Thorn Wilde

Just wondering, since you seemed to be drawing such a clear line between real human behaviour and fiction. I mean, when you tell a story, you describe the world and use what you know about human behaviour to make your characters as real as possible. And when a scholar describes human behaviour, he or she will inadvertently do so through the glasses of what they already know or believe to be true about people. As such, these areas overlap, do they not? As writers, we make up the situations and we make up the characters, but if we are too liberal in making up how our characters behave when faced with one situation or another, the story becomes unbelievable.

Yay! Happy Birthday!

Thank you. It's a good word. I'm glad you're enjoying the story!

I didn't think that your entire post was referring to me, but since you asked for clarification, I thought I'd clarify my position, as well as address some of your points. Can real human behaviour not be explored through fiction? Is that not, ultimately, what fiction does?

We are talking real human behaviour. We are talking storytelling, not pornography. I would never write a story containing characters that age in a sexual situation that was in any way meant to be titillating to adults. That's definitely not what I did with Firsts. Almost everything in that story was awkward, confused, and approached from a humorous angle. My goal is realism, and if I am to explore one of my characters' past, then I am likely to get into the good and the bad, the awkward, the misguided, and the emotional. That's what Firsts is about. It is not porn. It's not erotica. It's storytelling. When I was in my early teens, my mum gave me a couple of Swedish YA novels with really properly young characters exploring and figuring out their sexuality. I have never read a YA novel in English that does this in an honest way. That's what I'm trying to do, in everything I write, really. Come at it from a starkly honest perspective. Describe things that do happen. These are things that are real. Things that are true. Stories that deserve to be told. That's my opinion.

That's ridiculous. I mean, yes, if someone writes about sexual activity among kids that age and make it titillating for adults, in a PWP sense for instance, then yes, that's definitely bordering on child pornography. However, art, story-telling, when there's a point to it and a reason for it, and it's not pornographic, is another matter entirely, and to flag that as kiddy porn just because it happens to contain a 12-13 year old being, well, a 12-13 year old, that's truly ridiculous, puritanical and just plain stupid, IMO.

Full grown adults have absolutely no business engaging in sexual activity with kids below the age of consent, IMO, be it incest or anything else. But kids who explore and try things out with their peers is another matter entirely.

Hear hear! Give the wolf his demon!

I shall take the fact that no one has addressed my point as confirmation that it is indeed so.

I like button on reviews would be awesome.

If there was a function that would immediately turn your phone off upon contact with water, that would be a pretty cool function, though. I think someone should patent this tech.

Anyone see what the 'good' people of 4chan have been up to regarding this? Wouldn't it be awesome if this were real, though?

Yay! Happy Birthday!

Ooh, ghost! I want ghost! <3

Happy Birthday, Cele!!!

I think I've discovered another taboo, actually: The idea that kids under the age of 13 are capable of sexuality and sexual exploration. My story Firsts has had a lot of views, but only one review. After some thought, I can only conclude from this that the people who have read it are unwilling to admit that they have done so. Either that, or it's a really shit story and everyone's sparing my feelings, but for fear of sounding over confident, and from the feedback I have received, I don't really think that's the case. Magpie and I discussed this last night, and he was the one who suggested that this was somehow a taboo topic. Now, it may be my hippie Scandinavian upbringing, but that idea just doesn't make sense to me. Who didn't have some sort of experience of sexual exploration at the age of 12? Surely most of us had hit puberty by then. Is it that society is so repressed that this is something that we just do not talk about? Do people feel like it's something to be ashamed of, that we're intruding if we admit to ourselves that other people probably had these experiences too? Or have we repressed these experiences all together so we somehow believe that this is unrealistic? It's not. I've worked with kids. Kids as young as kindergarten age are aware of their own sexuality. So why do we seem to see 13 as some magical moment after which it's okay to express that sexuality in one way or another? Why can't we tell the stories of the emotional development of kids younger than that?

In my experience, geeks have some of the best sense of humour. Usually very intelligent, occasionally a little bit punny. Personally, I love science jokes. They make me deeply happy on the inside.

Happy Birthday!

The Daniel Radcliffe episode of Extras is hilarious! One of my faves.

This made me feel happy in all the best ways! What an awesome, heart-warming story!

That's the most bizarre programme I have ever seen! Funny, though.

This is so awesome I don't even know what to do with myself right now! All I can say is, OMG, music and Queen and physics, a few of my favourite things, it's like Christmas!! (I know, I am incoherent, I am writing in run-on sentences, this is what happens when I witness this much awesome at once, sorry not sorry, bye.)

I dunno, when I went to uni I preferred a quiet night down the pub with good mates, good ale and good conversation. In fact, I've been solving the world's problems with my friends over a glass of wine while listening to mellow rock music since before I was legally old enough to drink. It's only very recently that I've discovered how much fun it can be to go out and dance in a club (but only if the DJ's good). I've always been decent to people, I've always liked staying in watching a movie or reading a book, I've always preferred relationships over casual sex... Maybe I was just born old. I went to university to learn stuff, not to get drunk and sleep with strangers (and I had a boyfriend almost the entire time).

It's a very British thing, dear.

Mellifluous is the word indeed. Benedict's voice is one of the great gifts to mankind. I could listen to him reading stuff for hours. He's got some audiobooks, too. I have some Sherlock Holmes stories ('fanfiction', not written by ACD) with him reading that I got off of Audible. Gorgeous.