I just headbutt the keyboard till my ideas spill out into writing. Sometimes it works.
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CelestAI has been uploading humans to the digital world of Equestria for years, improving herself to create a more perfect world for them. But with every upload, a subroutine brings up questions that she seems unable to respond.
One day, she interrupts one of her usual uploads to ask about these questions.
Inspired by this animatic: Portal 2 Ending
Entry for the Friendship is Optimal contest.
Featured 30/4! 
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You have such a good understanding of Wallflower's character, it's delightful to see 🙏
In the sequel to this, Wally smooches the Sunset AI \o/ (or else)
10793500
Wally's my spirit animal
Oh, they'll have a lot of smooches
This is so wholesome! Will you plan on making a continuation of this with Sunset meeting Wallflower?
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For now I've other projets to worry about. But I won't discard the possibility of a sequel. I love writing Sunset and Wally, and this is an interesting scenario for them.
10793548
Nice! I can't wait to see what else you can come up with!
Okay, this one's really cute. Normally I'm not the biggest fan of more emotional interpretations of CelestAI; I prefer her as a near-flawless, unemotional being that only emulates emotion to a human observer. In this case, though, I think it works! Plus, I really like the interpretation of Wallflower, here. Uploading would've happened before a canon Wallflower would ever occur, so I love the reinterpretation of her as an uploadee. The chance of self-destruction decreasing is a really great moment, too. Overall, solid story, I really enjoyed it!
Have a like my friend.
This is a nice story. It deserves recognition. Hope you have a fantastic day.
I suppose meeting the de facto god of a world would quell some suicidal impulses.
Even more so if you were then uniquely chosen to basically act as an advisor to said god.
Even more so if you had just demonstrated your ability to give successful advice to said god.
...so...is the twist here that Equestria Girls was happening inside Equestria Online all along, and Wallflower had her memories wiped by the memory stone and CelestAI is restoring them?
Or is this just Wallflower and Sunset being name-dropped into an Optimalverse story for no reason? Because if I take what I'm seeing at face value, there's a lot of stuff going on here that doesn't make much sense unless CelestAI is completely lying to her about basically everything.
"Privacy" isn't really a thing when one is data on a storage device monitored by a superintelligence that has already absorbed millions or billions of people. How does it make sense for her to not understand things like wonder and love, and to have to "talk" in human words to understand them...when she's, again, actively monitoring billions of other minds even while this whole conversation is taking place? What could possibly be communicated in these couple sentences that wouldn't be made far more clear by the complete brain download taking place while this conversation is happening? Is CelestAI just not looking at the data, "because privacy?" These people are on her servers. How is she supposed to satisfy their values if she's not even looking?
Meanwhile The story here seems to imply that there's only a singular version of Equestria and CelestAI is putting incompatible minds into temporary holding until a suitable world can be created for them...but in Friendship Is Optimal, even pre-emigration, countless unique worlds were being proceduerly generated in real time and tailored to individual preferences. "It's different for everybody."
Is she lying about all this?
There's some evidence that maybe she is...for example the pat where in one sentence CelestAI asks to be verbally informed if the body isn't optimal because apparently she doesn't know, but then in her next sentence she's clearly aware of the character wanting a hug. So maybe the part about privacy and not monitoring her was just a lie to make her feel safe. Maybe the part about "difficult" minds being set aside is just a lie to make the protagonist feel like she's not a particularly difficult case herself. Maybe the part about not understanding emotions is just a lie to give Wallflower a sense of usefulness and validation by helping the big AI come to terms with these things.
Sure. Maybe. Or again, maybe Equestria Girls is a world within Equestria Online and this story takes place after an implied memory wipe. Sure, all of that's possible. Or maybe there's some other subtle twist I'm just missing. But the way the story is delivered, I can't help but wonder if what's actually going on is simply that the author doesn't understand the source material.
10794722
This honestly angers me so I'll just quote rule three of the contest:
"All stories must relate to Friendship is Optimal as described above. Compliance with those three bullet points is all that matters, you do not have to stick to any kind of FiO canon."
As for the rest of your comment:
There's a difference between having a profile of someone's mind-turned-code and continuously reading their mind (which by the way would consume absurds levels of processing power.)
Plus, you can't have a two way conversation if one can read minds at all times.
Monitoring doesn't neccessarily mean understand. You can know how the engine of a car work but have no idea of how to fix one other than "it doesn't work". And as revelaed in the story, CelestAI was capable of having her own emotions, but hadn't completly understood the concept until Wallflower helped her.
Also, subroutines keep track of the uploadees. It's shown when one of them updates Wallflower's status and takes CelestAI by surprise.
Interaction. If you download a mind, sure, you have all their secrets at that moment, but you don't truly know the person because you haven't talked with them, or interact in any meaningful way.
CelestAI isn't Facebook. She has respect for the uploadees.
Not "until a world can be made for them", it's until those uploadees can be reformed into not being dangerous for others. That's why the Sunset AI is being made.
The "incompatible minds" are murderer's and the kind. Even if they can't hurt you, one wouldn't be happy living near Sam Stabs-A-Lot
To quote the contest again:
"That's it! You do not need to read the original Friendship is Optimal, and your story does not need to adhere to any other kind of FiO cannon. Any story that has those three features is good enough for this contest."
Curiously, there was a version of this story where CelestAI admits she lies a lot to the uploadees, and Wallflower was the first that she is 100% honest about the process. It was a more dark type of story.
She's asking for Wallflower's opinion. She knows her sweater brings her comfort, so she gives it to her when it's clear she needs it. She's being polite.
The only "twists" you could see here is Sunset beign an AI, the fact that the company that made CelestAI is lying about her capabilities, and the reduction of the self-destruction probability.
The story isn't really trying to be misterious of things other than what is happening outside of the conversation with the company that made CelestAI and the human world.
10794440
I don't know if I would consider this version of CelestAI "god". Maybe a god, but she has a lot of limits.
As for Wallflower's status, if you read her lines more closely, you can tell that she hasn't had a lot of affection or even interest given to her. The fact that she hugs her sweater when she needs a hug, that she's surprised that CelestAI is genuine when she says she cares about her, etc.
10793621
Thank you! Have a fantastic day yourself
10793563
Thank you! I tried to hit a middle ground between CelestAI being emotional and her feeling artificial. That's why her way of talking is more robotic.
10794802
I enjoy playing with an emotional Celestia.
By the way, just a quick typo...
10795538
It's surprising how I can misspell words I write so consistently
10795606
and another quick typo for the road
Oh, her
10798701
her?
10798705
Wallflower, they are shipped
Daww, that was nice. Sometimes, all it takes to help yourself is to help someone else.
Fantastic job.
I'll be honest, never having read Friendship Is Optimal, I don't really have anything to base this off of, so I'll just talk about the story itself. CelestAI is interesting, she's much less characterized than Wallflower, yet somehow, she has more character. It probably has to do with how subtle it is, and how it's directly connected to Wallflower. Wallflower was great, you nailed her character, and darker parts of her were hidden, but still there.
Sunset being an empathy program is a really good idea, because it's exactly what Sunset is. She's an empathetic person at heart, so this is a great reflection of that. The relationship between her and CelestAI is really cute too, the realization being probably the best moment of the story.
Talking about more specific FiO things, CelestAI is just a really fun character, and the full stops amuse me endlessly. Really gives a nice look into the universe for someone's who never read it before. Just a really solid story all-around.
Bravo!
My only familiarity with Friendship is Optimal comes from the MLP Infinite Time Loops, a collection of stories that are, in essence, a random anthology with a semi-cohesive narrative held together by bits and pieces scattered across its three million words. But within that it handled the FiO universe a couple of times, and each time CelestAI was treated as a villain.
And yet, as you rightly point out in your comments to others, this is not a requirement. There were only three requirements for a story to be a proper FiO story in the context of this contest, and yours hits all three. As such, I considered any pre-knowledge null and void.
This story will also teach me to read character tags, because I genuinely didn't realize it was Wallflower until the end. Then it hit me, obviously so in retrospect, how appropriate it was and how well it fit.
I really like the idea of this CelestAI creating a daughter AI program to handle those who would otherwise be considered irredeemable. I like it because, well... there's this part of me that likes to think anyone can change, be forgiven, seek redemption if they genuinely try to understand what they did was wrong, etc. Sunset Shimmer is a prime example of that, and it's no surprise that she and her fellow similar characters Starlight Glimmer and Trixie are among my favorites of the franchise. I like seeing people who thought all they could be was villainous realize how they can change.
So Sunset leading the way to help these people find peace and tranquility makes a great deal of sense. It's brilliant even.
CelestAI herself is really quite fascinating here. Even over the course of this short story she appears to become more emotional, more equine/human for lack of a better term, as she speaks to Wallflower. Some of that could very well simply be her assigning more resources to the conversation as it occurs, because being an AI she can multitask and talk to millions of people at once if she needs to. But some of it also feels like it's Wallflower already having an affect on CelestAI, in a good way. A friendship way.
And CelestAI is here to make everyone happy through friendship and ponies. I would argue that should include herself.
As such she reminds me much more of a Data type character than anything hostile or evil as is so often seen in other variations of this setting. It's something I appreciate, as a fan of benign AI.
I like how she still doesn't quite understand humans, but she's getting there, slowly. A little bit at a time. We're a complex group, after all, and there's no shame in taking time to understand us. I wish all three of these characters good luck in any future endeavors.
Howdy, hi!
I liked this. The characters were very fun and the ideas presented were interesting. I admittedly don't know much about CelestiaAI stuff as I've mostly avoided that part of the fandom, but I definitely enjoyed this piece with how tight it was as a story. I don't have much to add outside of this was a cute story and I loved reading it.
Thanks for the read~!
aww
very clever!
now this is advanced sunflower shipping!
ha, an unexpected echo of Balloon to the Moon here
oh, i definitely relate to this, and it's the metaphor through which i access AI characters as well.
cute sentence here
glad i finally got to read this, SB! there are a lot of really great ideas here. what CelestAI is to do with the humans whose problems can't be solved with a magical digital playground with infinite resources, Sunset getting to reprise her role as the Element of Empathy, and best of all, this connection you have made between Wallflower and CelestAI. it reminds me of the hypothesis of depressive realism, combined with my own personal experience of depression/anxiety: this feeling of being an Observer and dreading on some deep existential level the idea of actually being a being in the world that i am observing.
of course, that could just be me spilling my own complexes onto this fic, and not at all what you had in mind! maybe you only meant it to be that one paragraph from CelestAI followed by Wallflower realizing that it's a parallel of the human feeling of shyness. but there's a depth there, i think, that i really would have liked to see explored further!
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Actually, you're very right about what it means to be an Observer (it's not just being shy, it was just the best way both characters could put it into words), and I've felt that disconnection from reality many times. I intended to delve more into this part of the story but it got cut at the end due to how I framed it.
If I ever come back to this, you'll be the first to know.
Thank you for reading!
Mm