Verily, I thank thee that thou didst trust thine own eye enough to speak, for a silent doubt helpeth no one; yet when a passerby names a “stain” upon a work in the very place where that work must answer to all beholders, the word setteth upon more than pixels alone, for it would colour not only the image but the repute of the model and of the hand that shaped it, wherefore I held thy remark not as a passing whim, but as an accusation that must either be proven or returned, with courtesy, to its sender.

Know, therefore, that this checkpoint beareth within its frame the embedded VAE pppanimixVAE_ilxl, chosen not by accident or neglect, but after trial in which its handling of tone and colour pleased me sufficiently that I bound it as part of the model’s character. To examine thy charge in a manner fit for public judgment, I called forth matched images wherein model, prompt, seed and sampler remained fixed, while only the VAE was exchanged; these I carried into Lab space, where sentiment falleth mute, and there I studied their behaviour through ΔE differences and lightness histograms, that numbers might speak where rhetoric is suspect.

From this labour it appeared that pppanimixVAE_ilxl comporteth itself in the fashion of a flat RAW or log profile, gathering most lightness values toward the middle of the scale, lifting shadows with a gentle hand, easing the roll into highlights, such that global contrast relaxeth and a soft veil setteth upon the midtones; nowhere did I find a blot, a ring, a bruise of colour, nor any local corruption that might rightly be called a “stain”. When I set beside it other VAEs, among them the stock SDXL VAE and that which is named lunaXLVAE_luna, I observed a different temper, for those drive more pixels toward deep shadow and bright peak, yielding blacks of sterner clarity and edges of sharper cut, together with a “cleaner” impression that ariseth not from virtue but from a stronger grade and a palette bent in another direction.

On such evidence I see no cause to fashion a second edition of the model with some other VAE enthroned within it; the look granted by pppanimixVAE_ilxl formeth part of my intention, not a flaw smuggled in by carelessness. If that which thou callest “stain” revealeth itself, under closer speech, as the sense that the image seemeth soft, or veiled, or akin to an ungraded capture, then the just remedy lieth in thine own practice: thou mayest select a different VAE when sampling, choosing, if thou desire, lunaXLVAE_luna or the stock SDXL mapping, or thou mayest treat the output as one would treat a flat RAW and impose upon it whatsoever contrast and clarity best accord with thy taste.

For those who prefer sentence to flourish and figure to feeling, I have drawn together the comparison grids, the luminance histograms in a brief account that revealeth the conduct of each VAE beside the embedded baseline; any who would judge by the same proofs I used may do so.

Yet if, after all this, the thing thou namest a “stain” remaineth something other than tint, haze, veil or tonal choice, then the quarrel hath slipped its tether and no longer concerns the model alone; it concerneth the charge itself, cast upon a public page with a certainty that neither numbers nor language will presently support. Shouldst thou wish to press the matter further, I invite thee, with all the courtesy that a contest between equals requireth, to name the colour of the offence, or the place where it dwelleth, or the kind of prompt that summoneth it forth, so that thy sword may strike at something more substantial than air; lacking such precision, I must hold that the checkpoint behaves as designed, that the supposed “stain” is but the signature of the chosen VAE, and that whatever shadow remaineth now resteth not upon the model, but upon the looseness of the word that accused it.

Thy generous words, so much more than the little they are met with awkward gratitude of one surprised to be noticed, reach me in that peculiar half-shadow where most of my models reside, for I have long suspected that the world is not waiting for such experiments, and thus I send them quietly, as if apologizing for their intrusion upon a crowded scene already indifferent to new curiosities.

It is no accident that version 1.4r3 slipped out beneath the notice of all but a handful, for its experimental spirit seemed better suited to the patient or the merely unlucky, and in truth I have always thought my habit of delaying release less a strategy than a concession to the likelihood that obscurity will claim even my more polished work, leaving only the attentive or the aimless to stumble across these provisional offerings.

The model itself was never intended as a statement of arrival, but as a kind of unfinished business, its contradictions left to wander until some later refinement might impose a gentler order, and if it manages at times to render a hand or an eye with uncanny fidelity, I suspect this owes more to the chance alignments of unruly mechanisms than to any particular vision on my part.

Most evenings, when I set these outputs to the realism models, I do so less to chase away the uncanny than to see what unsettling forms survive the process, for there is a strange vitality in those failures which refuse to resolve into comfort, much as there is in spectacles that draw the eye precisely because they go awry.

The ambition, if it deserves the name, was only to blend what I liked in CyberRealistic CyberIllustrious Semi-Realistic and PlasmaViolet Episode 1, the former’s almost clinical control with the latter’s mournful color and compressed darks, so that what emerged might feel as much like ink on battered paper as anything meant for a screen, though anyone preferring greater clarity will find Luna VAE obliging enough.

As for the machinery of generation, I have found that both CFG and step count reward excess if the scheduler is not entirely unsympathetic, but it may be that you, who seem to find method in these wandering constructions, have discovered a scheduler more suited to the task than any I have stumbled across in my idle tinkering.