I don’t really see what the previous Santa did wrong during the time that he was Santa. The elves were happy according to their belief system at the time even if humans would hate being in their position but that doesn’t matter since elves aren’t humans. Plus it was kind of funny that he decided to have a battle royale with his clones. The only “monstrous” things he did came after he went back to being human since he was inflicting pain on other humans with a human belief system. He used the system well.
In comparison Charles is an idiot. He had nearly infinite power at his fingertips and fucked it up because he wanted to be “nice”. Not even genuinely benevolent which would involve satisfying the beliefs of the elves as they were at the time but “nice” according to his own beliefs, something he forced upon them. Then he makes everyone immortal lmao this fucking moron. If he really wanted to help humanity he should have had the elves maintain the status quo the instant he realized that they had a fundamentally different belief system from humans before carefully experimenting on copies of himself.
Either way the idea of the story was very interesting.

Well that was horrifying. In a good way though.

I'm not sure what I think about him giving the elves immortality. It was very spur of the moment, and at the very least I think he should have given it a lot more careful consideration first.

While I'm bothered that he didn't even ask them first, I'm less bothered than some readers, because the way I see it, rather than taking away their choices, he gave them enough time to live and make their own choices. They've probably become independent enough by this point that they could make themselves mortal again if they so choose. But that independent thinking is somewhat horrifying in its own right when you consider the kind of things that they find acceptable without a Santa to guide them.

But they were going to leave humanity alone, so maybe not so horrifying after all. I wonder if they wanted to leave simply because they no longer wanted to do the job or because they were wise enough to see how dangerous they were to humanity. Maybe some of both.

He most definitely should not have done that last Christmas though. I don't know what the pebble did, but considering his previous ideas, the results were almost certainly catastrophic. He almost certainly did more harm than the previous Santa ever did.

Interesting story, I wished that you had touched on the engineering aspect more.

Holy shit.

Thank you.

Hahaha, that was mean! I wonder what that silver sphere was, and why you cut it.

It is weird, how this story is in aspects more horrifying than Bluer Shade of White, yet in others it is the reverse.

Adored it.

I read many less or more dark Christmas tales, but this takes cake. Maybe not most brutal, but certainly interesting.

Interesting

This is the strangest utility function...

Clever little story. Could have been pushed a further

But, yeah; Xiu Yang asks "Santa?" Or, more specifically, "Old man Christmas?" (Chinese version of Father Christmas).

I like the non-reproducing immortal entities, but why in the world aren't the elves going to help people? And how did they manage to separate CS from Santa's happiness?

I guess the elves take longer to learn things, especially since they aren't used to free will, so usually if they only live until 60 none of them live long enough to think much about CS.

Why aren't they having kids anymore? I know it isn't necessary, but do they just not want kids?

Actually, scratch that - I don't like the immortals; they're scary. They've seen the Rwandan Genocide and they still won't help the children even though it might happen again. And now they're immortal and likely can't be killed and are scarily overpowered.

Dear Daniel LC,
In case you missed it in the story, and were incapable of figuring it out through her name, Li Xiu Yang is Chinese. Not Japanese. Her name is not in romanji because romanji does not exist in China; her name is in pin yin. And her words are in characters, or Han Zi. Not "kanji" because, once again, that doesn't exist in China. Don't pretend you understand Asian languages; it's offensive.

Why do I read these things at one in the morning? Why oh why do I listen to Eliezer Yudkowsky?! I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight.

Very interesting fic by the way. Great concept, could have been drawn out more, it seemed a bit rushed, but well executed.

awesome story.