Send "SOOTHE" to comfort my muse after an upsetting/traumatic event
Why, why did it always come down to this? Why can't it just leave him be? Why is it that after everything, he still had to be haunted by it all?
He knew it was just a dream, influenced and twisted by ghostly memories, but it felt so real. Not because of the way he moved, what he heard, where he was...but his very soul, his very being was trembling as his legs ran as if in quicksand. No matter how fast, no matter how far, HE was far too close for comfort.
An angry voice, filled with discontent, rage, enomosity, and resentment, clear at showing the older and far bigger man's. And though the words he yelled were different, they all came to the same dead end.
"You were never supposed to be born."
"I have no respect for you, and I will continue to have less."
"You will do as I say, or you will feel my wrath."
"I resent you."
It was the same dance, and the same song. No matter how many years, no matter what he did, could do... it wasn't enough, it was never enough... He couldn't protect himself, no matter what; his heart always failed him and exposed itself to more pain. And no one was there to stop it. Though who would, could be there, only simply watched, or worse, joined.
Same dance, same song...
No matter how fast he ran, or how far, or how many years...no matter how strong he got...how many walls he built, how many ways he protected his heart, his very existence...it was nothing but sand in the presence of the man before him.
Dad...why? What did he do wrong? What could he have done differently? Was there ever another way this could have gone? Why be born if all he did was bring misery?
Why even exist if one's existence only brought this?
He knew the answer, and yet, he couldn't rationalize it for himself.
Tears started to roll as he was deep in sleep. Trying his best to free himself from such a fate that he knew would come if he stayed in such a hell.
It took an outside force to free him from the shackles of his own mind. Eyes wide as he gasps, barely able to see and hear as his heart vibrates down to the very pit of his stomach, his mind racing as it quickly processes everything he felt and saw, connecting it with every memory that brought it into existence while trying so hard to shut it all down.
But he felt so sick.
He knew this feeling, took years to learn what it was, but he knows now. A panic attack; he was having another panic attack in his sleep. Damn it, why did he have to be so weak?!
Hearing a warm, gentle voice filled with concern, so vastly different from the one that was in his mind, a warm embrace about his body, protective and loving, so different from the touch of being grabbed by the wrist or being hit... That's right, that was a long time ago, and though it felt like only yesterday...
He felt like he was going to throw up.
John quickly turned to the other, burying his face as he cried, his voice panting hard, no strength left to hold it back as he clung to the taller man's shirt. Make it stop. Anything, anybody, make it stop. Heavens or hells, make it stop. It was too much. It was all too much; it hurt, his mind felt like it was being dug into, torn apart. It's been so long since he felt this way, but he knows what it means, what comes after it... He didn't want to go back to that place.
Curling up, he clings and buries himself more, trying to hide from the existence of reality, feeling himself being watched. His neck is being grabbed by the scruff.
He was safe now; he was safe right now...he was safe...he was cared for...he was loved, he was wanted...Yet his rationality of it all was threatening to thin and snap... to break under his own inability to keep himself safe.
"Daddy..." The little form whispers. Stay in the present...stay in the present, not the past, not even the future. Here and now, that's what matters more right now. Here and now, and the man he now calls father. That matters more than any of what was in that hellish night terror called memories.
The Doctor had been tinkering at his desk when the TARDIS first sensed the boy's nightmares. Worried, she tried gently nudging her Doctor telepathically (although not entirely surprised when it didn't work: he was deeply focused). Sighing affectionately yet with the increasing awareness of their ward's distress, she switched tactics and chimed aloud (although isolating the sound to the room) -
- to no avail.
The Old Girl huffed. And then the emotional distress of the dear, tiny John spiked. She proverbially rolled up her sleeves. Right, she thought. No time to dilly dally and do this gently: John needed his father, and needed him now.
The hum of TARDIS momentarily went silent for a beat before the ship sent up a mighty clamour in his work room, both telepathically and using all but the Cloister Bell to get his attention.
To say that The Doctor almost regenerated from fright was an understatement. But before he could give her what for, she fretfully pointed him to John. The Doctor, now sensing the boy's distress, gave his Old Girl a hasty thanks and hurried to find him. In his urgency to find him, it slipped his mind that one of the benefits of having a ship that was at once all of Time and Space *and* sentient meant that she could move the rooms as she willed, wanted, and needed. So, when opening the door to his room revealed John's immediately facing his where there had been nothing before, he took a brief moment to give her a more heartfelt thanks, pressing his hand to a coral strut before carefully walking inside.
A telepathic wave of twisted-knotted-writhing fear hit The Doctor like a freight train, nearly doubling him over from the force of it. "Lad?" He called softly as he scanned the room; it didn't take long to spot the tiny, curled up form on the bed. And amidst the weeping, he heard the boy mumbling pleas.
His hearts tightened. Steeling his telepathic barriers for whatever else would come, he swiftly cleared the distance from the door to the bed in a few long strides, sat down on the edge of the bed, and gently scooped the boy into his arms, and hugging him tightly. "Easy, John: easy. Shhh- yer alri'. I've got you now: you'll be alright."
A wave of nausea hit The Doctor (not his, he sensed, but John's), and the boy began to sob. He can't make out whether John is actually pleading aloud (in that post night terror way The Doctor himself is all too deeply familiar with) or whether he's picking up the boy's rushing thoughts from the contact, but whichever it was did not change the fact that it broke his hearts all the same.
The lad all but tries to burrow into him, and all The Doctor can do is hold John tighter and whisper the odd reassurance until the nightmare fully fades. The small, pitiful "Daddy", uttered from the curled up ball that was usually so bright and innocent, makes him sadder and furious all at once: Omega have mercy on whoever it was that hurt John to leave such wounds because, Stars as his witness, The Doctor would not should he encounter them.
At a loss at how to comfort John further without crossing telepathic boundaries but still desperate to do so, The Doctor begins to hum a soothing lullaby he picked somewhere and somewhen on his travels, and the TARDIS softly chimes in.
"Doctor, my feet hurt. Why'd ya gotta park the TARDIS so far away?" Ariadne pouted, dragging her teddy by one paw alongside her.
The Doctor turned to see her pouting, looked back along the road they had traveled (tracing and calculating the route in his mind), then towards the nook the TARDIS was nestled in before settling back to her.
In all fairness, it was far for a small child. He walked toward her and crouched down.
"Becos big, stupid me forgot that I'm all long and gangly while yer still tiny. Haven't had the time yet ta match my stride, you," he replied with goofy smile. "D'you want me to carry you, or would you rather have a rest now and walk the rest of the way?"
Ariadne considered this. She really was very small, being only about five years old at this time. But she was a stubborn little thing, quite independent (she could already tie her own shoes and braid her own hair), and endlessly rebellious. Who could blame her, following along after the likes of Jack Harkness and the Doctor?
She hugged her bear, Mr. Jones, tightly to her chest, and gazed up at the Doctor with her big, brown eyes. Finally she reached out for him, indicating she wanted to be carried. With someone else, she might have declared herself a "big girl" and insisted she could make it. With the Doctor, though, she would occasionally allow him to baby her.
"How come you're so long an' I'm tiny?" She asked. "Do Doctors hafta eat leaves off - off - off the trees like, um...giraffes?"
"Alri', upsy-daisy," and The Doctor effortlessly lifts her into his arms and rests her on his right side (so that she could better look around which ever way she wanted; also meant that his left hand was free, just in case). Making sure she was good, he set off again.
Ariadne's question caught him off guard, causing him to laugh and gently ruffle her hair. "Silly duck - wherever do you lot get your ideas about what I eat? Have you ever seen me eat leaves off a tree, hm?" He gently tapped her nose, still grinning. "No, 'course not: I at least wait until they've been picked or something.
"Not tha' I'm adverse to a bit of foraging, but I don't know everything. The universe is huge: Lot's of trees and plants out there, across Time and Space! I's much more fun when you eat something prepared by someone who knows what it is and how best to eat it than just chomping down and hoping it's good."
"Now, as to why I'm so long, well, tha's because I'm all grown up! You, meanwhile, still have plenty of that to do. Height for most species is determined by genetics, itself impacted by multiple factors but! Wha's important is that your genes set roughly how high you can grow, an' how well you eat, an' getting plenty of rest, are important for helpin' yer body do the growin' it's been designed to do. Which, I guess, in a roundabout way, does mean eatin' yer leaves an' other vegetables."
Conspiratorially, he added: "Jus' not like a giraffe, and certainly not while giraffes are around: they're very sensitive, you know."
"Doctor, my feet hurt. Why'd ya gotta park the TARDIS so far away?" Ariadne pouted, dragging her teddy by one paw alongside her.
The Doctor turned to see her pouting, looked back along the road they had traveled (tracing and calculating the route in his mind), then towards the nook the TARDIS was nestled in before settling back to her.
In all fairness, it was far for a small child. He walked toward her and crouched down.
"Becos big, stupid me forgot that I'm all long and gangly while yer still tiny. Haven't had the time yet ta match my stride, you," he replied with goofy smile. "D'you want me to carry you, or would you rather have a rest now and walk the rest of the way?"
On July 20, 1969, 109 hours and 42 minutes after launch, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin entered the lunar lander ‘Eagle’, made a final check, and the Eagle undocked from the lunar orbiter ‘Columbia’, where the third member of the crew Michael Collins, stayed in orbit around the moon.
Partially manually piloted by Armstrong, the Eagle landed 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north moon latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east moon longitude. Armstrong stepped out, and Aldrin followed 20 minutes later: human beings stepped on the moon for the first time. The two men spent 21 hours and 26 minutes on its surface.
One of the astounding aspects of the mission was the seeming simplicity of the technology used to get man to the moon. According to Oliver Gassmann, professor of Technology Management, the mobile phone in your pocket has one million times more memory than the Apollo 11’s computer. Same about the procesor: the latest phones typically have more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago.
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” –Neil Armstrong
(gifs from the documentary Chasing The Moon, 2019)
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
Keep a weather eye on Proton -- they've done sketchy enough stuff that I don't trust them overmuch -- but otherwise, this is a fantastic list and thank you to the compilers!
Nine: What do you want from me?
Mrs Crook: I wanna know. What it felt like. To wipe your own people from existence. To kill every last Time Lord in the universe.
Nine: No, you really don't.
Mrs Crook: Oh, but I do. I do, I do. I doooOOOoooo. How powerful did it make you feel? How omnipotent?
Nine: Are you sure you aren't exceeding your orders, Mrs. C? If the Grue wants me, take me to him.
Mrs Crook: Just tell meeeeeuh, tell me, tell me, tell meeeeeeeeuh. How did it feel? What did it may ya feeeeel?
Nine: If you want to know how it made me feel, go to hell. And find out for yourself.
Mrs Crook: Oh, thank you, Doctor. Oh, yes, I believe you.
-> 4.6. Thirteen O'Clock - The Ninth Doctor Adventures
They way he says "go to hell" like he wishes that's where he still was, where he thinks he belongs.
origamiaround
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
gracieabrams
titsay
