When does a blog stop being yours?

In romance [well, in other genres also? I don’t know], sometimes authors strike such a chord with readers that the characters the author created seem to belong to the readers (aka fans). When an author does something bad to one of her characters, much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues. Well, you know, you write romance, you know that there needs to be a happily ever after (HEA) or at least a happily for now (HFN) ending. (We will parse the romance “formula” later.)

Well, I can see why there’d be some legitimate reason for distress here. The author created these worlds and people and they belong to her, true, but the public pays to read about them. Do they have an expectation to get the story they want/expect/hope for or not? Hell, I don’t know. I’m going to write my Imaginary Friends the way my Imaginary Friends tell me to. [Uhm, I’m independent. I can do that.] But I have to expect that some people are going to cry foul if I just completely make one of them [insert horribleness here].

But now over at one of my must-stops for blog cruising, Dear Author, apparently the blog has ceased belonging to the person who built it, maintains it, and pays for it—

Do you not think that unless you know the full story before you judge?

Welll … I do and I don’t. She presented her side of the story in the article, and I didn’t buy it. Yes, it’s possible they left stuff out. It’s possible she spent hours making a passionate case and the reporter discarded all of that and went for the killer angle.

But to say you can’t have a thought or a knee-jerk reaction or an opinion without knowing every detail of everyone’s side of the story does seem a bit much to me. To me, there’s is very little that could fully justify this woman’s decision. That might not be the case for everyone. I admit that, having been the child of a non-custodial mother, my feelings on this may be sharper than others’s (and my Mom was always in touch, I saw her regularly, all of that, but nothing ever fully takes away the feeling that you needed your Mom and she wasn’t there, for whatever reason.) It may be partly the fact that I am a mother and cannot fathom any force on this planet that would induce me to leave my children like that.

Women leave their families every day, but I think there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, and I think this woman simply did it the wrong way.

Women who leave their children are judged much more harshly than men who do the same – yet women do it much more rarely, and usually with a lot more compulsion. I would look at this and say, it must have been something truly extraordinary that made her do this. Maybe her reasons still wouldn’t pass the moral bar, but peering at someone else’s family with a microscope is something I believe we shouldn’t do unless we’re involved.

And that is true, to some extent. Yes, they are judged more harshly then men by some. Not by me. When a friend of mine left his pregnant wife (he “didn’t think he wanted to be married after all”) he ceased being my friend. Point blank. I told him exactly what I thought of him and his actions and that was it.

Perhaps it’s cyncial of me. But I just can’t look at this woman and be as sympathetic as you can. You say it must have been something extraordinary; I say it’s possible, but it feels more like she just wasn’t happy and met some guy online and decided to run off and be with him. What sort of “absive husband” who doesn’t let his wife have access to a vehicle or money (yet she was apparently able to clear out their savings), let her go on solo vacations to England after he’s found evidence she’s been having online affairs? Why divorce through this “special process” by which you say you can’t find the other person if they’ve been sending emails, cards, and gifts?

I simply look at the situation and think, that child has some legitimate greivances, and of all the parties involved, she’s the one I’m inclined to believe.

But you have made a salient point, I think. I can’t agree with it, but I do think it’s valid.

—which is a far different matter from creating books that you then persuade the public to buy who then eats them up and feeds your bank account.

I’m watching this train wreck of a thread and wondering: Why, if people don’t like a thread, a blog, don’t they simply stop reading? This isn’t Usenet, people (darn it). It’s Jane’s blog. She can post what she wants to and expect reasonably that people will remember that fact—without having to confront people who feel betrayed that what she said in her own house didn’t exactly fulfill their reading expectations that day. The sense of entitlement running through the thread is kind of … interesting.

Yo, all you gotta do is not go there. Or not read. Or sumpin. When did Jane’s blog become yours?