The Fictional Character Adam Baldwin Seems Like a Gorram Asshole (by Jayne Cobb)
(Gorram it, that asshole doctor kid told me I needed to attach a “trigger warning” to this article, because trauma is a real medical condition and unexpected exposure to trauma triggers can result in real psychological harm. At first I was all like, “the only trigger warnings Vera needs are the — “ and then I ran out of something clever to say, but then Inara started in on me too, and she’s I’m already on her bad side because I described companions using “an insulting, demeaning term for sex workers” and really I gotta do what the doctor tells me because his sister can still kill me with her brain, so: this article contains reference to transphobia and suicide.)
So I’ve recently been reading some novels from Old Earth, at least I think they’re novels. The Shepard always said I should read the Good Book and this “Twitter archives” seems like a pretty good book. I especially like the parts involving this “dril” character. Anyway, I recently came across this character called Adam Baldwin, and I gotta say, he’s a real asshole. And it’s not like I’m about being all shiny and nice, but this [Inara edit: culturally appropriative swear word in mistranslated Mandarin] does some things that are just completely out of line.
So, in this “Twitter archives” story, there’s this huge storyline where some [Inara edit: culturally appropriative swear word in mistranslated Mandarin] guy got really mad cuz his girl left him. Now personally that’s why I never sleep with the same girl twice [Simon edit: I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him with the same girl at least twice.] [Inara edit: I have never seen him with a girl other than a sex worker, which is perfectly fine but not exactly the kind of relationship that we’re discussing here.] but in any case, this kid decided he was going to get all these people together and start some kind of movement to go after her. It was about video games. Anyway, somehow this Adam Baldwin guy, he’s some kinda actor, he started posting made up [Inara edit: you know the drill] about this girl, whose name was Zoe by the way, and right there you can see where this guy’s wrong because you don’t mess with Zoe, even I know that. And Baldwin, see, he made up this name for it, GamerGate. I don’t even begin to understand what that name means. (Simon edit: Jayne has never made a truer statement.)
Anyway, the thing is that this got big. They wanted to get rid of ethics in game journalism, or maybe create it, and I think some of them wanted to sleep with a girl named Vivian. But really from what I can see it looks like they were just going after a bunch of people who made these boring text games and stuff and saying mean stuff to them. And people started hailing this Baldwin character as some kind of hero. Like he was the guy who started it all, even though he wasn’t, and like the whole thing was worth anything.
Now me, you know I like me some heroism. Well, that’s a lie. I like people buying me beers because they think I’m a hero, and of course the ladies… well you know. I’ll not get too graphic here or that [sex worker, specifically Companion] will probably edit something in here. But this one time, people thought I was a hero, and they had this whole movement about celebrating me, and if I have to say so myself, they had a much better grounds for a movement than these GamerGate guys because they were fighting a guy who was like putting them in boxes for years and making them eat mud. It was really sad. Anyway they had this great song about me, it goes like this:
[Simon edit: we all know the song, Jayne.]
But the thing was, it wasn’t making things any better and… there was this kid. I still remember the kid. He looked up to me. He looked up to me and thought I was all sorts of things that I wasn’t. And this guy was shooting at me and the kid jumped in front of me and he didn’t make it. He died because of me and because of that movement I started, by mistake. And like I said, I ain’t much for actual heroism, but I tore the statue they were building of me right down and I told them that the movement was crap. They might not have listened, but I said it.
Now here’s a thing: back on old Earth when this Adam guy would have been running around, people weren’t so nice to folks who’re “transgender.” I know what that is because I started searching the datanets for “what do you do when you’re a boy and some [Inara edit: misogynistic term for River removed] keeps saying you have a girls name” and I found out that some folks, like, not only get the girl’s name but they get, like, the girl parts and stuff. That would be gorram awful. And so, it turns out that a lot of these transgender people were making games about how awful stuff was. Like I said, a lot of them seemed pretty boring, most of them didn’t have any rutting killing in them.
But here’s the thing. Like the doc says, sometimes [Inara edit: standard swear edit] gets in your head. But here’s the part the doc made me warn about: there was this one transgender woman, who these GamerGate rutters were after, and she died because of what they were doing. And thing is, she’s just the one that people knew about. Transgender people back on old Earth had a gorram high rate of suicide, and the doc’s backing me up here. Like I said, when somebody died because of a movement I started by mistake, I gorram did my best to stop it.
This Baldwin guy? He never did. In fact, he continually posted things just like the stuff that got that girl killed.
Look, I ain’t no “social justice warrior,” but when people are dying from something you did and they didn’t start nothin’ with you, and they don’t have anything you want, you should probably stop doing that thing. So all I’m saying is, when somebody died because of my movement, I stopped. This Baldwin guy didn’t.
Not that I gorram care about any of this.
[Jayne Edit: You gorram 笨天生的一堆肉 edited my swears? What the 熊貓尿 is cultural appropriation? I swear I’m gonna — [TERMINAL CONNECTION ENDED]
