As someone who's read an awful lot of reviews by Blythe, I'd love to know what she did that was 'kinda bitchy'. She started a book, updated her status to say she was really enjoying it, then updated her status again when she felt there were issues in it. While the actions Hale accused her of could be fairly said to be 'kinda bitchy', I see no reasons to believe that any of them happened anywhere except in Hale's imagination.
I've never read any reviews from Blythe prior to the incident, nor have I heard off Hale before the incident, I found my way to the article from Twitter. I think it was probably one part of the article where (and this was how I interpreted it)
“Rape is brushed off as if it is nothing,” Blythe explained to one commenter. “PTSD is referred to insensitively; domestic abuse is the punch line of a joke, as is mental illness.”
“But there isn’t rape in my book,” I thought. I racked my brain, trying to see where I had gone wrong.
Which made it sound as if she hadn't read the whole thing? Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and all that, but when they're making assumptions and/or accusations for something that didn't happen? Yeaaah...
Granted though, I read that article over the course of 6 hours one night, spliced between scoping out DeviantArt and AW. So my reading it was a bit disjointed at times, and I had to go back and reread paragraphs for context. So YMMV
Also, is it me, or is it really strange to obsessively stalk someone on the internet for that amount of time and not take any screenshots of their behaviour towards you?
Hah, I agree with you there. You'd want as much solid proof as possible to try and justify your actions, however nutty they may be.
I've written some snarky reviews. I wonder, if an author stalks and harasses me because of such a review, would people excuse the author provided it's the first time the author's done that and the author promises it won't happen again?
I think that was my point? I'm confused. She claimed in the article (wait, did she? I think she did) that she wouldn't do this sort of thing, but after some browsing on Twitter, she's been guilty of similar things with other people who had negative things to say. I was sorta on her side prior to seeing that, assuming that she'd done the one (drastic) stalking thing, but she seems quite insecure in that she asking and justifying on Twitter against other negative reviews.
Side note: I'm tired of people saying she's crazy for what she did. She doesn't strike me as crazy at all. Privileged, narcissistic, self-absorbed, entitled, clueless, and lacking empathy? Yes. Crazy? No.
I'd throw insecure into that mix too. An odd combination of insecurity and narcissism creates the sort of individual who feels proud of their work and yet needs to justify what's so great about it and how people are wrong when they find something negative to say. Probably not so crazy. Although, and I can't remember, when she was stalking Blythe, did she fly to.. wherever she was? Bus? Train? Was she relatively close or across the country?