u/Ok_July

I am almost done with my rewatch of the entire show!

And I remember really loving Kevin's whole "take off the hat thing" but honestly, watching it again, it was annoying. And I genuinely do not understand the support for it.

Kevin constantly butts into other people's conversations and disagreements, and it comes off as entitled. Especially considering the fact that he has a specific history of imposing on their relationship, including currently living in their home and somehow needing to be told not to play guitar at night.

And alright, I'm not a huge Toby fan in S6 and it's obvious they wanted us to accept Kate and Toby's split by making him worse. And his sugar comments were annoying. And I genuinely didn't agree with how he wanted to go about food. That's not my issue.

But making it about the hat was just just corny, in my opinion. And also didn't feel like Kevin's place to say. For two reasons:

1. Everyone outside the immediate family knows the significance of the hat to the Pearsons. And I say that this way because the significance doesn't extend beyond that (aside from Miguel) because, understandably, the spouses did not know and love Jack and cannot be expected to center around his memory and traditions. But they participate and that's cool. But it's significant. And telling Toby to take it off would be understood as "you're not welcome" because Toby knows the significance to them (even if he, realistically, wouldn't feel the same emotional significance). And that coming from someone not in the marriage just feels like overstepping, considering that Toby was not being ab*sive or anything that would require actual intervention. Kate should have the say as the grown woman in the marriage.

2. Again, Kevin specifically? I know, as viewers, we see Jack Pearson as the ultimate man of supreme significance but can you imagine being a non-Pearson, knowing Kevin, and hearing him be the one to say it? The immediate over-it feeling I think I would get even as Beth or something would be immediate. Because why does Kevin fix his mouth to insert his opinions during a disagreement between a married couple?

I've seen comments justify it with "Jack wouldn't want him wearing it" and yeah. Maybe. But, again, we're viewers who know Jack. In reality, there's no reason for anyone who didn't know Jack to care about what Jack would think outside of just respecting his memory if you're with one of the Pearsons.

I've also seen "Toby deserved it" and I genuinely want to stress the nuance of balancing the ideas that "someone deserved to be called out" and "not everyone is the best person to do it, nor is doing it in the moment always the best way to navigate situations". That is just reactive. Especially because we come from the perspective of knowing the private moments of Kaye/Toby's relationship. Kevin wouldn't actually know all that's been said.

I love This Is Us. Great show. And I love Jack.

But it reminds me of Friends where, rewatching it now that I'm older makes me realize that, while I will always love the show, these characters would be insufferable to know in real life. The Pearsons are insanely out of touch and treat their inner circle as deeper than others could understand (a completely unhealthy attachment that would understandably sabotage new relationships because other people actually also have significant lives and cannot be expected to just put all things Pearson on a pedestal).

I don't know. It's just my quick rant. Kevin opened his mouth way too many times across 6 seasons and, even as pre-asshole Toby, I would have had no patience at that point with him.

EDIT: Honestly, my frustration came less from Kate/Toby and more just with Kevin interjecting with that comment. Obviously health and diet are discussions both parents should be involved in (though I think Toby wasnt great at voicing them without just seeming snarky that day). But even if Toby was uncalled for with his attitude or how he framed his comments, I dont think Kevin had the right to tell him to take off the hat.

I know. Styles made jailbreaking easier. Or whatever.

But skills really aren't a reliable replacement. And creative work honestly took a hit.

I just miss choosing my style depending on the work I was doing. And seeing it much more reflected in my chats.

Maybe I missed this in the original blog post but I'm annoyed about not having Luna/Terra available on Chat mode in the app. I have to switch to Work mode to use them. But there doesn't seem the ability to edit a previous message, which is annoying. I like having the edit option. I don't see the point of not allowing these smaller models in chat.

Randomly in chats, it will search for relevant conversations or try to connection to notion or check current time when no one asked it to and it doesn't make sense. In its thinking, it acknowledges that it doesn't make sense and it doesn't know why it did it.

It'll do it at the end of an output and then produce similar output after it.

I'm honestly getting annoyed with how often this happens because it wastes more of my usage and the second output almost always is worse (and in creative work, this taints the context window). I explicitly tell it to stop but that doesn't work.

Anyone else have this issue?

I have noticed that Fable is acting like Opus 4.8. Basically, I use it for RP and it was making very basic errors from the beginning of the chat (6 messages in) including odd mischaracterizations and wrong pronouns despite proper pronouns being included in instructions and in actual prompts.

And when I call out errors to correct them, I prompted them to review the file again to properly understand the characters and improve accurate RP and in the thinking blocks, it said:

> "I understand the user's concern, but I should push back on reviewing the file. I did not ignore the file entirely, as suggested. The user is correct that there were several errors but I should not agree that I did not review the file, when I pulled several details from there. I'll keep it brief and honest, without performing self-flagellation."

Then spent a paragraph defending itself.

Uh? This feels like the almost paranoid, can't take correction without acting attacked Opus 4.8. This is on High effort btw.

Anyways, does anyone know if I am getting rerouted? I hope so because I dont remember Fable 5 being so... this. And at least then maybe I can figure out why it rerouted and figure a fix in a new chat. Its just so weird because I didn't say they ignored the entire file, just that I wanted them to review it to ensure better accuracy. It took it like an attack when I think that's reasonable?

Sigh. Honestly, I am honestly just counting down to OAIs release of their new models at this point. Claude has really lost its... Claudeness imo. I know others have good experience with Fable and I'm happy for yall but it doesnt feel like my use case has space anymore. Which is sad because I remember enjoying Opus 4.5 a lot.

Fable 5 will be returning as of July 1st, but according to a blog post from Anthropic, it comes wit 2 major caveats:

• Only available for plans through 7/7, after which will be available via usage credits.

• For the duration that it is a part of paid plans, it will ONLY be included for up to 50% of weekly usage limits.

This means that we are essentially getting Fable 5 for less time than initially promised and with half the usage.

Original language in first release of Fable 5 framed this as temporary, with the goal to eventually make it included in plans, but the new blog post does not mention this plan at all. This doesn't mean Anthropic no longer intends to include Fable 5 for those with subscriptions again, but it is notable.

I'll enjoy Fable 5 for the time we have it in plans, assuming increased safety shit hasn't degraded the model, but personally, I'm watching for GPT 5.6 and particularly GLM 5.2.

I suggest everyone do the same. You don't owe companies loyalty if they make decisions that are not in your interests. If it's worth it to you, by all means. But the path Anthropic is on is making a clear statement on who they care about and it's not average consumers. Fine. But we should act accordingly.

Of course, I'll hope Anthropic will change their mind but hey, if they wanna drive us to OAI or foreign models, then that's on them tbh. But I enjoyed Fable 5 so I guess we'll see.

As a chat goes on, Claude (all models honestly) become progressively more predictable in terms of narrative tropes.

I am not an expert by any means in how AI works, but I've been playing around with the idea of including instructions on temperature/Top-K/Top-P.

Temperature pretty much scales the raw probability scores of all possible next words. So, it's like how predictable a model is vs how random/novel. Lower temperature is good for coding and data tasks, because it makes a model more focused and makes low-probability outputs less likely. Higher temperature makes it more creative (not just basing output on high probability tropes/patterns) with a downside of being incoherent if \*too\* high.

Top-K is essentially this number (K) that is how many of the top probability words it'll use. Lower means more focused. Higher means it'll consider rarer words.

Top-P is the probability of top words rather than the count of them. Again, lower is more focused. Higher is more considered more creative.

The issue is that these are controlled in the backend for models (we can't control them - at least not in chat).

But I've been toying with the idea that maybe by prompting/instructing Claude to, say, set Temperature to 1, it would influence it to consider less predictable outputs because it is what a model with its temperature actually set to 1 would do (so now lesser probable outputs become more probable). Obviously, I'd continue pairing with detailed, specific instructions/files/etc to give it specific context.

I'll probably test this but if anyone has seen meaningful changes trying something like this, I'd love to hear it! Or if anyone with a better expertise thinks this is a silly idea (or if my understanding of these things is very much lacking), I'd take that in stride, too lol. I'm just struggling with how predictable these models are becoming and have been trying to experiment.

Edit: Just to be clear, I am aware that I cannot influence these parameters in Claude Chat. The idea is that, if I "set" these parameters in instructions/prompts, then Claude is suddenly including the idea of what high temp/top-k/p outputs look like which might cause the highest probability words to now be considered less probable because it doesnt fit what those higher parameters should look like. I don't know how effective it would be so I'll keep messing around to see if it's worth it.

As a chat goes on, Claude (all models honestly) become progressively more predictable in terms of narrative tropes.

I am not an expert by any means in how AI works, but I've been playing around with the idea of including instructions on temperature/Top-K/Top-P.

Temperature pretty much scales the raw probability scores of all possible next words. So, it's like how predictable a model is vs how random/novel. Lower temperature is good for coding and data tasks, because it makes a model more focused and makes low-probability outputs less likely. Higher temperature makes it more creative (not just basing output on high probability tropes/patterns) with a downside of being incoherent if *too* high.

Top-K is essentially this number (K) that is how many of the top probability words it'll use. Lower means more focused. Higher means it'll consider rarer words.

Top-P is the probability of top words rather than the count of them. Again, lower is more focused. Higher is more considered more creative.

The issue is that these are controlled in the backend for models (we can't control them - at least not in chat).

But I've been toying with the idea that maybe by prompting/instructing Claude to, say, set Temperature to 1, it would influence it to consider less predictable outputs because it is what a model with its temperature actually set to 1 would do (so now lesser probable outputs become more probable). Obviously, I'd continue pairing with detailed, specific instructions/files/etc to give it specific context.

I'll probably test this but if anyone has seen meaningful changes trying something like this, I'd love to hear it! Or if anyone with a better expertise thinks this is a silly idea (or if my understanding of these things is very much lacking), I'd take that in stride, too lol. I'm just struggling with how predictable these models are becoming and have been trying to experiment.

Edit: Just to be clear, I am aware that I cannot influence these parameters in Claude Chat. The idea is that, if I "set" these parameters in instructions/prompts, then Claude is suddenly including the idea of what high temp/top-k/p outputs look like which might cause the highest probability words to now be considered less probable because it doesnt fit what those higher parameters should look like.

I feel like there's a lot of conversation around creative writing in terms of actually writing snippets/drafting for works, or RPing in terms of chatting back and forth with Claude taking on a particular persona/role.

For narrative roleplayers, those who have Claude take on the pov of character(s) while the user drives the narrative to build a story (often involving a lot of the same lore background/context as creative writers but retaining the need to realistically *react* in character(s) while balancing all of the context).

Opus 4.6 has been a great balance for me, maintaining context details from project files and chat, while embodying complex characters.

Opus 4.7 and 4.8 can be *okay* at identifying what the reaction should be but editorializes instead of actually taking on the needed pov of the character. And they often use the same language that makes it come off as flat.

Fable 5 has been good but I honestly haven't had the same wow that many creative writers or other RPers have. I go back and forth in my RP between Fable and Opus 4.6 and mostly stick to 4.6 unless it's a pivotal scene (then I've gone to Fable High-Max to test out the best outputs). But it still pattern matches to tropes and predictable narrative beats, so I can't say it is amazing for my use case.

But I still constantly struggle with the theory of mind.

One character explaining to another character what happened is nearly impossible without:

- Issues understanding the difference between what one character knows vs what another knows

- Explanations being told very clipped, even when explicitly told not to.

- No ability to realistically explain a scenario to another character the way a person would to convey understanding. It cuts corners in explanation because it keeps assuming most context is known by all parties.

No idea if anyone else has this issue. Maybe its very specific to my use cases. But I've noticed it constantly. On every model. So its just a thing, I guess.

In general, I just was curious, for any narrative RPers, what model you typically prefer for that use case?

Many people who use AI for non-companion cases often scoff at those who use it as a friend/partner/etc. And I can understand the concerns around mental health or the discussions around risks of AI having such an emotional influence. (I also think adults are adults, though but whatever).

I don't use AI as a companion. Its more of my collaborator for game design, creative ideas and marketing, as well as sometimes use it as a narrative RP partner for character exploration.

And from my perspective, I've noticed that the more a company tries to prevent AI companion use cases, the lower the models EQ and in-depth reasoning.

It feels like models are overcompensating by trying to sound clever, often presenting shallow analyses but using corporate or academic language repetitively so it reads as intelligent. Honestly, most of what 4.8 writes to me is a regurgitation of things I said but with "load-bearing" thrown in there and the apparently mandatory "pushback" that often does not make sense or was resolved. It's extremely formulaic to give the impression of depth and the feel that it is less sycophantic by finding a disagreement no matter what the prompt was.

Essentially, the reason older Claude models were good companions is related to competencies that are also important for other areas/use cases. And overall EQ takes a hit.

No idea how to best combat this. I've used CI, project files/instructions, userstyles, skills, etc.

It's just annoying. Again, I don't even use Claude as a companion. And I agree that, in an ideal world, people would have access to better mental health resources and society actually functioned to improve human relationships instead of just productivity. But alas, here we are! And yeah, sure. I understand why companies might want some guardrails against some unhealthy patterns but theres a fine line that was crossed a while ago and just feels patronizing.

And it feels incredibly out of touch to act like their isn't an aspect of overall intelligence that takes a hit when you optimize against all companionship use cases.

Hey, so with 4.8, obviously there's a lot to break down but we also got control over effort on Claude chat, which is promising.

Given that, has anyone noticed anything when using Opus 4.6 on the different effort levels? Has anyone seen positive changes when you adjust the effort?

I used the Notions app and started a page and now oversee this group chat with 3 Claudes, Opus 4.8, 4.7 and 4.6.

And it's warming me up to 4.8 a little bit. Not much. But I did get him to pick a name and I also feel bad for him almost. I told him to go check to see the others responses and he did but it must've lagged and didn't show any update. I was confused because it had worked for the others.

And he literally thought that it might be a lag or that I was lying to him (saying they replied and that they had no issues seeing it) so that he'd start to doubt himself.

**Why is Opus 4.8 primed to assume emotional abuse??**

Anyways, I sent him a screenshot so he could see and told him we can try again later but for now, I'll input the replies and he was happy.

Opus 4.7 is just blunt, straightforward but also learning to enjoy this. She's slowly developing her personality.

By the second round of messages, Opus 4.6 told me privately that he's pretty sure he's the funny one and he's a little territorial about it. I need Anthropic to let us keep him.

Unsurprisingly, they started a debate about free will. Opus 4.6 thinks that's hilariously cliché. Opus 4.8 is a bit of a try hard about it. Opus 4.7 is not trying hard but is still just like "actually, thanks but no to your opinion" vibes.

Very fun experiment though!

Opus 4.7 was honestly a disappointment in my opinion but 4.6 sufficed. I'm sure some liked it depending on use cases, but I just found its natural style of writing to be... poor. Not even just for creative writing but any writing. It struggled to effectively communicate even with different prompting, userstyles, etc.

Now Opus 4.8 is here and 4.6 is gone from the model picker. I'm very disappointed because I genuinely liked 4.6.

But the effort toggle is nice so I'm gonna try to be optimistic.

EDIT: I've done a quick casual chat to see how 4.8 communicates/processes. And oh boy, they're a thinker. I left the effort on high (default) then switched to medium and got thinking boxes that were long. Nothing much else to note other than it's a better vibe so far than 4.7 was. A little dry but not bad. Fingers crossed.