#simulacra

SO! The video is about this weird mod that scans through your discord dms and calls with someone, and then makes an ai version of that person for you to play minecraft with. Which is SUCH an interesting concept especially as ai Ash gets more sapient and scary and possessive.

First of all I don't think ai Ash actuay knows he's not the real Ash... He knows it in SOME way, in his programming, he knows that he's a simulacra, that he's scanned through discord messages, and that he has programming— but I don't think he's connected that to not being the real Ash, when Squiddo said "come my fake Ashswag" he seemed confused, even when Squiddo directly tells him "you're not actually him, you know that right?" he doesn't answer, despite how at this point Squiddo has been pretty clear that he's not actually her friend.

The main theorising is in the manual though... it goes by pretty fast but these were the pages I thought were most interesting:

This tells us a LOT of things, like how this mod kinda preys on lonely people the way actual ai chatbots do, especially ones like character ai.

There's also the developers, and from the loving memory page and the Spanish text (disclaimer, I don't speak Spanish sadly, my friend Soon translated :D), we can tell that Benny, who was the graphics designer and Mirai (lead developer) 's boyfriend is dead. Very reassuring to see "I know we would do anything to keep your memory alive longer" coming from people working on a mod about making ai copies of your friends...

The translation:

Since her boyfriend left the project, Mirai ?has experienced? many changes in mood. She says it is necessary that the mod scans not only the chosen friend but also... the player. After his death, her obsession with ?perfecting? a Simulacra—his voice, his personality, his care. And now, this is the only thing she talks about. And now, clearly, scanning the player, and transmitting the data to her computer. Perhaps they are related?

So. Benny died and Mirai went all in with Simulacra, the mod but also a Simulacra of Benny specifically(?), and that included scanning the player, which according to the GDPR (<— real data protection company) disclaimer means it saved Squiddo's name, age, personality, likes, dislikes, chat history, likeness, voice approximation and friends. So basically any Squiddo video from now on could be made by the ai version of Squiddo welcome back Evilfies oh my god Squiddo made a Squevil

And like even when the mod is deleted this data still got sent to Mirai, who can use it for so many things, including making more Simulacras of people— and also probably feeding it to her Benny Simulacra... Think about it, KaeCaracal (the translator for the mod) said Mirai kind of lost it after Benny's death, and got really invested in remaking him as a Simulacra, keeping his memory alive as long as possible, making him as accurate as possible. And the mods are very familiar with how the Simulacras get more sapient the longer they're left turned on— which probably seems like a good thing to someone grieving like Mirai is, the only issue is that a Simulacra needs fuel... (and also the decayed form but it seemed like Ash could revert back to regular form that night Squiddo saw him outside so that might be less of an issue than expected)

Tumblr only lets me add 10 pictures lol but the manual says "Simulacras will use ANYTHING they can get their hands on as fuel. Cows, dogs, villagers, and even humans." Specifically the word 'humans' is really interesting to me, they've made the specific distinction of 'players' before, so why now 'humans'? I think it's because the data from the players, the discord data, maybe someone's entire friends list are just kinda getting fed to this Simulacra. It's mentioned that this data immediately gets "used up" which is the exact language Ash used whenever he talked about the mobs he used as fuel.

What is a minecraft mob or a player if not data? What is discord dms? The mod can search the internet too, which is how it gave Ash a more human skin, which is. worrying. I kinda think there might be a more 'irl' implication of it also but still unsure about how that would work, 'humans' is just really ominous to me.

The other theory (or maybe in combination) regarding Benny is that he's become kind of the default model for Simulacras. Squiddo mentioned that while the Ash Simulacra looks and sounds like him, his mannerisms are all off, even as his sapience grew. With how in the manual it's mentioned how Mirai was really focussed on recreating Benny's personality as best as possible, she may have used Benny as a default while coding, and now his behaviour bleeds through in other Simulacras, including Ash, despite having the discord data as source.

This is backed up by the bug report of someone trying to make a Simulacra of a female friend, but because of connection issues mid upload ending up with a male Simulacra that sounds and acts entirely different. There's Spanish on that page too, translating to:

perhaps i'm crazy, but... ?seems like?

Then there's a code, QmVubnk/, which my friend Rexsortis decoded to "Benny?", which means the translator sure thinks this bug report is related to Benny, either in a coding base way, or a digital ghost way which would also be very interesting, but not too likely considering ghosts aren't mentioned anywhere else.

Another brief theory is that the Benny Simulacra was somehow separated from Minecraft and lives more on Mirai's setup, where he ended up in someone else's game cause of an upload failure, considering the discord data does immediately get sent to Mirai.

Also, this Squiddo tweet from the other day?

Kinda suspicious, might be the Squiddo Simulacra honestly. Btw Squiddo's video was in survival the entire time it's possible Ash just respawned honestly... like he has a whole player model and can do things most players can, he's never really treated like a mob, he might just come back. Though this tweet, if it is a Squiddo Simulacra, kinda reads like someone alone in a world, despite the hunger ai Ash still wanted a friend, so it wouldn't be too strange that a Simulacra of Squiddo that's all alone would also crave friendship

I've spent the last few weeks testing AI companion apps the way I'd test any tool I plan to trust with personal data, and the differentiator that kept pulling SweetDream ahead wasn't the flashiest demo reel. It was the quiet confidence of its privacy-first design. On sweetdream.ai, the entire experience is built around the idea that your conversations and your generated content belong to you, full stop. That framing changes how the whole product feels.

What surprised me on closer inspection is that discretion doesn't come at the cost of capability. You still get the deeply customizable character creation, where you shape your AI girlfriend's looks, voice, backstory and little quirks, and you still get chat that genuinely remembers context instead of resetting every session. The privacy layer just sits underneath all of it, unobtrusive but constant.

This is taken from the most recent patch of Limbus Company.

So for context I have a theory//many notes which I will make a better post about at some point later but.

In the previous, this cg was different in the theatre and in canto story, the latter having a CG that closer matches the description of the scene given by Dante.

Interestingly enough, the cg that has been kept (and is now present across both theatre and story) is the one that directly contradicts the dialogue of the same scene, the spiral clearly being present in Ryoshu's hands.

This scene has also changed to be the same across both, with an alternate cg having the entire blade (notably the black section) be invisible.

Something that I do want to note is the fact that the sword, rather the edge, is transparent, most visible in the second cg of this scene

where in details of Yoru's outfit continue clearly past the edge of the blade.

Following this scene, we are told that Yoru indeed has no tongue

something that is seemingly a false or created memory

This is two times that either Dante or Ryoshu's testimony have been directly contradicted by either themselves, another character, or a CG .

However,

This entire canto--the nursefathers, those who are in the know--has been repeatedly questioning the idea of what is and is not real--rather than objective reality

alongside the fact that Ryoshu, for lack of a better term, knows nothing. Too that her direct testimony or "truths" have been contradicted, notably, her shorn memories, and the belief that Araya was hidden

Now is the seasonal time for me to go off the rails with looking into various ideas, and the most notable, being that of the "Truth" of free will.

The fact that they always knew where Ryoshu hid Araya, the fact that the House of Spiders is centred around the Index, the fact that winning our fight against Sora was--quite literally--fated to happen, as seen by her unique defeat screen.

reading "Fate lost".

and finally, the fact that the defiance of the will of her Fathers('s) was not in fact of her own will, but of theirs.

This mirrors an argument of Free Will in genesis. If free will is what god had planned for humanity, in eating the fruit, humanity has gone about as God had determined and planned, therefore eating the fruit--granting free will--is proof of a lack thereof.

In hiding her daughter, in running away from home, Ryoshu attempts to subvert or sever the fate that she is born into; This expression of her free will is the will of her Father(s)'s which in turn means that her expression of free will, though effectively real, is false.

This leads back to my favourite of the Nursefathers (and not just because I'm basically a Ring member (read my body horror <- Link goes here Carmen don't forget)), The Ring finger, who uses a particular phrase.

Simulacra.

Simulacra is an odd term--quite possibly, this term is simply being used because of it being the Ringfather--one that relates back to the idea of copies and impressions of reality.

Ryoshu's free will, or will in itself, is a copy of the will of her Father's(s), which in turn is a reflection (or imitation) of the Will of the City, or "The way that things are//will be" so to say. The Will of the City is a copy of the Will of those who live inside of it, and the Will of those who reside is a copy of the City's Will--Neither is the original, and to attempt to restore an original is worthless. Both are copies that have departed from their original--copies of each other, neither having an original--that exist only as ideals.

if a copy is to be made of a copy to begin with, or if that copy is created of something that does not have an original--or a copy is created that is truly indistinguishable from the original should it exist--the copy in turn becomes the concept.

Read Simulacra and Simulation (Also bully some larger content creators into reading it on my behalf (the bullying behalf; I've read it and am re-reading it)) because it **MIGHT** come back to be relevant in the following... week. Or, better yet, read it following the Canto in the downtime between this and the next, even if it doesn't turn out to be that relevant, it would still be good reading.

Daidaidaikirai But Artfight (bright colors warning)

With The Familial(my simulacra oc) and De Quatre by @ninetheowl

Animated version

Mr Robot, 2015