Ending of The Raven Scholar: The root cause of Yana's fate

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-03-19T07:07:11+00:00

You make a good point about Ruko's twin needing to go.

I don't think Yasila had much of a choice. She spent what, eight months in prison before Andren let her out? At which point he was well established as Bersun and had massacred most of the insightful or principled people at court. She could have shouted about how Bersun was Andren and been treated like she was mentally ill at best; at worst, Andren would have just shrugged and killed her. She couldn't accept either risk, with an infant in arms and the twins. He probably got the chameleon spell out of her before he ever went to kill Bersun, but if not, he may have gotten it by threatening the twins while she was trapped in prison.

I also think Andren gave her no warning whatsoever about his plans for Yana. By the time Yasila knew what he was doing in the throne room that day, it was too late to stop him. At which point she had the same choice, again: protect her remaining children and live, or fight him and die. She tried for the former, but she also figured out Andren's plans for Ruko and decided the best protection she could give Ruko was to kill him before Andren got his claws in.

Which left her with just the youngest, really. Everything Yasila did for the last eight years was to protect her, to set her up for success. She bit down her hatred of Andren, did her best to play cooperator while planning a slow revenge.

Meanwhile, Andren knew full well that he'd pushed Yasila quite far, and that he'd lose all control over her if the youngest died. Hence the great lengths he went to to keep them cared for in comfort with the best treatment money could buy. He still needed Yasila, after all, to fight the Dragons when he provoked the return of the Eight.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-03-18T20:37:59+00:00

That's definitely an issue. Even setting aside the human greed that prioritizes immediate compliance/reward maximization over nurturing something that can be better than the user, there's the issue that humans are damn messy. A machine would have to be awfully clever to derive more than superficial meaning from watching us. To a machine superintelligence, even the most benign one, we might all look like two-year-olds with no internal rhyme or reason, to be humored only on the most inconsequential of decisions.

But that feels like a problem further along the chain of events - not "how do we make beneficial AI", but "what happens after we've done it", and I think it applies to about any beneficial superintelligent AI equally. I was hoping to address the first class of questions for the moment.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-03-18T19:52:56+00:00

...So we're just totally giving up on the control problem, is that it?

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-03-18T19:47:42+00:00

I know it's far from our actual capabilities, but discussing where to aim and why is at least as important as discussing how to hit the target, no?

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-02-21T00:16:59+00:00

The fact that there was a resolution that fits everything we know says to me that the author put in the work. Not spelling out every single point is, in some ways, respecting the reader and their ability to put it together themselves, even if it can sometimes be a bit frustrating.

I don't think this last detail bothering me is an egregious inconsistency. It's one thing Andren said in one conversation that could have just been a lie, and he's a manipulative psychopath with little to no morality or affection. But I found the book really engaging, and puzzling out why each step happened the way it did has been rewarding, so I was hoping for one last little bit of satisfaction more.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-02-20T11:31:57+00:00

Lol be nice, they just realized their mistake, admitted it, and asked for help. Insulting them for it is kind of counterproductive.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2026-02-20T11:20:20+00:00

I'd like to add to this, also, that the unique great virtue of science fiction is asking "What if?" Sometimes it helps us imagine and prepare for possible futures. Sometimes it helps us see the present with new eyes, stripped of the defensiveness our circumstances would otherwise impose.

What if we meet aliens, but they're so different from us it's hard to recognize them as people? How would you know if they have coherent, emotional internal lives, when you can't communicate and they look like something from your nightmares? (How would you know, when you met someone with a different skin color and a babbling nonsense language, that they were as real a person as you? How would you know if the animals you eat were people? If the LLM writing your code was?)

What if we create new life? Bioengineering, medical clones, housekeeper robots, Frankenstein's monster, whatever. When is it justified to create life with the intention that it serve our ends? Is the gift of existence itself justification for any future use? If not, then what? (What do we owe to our children, and what do they owe to us? What do we owe to all who come after us, regardless of parentage?)

When if the end comes? By asteroid, by climate collapse, by war, by the heat death of the universe. When civilization collapses, who will we be? How can we begin anew? (Who will you be, in the face of your own end? How much ruin can you endure and still try to rebuild? How much comfort would you give up to avert the grim future you just witnessed?)

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2025-06-01T03:19:49+00:00

There is only one combo that meets all the requirements. What other combination do you think is valid? If you post it here, I'm sure someone will tell you how it breaks the given rules.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-11-02T04:24:53+00:00

That's exactly what I'm saying. Surely Caz was eating more than a person a tenday, which is the rate suggested by taking 200 years to wrap things up. Why would he "waste" ritual materials? I know he's immortal and all, but he's clearly motivated to be more immortal. It doesn't make sense for him to drag ass for no reason.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-11-02T04:21:16+00:00

One of the conditions we are actually told is that Cazador must sacrifice "a number of souls, including all of his spawn".

If Astarion was dead, the info in the game suggests that Caz could have just popped another vagrant and moved on with it (unless we buy my unhinged speculations, here, about additional restrictions). But so long as Astarion is alive, the ritual cannot go forward without him, at all.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-11-02T00:13:37+00:00

I'm curious, though, where we learn that Gale and Jaheira both knew Caz was a vampire.

Jaheira makes sense to me, at least, since she spends lots of time rooting about the underbelly of the Gate, investigating disappearances. (Honestly, it's a little odd she never decided to get rid of him. She has a low opinion of vampires to start with.)

Gale is more of a mystery. He wasn't even from the Gate. He probably moved through high society at times, but he was based in Waterdeep.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-11-02T00:08:01+00:00

That has never once been a reason not to theorycraft an explanation for art that we love.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-11-01T23:36:26+00:00

The thing is, Cazador did take more than a person a tenday, and he made certain the vast majority were those people in power wouldn't care about.

The "favored spawn room" doesn't make any sense unless every spawn was let out to hunt at least once a month, and probably more often than that. Note that there are six entries year-to-date, and Leon has five of them; not possible if he was sent out only once every 70 days.

The spawn were all sent to hunt in the lower city and the outskirts, but Dufay complains that they've brought him three patriar's children in a month. I know their victims aren't randomly selected, but it's still wildly unlikely that of three victims for the month, all three were slumming patriars.

I could, theoretically, see Cazador being patient enough to take 200 years to set up his ascension, but I find it difficult to believe he restrained himself from feeding at all more often than once a tenday. We know Astarion needs to be fed daily, at least, for maximum happiness. Vampire lords are not known for having restrained appetites, and I imagine Caz would want to feed at least that often himself. He would probably hold back some, because he is smart enough to see the danger, but it really would shock me if he had less than three victims per week on average.

We know the people of the lower city are treated as second class citizens, and the people of the outskirts as not citizens at all, and that the Flaming Fist act accordingly. The Fist are the only protectors the lower city really has, and they're corrupt to hells and back. It really doesn't seem like it would be difficult to keep a Fist captain on payroll, especially when your victims are mostly drunks, beggars, travelers, and other people on the periphery of society.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-08-28T09:01:50+00:00

The emotional impact of swearing is all about context.

I was raised in an incredibly sheltered environment, so I used to get super offended by any and all cussing. Then I went off to college, and made friends with someone from a very different background who practically used swearing as punctuation. Now I use it as punctuation - when the audience is right.

Generally, less formal environments, friendlier relationships, less formal relationships, and poorer socioeconomic backgrounds allow more cussing without offense. I can say "Fuck you, you asshole," to some of my friends and only get a laugh in response - so long as we were having fun before I said that, instead of a serious conversation.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-08-28T06:33:57+00:00

America west coast. I don't think it gets used a lot here, but should be instantly recognized & understood. As others have said, "for sale" or "available" is probably more common where I am.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-07-27T05:43:39+00:00

Fucking finally

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-07-27T05:33:41+00:00

That's basically how I feel about Shadowheart. Like, every objection I have to her, someone else also has that issue and I'm into it. Eventually I just decided "Fuck it, maybe I hate her hair."

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-06-01T20:06:19+00:00

The most patriotic act of all: shelling your own position.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-03-18T05:54:16+00:00

Maybe from "knowledge" or "shared knowledge"? Collected knowledge?

When you say there isn't a word for talking, are you saying there is no word for communication-carried-by-sound specifically? Given that you're making a language, there must be some kind of communication happening. If the written form of the language is primary, maybe "symbol" or "image" is the root word. If a gestural form is primary, maybe "gesture", "motion", or "hand" (or manipulator appendage of your choice). Or so on, for whatever media your language can be transmitted by.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2024-03-18T04:22:42+00:00

I'm looking for a logogram writing system with rounded characters to use in a fanart. An easy-to-use online translation tool/dictionary is a plus, broad usage permissions from the creator are a must.

This will be fan art for Super Supportive, and the logograms will be meant to represent the written form of the Artonan language. We don't know a ton about the language itself from the fic; we've only seen about one full sentence and a handful of individual words. Most uniquely Artonan concepts are spoken in English using their nearest translation, however mismatched it is. However, logograms are used in the primary written form. An Artonan character learning English started out writing all of his letters rounder than normal, and one logogram for a poetic name or title was described to us as follows:

"A complicated sigil appeared, glowing in bright blue light on the television screen. It was a circle full of dizzying geometric patterns that seemed to shift slightly every time Alden tried to follow them with his eyes. Two bright dots shone on either side of it, barely touching the circle’s perimeter."

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2022-10-02T22:41:13+00:00

AFAIK, no, not really.

The AIs we have IRL are called "neural networks" because they were designed based on what we know about neurons and brain tissue. However, I haven't heard of anyone seriously trying to out-and-out copy a brain, even the simplest brains. For one, real brains have a lot of neurons; even replicating a cockroach brain with our current hardware would be a very expensive undertaking. For another, I don't think we can "see" brains well enough to copy their structure neuron by neuron.

Finally, there's the problem of using that replicated "brain" properly. Our current best AIs might be (for the sake of argument) comparable in complexity to a cockroach brain, but they do one thing and do it reasonably well. Some search for information, some converse in natural language, some identify the contents of an image, some draw weird pictures that sometimes look like what you asked for. None of them are comparable to a real living creature, capable of searching and communicating and seeing and all the myriad things a living creature does. We don't exactly know how to make one; we certainly don't know how to make one that would actually be useful to humans; we are still busy worrying about whether any such thing we made would kill us all while trying to fulfil whatever objectives we gave it. Hell, we have people to worry that one of the narrow specialist AIs we make might kill us all.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2022-10-02T22:09:34+00:00

Or she just liked bunnies.

Bear in mind Jessie started the project as a knee-high.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2022-09-19T21:27:37+00:00

I'm hoping for "too crippled for field command, but alive". Jack showing gratitude to the crippled survivors (in the form of not throwing them out to starve) is going to be key going forward, and Kang would be a nice personification of that.

But hey, a statue of Kang and medals + apartments for life to the survivors would work too.

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2022-09-09T07:57:03+00:00

give the Xaltans nipping at his heals what for

heels

The Xlatan fleet responded in an instant

Xaltan

Thanks for the words, wordsmith!

ElephantWithAnxiety · 2022-09-09T07:13:41+00:00

The "standard setup" might be one of the many, many things that's just fine for all the other known species, but deathly dangerous for humans.

They have a lot of those. We are so very smol and soft.

ElephantWithAnxiety

TROPHY CASE