‘Jeeves,’ I said, reaching the finish line and sinking into an armchair, ‘answer what I am about to ask you frankly. You have known me a good time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have had every opportunity of studying my psychology.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, would you say I was a fellow who stole cats?’
‘No, sir.’
His ready response pleased me not a little. No hesitation, no humming and hawing, just ‘No, sir.’
Bingo hesitated for a moment.
‘Well, I told you I’d got an idea. This is it. I want you to spring the news on him. I haven’t the nerve myself.’
‘What! I’m hanged if I do!’
‘And you call yourself a pal of mine!’
‘Yes, I know; but there are limits.’
‘Bertie,’ said Bingo reproachfully, ‘I saved your life once.’
‘When?’
‘Didn’t I? It must have been some other fellow, then. Well, anyway, we were boys together and all that. You can’t let me down.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘But, when you say you haven’t nerve enough for any dashed thing in the world, you misjudge yourself. A fellow who-’
‘Cheerio!’ said young Bingo. ‘One-thirty tomorrow. Don’t be late.’
47 Ginger Headed Sailors - Jeeves and Wooster
An old maid down in devon
Said my idea of heaven
IS FORTY SEVEN GINGER HEADED SAIIILOOORS
speaking of jeeves do you ever think about how dismissive he is of progressive social movements like communism, or even his reactions to new music, literature and fashion, and remember that he’s spent his entire life molding himself for professional excellence in a very specific, demanding job that is tied intimately to a class system that is rapidly changing and that within his lifetime the job that he has worked so hard to become one of the best at is basically going to stop existing
Fandom is not an obligation.
It is not a job. It is not school. It is not a contract. Participation in fandom is voluntary and it is not binding (commissions and paid work aside).
Yes, within fandom you should be bound by some sense of ethics or general decency: don’t steal art and fic, don’t willfully deceive people, don’t be a jerk or a garbage human, and so on and so forth. But everything else? The writing fic and the doing and the participation? It is voluntary.
So if you are writing a fic and you’re seven chapters in and you have eight chapters to go and you’re just tired and you don’t want to do it any more? You can stop. If you’ve been running a blog and writing about every single episode of every new anime show that’s come out and you can’t for three weeks? Don’t. If you told your 5 billion followers you were gonna post a piece of fanart and you’re just sick of it and you don’t want to do it any more? Give it up.
Sure, people will be disappointed and upset and some will complain. But life is disappointing and upsetting sometimes, and it goes on, and no one can sue you for not finishing a fic that they were enjoying the hell out of for free. No one can accuse you of not living up to the terms of your contract when you don’t post that fanart you mentioned three weeks ago. Because fandom is voluntary. It’s something that you participate in because it’s fun or fulfilling or important to you, and when it stops being those things, you should stop, too.
You are not bound by the asks in your inbox. You are not bound by comments on a fic or a piece of art. You are not bound, in fandom, by other people’s disappointments or their expectations.
Fandom is voluntary. Don’t let people pressure you into thinking that it is anything else.
I found this out when the Portland Guinea Pig Rescue contacted me one day, asking if I’d ever thought of training a neural network to name guinea pigs. I hadn’t, but it turns out that neural networks are amazingly good at this.
Soon, the Portland Guinea Pig Rescue had guinea pigs named Hanger Dan, Buzzberry, Princess Pow, Stargoon, Fuzzable, and Popchop. See Part 1 for all the names and guinea pig pictures, and the Portland Guinea Pig Rescue site for how to adopt guinea pigs, or donate to the cause.
Soon, I heard from the Morris Animal Refuge in Philadelphia, who had another batch of guinea pigs who needed names (often, the guinea pigs arrive unnamed, escapees, abandoned, or from hoarding situations). I was only too happy to fire up the neural network and generate some more names. These animals resulted:
Hally Flope
Spooty and Snofer
Astrono
Mumpkans
Biinshecklesseon
These guinea pigs are all currently adoptable at the Morris Animal Refuge, which also has other pets up for adoption and takes donations.
I leave the future guinea pig namers of the world with two lists of guinea pig names. The first one is generated using the same neural network as the list above. Depending on the maturity of the network, as well as random flips of the coin, the names may be more or less suitable for guinea pigs… use at your own risk!
Funbees
Sporky
Faffle
Sratterson
Slofky Sugtle
Falasla
Spod
Butzoon
Faxley
Mr. Mister I
Mickle
Adory
Butchin
Halt
Swander Wrigty
Furpie
Bundu
Hax
Ping
Potty
Funzy
Splandaaa
Bit
Warpers
Mansy
Spy
Punches
Aaairg
Simples
Fuskle
Furzy
Finzlies
Buntyluttaus
Binky
Patter
Farter
Pigter Wiglil
And the SECOND list… I decided to add more variety by mixing two more datasets in with the guinea pig names. The first was a list of superheroes, to add some action and majesty to the names. And the second dataset… was a list of metal bands.
To avoid overwhelming the other two datasets with the sheer size of the metal band dataset, I selected only band names that began with “Dark”, “Death”, and “Evil”. I interleaved the three datasets line by line, and sat back to watch. It turns out that the neural network was clever enough that it picked up on the pattern, and soon was dutifully producing output that alternated between the genres: “Dark Sender, Fuzzy Butt, Deathnip, Hawkeye, …”. But sometimes it would get its neurons in a tangle and result in names that were obvious mixups, sinister guinea pigs or adorable metal bands or super pigs.
And SO. Here is the guinea pig/superhero/death metal list:
Dark Piggy
Deathmlom
Fuzzy Night
Dark Darn
Dark Damn
Batson
Deathlike Destroyer
Magely
Roger Sin
Death Snifs
Dark Lard
Dark Hunnsy
Deathmop
Bun Roy
Spider-Woom
Dark Legendord
Deathmofs
Evil Bee
Dottie Dam
Death’s Halp
Dardles
Nofder King
Dark Laand
Fuzzy Tolt
Hulkey
Deathwark
Deathy of Mashow Wolls
fishyfishyfishtimes
mallsharks
coworker told me he “hates all mollusks” today. and to each their own obviously but like… theres 100k species of mollusk… you really hate all of them bro? nautiluses and oysters and snails and nudibranches and chitons and thousands of animals youve never even heard of???? what did ammonites even fucking do to you
he hates sea bunny?
AND leaf sheep??
