Cyborcats Go!

His name is Jim Sterling and he is a rather… colorful games journalist who actually uses his platform to report on stuff like horrible working conditions, abuse and even stuff like sexual assault in the games industry.

Why? Because a massive scandal broke at the major game publisher Ubisoft revealing a culture of systematic sexual abuse, including high-ranking officials within the company that would regularly drug and rape female employees, which management and HR seemed fully aware of and would protect and move around the perpetrators Catholic-church-style. Reviewers were told not to talk about it and, when it became impossible to contain, to not talk about it where it’s “irrelevant” – that is, never mention or hint at any such stuff when actually reviewing and promoting Ubisoft games, because it’s a separate thing, see, no need to distract from the game (Ubisoft’s goal here was to be able to continue to advertise their games to players who hadn’t heard about it, and wait out the scandal until those who had just assumed everything was dealt with and forgot, which worked).

Jim refused. They knew this would tank their career, they knew they were throwing away an incredibly promising future. They did it anyway.

James Stephanie Sterling in one of a very small number of game reviewers out there with an actual fucking spine and a moral code made from titanium. They’re still effectively blacklisted from the industry, because since then they’ve refused to reform and play Good PR Robot like reviewers are supposed to do (because the AAA games industry thinks ‘reviewer’ and ‘critic’ are synonyms for ‘PR person in a gig economy’), shining light on repeated abuses and scandals in the industry, both internal scandals like this (discrimination, worker abuse, fraud, the normalisation of crunch culture and not paying workers) and ways at which the AAA industry scams players (abuses of early access, loot boxes and ‘pay to win’ mechanics that used to be the realm of free-to-play games now dominating paid titles while the prices of those titles also go up, abusive subscription models and ‘always online’ services, fun little tricks that companies love to pull with “remastered” games, and lately NFTs). Jim’s usually a good six months to a full year ahead of the curve on spying out this bullshit, able to see and warn about it before it becomes trendy enough for other reviewers to touch, and the result has been being continually silenced by game companies and passively buried by algorithms due to illegitimate DCMA takedowns, incorrect copyright strikes spurious lawsuits, being frozen out of gaming news, and whatever other nasty tricks people can pull. They came out as nonbinary very shortly before hitting a million subscribers (despite the forces agaisnt them) and then suddenly lost a lot of subscribers over a short period of time. Which was surely a complete coincidence. Yep. Just a coincidence. Have they backed down on literally anything? No. Because they decided to do this properly despite the cost and they are NOT fucking around.

They also call out particularly bad bullshit of indie developers (we’re talking the con artists and bigots in indie development in particular), not just AAA, which once hilariously resulted in a tiny no-name developer attempting to sue them for TEN MILLION DOLLARS. (Well, I found it hilarious after the fact. It was incredibly frustrating and somewhat stressful for Jim at the time, if one of the more ridiculous silencing tactics.) You can see them report on that here:

I have a family friend who worked at our local Salvation Army headquarters as a a secretary. This particular office took all the Christmas donations for children in need, put them in a warehouse, and on a designated day the staff and their friends picked through them all, taking whatever they wanted. She saw people hauling away bikes donated for specific families. Some local children had hundreds of dollars of gifts donated in their name, and on Christmas they received three cheap things, items likely not even from the person who sponsored them.

My friend quit, and I’ve not given them a dime of my money since then.

I’m a wildfire and disaster logistics specialist.

I deal with a lot of agencies who provide disaster relief.

I used to say the Salvation Army’s disaster services were the one (literally the ONE) good thing they did.

They would come in, set up a canteen trailer, make and pass out hot coffee and donated food in a disaster, usually being one of the first agencies to get there and the last to leave.

Then I found out.

Every time they did this, regardless of if they were actually invited or deployed by the agency in charge (usually FEMA, sometimes others) they would SELF-DEPLOY. Meanjng they would just show up. Ok. That’s not TOO bad, sometimes agencies have to take initiative and get there before the red tape is sorted out. BUT. They, after they left at the end of the incident, they would send FEMA or the host agency a BILL. They used one or two paid employees (usually the driver of the truck and a supervisor); and many VOLUNTEERS, but they would bill for EVERYONE’s Labor at standard federal rates. They would bill for the food they distributed even though it was all donated by another agency or private parties. They would bill for the coffee they made and the supplies. Except they would use electricity from the shelter location, water from donations or from the shelter, and in many cases, they would get the coffee and industrial filters DONATED, but bill for them at retail prices.

Salvation Army reached out to Milknmuffins and asked what shelter she’s at with the promise to address the abuse in it. She…ended up saying where she was. She was thrown out onto the street. It’s also all on Twitter.

They invited her to a personal talk so she could explain the situation in person.

And then they threatened her with a screenshot of a rape-threat made supposedly by her:

And then threw her out into the street while claiming she broke house rules that

The original video, for anyone who hasn't seen it:

And the relevant album cover:

Sessler was a teenager when "We're Not Gonna Take It" it was on the charts. Probably had MTV so he saw the video.

Reddit user "TheBirminghamBear" makes a comment that reads as follows:

I consider myself a pretty imaginative person.

But I cannot, and will never be able to comprehend how anyone gets worked up when a person wearing a suit comes in one day and now is wearing a dress and says "I'd like to be called 'she' now."

I mean the amount of mental energy people have spent getting worked up about this is just fucking batfuck insane.

We are creatures born of voidstuff that bootstrapped consciousness out of *nothingness* and in the infinitesimal span of 2000 years went from pushing around a stone wheel to landing a rocket on the fucking moon.

And yet hundreds of millions of people spend their entire fucking lives fighting against a tiny percent of people that would just like to be called a she instead of he or vice versa.

What a fucking waste. It's pathetic. The Protectors of Public Bathrooms? The Purity of Pronouns Police? Fucking juvenile. Depraved, sad, meager little fools.

It makes me livid beyond the inhumanity and cruelty of it. Like, I would like to lie, and tell you that my anger is entirely on behalf of the trans community, that this is entirely out of empathy for them, but that's only a half truth. Only half of my outrage is on *behalf* of them, the other half is a purely selfish fucking fury at how fucking *pathetic* these bigots are. How sad, meager, nonsensical, and preposterously fucking *stupid* this entire mainstream political anti-trans movement is.

It makes me livid because it's just so fucking beneath our potential as a species. We could be terrforming planets right now, and people like Sophie Wilson are essential to us having the societal capacity to do the work.

And yet we're bogging people like her down in laws focusing on what fucking bits she has and what she wears relative to those bits. Alan Turing did more than nearly any human alive not ONLY to WIN WORLD WAR FUCKING TWO, but to advance the entirety of human technology, and he was harassed his entire life because he liked to fuck men.

So insignificant. So completely, entirely irrelevant to the grand scheme of the cosmos and we are just swarmed and consumed by the weight of these fucking ignorant, meager little losers and their sad, delerious little missions.

These cosmically myopic pissants with a mere fraction of the intellectual capacity of someone like Sophie or Alan Turing are standing around in their filthy fucking mobs protesting people like her, harassing people like her, using the power of government office to attack people like all, and for *what*? Because she was born with a dick but now as an adult prefers to act and dress as though she weren't?

That's *it*. That's *all*. It's so irrelevant to these idiots' lives, so inconsequential to them, so.intensely personal to her and her alone, and yet they just screech and froth and drag our entire species down under the weight of their inanity and stupidity.

Entire political parties full of ivy-league educated opportunistic, psychopathic charlatans and all their ideologically sympathetic propaganda networks are whipping up our worst and stupidest and pointing them at these ordinary, normal people who did nothing wrong for no other reason than because they're a convenient minority to victimize at that moment.

For fucks sake, if you, whoever you are, are among these bigots, take a fucking look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself why you want to spend this precious, brief span of your existence being *this* sad and pathetic.

The purity of a fucking pronoun? The safety of a public bathroom? The sancitity of children's sports? Are you fucking serious? You are an adult and *this* is what you think matters? This is what you think constitutes using significant amounts of your time and energy fighting against? These are not real. These are not the serious concerns of a serious human being.

You people are being hooked by the fucking balls by con men and dragged around the streets made to hold a fucking bullhorn for them, shouting bloody fucking panic about *bathrooms* being invaded? Do you ever stop to look around at what a fucking clown you're being made into? Do you? You have one life and you waste it like this?

Sophie Wilson was born with a condition that made her physically and psychologically uncomfortable by the gender norms related to the genitalia she had at birth.

Despite the public fucking spectacle people like you have made of this very simply-addressed issue, she found her peace, she transitioned, and despite the pain of the condition, and the pain of simply *being* trans in an environment this pointlessly fucking hostile, she went on to build essential components to the technology YOU people use to spew fucking hate at her.

That's what she did. Contributed to the good of all mankind. Tell me again how *your* useless, bigoted asses are going to save reality by preventing her from using your bathroom, clowns.

She advanced human knowledge, and yet if she were in modern-day Texas they would want to throw her in jail for wearing a dress. It. Is. Pathetic.

**EDIT**: It's good to go on a rant against transphobia every now and again. As a cis person I don't have many opportunities to converse with these transphobes on a regular basis. I start to forget they exist.

Then they come screeeeeeching in to tell me how misplaced my anger is, because, GASP! Did I know that *people out there were asking them to use different pronouns?!*

The inhumanity of it!

Meanwhile in hellacapes like Florida and Texas they are passing laws to make drag shows illegal, they are calling trans individuals pedophiles in statr houses and trying to pass laws making it illegal to dress "in clothing different to that of the gender assigned at birth."

But yes, YOU are the ones who have had your life upended, what with the, maybe *one* trans individuals you ever actually encounter in real life, who requests you respect their dignity as a human and call them a he even if they were originally born a woman?

You people sound fucking preposterous. I want you to know that. I've listened to five year olds throwing tantrums and screaming blood murder for not getting to eat a whole pack of Oreos and they sound more reasonable than you people.

You know what? I don't believe in the science behind transphobes. I don't recognize you exist. I think you must be making this up. You're not real, so I don't validate your existence. You all agree with me deep down. No one has ever shown me science saying transphobia is a legitimate state of being. So, I invalidate your existence. Thanks for agreeing with me.

Like, I know you SAY you don't believe in honoring other people's pronouns, but you're just making that up for attention. Deep down you really do believe it. I know. 100%.

I'm just asking to you to look at yourselves in the mirror. Just stop and fucking look. You are adults. With access to the internet. You could do anything.

And you are spending significant time and mental energy worrying about the safety of public bathrooms. One guy said calling a transwoman a she would lead to the collapse of the Oxford dictionary.

Do you people hear yourselves? Have you taken just one fucking moment in your adult lives to honestly assess the things you believe in? Do you take a pause to just *look around* at the sort of fucking losers you're standing beside? People banning drag shows? People calling gay people groomers? These are the same people behind segregation. The same people behind satanic panics. Jordan B fucking Peterson. These are your peers on this. This is your peer group. A pack of fucking losers.

For the sake of making something of the rest of your life, just please honestly listen to yourselves and ask yourselves if this is really what you want to be.

Like, that’s the straight-up text of the film, and it’s not especially subtle about it.*

I’m not saying gay people can’t be villains, but the whole point of Jareth is that his attraction toward Sarah is sick, and her rejection of him represents a triumph of good over evil – it’s very much a film born of the Stranger Danger narrative that was all over popular media in the 1980s. I’m sure it’s possible to do a same-gender version of that without falling down the slippery slope of Unfortunate Implications, but it doesn’t feel like that concern is even on the radar in a lot of these proposals.

CW: Long meta, rape mention, frank discussion of Problematic Teenage Fantasy Boyfriends

Labyrinth is pretty clearly a Symbolic Coming-Of-Age Story ™ about the Role Of Fantasy in the life of a Young Woman, right? it’s about how you need to have a healthy relationship with fantasy. you can’t let it push away the people you love, you can’t let it control you or blind you to what’s there. but it can help you make lasting friends, and when you need it most- for any reason at all- it’s there.   

it’s pretty much text that everything in Labyrinth is part of Sarah’s imaginary world. Everything in the Labyrinth is either something she sought out and loves- her plushies and statuettes, her music boxes and books- or some part of herself, some want or fear or dream, given form. 

And a lot of girls like Sarah- bookish, daydreamy, intellectually gifted but emotionally immature girls who’ve been steeped in a lot of crap about relationships from the world we live in - have a Fantasy Lover who looks and acts a lot like Jareth. 

He’s Intense and kind of scary– because when you’re at that age, anything to do with romance or sex is intense and scary. He’s passionately, obsessively devoted to you, because it feels good to be needed and a teenager hasn’t got the life experience to realize that IRL that kind of obsessiveness is a red flag. He’s an older man- sometimes much older- so that he knows what he’s doing and can show you what to do, but he’s as pretty and graceful as an age-appropriate crush would be. He’s Flawed and Broody and a bad boy- but it’s blatantly obvious that he has good qualities; he will gladly make a fool of himself dancing just to make a baby smile. 

 And the Fantasy Lover is often… yes… kinda predatory. He’s a vampire, or a werewolf, or a Phantom, or a Goblin King. He comes onto you, not the other way around; he chases you, and you run for a while before falling into his arms and being Ravished. He leads when you dance; he tells you “do everything I say, and I will be your slave”.

But there’s a reason for this. in modern American society- and this was even more true back when Labyrinth was being filmed- women are not supposed to want sex. even having fantasies about having a passionate lover you sought out that you want can get a bit ~taboo~. and if you’re a teenager- especially if you’re a sheltered teenager with no female friends or family, no one to tell you that what you want is okay and normal- it can feel weird and bad and scary to fantasize about, well, initiating consensual sex. you don’t feel like you’re allowed to; Nice Girls don’t. 

so oftentimes, the Fantasy Lover blurs into rape fantasy territory. he knows exactly what you want and he gives it to you, no matter how many times you say no. you deny yourself any agency within the context of your fantasy, but since it’s just a fantasy, you’re having your cake and eating it too– after all, you can stop whenever you like. you still get to be a Nice Girl, a Good Girl- you didn’t do anything wrong, even in your own head- but you get all the poorly-choreographed Imaginary Romance Bodice-Rippin’ you want. 

normally, this is a pretty harmless coping mechanism. the thing is… “denying herself her own agency” is one of Sarah’s big flaws.

 She tends to immediately deny that she made bad decisions, to act like bad things just happen to her because It’s Not Fair, to balk when there’s a problem she can’t immediately solve. heck, selling Toby to the Goblin King in the first place is sort of a backhanded denial-of-agency – she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Toby even though she resents his existence, oh no no no, it was the Goblin King that stole the baby. 

 And Sarah’s never in any real danger from Jareth. the snake scared her, but it didn’t bite; the poisoned peach would have made her lose her memory and stay in her fantasy world forever, which is something that Sarah knows is bad, but still kinda wants on some level. at their final confrontation, he doesn’t try to kill her, doesn’t try to fight her– because he can’t. 

Jareth is Sarah’s Fantasy Lover. He can’t do anything that Sarah doesn’t want him to. he’s predatory because Sarah wants him to be, because then she doesn’t have to accept that she wants sex and romance; she can pretend it’s just another thing that happens to her. the reason Jareth is so out of control in the text is that Sarah has given away all control. 

the final confrontation in Labyrinth, isn’t Good Versus Evil in the sense that you mean; it isn’t Sarah destroying Jareth forever, or kicking him out of the land. Hell, he shows up at the end in barn owl form, while all the muppets are having a dance party in Sarah’s bedroom– he’s a part of her inner, fantastic world, and has just as much right to be there as Ludo or Hoggle or the little dudes with the ostrich hats. but he’s only a part of that world, and he’s not the part that matters most, or the part that has say.

their final confrontation is Sarah accepting, and taking responsibility for, her inner life. she is the one in charge of her destiny; she wants what she wants, she needs what she needs, and she will take responsibility for both. she doesn’t need Jareth to do things “to” her so she can pretend she doesn’t want them to happen. her will is as strong as Jareth’s, and her kingdom as great.  he has no power over her. 

so like…I get where you’re coming from with recognizing the Unfortunate Implications and all. “Gay people are sexual predators” is still A Thing, and in the real world, yeah, Jareth would be a creepy pedo stalker. assuming our civilization survives and all, I hope that someday people look at Labyrinth the way we look at Baby, It’s Cold Outside and completely miss the point. :V  

…but c’mon. a kid who grows up being told that they don’t really want the things they want– and if they do want those things, they’re Literally Satan– is gonna have so very much more trouble accepting their own sexuality as they get older.  

When the Fantasy Lover is not human – vampire, werewolf, or Goblin King – then it comes with the understanding that the way he behaves is simply in his nature. There’s no need to fuss over wondering why he became this way (or whether he might become worse in the future) or whether you have an obligation to try to Fix Him with your love, or whether there was something you said or did to make him this way. He simply is.

(I mean, I Can Fix Him With My Love is also  a fantasy, but a different one. Sort of how like “I overcome the oppression” and “I don’t have to face the oppression in the first place” are both important fantasies for many minority groups, I Can Fix Him and I Don’t Have To Fix Him are both important fantasies for young girls.)