I get knocked down, but I get up again.

[bladespark]

Now I'm apparently applying my habit of titling stories with song lyrics to blog titles as well. :D

There was a certain amount of really stupid "internet drama" recently around my story Kiss Against the Wall. Said drama was perpetuated entirely by somebody who didn't even have the guts to leave me a comment on the story, speak up in a chat room I'm actually in, or do anything else to my face, it was all just stupid backbiting. (And, by the way, if somebody ever approaches you with some kind of salacious "Did you know so and so is a pedophile?!" comment... Please do consider checking the actual source they're citing as proof and, you know, looking at it, so you know the full story. A story featuring a teenager masturbating and engaging in online chat room sex is very different from a story about kiddie diddling. I know this may shock people, but a large number of real, actual teenagers do in fact masturbate. The story literally has in its description the fact that said teenager waits to be of age before actually having sex. I really have no words for how much eye-rolling I've done over the nonsense of trying to pretend that the "underage" AO3 tag alone means it's outright child porn.)

Anyhow!

Drama isn't going to keep me from writing what I want, or from sharing it. So the full story is up now, I just posted the final chapter a few minutes ago.

I'm quite aware that it's not everyone's cup of tea, of course. Teenage sexuality is a touchy subject, there's some very difficult and triggery stuff in Matt's character and backstory, and this is also about religiously raised folks who are gay so, you know, there's some pretty intense homophobia in it. And some kink as well, as it's drawing on the part of my own life story where I discovered sex and BDSM basically in parallel. It's meant to be realistic, is what I'm saying here, which means it's peculiar, messy, and uncomfortable, but I also happen to think it's sweet, hot, and engaging, so...

(I rather treasure the fact that somebody bookmarked it with a note about it being realistic. <3 Yay!)

If any of that sounds interesting to you, go have a look.

Comments

[daryl_wor]

Thank you. I really appreciate you discussing these issues. I've had similar struggles for years and I was pretty sure others must be having them. So when I look over these misunderstandings with others (who really have nothing else better to do than gossip) I can nod and say, "Okay, it's not just me."

(Plus pubescent years are just plain rough so it's good there are stories about that struggle too!)

[dreamerinsilico]

Good grief, at this point if someone says someone else is a pedophile on Fandom Internet, I assume the accuser is acting in total bad faith; it's such a stock purity police accusation. I'm sorry you're dealing with that shit.

[silveradept]

That sounds like an interesting story.

And my Fandom old is showing through, but augh this idea that the Internet needs to be completely safe for the children in spaces that were conceived as being not for children at all needs to be told to come back when they're older.

[armaina]

This is not the first case I've seen of people calling others that just acknowledge teenage sex drives as being 'pedophiles'. They're starting to imply now that merely acknowledging that teens and preteens may have arousal at all, is 'pedophilic', their argument is that you shouldn't even be thinking about it. It's incredible the mental gymnastics some people do, honestly.

But for real, normalizing masturbation for teens is a lot more healthy than pretending like they don't experience anything at all.