“His claim that he never saw himself as anything but an equal interacting with equals clashes with his self description as ‘Stalin’ on his old board and his curmudgeonly statements about professionalism and his writing specifically. He knew damn well that he was in a position of multiple kinds of authority”

I mean, he knows what he did, because he was there for it when he did it. I said this elsewhere, but I would assume that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but told himself that he didn’t wield enough formal power for this to constitute force, so it would be cheating-level wrong as opposed to rape-level wrong. He…

He’s a writer whose work I enjoy so I want him to get this right - but there are so many things that make me shake my head.

Warren Ellis’ shitty behavior notwithstanding, saying that really good writers are as a result really good liars is some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard

Yeah, that’s why this isn’t something that’s just going to go away for me. This is something that has gone on for a very long time an affected a large number of people. Also, he fucking knew better. It’s not like he’s some dumbass frat boy (who also wouldn’t get a pass) but someone who had written about this exact…

It’s like reading the weather, no? We make our choices as individuals, and the push pull of public declarations of support or not, including how much news it makes form some kind of consensus.

If you had a year to get coaching and editorial input on how to make an apology sound genuine, you too could turn out something like this.

Many of the accusations against Ellis are not anonymous.

I’d guess the defence (if you could call it that) against that particular charge is that he basically rationalised himself as a rockstar with a bunch of groupies throwing themselves at him. I’m sure that was reasonably accurate for many of his interactions.

Yeah, I think he’s doing it right going about it pretty intelligently. The issue will be that he has to do whatever he needs to to keep his accusers happy. Random Twitter people shouting or whatever can be overcome with time—but if you have erstwhile victims touting their grievances in response to any Tweet about a…

Obviously we have no way of knowing what Ellis truly knew/thought/believed at any given time. However, and regardless of whether you actually believe him, I don’t think what he’s saying is absurd or totally beyond credulity. I think it would be possible for him to have understood what he was doing to have been shitty…

Well, more sad.  

But, we have a justice system, as broken as it is. It should be used if someone’s breaking the law. If someone’s not breaking the law, then, well... make a new one?

He was totally grooming you. ;)

I can almost see where his mind was. His focus was in having fun on the side, often with young adults enamored by him before meeting him. He didn’t consider the power imbalance or his guiding them towards a relationship because his focus was likely on the affair part and stoking his own ego.

SoManyOfUs, there’s a link in the article. Like, literally their point, if you’ve been following this (or read this or other articles this week about the situation) isn’t about “cancelation” but accountability and growth. Restorative justice.

I’ll rate this as “a good start, and we’ll what the follow through looks like.”

SMOU literally offered him a path back when they first launched their website.

Louis CK literally would make jokes on stage about the things he would turn around and secretly be doing after he left.

I agree that I find it hard to believe someone as smart as Ellis (although not as smart as Ellis thinks he is) wouldn’t know he was engaging in deeply fucked up behavior.

The problem is, no one has proffered a path back from this sort of thing. Like I get “he waited to long” or “why should he even be given the chance” but just like #MeToo is 4 years old, some of its lesser villains have to figure out how to navigate lacking any universally accepted directions for approximately half a…