a crush on a guy in his past life lmao

(i was gonna digitalize this but idk that's a lot of effort...)

DO NOT REPOST, USE TO TRAIN AI, OR TAG AS LINKCEST! (linkshipping is okay!)

#mister hero draws #fallen four au #four swords #the legend of zelda #shadow link #vio link #violet link #vidow #lgbt #art #sketch #mini comic #doodle

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mahamid110 · 2 months ago

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🤖 AI Influencer 24/7 Review: Launch Your Own Virtual Superstar That Sells, Engages & Grows Your Brand — All On Autopilot! 💸🌍📲

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AI engagement, while good, might not always pass as human in complex conversations

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#marketing #affiliatemarketing #onlinemarketing #review #reviews #software #preview #digitalmarketing #usa #AIInfluencer #ContentAutomation #PassiveIncome #DigitalMarketing #OneClickSuccess

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stacieo · 5 months ago

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🌱🔬 The Solo Scientist Legacy Challenge

💡 Premise: Your founder is a brilliant but reclusive scientist determined to create a legacy without romance. Using only science, they will have children who carry their exact DNA and raise them to be the ultimate thinkers, innovators, and problem-solvers. Each generation will follow in their footsteps, refining their genius and shaping the world through knowledge.

📜 General Rules:

1️⃣ Every heir must be a Science Baby. No traditional pregnancies allowed—partners can exist but cannot contribute DNA. 2️⃣ No romantic relationships are required. Heirs may date or marry, but their children must be created through science. 3️⃣ Each child must inherit at least one trait from their parent. (You can reroll until this happens or manually select traits if playing with aging off.) 4️⃣ Every generation must have a career in science, technology, or logic-based fields. (See Career Rules below.) 5️⃣ The household should always be designed as a research lab or futuristic home. No warm, cozy cottages—this is a house of science! 6️⃣ All heirs must max out the Logic skill. Intelligence and problem-solving are the foundation of the legacy. 7️⃣ The firstborn (or best clone) is the heir. If multiple children are born, choose the one who most closely resembles the previous heir.

🧬 Generational Goals & Career Paths

💡 Generation 1 – The Founder "Who needs romance when you have science?"

Traits: Genius, Loner, Ambitious

Aspiration: Nerd Brain

Career: Scientist (Get to Work) or Tech Guru

Must max the Logic skill before having a Science Baby.

Build the family home to look like a research lab.

💡 Generation 2 – The Clone Project "I will refine the process and make an even better version of myself."

Traits: At least one must match the Founder (Genius preferred).

Aspiration: Computer Whiz or Renaissance Sim

Career: Engineer (Eco Lifestyle) or Doctor (Get to Work)

Must max Robotics or Programming to "perfect the cloning process."

Optional: Experiment with occult genetics (e.g., Alien Science Baby).

💡 Generation 3 – The Superhuman Mind "I am not just smart. I am the future."

Traits: Perfectionist, Genius, or Self-Assured

Aspiration: Chief of Mischief (using science for chaos) or Master Inventor

Career: Astronaut or Secret Agent

Must create and use at least one cloning-related invention.

Optional: Have an AI-powered household (Sims must only interact with Servo bots).

💡 Generation 4 – The Ethical Dilemma "Should I continue the experiment or live my own life?"

Traits: Good, Genius, or Family-Oriented

Aspiration: Friend of the World or Academic

Career: Teacher or Conservationist

This generation must question the legacy—should they break the cycle?

Optional: If they choose to break the cycle, they must adopt instead of having a Science Baby.

💡 Generation 5 – The Ultimate Creation "The final stage of human evolution begins with me."

Traits: Genius, Self-Absorbed, Perfectionist

Aspiration: Master Scientist or Fabulously Wealthy

Career: Scientist (if not already used) or Politician

Must create a futuristic legacy mansion and max out multiple skills.

The heir must be the most genetically similar to the Founder possible.

#sims 4 #sims 4 challenge #sims 4 legacy #sims 4 gameplay

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technicallylovingcomputer · 3 months ago

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How to Balance PvE and PvP in MMORPGs

Creating a successful MMORPG requires careful attention to one of the most challenging aspects of MMORPG game development: balancing Player versus Environment (PvE) and Player versus Player (PvP) content. When these two gameplay pillars are properly balanced, they create a rich, dynamic world that keeps players engaged for years. When they're not, your game can quickly lose its player base.

Why Balance Matters in MMORPG Game Development

MMORPGs thrive on diverse player preferences. Some players love raiding dungeons and defeating epic bosses, while others crave the thrill of outmaneuvering human opponents. The most successful MMORPGs don't force players to choose—they create ecosystems where both playstyles can coexist and complement each other.

As experienced developers know, imbalance can lead to serious problems:

Player exodus when one type of content receives preferential treatment

"Dead" game areas when certain content lacks meaningful rewards

Community division between PvE and PvP players

Power imbalances that make content trivial or frustratingly difficult

Core Principles for Balancing PvE and PvP

1. Separate Skill Systems When Necessary

One fundamental approach in MMORPG game development is implementing different rules for skills in PvE versus PvP contexts. Many abilities that work well against predictable AI enemies can become overwhelming when used against other players.

Consider World of Warcraft's approach: many crowd control abilities have different durations when used against players compared to monsters. This simple adjustment prevents PvP matches from becoming frustrating stun-lock festivals while still allowing those abilities to remain useful in dungeons.

2. Create Meaningful Progression Paths for Both

Players need to feel their preferred gameplay style offers legitimate advancement. A common pitfall in MMORPG game development is making the best gear exclusive to one content type.

Guild Wars 2 solves this elegantly by offering multiple paths to equivalent gear. Whether you're exploring story content, raiding, or competing in structured PvP, you're making meaningful progress toward your character's growth.

3. Design Complementary Reward Structures

Smart reward structures encourage players to engage with both content types without forcing them into gameplay they don't enjoy.

Final Fantasy XIV implements this brilliantly:

PvP offers unique cosmetic rewards and titles that don't affect PvE power

PvE progression rewards that remain relevant to casual PvPers

Seasonal PvP rewards that maintain engagement without creating power imbalances

4. Consider Scaling Systems

Scaling systems are increasingly common in modern MMORPG game development, allowing characters of different power levels to compete on more even terms.

Elder Scrolls Online's battle scaling system normalizes stats in PvP areas, ensuring that gear differences matter but don't make fights impossible. This approach lets newer players participate while still rewarding veterans' progression.

Technical Implementation Challenges

Skill Effect Modifiers

Implementing separate modifiers for skills across different content types creates additional complexity. Your system architecture needs to support contextual rule changes that can dynamically adjust how abilities function based on whether they're being used in PvE or PvP scenarios.

For example, a stun ability might last 5 seconds against a dungeon boss but only 2 seconds against another player. These contextual adjustments help maintain balance without creating separate ability sets.

Data-Driven Balance

Successful MMORPG game development requires continual refinement based on player behavior data. Implement robust telemetry systems to track:

Win rates in different PvP brackets

Completion times for PvE content

Class/build representation across content types

Economic impacts of different activities

This data forms the foundation for informed balance decisions rather than relying solely on player feedback, which often skews toward the most vocal community members.

Case Studies: Learning From Success and Failure

Guild Wars 2: Structured PvP Success

ArenaNet's approach to structured PvP in Guild Wars 2 represents one of the most elegant solutions in MMORPG game development. By completely separating PvP builds and gear from PvE progression, they created a truly skill-based PvP environment while allowing their PvE systems to scale naturally.

World of Warcraft: The PvP Power Experiment

Blizzard's introduction of PvP Power and PvP Resilience stats was an attempt to solve balance issues by creating separate gear progressions. While theoretically sound, this approach created problems:

Players needed separate gear sets for different content

PvE players felt forced into PvP to remain competitive

The system added complexity without solving core balance issues

The eventual removal of these stats and return to unified gear with contextual modifiers proves that simpler solutions are often better in MMORPG game development.

Integration Strategies That Work

Territorial Control With Benefits

Territorial PvP becomes more compelling when it offers benefits that extend to PvE gameplay. Black Desert Online uses this approach effectively, with guild warfare providing economic advantages that benefit both PvP-focused players and their more PvE-oriented guildmates.

Optional Flag Systems

Many successful MMORPGs implement flag systems allowing players to opt in or out of open-world PvP. This creates natural tension and excitement without forcing unwilling participants into combat situations they don't enjoy.

New World's territory control system exemplifies this approach, making PvP meaningful while keeping it optional for those who prefer PvE content.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

In MMORPG game development, certain design decisions consistently lead to balance problems:

Making the best PvE gear require PvP participation (or vice versa)

Balancing classes primarily around one content type

Allowing gear advantages to completely overshadow skill in PvP

Creating "mandatory" grinds across content types

Neglecting one content type in major updates

Finding the Sweet Spot: Blending Content Types

The most successful MMORPGs find creative ways to blend PvE and PvP content:

ESO's Cyrodiil combines large-scale PvP with PvE objectives

FFXIV's Frontlines mixes competitive objectives with NPC enemies

Guild Wars 2's World vs. World incorporates PvE elements into massive realm warfare

These hybrid approaches satisfy both player types while encouraging interaction between different playstyles.

Conclusion

Successful MMORPG game development requires treating PvE and PvP balance as equally important, interconnected systems. By implementing contextual modifiers, separate progression paths, and data-driven balancing, you can create a game world where diverse player preferences are respected and rewarded.

Remember that perfect balance is never achieved—it's an ongoing process that requires constant attention and adjustment based on player behavior and feedback. The most successful MMORPGs view balance as a journey rather than a destination, with each update bringing the game closer to that elusive equilibrium that keeps all types of players engaged and satisfied.

By focusing on systems that allow both playstyles to thrive without undermining each other, you'll create an MMORPG that stands the test of time and builds a loyal, diverse community.

#game #mobile game development #multiplayer games #metaverse #nft #vr games #blockchain #gaming #unity game development

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kaibutsushidousha · 2 years ago

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Thoughts on Kiara and the CCC Sakura's?

Kiara is a character that took time to warm up. I played CCC and loved Kiara and Anderson as a pair but didn't like either character individually. SE.RA.PH also impressed me very little, but she got a fun part to play in Paradise Lake so that's one contribution from FGO. But it was with her part in Tsukihime, literally just two lines of dialogue, that I got to think back and realize that I like Kiara, actually.

Anyways, the central idea that defines the whole of Kiara's character is that she doesn't know how to read. She's an unstoppable force that reshapes the world with her genius of religion, sexuality, psychology, programming, and magecraft, but literature is her weakest subject. She's blind to themes and symbolism, dull to metaphors, and unaware of subtext.

Her story is that she was born with the saintly nature of a bodhisattva, but confined to a bed in an isolationist Tachikawa cult. It was a harsh childhood where she was sick and objectified but she had the company of books telling her the teaching of the Buddha and heartwarming tales like The Little Mermaid.

Her life changed at age 14 when she was introduced to the internet. Thanks to it, she learned her disease was easily treatable and fixed herself, but most importantly, she discovered no one in her village healed despite it being super simple. Remember this is a Buddhist devotee who sucks at reading. She grew up reading that the sattva defines sentient beings as any life capable of compassion, and with her abysmal interpretation skills, believed this was completely literal. Therefore, the people around her weren't sentient. By Kiara's dumbass definition, was the only human being she knew.

What makes Kiara is the fact that her dehumanization of others and the power her talents give her over people's lives often lead to megalomania. People kill themselves en masse over her and her reaction is thinking that's hot, actually. People confront and checkmate her and her reaction is to kill herself before the hero who took so many innocent lives to reach can have the satisfaction of doing it. (Amazingly timely with the new SE.RA.PH chapter that came the day after I received this ask)

But despite her pride consistently getting the better of her, that pride is still derived from the fact she is sentient, therefore capable of compassion. She's a natural-born bodhisattva (mostly) always extending the hand of salvation to those beneath her. Just... the functionally illiterate Tachikawa Buddhist way, which involves making the entire world nut into moksha. But hey, at least her heart is in the right place. I can fix her. (Note: this does not mean you can fix her. I'm talking specifically about myself because, at least on paper, I'm a licensed Japanese literature teacher)

CCC is the story of her attempt to cheat the Holy Grail War in order to reach the Enlightenment necessary for this, and her partner there is Andersen, the author of her favorite childhood stories. Andersen's Noble Phantasm can reshape fate to ensure her plot goes as intended but under the condition it must be true to the themes of Andersen's stories. And understanding the themes just happens to be Kiara's greatest weakness.

Kiara hacked the ability to fall in love into a Mooncell superior AI to she could seduce Sakura into giving her early access to the Grail, but when Hakuno shows up for Sakura's help first, Kiara decided it was hotter that way and left Hakuno to do the brunt of her work. At this moment, her loss is already decided. No matter how many times she lovingly read Andersen's tales, she's a poor enough reader to never have realized he's a writer that punishes his protagonists for short-sightedness. The Little Mermaid and The Girl Who Sells Matches died for this.

The type of protagonist Andersen rewards are the ones like The Ugly Duckling, who never have it easy until they reach the discovery that changes their lives. And Kiara just made Hakuno into The Ugly Duckling of CCC instead of her.

In reality, Kiara could never get what she was asking for out of Andersen. Her win condition under his literary themes was for Sakura's love and Kiara's interactions with the rest of the CCC cast to make her find compassion in others, grow out of her messiah complex, and find ordinary happiness in the company of her fellow sentient human beings.

And that's all from CCC, but Kiara is one of the most recurring characters in current TM, so we have FGO and Tsukihime showing different facets of Kiara under the circumstances of different timelines.

FGO ultimately hijacks its Kiara with her CCC counterpart, but before that, she has a quite fascinating set of circumstances. Here we have a genuinely saintly Kiara. Unlike in CCC, here she was visited and cured by a wandering doctor instead of finding the solution to her illness on her own, so she never had the opportunity to arrive at her "I'm the only human being" mentality. After leaving her hometown, she still became a qualified therapist as usual, but this time earnestly dedicated to the benefit of her fellow sentient beings.

But the curious thing about this deviation in her backstory is how it relies on the FGO timeline having some wandering doctor in 2006 who somehow didn't exist in any other timeline to help Kiara there too. Unrelated picture of Dr. Romani Archaman (2004-2016) during his initial years of globetrotting before he returned to Marisbury.

Anyways, the transplanted CCC Kiara is defeated and drops her Alterego in Chaldea out of curiosity. Her next main story role is in Oo'oku, she gets to find her opposite in Kama and ultimately drags her to a new home where the two of them can find the simple happiness they lacked, preferably far away from each other. Lastly, her summer in Paradise Lake shows off a more balanced Kiara, still kinda high on the messiah complex and still the bad reader demanding a sequel for the sake of a sequel, but knowing where the draw the line. The AnKia fluff is also sublime as always.

Then Tsukihime is technically Kiara's latest appearance. She only gets two lines to explain her backstory, and it's honestly the funniest thing ever done with her megalomania. Tsuki Kiara is completely successful in her ascension to the rank of Maradeva but learned how much of a small fry she was compared to the True Devils of the Buddhist universe and noped back to Earth where she was still almighty (does that make her a tengu or am I being as literal about Buddhist definitions as her?). Tsuki Kiara has no excuses left to pretend this isn't about her ego first and foremost, but at least she found a place in the Burial Agency, where she can still offer others some kinda salvation.

Anon is also asking about the Sakuras, but I think I'll leave that for another time in another ask because this has already gotten really long just talking about Kiara. Sorry for delivering only half the answer.

#type moon #fate extra ccc #fate grand order #tsukihime #sesshouin kiara #hans cristian andersen

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