{"id":147,"date":"2008-10-07T08:43:58","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T13:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=147"},"modified":"2025-08-01T02:26:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:26:03","slug":"when-does-a-blog-stop-being-yours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/when-does-a-blog-stop-being-yours\/","title":{"rendered":"When does a blog stop being yours?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In romance [well, in other genres also? I don\u2019t 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<\/a>, 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 \u201cformula\u201d later.)<\/p>\n

Well, I can see why there\u2019d 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\u2019t know. I\u2019m going to write my Imaginary Friends the way my Imaginary Friends tell me to. [Uhm, I\u2019m 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].<\/p>\n

But now over at one of my must-stops for blog cruising, Dear Author<\/a>, apparently the blog has ceased belonging to the person who built it, maintains it, and pays for it\u2014<\/a><\/p>\n

Do you not think that unless you know the full story before you judge?<\/em><\/p>\n

Welll \u2026 I do and I don\u2019t. She presented her side of the story in the article, and I didn\u2019t buy it. Yes, it\u2019s possible they left stuff out. It\u2019s possible she spent hours making a passionate case and the reporter discarded all of that and went for the killer angle.<\/p>\n

But to say you can\u2019t have a thought or a knee-jerk reaction or an opinion without knowing every detail of everyone\u2019s side of the story does seem a bit much to me. To me, there\u2019s is very little that could fully justify this woman\u2019s 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\u2019s (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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Women leave their families every day, but I think there\u2019s a right way to do it and a wrong way, and I think this woman simply did it the wrong way.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t pass the moral bar, but peering at someone else\u2019s family with a microscope is something I believe we shouldn\u2019t do unless we\u2019re involved.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 \u201cdidn\u2019t think he wanted to be married after all\u201d) he ceased being my friend. Point blank. I told him exactly what I thought of him and his actions and that was it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s cyncial of me. But I just can\u2019t look at this woman and be as sympathetic as you can. You say it must have been something extraordinary; I say it\u2019s possible, but it feels more like she just wasn\u2019t happy and met some guy online and decided to run off and be with him. What sort of \u201cabsive husband\u201d who doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s found evidence she\u2019s been having online affairs? Why divorce through this \u201cspecial process\u201d by which you say you can\u2019t find the other person if they\u2019ve been sending emails, cards, and gifts?<\/p>\n

I simply look at the situation and think, that child has some legitimate greivances, and of all the parties involved, she\u2019s the one I\u2019m inclined to believe.<\/p>\n

But you have made a salient point, I think. I can\u2019t agree with it, but I do think it\u2019s valid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014which 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m watching this train wreck of a thread and wondering: Why, if people don\u2019t like a thread, a blog, don\u2019t they simply stop reading? This isn\u2019t Usenet<\/a>, people (darn it). It\u2019s Jane\u2019s blog. She can post what she wants to and expect reasonably that people will remember that fact\u2014without having to confront people who feel betrayed that what she said in her own house didn\u2019t exactly fulfill their reading expectations that day. The sense of entitlement running through the thread is kind of \u2026 interesting.<\/p>\n

Yo, all you gotta do is not go there. Or not read. Or sumpin. When did Jane\u2019s blog become yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In romance [well, in other genres also? I don\u2019t 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[476],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17248,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/17248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}