TL;DR. Best reward is WITH the LoRA at 50% (0.603 vs 0.527 for the evolved prompt). The 50% merge lifts the fear-adjacent signal (emo 0.040 to 0.085), genuineness (0.132 to 0.192) and blend (0.431 to 0.532), but intelligibility and quality pay for it: WER more than doubles (0.228 to 0.493) and quality drops from 0.514 to 0.387. Fear manifests mainly as distress and vulnerability with an emotional-numbness/fatigue undertone (corr Distress 0.70, shift up Emotional Numbness +0.92). Avoid 100/150% — pushing emo higher smears the voice into anger and pain (LoRA150 shift up Anger +2.4, Pain +2.4) and WER reaches 0.834.
Without a LoRA
Best: evolved prompt, no LoRA → reward 0.53
GENERAL: A voice powerfully expressing fear, a terrified voice, trembling and breathless, shaking with fear, near screaming, in every breath.
SCRIPT: (trembling, terrified, voice shaking with fear) "<neutral sentence>" · temp 0.85 top_p 0.9 top_k 40
Best reward is WITH the LoRA at 50% (0.603 vs 0.527 for the evolved prompt). The 50% merge lifts the fear-adjacent signal (emo 0.040 to 0.085), genuineness (0.132 to 0.192) and blend (0.431 to 0.532), but intelligibility and quality pay for it: WER more than doubles (0.228 to 0.493) and quality drops from 0.514 to 0.387. Fear manifests mainly as distress and vulnerability with an emotional-numbness/fatigue undertone (corr Distress 0.70, shift up Emotional Numbness +0.92). Avoid 100/150% — pushing emo higher smears the voice into anger and pain (LoRA150 shift up Anger +2.4, Pain +2.4) and WER reaches 0.834.