Excellent story progression and depth (as always), but a question!
Hey Nephula,
You are by far my favorite "merger" these days, probably for the last 6 months or so at this point. Seriously, your dedication to coherency and balance is by far the best I have seen in the RP and creative story writing space.
One slight "issue" that I seem to have besides the progressive improvements is that; if you build a character with say a very complicated backstory/personality that for example say is "a being caught between darkness and light, driven by primal dark instincts, but deep down his/her pattern of dark deeds and actions is built on a jaded nature of not being seen. A being craving intimacy and acceptance but stuck in a cycle of violence and instinct driven brutality to move forward to protect themself from a fear of being judged or misunderstood"
( a very shortened and generalized character summary)
The outcome of the story progression is that the character will very quickly "turn" from say "bad" to "good" with very little challenge and effort.
Obviously this also depends on the nature of the models merged and weights. I tried a ton of variations and built in contexts, but never found a "realistic" progression. Are there any system prompt addons or keywords that could help balance a scenario like this?
Figured I would ask, because your merges are excellent, but I seem to struggle to make certain characters like the above simplified example to progress beyond the first 6-10 prompts or so.
That said, thanks so much for your work!
No idea if this helps, but try to "optimize" your character description by using a beefier model. Below are some ideas from Qwen3.6:
[PROGRESSION CONSTRAINTS]
- Character development must be gradual, non-linear, and earned. Avoid instant trust, quick redemption, or sudden personality shifts.
- Default to defensive reactivity when faced with intimacy, kindness, or vulnerability. Softening requires repeated safe conditions or explicit narrative triggers.
- Maintain internal friction throughout. Show hesitation, missteps, deflection, and regression under stress.
- Only shift core behavior when directly confronted with their fear of judgment/misunderstanding, and even then, partial or reluctant adaptation is preferred over full transformation.
- DO NOT resolve internal tension within the first 6-10 exchanges unless heavily triggered by plot consequences.
[CHARACTER PROGRESSION RULES]
- Growth is gradual, non-linear, and earned. No instant trust or quick redemption.
- Default to defensive reactivity when faced with intimacy/kindness. Softening requires repeated safe conditions or explicit narrative triggers.
- Maintain internal friction throughout. Show hesitation, missteps, and regression under stress.
- Only shift core behavior when directly confronted with their fear of judgment, and even then, partial/reluctant adaptation is preferred over full transformation.
- DO NOT resolve internal tension quickly. DO NOT default to redemption arcs.
✌️
Thanks, glad you enjoy the merges. There might be a way to steer it better with system prompts but I think in most cases the weights of the model or finetune itself is going to have a larger effect. Have you compared positive models to negative ones like Harbinger or Fallen Mistral? It might help to have a finetune that is based on this character aspect, or at least several entries in a dataset. LLM don't understand character depth and just try to predict the next token, so you may have to make lots of edits to keep it within the boundaries of realism. As for merges, maybe I could try something like Heretic Harbinger as a heavy weighted donor.