Barefoot and Pregnant

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Mongrel
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jun 25, 2021 2:10 pm

Thad wrote:"Fell is coming back" is a headline I would have been excited about a year ago. I loved that series. I got my copy of issue #1 signed by artist Ben Templesmith the last time I went to a convention.

But under the circumstances? It means Warren Ellis has hit Step 3 of the Louis CK Playbook for How to Handle Being Outed as a Sexual Predator.

Step 1: Issue an "apology" that mostly consists of you humblebragging that you didn't know you were abusing a position of power because gosh darn it you just never realized how important and respected and influential you are.

Step 2: Just shut up and lie low for a year or so.

Step 3: Come back and act like nothing happened.

Occasionally, the Beat reminds me why I still read it despite its descent, over the past couple of years, into the same bland, semi-literate general pop-culture cheerleading as every other goddamn "comics" site. Once in awhile, it manages to commit acts of comics journalism, and here are a couple examples of that:

Warren Ellis makes a controversial return with Fell, by Heidi MacDonald

The Short-Lived Damnation of Warren Ellis, and the Danger It Creates, by Tara Ferguson

tl;dr Ellis ain't done shit to atone or make things right, he hasn't suffered any serious consequences, this is a fucked-up situation in isolation and a terrifying one in the larger context that Image is pretty much saying you can do whatever the fuck you want to women and you'll still have a place there.

Templesmith comes off pretty badly too, defending his collaboration with the strawman "I just can’t subscribe to a permanent social and economic living death for anyone, outside of criminal matters." Which, by and large, isn't what people are saying at all. So Many of Us, the site that detailed the accusations against Ellis last year, also laid out a path he could follow to achieve some restorative justice. He's done none of it. He's made no effort. He just lay low for awhile and then came back. Templesmith's response to that is utterly tone-deaf and completely out-of-touch with reality. I think he would have gotten more sympathy if he'd just said "Look, I've been working on this for years, since before all that stuff came out about Warren, and I just can't afford to do hundreds of hours of work and then not get paid for it." That's probably even the truth!

Anyway, fuck this. And fuck Image for doing it, though I'm not going to say people should boycott Image, because the hell of it is that would hurt the publisher a lot less than the independent creators whose books it puts out.

Definitely boycott Fell, though.

(I gotta remember to make sure it's not on my pull list anymore. I'm guessing it probably got removed at some point over the past 13 years, but I've been surprised when books have popped up in my box ages after they last came out.)

There's an update where Ellis did actually reply.

It sounds good, but then Ellis is good at sounding good, AND everything you said about him trying a Louis CK still applies. I'll believe it when So Many Of Us believes it.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Fri Jun 25, 2021 3:31 pm

Well that was fast.

Image wrote:This week’s FELL announcement was neither planned, nor vetted, and was in fact, premature. While finishing Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s FELL is something we’ve been looking forward to for years, Image Comics will not be working with Warren on anything further until he has made amends to the satisfaction of all involved. It is our sincere hope that the conversations that are beginning now will result in positive changes for everyone. Please visit SoManyOfUs.com.


A cynic might say "Well this explains why he finally reached out to So Many of Us yesterday."

Well this explains why he finally reached out to So Many of Us yesterday.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby KingRoyal » Fri Jun 25, 2021 4:08 pm

My "I'm not doing this for the sake of my project" comment has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the comment.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:19 pm

Court overturns Bill Cosby’s sex assault conviction, bars further prosecution

Well, this sucks.

The state’s highest court tossed Cosby’s conviction as a result of an agreement he had with a prior prosecutor that would have prevented Cosby from being criminally charged in the case.


He's still committed at least a few dozen rapes that he hasn't been charged with as of yet, so I expect there are probably some prosecutors looking into those about now.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:43 pm

I read the article and I still can't understand how an agreement like that even gets MADE.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:56 pm

Mongrel wrote:I read the article and I still can't understand how an agreement like that even gets MADE.

If I told you the person who made it was this fucking guy, would that explain it?

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:59 pm

That would do it.

Now the part I don't understand is how anyone could rule an extremely suspect agreement with no proof of its existence could be legally binding. BUT OKAY W/E I GUESS.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby KingRoyal » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:20 pm

Wait, did the judge really accept, "But the other DA said I could go" as an excuse?
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:27 pm

Yeah, this is blowing my mind.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:23 pm

So okay. By not stopping Texas's abortion ban from going into effect, SCOTUS has effectively overturned Roe, without the need for a big flashy ruling saying they're overturning Roe.

They've been playing this death-by-a-thousand-cuts gameplan for years. Don't actually straight-out say they're overturning Roe, but pare it down significantly every time a state passes a restriction, until there's nothing left. (Even Texas's law makes a show of not technically banning abortion, just banning it so early in the pregnancy as to effectively ban it.)

On the one hand, the media has consistently fallen for this tactic, and I don't have any faith in them to give it the blunt coverage that they need to (CNN's headline is "Justices' inaction allows 6-week abortion ban to go into effect for the first time in US", and that's one of the better ones; at least they're covering it on the front page). What I'm hoping is that this is one of those things that's too big to ignore. Remember how the opioid epidemic finally got people to start reexamining the drug war because it affected middle-class white people? I think this might be one of those things.

The other problem, of course, is that there's no solution to this short of packing the court, and the Democrats don't have the guts to do what needs to be done. I think it's still possible, if not probable, to change their minds with sufficient public pressure. I also think the midterms are going to matter a lot.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Friday » Thu Sep 02, 2021 12:45 am

yeah it reminds me of that southern state (I forget which one) that only has exactly one facility to get an abortion.

In the whole state.

Abortion might be "legal" but there are millions of women who cannot effectively get one. And now there will be millions more.

Yet another feather in my cap of "the law doesn't equal ethics and morality, and never fucking has" argument.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:20 pm

And aside from the most immediately obvious problem, which is the effective overturn of Roe, the Texas law is just straight-up fucking insane. The premise is that you can pretty much make any legal thing illegal by enforcing it through frivolous civil litigation instead of the criminal justice system. And the Supreme Court just said "Hm, that's too complicated and novel for us to block outright; we'll have to let it go into effect and see what happens."

So uh pretty much this now.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:11 pm

I've been seeing a lot of "Afghanistan seeing influx of Texan refugees in search of a better life" sorts of riffing in the past day.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Yoji » Wed Sep 08, 2021 12:54 pm

First off, look out: The link auto-plays video

Has anyone heard of this one yet? If I'm following it right, there was an old bar that ran afoul of a law permitting churches to block liquor licenses for any business nearby, which the one across the alley did. The bar took them to court, arguing that it's not constitutional to give randos veto power over your livelihood, and won. Now people are wondering if the same argument can be used against Texas' abortion bounty law.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Grath » Thu Sep 09, 2021 7:42 pm

DoJ is suing Texas for depriving women of their constitutional rights as well, now.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Thu Sep 09, 2021 7:55 pm

Grath wrote:DoJ is suing Texas for depriving women of their constitutional rights as well, now.

And from what I understand, it's a well-written case, and the judge, while a W Bush appointee, is not a crackpot and has ruled against abortion restrictions before.

Granted, with this SCOTUS all bets are off and I think the best-case is likely that the whole vigilante-bounty approach gets thrown out but Roe is overturned-without-actually-saying-it's-overturned anyway.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Yoji » Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:37 am

Not really prompted by any recent developments, but I wonder if there's any way to for out-of-staters help people trying to get care. Like any kind of mutual fund or aid? Because just throwing money at Planned Parenthood is starting to feel ineffective.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby KingRoyal » Tue Oct 05, 2021 12:00 pm

Donations to Texas Equal Access Fund are always appreciated. They do a lot of work to help pregnant people get access to abortion services throughout Texas
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Tue Dec 28, 2021 7:16 am

Some good news at least:



Really hoping some of these women take their settlement money and use it as seed funding for games which are actually fun.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby mharr » Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:16 am

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Ellis and Notch look like dudes cosplaying as each other. Counting the days until Moore turns out to be the same cookie cutter breed of asshole then I guess.

Is there a secular humanist philosophical movement hiding out there somewhere that isn't fronted by predatory, reactionary straight white males in silly hats?

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