My Current Status

Hey all,

Due to a confluence of events and stress both within and out of my control, I’ve fallen woefully behind on content here at the moment. It’s nothing I can’t get back on top of, but for the moment, the schedule will be a bit looser than usual, (though I will still do my very best to fulfill the four post a week promise, and will make up any posts I do miss with extra on the following weeks) and also that the posts I do make will probably be a little “rougher” than usual. Stories will probably be a bit more like drafts, some storylines might end suddenly and I might start something new instead.

Part of the issue lately has been a light case of writer’s block, which is entirely self-inflicted on my part. I have, at the moment, a number of longer stories I’ve been wanting to write, but prioritizing them has been difficult, because I hate delivering an unfinished product, but at the same time, the schedule is such that I simply don’t have time to get the stories up to par in time to post, if that makes sense. Blah, blah, boo, hoo, whatever. On top of that, the day job has been especially stressful, not to mention a variety of other issues (dog’s undergoing surgery, money woes, whatever else life feels like hurling at me at the moment) that have simply cut into my writing time.

This isn’t a cry for sympathy, but merely an attempt to level with everyone about what’s up. Hopefully by the end of the month things will have eased up a bit all around, and I’ll be back on my feet. There’s no post today, but I will have something tomorrow.

Metawriting – Question Response

I got a couple of interesting questions over the last week, which I wanted to take some time to respond to in detail:

anonymous asked:

How can an online community give the kind of constructive criticism that writers give writers? It’s too late after the story has been posted.

Hold on, slow this down a bit, you’ve got a whole bunch of assumptions rolled up in this question that I don’t necessarily agree with, that I want to parse out before we go any further. Here are the big ones:

1. I assume that when you use the term “online communities” here, you’re talking about story collections like the NCMC, CYOC, and the like, but here’s the thing–I’m not necessarily convinced that these sorts of communities are the best place for writers to receive “““““Constructive Criticism””””” (see number two) at all. These sorts of collections ought to be designed to deliver stories to readers first and foremost. This isn’t to say that writers don’t need a place to get feedback; merely that sites which are focused primarily on readers’ needs are never going to be able to prioritize writer feedback in the first place.
2. Ugh…. “““““Constructive Criticism””””” is a pair of words I’ve given up using. I too, in the past was an avid defender of constructive feedback, but the last writing group I was a member of demonstrated to me that what we tend to think of as constructive is actually some of the least helpful criticism writers can receive. But first, what is constructive criticism, for those who aren’t familiar with the term? In general, it means that critics in a writing group ought to focus on ways the story could have been better, and minimize feedback about what the story does badly. This sounds nice, sure, but the reasons we want to focus on “““““constructive””””” comments are not because they are inherently better feedback, but because so called negative or destructive feedback tends to “hurt peoples’ feelings.” It’s true that no writer wants to be told that their story is a piece of shit. But the fact is, sometimes you write stories that are pieces of shit (fuck knows I have entire folders of them). Part of becoming a better writer is about taste. Its about knowing when the core of a story works and when it doesn’t. If one has to treat every story as though it is inherently redeemable, then suddenly nothing a writer produces can actually be bad by necessity. What good does that serve? If I write something bad, the most important feedback I could receive from someone would be telling me to scrap it and start over. This, however, isn’t at all “““““constructive””””” and I know many, many critics who would go through all sorts of contortions to avoid saying anything like that to a writer, and that’s just a shame.
3. Leapfrogging off of that, writer’s don’t give very good criticism for the reasons above. Critics give good criticism (or rather, good critics give good criticism). I am not someone who thinks that, in order to critique something, you have to be versed in that particular art–that is, I hate hearing someone say, “What do you even know? Have you even written a story before?” Criticism is an art in and of itself. You don’t have to be a writer in order to know what a good story is–think about it, if that were true, then literally *every* story would be critically successful, because they would all be crafted by writers, who necessarily know what good stories are by virtue of being writers. It’s nothing but a circular defense of ego. The best criticism I’ve gotten has come from readers who have never written anything. Often, the most useless feedback comes from writers hoping I will turn around and compliment their work in return. Of course, this isn’t to say someone can’t be both a good writer *and also* a good critic, simply that such a creature is relatively rare, and even then, their skill as a critic has little to do with their skill as a writer.
4. Is it really too late after a story is posted? When is a story ever finished, anyway? I’ve written the same story numerous times, all in different forms, whether it be City of Bears or Pigtown, and I doubt I will ever actually be finished, and the criticism I received after each attempt generally fueled the direction for future versions. It is true that criticism can only ever be received and given after a work is “posted”, “published” or “finished”, but if the assumption above is correct, that would mean that all criticism necessarily arrives too late to be of any use, which wouldn’t make much sense unless you think of criticism as some sort of intervention–as the attempt to guide a writer’s fingers as they are in the process of writing, as some kind of divine guidance. If that’s your conception of criticism, I’d suggest you turn to religion. Criticism is hindsight, “should have done,” and “will do in the future.” It isn’t something that, if applied like a balm, will make a story magically better if applied at the right time. But even then, stories are never finished–though writers at some point have to be finished with the stories they write. We give up on them–they never force us to stop.

So, with those four assumptions interrogated, why should I bother answering this question? Because, at the heart of it, it is a really, really good question. Dispensing with the problems above, we’re essentially left with, “How can we form an online community which is designed to encourage and nurture writing?” I don’t really have an answer to this question, as good as it is, but I can point to some things it would have to have. For one thing, it would have to have a system for giving feedback, though not necessarily ratings (which are only really useful for an audience) and also not necessarily open ended comment fields (which are prime feeding for trolls). It would have to allow for stories to be edited, extended, rewritten, erased, and co-authored. It would have to attract people who are less interested in passive consuption of content, and more interested in giving criticism. Perhaps most important, it would have to have a place for people to post pieces of criticism (i.e. reviews, commentary, etc.) and give that sort of content prominence along with stories themselves. In fact, the sort of site which might be most helpful for writers might not be designed for writers themselves–it will actually be designed for critics. That, of course, is only a broad sketch, but does demonstrate the problems involved, and the amount of work and thought that would have to go into such a design. It also should show that no existing website (that I know of) is up to the task.

anonymous asked:

If cyoc, ncmc and mcstories added ratings for a) quality of writing and b) quality of story wouldn’t that be adding more restrictions to the type of stories posted?

A few points of clarification. First, when I offered up the suggestion of those two categories, that was referring only to the NCMC, not to those other two sites. Second, I was advocating for a replacement of categories, rather than an addition. That is, instead of all eight or something dominant categories (those across the top of the page) which are in some cases vague and overlapping (what, exactly, is the difference between ‘hypnosis’ and ‘mind control’?) or under used (when’s the last time there was a ‘statue/robot’ story written anyway?) it would make more sense to streamline the number and type of categories. I suggested those two you mentioned because those are, I think, what a lot of the audience at the NCMC cares about, that is, “is the story well constructed?” and “is it written well enough that the story can be enjoyed without grammar/spelling getting in the way?” This is not to say that these are things I myself necessarily care about, of course, but given the audience of the NCMC, I think it would be appreciated.

Alright, now onto the bigger issue, the question of restrictions. I don’t think restrictions are bad things. If someone wants to make a site where the only stories allowed are those featuring father/son incest, or those involving revenge fantasies, or any other possible restrictions you might imagine, then that’s all fine and good. That said, restrictions are simply one component of a larger topic we might call “community design,” that is, the various tools the architect of a site provides to users that control what content people can create for the site and what sorts of communication is allowed between individuals. No site or community can avoid this question of what sorts of interactions it wants to enable and what sorts it wants to hinder

(and keep in mind much of what I say here applies not only to online communities by real life ones as well). For example, by hindering any sort of communication with the moderator, the NCMC effectively structures itself in a dictatorial fashion (again, not necessarily a “bad” choice, but it is what it is). Enabling the audience to give ratings and comments allows that audience to select out and discourage the kinds of stories it wants to see as well, which means that we can even have two different kinds of restrictions on content–explicit and emergent. Explicit restrictions are those built into the site by the architect, like the “ban” on copyrighted characters. Emergent restrictions are enforced through social standards–if something is downvoted, that means the audience doesn’t want to see that anymore. Neither of these restrictions can really be avoided, in the grand scheme of things, because in order to generate a particular kind of content, a community must necessarily try and exclude the kinds of content it doesn’t want to see.

All that said, my general stance is that sites like this ought to try to restrict content less, and curate content more. That is, rather than trying to keep out content the community doesn’t want, it should instead create good design which helps readers find the content they want and avoid content they don’t want to see without the site having to ban the content in question. The CYOC does a better job at this, in my opinion, especially with their new search engine and the recent upgrades to the interactive system, which allow readers to find content they want, while avoiding the content they don’t want to see. It isn’t perfect of course, but no community ever will be. You either have to over-restrict and cut away content you don’t want to see from the community entirely, or you have to under restrict and live with the fact that you’ll be seeing stuff you don’t want to see. Good curation can ease the issues of under restriction, but takes more work. I hope that clarifies things somewhat.

Coach’s Summer Training – Part 3

Jerry Hudson was my final student of the summer, and I had quite the project in mind for him, a transformation I had never attempted before. He was a rugby player at a local college, and his coach was a good friend of mine–he had a special commission and challenge for me, he said. Jerry was a bit of a loudmouth and a braggart, and I could only take it for about ten minutes before finally pushing him to the ground and shoving my foot in his mouth. Much to his surprise, and then his terror, my foot slid in effortlessly to the ankle–he tried to fight me, but for some reason his hands and arms just flopped against my leg like fabric. With my foothold secured, I took a moment to cut away his clothes, and then reached down, grabbed his hips, and twisted his lower body around. Had he still had any bones at all, his spine would have broken–instead, he just laid there, and watched me put my other foot right in his ass.

Now came the real challenge. I concentrated on him, and started making him smaller, watching the twist grow tighter and tighter at his middle. I’d certain turned someone into a sock before–but I’d never tried making one person into a pair of socks. It was obvious from the way what remained of his face was contorting that it must have hurt something terrible, but finally, with a loud rip, he came apart at the middle, and formed into two thick, black, identical calf length socks on my feet. I surveyed the damage. My right foot, which had been shoved in Jerry’s mouth, was screaming–as usual. But the sock on my left foot was saying nothing–no mind at all, aside from a dim instinctual desire to fuck. That was no good–I couldn’t have one sock brainless, so I pressed my feet together, knit the fabric again, and concentrated, forcing Jerry’s consciousness to spread out across both socks, and then, once it was more or less centered and even, I ripped them apart. Even I screamed at that, listening to the pain the two of them felt as I did that, but it did work–Two Jerrys, one on each foot, thinking independently of one another.

Now the coach who had offered this challenge, we’d met quite a few years ago at a leather club one night. I could tell he was a man like me–musky, leathery, willing to inflict pain on other people for fun. I’d thought about wearing him, but how could I make him better? Instead, I started making things for him to wear–for a hefty price, of course. What he wanted was a pair of devoted boot slaves–and so I went to work. Luckily we had similar shoe sizes, so I could wear his boots, conditioning both Jerrys to relish and appreciate the smell of their future master’s feet. I shined the boots twice a day with the socks, getting them used to appreciating the taste of boot black, and the importance of serving boots and feet. Still, with the initial challenge over, I grew a bit bored–why not have a bit more fun with both of them? I knew what their coach liked, after all–and with two slaves, that gives you some room for, shall we say, specialization.

The right one became my newest cum rag, and once he grew more used to absorbing filth, I started branching him out–submerging him in jars of my piss, forcing him to drink all of it into himself. He also worked as my toilet paper, and grew to appreciate the taste of shit along with everything else. After a week, he was crusty and filthy, but he loved it, and was begging me for more filth to eat. Meanwhile, I put the left sock through other exercises–stretching him out, forcing him to fit over my entire fist and arm up past my elbow, decorating him with rings and studs and metal spikes. By the end, the two socks looked strikingly different–and I told my friend to come over, because we would have to finish the work with him present as well.

He was ecstatic, when he saw what I had done, and couldn’t wait to put them on. He did, and I started working the slaves together, telling them that this was the moment they’d been waiting for, that this was their master, their owner, and I started shifting them back. Soon, two young men were kneeling before him, worshiping his feet hungrily–obviously identical twins, and yet they couldn’t have been more different in their appetites. The one serving his right foot was a filthy mess, caked with cum, piss and shit–the other was cleaner, but his entire body was a riot of piercings, and desperate to feel his master’s fist buried in his asshole. The mental split had left both Jerrys much, much dumber–after all, when you only started with one brain, there wasn’t much hope for intellect, but each served his master well for many years to come. But that, alas, was the end of my summer. Still, I’ll have a whole new set of men to train next year, so who knows what might happen then?

Coach’s Summer Training – Part 2

Phillip Emerson was my next pupil. I’d met him while helping out with a few local wrestling meets at the college level. Part of what I liked about him was he was more than an exceptional all around athlete, he was incredibly smart to boot, in the midst of pursuing some degree in an advanced math program. Just the kind of guy I can destroy, and love every second doing it, usually with a bit of challenge along the way. Wrestling was his chance to not think for a while, he told me, and I figured that by the time we were through, he wouldn’t be thinking much at all. We spent a day in the ring getting nice and sweaty, and I offered him a massage to help him cool down afterward. I started on his shoulders, and immediately his body went limp, and he let out a groan. I urged him to relax, to just focus on his good it felt as I kneaded all the tension from my body. He still eventually noticed what I was doing, of course, once he saw his legs shrivelling up and disappearing into his torso. I started pulling him on, and he couldn’t do anything but flap his withering arms at me, his head shrinking down into his neck of the shirt as I pushed my head through. I sniffed the sweaty fabric and jacked off, making sure to shoot up the front–the first load of seed of many more to come.

As I expected, Phillip was too smart to be a screamer–he was a bargainer. He obviously knew that I wanted something out of him, but he didn’t know what. His mind was too adept for me to wear him down to the breaking point like I had Shawn–so I decided to work on him a little differently. I proceeded with what I had been planning, and I started a long, intense workout regimen which had Phillip soaked in my sweat from dawn to dusk, and as I lifted weights and ran my miles, I counted. I counted steps, I counted sets and reps, and I counted at him, and soon, unable to help himself, he was counting too. He didn’t exactly have much else to do, right? And he did love math, after all. Then, while he was busy counting, I could sneak around in his head, sand off off a little cleverness here, erode a little vocabulary there, take off a little bit of wit over there. By the time he noticed that he was getting dumber, it was too late–then he started screaming.

Thankfully he got too dumb to figure out why he should scream soon after that. Soon his mind was so far gone that pretty much all he could do was count–and not very high at that. He’d usually lose track somewhere around ninety during our runs–that jump to one hundred always seemed to confuse him, so he’d happily start back at one again over and over and over again. He was much better with sets and reps, of course–smaller numbers were better, he said. I had him eagerly sucking up all of my sweat at this point too. You know those fabrics that are supposed to wick away moisture? They don’t have anything on a jock trapped in a shirt sucking all your sweat up and drinking it down for you. I had also been making him bigger this whole time, baggier, with big arm holes and a low scooping neck. When I was happy with him, I decided it was probably time for the finale.

As I said, if I focus hard enough, I can keep someone as clothing even when they aren’t on my body. One morning, I finally peeled Phillip off my wet body, laid him out on a table, got out a black sharpie, and I started drawing. On the back I wrote “MUSCLE FAGGOT”, in big, thick letters, and then filled in the rest with smaller stuff. Some of it was writing–“Musk pig”, “Fuck my holes” with an arrow pointing down the back–but everything else was just swirls and blocks of black ink all over the shirt. He didn’t understand what I was doing at all–but once he was more black ink than white (well, “white” I suppose, he was really more of a dingy brown at this point) I released my focus, and the brand new Phillip Emerson emerged from his form.

He was huge–at least six and a half feet tall, and packed with muscle from neck to calf. Hell, he could have been an amazing bodybuilder, if it wasn’t for all of his tattoos. He was covered everywhere, even up onto his neck, face, and shaved head with tribal swirls. Of course, the centerpiece on his back was “MUSCLE FAGGOT” in massive letters so large it had to be spread down over two lines, and the simple minded oaf didn’t really know what was going on, but he could smell me, he could smell my musk, and so he got down and started cleaning my body for me. I fucked his surprisingly tight hole in return, before dropping him off at his home, a local gym. He lived upstairs there, and worked out day and night–when he wasn’t getting gangbanged by the regulars in the locker room. Being as stupid as he was came with some issues of its own. He was lucky that the owner was a sadistic fucker who loved the idea of keeping a big, stupid, muscle faggot pet for himself and all of his friends. Still, because he didn’t quite understand social standards, Phillip’s dick was kept locked 24/7, so he couldn’t just drop his shorts anytime and start jacking off like a pig during business hours. When he kept stripping his clothes off anyway, his master forced him to wear singlets, because he was too stupid to figure out how to take them off without help–and so he never did, usually wearing them until they started ripping and tearing at the seams, his locked cock obvious underneath the spandex. Needless to say, I keep a membership there now, but rarely to work out–I mostly just like to drop in on my muscle faggot on a regular basis. He’s always so excited when he smells me coming–even though he doesn’t even know why.

Coach’s Summer Training – Part 1

You can just call me coach, if you’d like. I work during the school year working as a PE teacher and coach for a few local high schools and community colleges–but my real fun doesn’t come until the summer. You see, I run a highly successful summer mentoring program for student athletes. I mean, it’s highly successful for me, of course, but let me explain. When I hit puberty, I discovered that I had a rather strange power–I could turn people into my clothing. The effect only lasted until I took them off again, but this wasn’t a real problem for me–see, I was a bit of a slob, and I enjoyed wearing my dirty clothes for days on end. Of course, the first time I did this, when I turned my big brother into a pair of boxers, I was terrified someone would find out, however, I soon realized that everyone had forgotten all about him–as far as my parents and the world was concerned, he didn’t exist. I remembered of course–I could even talk to him while I was wearing him. He wasn’t very happy, as you can imagine, but he’d never been very nice to me. So I started jacking off into him, day in and day out. Eventually I got sick of listening to him beg me to turn him back, so I took him off, but reality never quite picked up where it left off for him. Our parents still didn’t remember him, so he had to leave home, but luckily, reality made space for him elsewhere–as a whore for a pimp downtown. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily depending on your perspective, soaking in my cum all those weeks had left him craving cum. I still talk to him on occasion–he works as a hustler downtown, and he always gives me a discount. He’s not happy about it of course, but he doesn’t exactly have much choice now, does he? Unless he wants me to wear him some more.

Over time, my powers have grown as well. If I focus hard enough, I can keep someone in their inanimate form even when they weren’t on my body for short periods of time. I discovered that I can even change aspects of the clothing, allowing me to better tailor their final forms to my darkest fantasies. I naturally gravitated to an occupation where I could do exactly what I want to do–turn men into clothes and fuck up their lives, but I never could devote my full attention to my clothes during the school year. Instead, I’d become close to a few young men each season, and encourage them to sign up for a week of “personal mentoring” during the summer. Their parents were always thrilled–after all, their children were born to be special, and receive special treatment, right? It didn’t matter that I couldn’t name a single successful athlete who’d graduated from my program–no one seemed to be interested in sports after I got through wearing them. Still, I’d managed to, once again, find three of young men eager to be mentored. Shall we get started?

Shawn Alexander, a high school quarterback with enough skill to go pro if he gets into a decent college team, signed up so I could help hone his leadership skills. Instead, I pull him into my office, and he goes floppy in my arms. I don’t change him right away–I fuck his mouth first. I want to be the last person that senior has sex with in that body, and as I cum, I feel his arms reach around me, his body shrivelling up into mesh, and within moments, he’s a brand new jockstrap soaked in my cum.

He’s screaming, of course. I never really blame them for screaming. Still, I go to work on him quick enough, wearing away at the edges of his cloth mind, forcing him to suck down my cum. You see, even though he’s a jockstrap, he’s still capable of absorbing anything on him or soaked into him, if he puts his mind to it. It takes a couple of hours to eat the seven loads I pump into him that afternoon, but he finally dries crispy, just how I like it. Of course, he thinks that as a reward for eating my cum, I’ll change him back–instead I laugh, and jack off again, and again, and again. Over and over, forcing him to suck my cum dry each time.

He finally broke after six days. Did he really like the taste of my cum? Or was he just being coerced? I told him it didn’t matter, and he started sucking it down all on his own. Sure, he still cried about it for a while, but with a bit of coaching and positive encouragement, by the end of two weeks he was begging me for cum. I frequent quite a few clubs of course, and by this point Shawn had grown accustomed to eating cum other than my own, and I could tell that I was almost ready to return him to humanity.

He needed a few other changes though. For the few weeks I wore him, I consciously made the jockstrap age and wear much faster than usual. By the end of his mentoring session, Shawn looked like he was years old, not weeks, with a threadbare pouch dotted with rips and holes, and straps with fraying elastic that didn’t pull as tight as it used to. I stripped him off, three weeks gone by already, and watched the new Shawn Alexander appear in front of me. He looked like he’d aged close to forty years–in fact, checking his new driver’s license–so I could eventually drop him off at his new home–he was sixty one years old, flabby, hairy, nearly bald with a patchy beard that always felt like dried cum was stuck in it–usually because there was. I never did find out what he did for a living, but I still see him all over town climbing into gloryholes, desperate for as much cum as he can get.

Metawriting – Newness

At the end of the day, the MC/TF genre is very, very small, and lacks any sort of foothold in any sort of broader publishing industry. As such, I want to state, first, how thankful I am for the various people who run sites like the NCMC, CYOC, and all the rest of the sites I mentioned, because without them, there most certainly wouldn’t be any of these stories on this here blog of mine at all. That said, these various sites also exert tremendous influence on the kinds of stories that tend to proliferate in the genre, because of how they are structured. I spent a moment talking about various ways these sites might be “improved”, but because I don’t necessarily value the sorts of stories and approaches some of these sites use, it’s difficult for me to be very objective here. More than anything, I’m a relativist, which puts me in a contradiction. On one hand, I think it’s vital to this genre that we be open to as many kinds and forms of story as we possibly can, which puts me directly at odds with a site like the NCMC, which is structurally designed to inhibit certain kinds of work. But at the same time, the moderator of the NCMC ought to be able to do with their site what they want–if they want to focus the stories towards a certain format, that should be their prerogative. More than anything, what I wish for is a larger, more neutral archive of the size of something like MCStories, but with a better system of curation and organization like some of the features of the NCMC. But as always, if wishes were horses, etc. etc. etc. I might have a bit of a radical solution, however, but first, onto the main topic–newness.

In this sea of repetition superficial and thematic, purposeful and accidental, between authors and within one’s own work, how is anything new possible? Certainly one easy way of thinking about newness is simply a new story, but it seems that the main problem we have is that not every new addition to a collection is necessarily “new”. After all, if a story simply retreads the same themes and superficial features of hundreds of stories that have come before, what is really new about it? For lack of a better term I’m going to term this a “conservative story”, a story which fits neatly within the themes and features of stories that have come before it. It treads no particularly innovative ground, it doesn’t stretch the genre in a different direction, all it does is reinforce the themes and superficial features which are already prominent within a genre. Conservative writing isn’t necessarily politically conservative of course, but I merely mean that it sits comfortably within the confines of a space already defined. There’s also nothing necessarily wrong with writing and enjoying a conservative story–I would say the vast majority of stories put out, especially by new authors, are conservative in form and substance. If we don’t bother cutting our teeth on the writing that’s come before us, then we’ll never understand the genre well enough to produce anything original at all. I would also say that people who complain about the fact that these types of stories are prominent aren’t really complaining about the fact that they are conservative in nature–they’re complaining that the current conservative form doesn’t cater to their particular desires, both thematic and superficial, in the same way that people who ask for more of the same want more of the same precisely because all of their boxes are being sufficiently ticked.

So then what exactly is newness? Obviously it stands in opposition to conservatism, but I think it’s more complicated than an either-or. After all, a story which might be radically new in superficial qualities might be perfectly conservative in terms of its thematic undertones, like, say, someone like Pericedskin writing a story not about skinheads but perhaps twinks, but with the same fundamental story structure as his other work. Would that story really be new? New to Peircedskin’s work, certainly, but new to the NCMC, where stories like that are posted on a daily basis? How new would it be then? It could also occur in the reverse–a story might appear to be, on the surface, very similar to previous stories, and yet on a thematic level diverge wildly, which is the best description I can give of my own anti-porn posts. So how do we go about trying to define the new at all? The best definition I can give is a story which bucks the conservative norms of the canon that it is placed within, but this creates a few kinks.

First, it means that a whether or not something is “new” relies on the context of the other stories it is being placed with. This might seem a bit odd–shouldn’t newness be rather objective?–but it actually helps explain how some stories can be received wildly differently in different communities. For example, “Daddy’s Little Man”, in the context of my own work, was not particularly new–perhaps in the extremeness of it, but nothing that I hadn’t tread before in previous work. But as soon as I placed that story in the context of the canon at the NCMC, it was deemed radical–too radical, in fact–and it was removed. If we tried to understand newness as an objective fact, this response would be impossible to understand. Second, it means that newness isn’t a static feature, but rather a sliding scale, depending on how much the story pushes back against the established norms of a context. A story can be just a little new, say, if it just introduces a new wrinkle or variation in an established trope, or it can be extremely new, it it bears no resemblance to anything in the canon that came before it. Similarly, this means that no story can be entirely new–there will always lie at least some conservatism within any story, or else it would simply be incomprehensible. Third, it means that newness is necessarily disruptive. No story can be new without upsetting expectations and the status quo, and it is this disruption which I find most fascinating of all.

Because stories are always judged against a prior context, “newness” is really outside of the author’s control. Once they make the choice to insert their work into a given context through the act of publishing, what sort of reception it receives depends entirely on its audience, and it is here that the structure of communities as I discussed before becomes so important. Communities built like the NCMC can’t tolerate newness in the same way a site like CYOC can. This isn’t necessarily because the audience doesn’t have an open mind, because the audience at the NCMC is so larger I doubt any broad statement like that could ever apply. Rather, what it means is that the vocal minority who use the rating systems and leave comments have an outsized influence on what sorts of stories and authors are encouraged to keep contributing or not, and it is much more likely that these sorts of active users are going to prefer more conservative stories. CYOC has a different structural problem–while the new is able to proliferate easily, this is largely because these stories don’t receive enough of an audience to spread widely and gain momentum. As such, it falls victim to what might be called enclaves–small groups of devotees to a certain kind of story who exist in their own interactive universes. These universes possess the same weakness at the NCMC—stories that don’t fit their conservative vision are squashed and ignored.

The original question then, that began all of this was, “Why aren’t there more ‘new’ stories?” Here we have a bit of an answer–most of our communities have no real support system for new authors or new ideas, meaning they are either crushed by conservative trolls, or buried underneath a steady stream of conservative fiction. This is the core problem–not that there aren’t people who want to produce new stories, both radical and conservative, but that the communities we rely on as publishing platforms provide no real support for new authors or their visions. So, what’s the radical change I mentioned at the beginning? If we could find a way to use these platforms to better encourage and highlight new authors and new ideas, in order to counteract the natural advantage conservative repetition holds over the genre. I don’t have any particular ideas how to do this, unfortunately. I doubt a site like the NCMC could ever change itself to prioritize this, nor do I think the moderator would have much interest in doing so. CYOC might be more capable, by finding a better way to highlight and encourage the growth of younger story branches written by new authors. Until then, newness is simply going to rely on the courage of new and established authors to challenge the conventions and conservatism latent in these communities, and on those communities to be open minded to other sorts of themes and ideas which might not cater to their established desires.

Bart loved hitchhikers, though not for the reasons one might usually expect. Of course, not many people were very willing to ride with him–he stank like smoke and booze–it also didn’t help that he wouldn’t shower for months at a time, but there was usually someone desperate enough to climb up into his cab for a ride, but he’d only let men up. For a few hours he’d probe them for information, and ply them with a drink, and when the drug had them passed out and slumped against the seat belt in the passenger seat, he would drag them into the back of the cab, undress them, and tie them securely in the sleeper.

Those were his favorite moments, when they were well secured, but still asleep for a few more hours. He would explore their bodies with his tongue, get to know their flavors, inside and out. Suck their cocks and taste their cum. With enough prodding on their prostate, they’d eventually piss, and he’d drink that down too, just to sample it, see what kind of person he’d be travelling with for the next several months. It was always so very informative–somehow, he would be able to get a sense of them–how they worked, what kind of person he could shape them into.

Of course, they would protest once they woke up, but they quickly discovered that Bart’s drugs had left them unable to resist obeying every order he gave them. Really, their obedience was just a precaution–he preferred keeping them tied up more than anything else. Over the next several weeks, he would introduce them to their new chores–primarily as his cumdump, urinal and toilet paper. They would all discover in due time that they enjoyed their new chores more than they knew they should–something about Bart’s filthy body would drive them mad with lust. Before too long, they would be begging him for attention, asking to clean his body and suck his cock. He would tease them, listen to them squirm against the ropes binding them in the back as he drove. They always begged so nice–it was a special kind, while they still knew they shouldn’t want him, but couldn’t quite figure out how to say no to their own changing minds.

When they were finished–when all they could think about was Bart’s filthy body, he would begin training them for work. Pimping them out to other truckers at various stops, teaching them to enjoy all sorts of filthy bodies–not just his. The time spent in his truck tied up and unmoving, with a diet of mostly junk food and Bart’s filth, usually didn’t do them any favors–they would grow large guts, their limbs withered, all of them with long, grimy beards they couldn’t see themselves without anymore. When he’s confident that they’ll survive on their own, he dumps them and tells them to get to work, and make him some fucking money.

Everyone on the road can recognize one of his whores–they all wear the same collars bearing a single tag with the words, “Owned by Bart.” They cruise the roads, catching rides with any horny trucker who will have them, serving them in any way they might desire, and collect money for their Master, depositing it in his bank account at their next stop. They all do their very best, because they know his best whore gets one whole month riding with their master in his truck, tied up in the back, the privilege of once again being their master’s sole focus in the world. And the one thing they all desire more than anything else, is one more taste of their fat master’s filthy body.

Caption Day – 1 of 2

In the end, it had been easier than I’d thought to get the nanobots into Mac and his two chubby sons, Eric and Kyle. A good dose in their family pool took care of the two boys while they were swimming one afternoon, and Mac was more than happy to take a beer from me that same day while we chatted across the fence. And now–well, now I get to have all the fun I want with the three of them.

All of them know something wrong, but none of them can quite articulate what exactly. Besides, who would they tell? It’s not like Mac can tell the police that sometimes when he’s with his sons, he becomes uncontrollably horny and rapes whatever hole he can stick his cock in the fastest. Sometimes, they even seem to want it more than he does, jacking off in the open, Kyle pinning him down while Eric sucks his cock. And his sons seem to spend more time fucking each other than anything else anymore, and sometimes Mac will just sit and watch, milking himself to orgasm after orgasm, over and over again.

But this last week, well, this has just been me testing what the bots can do–I haven’t even introduced them to me yet. I think that will happen tonight. I’ll go over, and all three of them won’t be able to help themselves–but we have plenty of time, they can spend all night worshiping my body. By morning, I’m sure all three of them will be more than willing to call me Master, and do anything I say, like proper bear sluts.

Still, emotions are easy–thoughts take a bit longer to embed in my three subjects. Still, I’ve been wearing them down. All three of them have already become complete nudists at home, without even being consciously aware of it. Mac went and got his first tattoo yesterday, a bear paw colored like the bear flag across his ass, without even questioning it, and he’s going to be getting quite a few more in the weeks to come, I can tell you that. In a few months, the whole family will be sponsoring orgies off of Craigslist, and then all of my friends will have access to every one of their kinky holes. Anyway, I’d better get going before it gets totally dark–I have a long night ahead of me after all, and I can’t wait to get started.

Do you have any particular ideas on how either NCMC or CYOC could be improved?

Fully answering this question would take a whole other entry, but I’ll try to keep in shorter. The first thing I’d have to say is that what I might suggest for either site would depend a lot on what sort of goals the site wanted to accomplish. To be more specific, my answer to this question would be very different for, say, the NCMC, depending on what direction it wants to go. Does it want to try and encourage more writers? Does it want to provide more ways for the audience to give feedback on stories? What sorts of “improvements” I might suggest would depend on what sort of direction the site would want to go.

Of course, I could also just speak on what sorts of changes I personally would like to see made to the sites, but these changes would by necessity reflect what I want, and not what those who run the sites might find helpful, and would in general be self-serving. If I in the future ever decide to start up my own collection (probably never gonna happen), then I can worry about what I want, personally.

That said, there are some general issues I have with both sites, that I think should be easy enough to address.

1. The NCMC needs to clarify its submission guidelines to reflect what is *actually* allowed on the site. Just get rid of the ban on superheros and celebrities–it’s never enforced with any sort of rigor, and obviously doesn’t bother the audience–so why keep up appearances? The NCMC, in my mind, doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. If it wants to focus on a particular kind of story, then its submission guidelines should be narrowed to reflect that sort of focus. The community prefers to be exclusive–that’s not a bad thing, I just wish it would be willing to admit it to itself that it is, instead of trying to pose as a place for all stories.

2. I think that the rating system on the NCMC makes no sense. Most of the rated tags are never used anyway, and those that are used are construed so broadly that they mean next to nothing and have no real purpose. They should score stories on a) quality of writing, b) quality of story, and c) did it make you cum. That, I think, would accomplish everything the site wants to do with less pretense and more clarity.

3. I wish that we could get away from surface level fetish tags and institute a set of deeper tags as well, which could be selected by authors. Categories like “Wish Fulfillment,” “Revenge Fantasy,” and “Reality Shift” would all be more informative to readers than surface level tags alone. This does apply to the NCMC, but in reality the site that would be most improved by this addition would be MCStories.

Moving onto the CYOC.

1. The CYOC needs more active moderation to improve the overall quality of content on the site. One change that could make a difference would be allowing other users to edit the stories made by other members. These edited versions could appear either as additional branches off the original story, or could even replace the original chapter altogether. Of course, this sort of editing would require moderation to make sure it isn’t abused, preferably by volunteer moderators. Alternately, people who contribute to the site regularly might gain the privilege of editing and improving chapters submitted by others, which would also cut down on abuse.

2. A reward system for contributing to the interactives would, I think, help boost interest. This could be done with an achievement system or something similar. Again, only more active moderation can make sure the system isn’t abused by people who want to cheat.

3. Keep comments and ratings away from the interactives. It will kill them faster than anything else.

Metawriting – Repetition 2

Over the years, I have been a member of any number of writing communities, and by and large, I have always been struck by how all of them are generally unhealthy environments for encouraging writers to produce good writing and improve their craft. My concerns have roots beyond erotica, and are perhaps more inspired by various writing groups I have led and attended during college and the years after. Generally, I have been disappointed in these sorts of groups for any number of reasons, although by far the greatest reason is that spectre of “constructive criticism”, which tends to force everyone in the room to praise pieces of writing which are exceedingly poor, leading to what essentially becomes a system of providing critical blowjobs for every writer present, whether they want to or not. Generally, the greatest sin someone can commit is being too critical–all writing is redeemable, any act of writing is fundamentally good. Online communities, on the other hand, have a distinctly different problem. The ease and pleasure of trolling allows online communities to effectively police, discourage, and even outright censor stories and writing which they deem offensive to their particular desires. I am convinced that there must be some needle hole to thread in the middle, but it eludes me, and I doubt such a perfect middle-ground actually exists anyway. Still, it presents a problem–what exactly is the role of these sorts of online communities and collections? Is it to help authors improve and encourage them to write more? Is it to provide an audience with a particular kind of story? What exactly are they designed to accomplish? I believe the phenomenon of inter-authorial thematic repetition I presented before can shed a bit of light on these questions.

Of course, there aren’t exactly a bevy of collections to discuss in this genre, so some of these conclusions will by necessity be based on a rather small sample size. In particular, I will be discussing the NCMC, CYOC, MCStories, the Nifty Archive, and both of Maelstrom’s now defunct archives focused on TF fiction and tobacco fetish fiction respectively. This, I think, is a large enough base to draw a few broad conclusions about the various techniques these communities are based on, and how they affect the sorts of stories and themes these collections accumulate.

I want to begin with the NCMC, which I’m sure surprises no one. There’s more reason to this than one might think, however. The NCMC is unique among the various sites I just mentioned for a number of, what I consider to be, very illustrative reasons. In particular because, more than any other collection still operating, it possesses a collection with a much more cohesive theme than any other. Now, as a bit of disclaimer, because the NCMC is a constantly evolving community and collection, the ideas and themes it tends to accumulate are always in a state of flux. Anything I say now could very well no longer be true six months from now, or even sooner. One particularly good story can spawn a bevy of imitators, old ruts which fell out of fashion years ago can suddenly reappear stronger than ever, so I hesitate to say say that the NCMC possesses a “defined” theme or set of ideas, but loosely examined, there are a few ideas which can be drawn from the kinds of stories the NCMC tends to attract. More often than not, the stories are driven by wish fulfillment rather than revenge. They are stories which are interested in making men more “typically desirable” (i.e. muscular, twinkish but not necessarily femme, sexually promiscuous bottoms, etc.) If a revenge fantasy is a plot point, it is less about punishing someone by turning them into what they hate, and more about turning them into something which will bring pleasure to the person correcting the injustice. When I say that the NCMC is generally not receptive to the kinds of stories I write, that’s because most of my story arcs tend to aim in the exact opposite directions. On the other hand, MaelstromX’s TF site possess themes more similar to mine, where revenge is more often about punishment than pleasure, where men become “atypically desirable,” though the site also possess a strong line of wish fulfillment as well. His old site focusing on smoke TF stories is different from the other two as well, with a stronger focus on cross generational nurturing relationships more than anything else. All of this might seem rather unimportant, or merely academic in nature, but what I want to point out is that the reason these sites possess any sort of specific focus in their themes is because of how these communities and collections are structured.

As a counterexample, let’s look at CYOC, the Nifty Archive and MCStories. All three of these are sizable archives, all of them possessing much more content than the NCMC, however none of these sites possesses anything like the strong thematic consistency the NCMC. Part of this is because these sites allow a much broader range of submissions, and thereby deal with a greater volume of stories in general. Themes then, multiply. This is especially obvious on CYOC, where this repetition is made even more direct through the continuation of another person’s story, or through the lengthening of your own work with the addition of further chapters. Thus, because there are so many threads, it makes more sense to start looking at subsections of these sites, where themes become clearer. the CYOC interactive “Ty’s Power”, for example, tends to be revenge focused, but also examines themes of puberty and becoming an adult, as well as what it means to be a part of family–especially in terms of siblings. The Nifty Archive possesses some themes once the site is divided into various genres, but these become harder to trace without the interactive structure of CYOC. MCStories is perhaps the most difficult, because stories are treated more as isolated chunks than as part of a larger system of categories. The site does possess fetish tags, but these are largely underutilized and deal more with superficial elements than anything else. As such, finding a story of a similar deep theme quickly becomes the task of finding needles in haystacks.

So what’s the difference? Why does the NCMC possess a clear set of themes, while CYOC, Nifty, and MCStories do not? The biggest difference between these two sets of sites is that the NCMC is the only one with any sort of numerical rating system, and it also possesses the most robust comment system. The NCMC is really the only website that provides an author with immediate feedback on their story, both quantitative and qualitative. I would argue this does little for the author–because these numbers and comments aren’t generally feedback an author can use to improve their work–but it does show that the audience possesses a great deal of power at the NCMC. The power to rate a story means that if an audience finds the themes, ideas, and content of a story distasteful, they can immediately communicate that with poor scores and trollish comments. This more than anything is what determines whether or not an author will keep contributing to the site. In this way, the NCMC doesn’t necessarily encourage authors to express a particular viewpoint, rather it’s structure allows the site’s audience to quickly discourage and downrate content which does not reflect the themes and ideas they want to see. It also possesses silent moderation, who can strip stories from the site without appeal. If anyone has the most power to shape the NCMC, it would be them.

Nifty and MCStories possess no such system at all. The stories are simply posted, with a link to an email if you’d like to send a comment (assuming the author allowed it to be accessible). Feedback is very inconsistent and not very meaningful; trolls are sparse and easily ignored. As such, no one is actively discouraged from posting, allowing the number of stories it hosts to grow rapidly. CYOC is somewhat different from the others, in that it does provide a means of giving feedback, but in a very different way than the NCMC. The most meaningful feedback that someone on CYOC can give a story is validation by continuing it. As such, rather than discouraging authors from contributing, CYOC’s structure encourages readers to become writers, to provide feedback on their favorite ideas and themes by adding to them and amplifying them. It does possess a rather robust forum, of course, but rarely is it used to discuss and rate particular chapters and threads. This, in my opinion, is what makes CYOC so fantastic as a collection–its design encourages both participation and proliferation, in a way the NCMC will never be able to do as it’s currently structured.

I’m sure that, at this point, it sounds like I detest the NCMC with all passion. In fact, the NCMC’s ability to hone down their thematic focus allows a range of stories there which are highly creative which no other site could produce, such as this odd postmodern work, “Too Meta”. While CYOC is capable of a wide range of stories with disparate themes, without any moderation it quickly can devolve in poorly written, overly short chapters with no development at all. Each tool has its place, and CYOC could use more moderation, while the NCMC, in my opinion, could use less (or simply moderation wielded equally). The question, I think, is who do we want these sites to serve? The readers and audience, or the authors themselves? The NCMC is firmly in the audience camp–everything about the site’s design is focused on providing its audience with the kinds of thematic content they desire, and making it easy for the reader to find stories similar one’s they’ve liked before. Whether or not this model helps writer’s improve or encourages more submissions is completely secondary. On the other hand, CYOC is much more author-focused. It urges readers to stop being passive consumers of content and instead generate their own. Feedback is less concerned with how well a story is written or whether it fits the desired theme of an audience, and more about whether it contains ideas and themes that inspire other people to continue the story further. Is one model better than the other? It depends on what you value more than anything else.

There is one more aspect of this discussion I want to address in a third post (sorry, not sorry) which is what it means to say that we wish there were more “new” stories in the context of this repetition. An author’s constant foe is the threat of stagnation, of retreading the same old theme without any sort of development and nuance, and I want to talk about how I, as an author, do my best to avoid ruts. Further, when an author does do something “new”, how various communities deal with this newness is also something worth examining. Then I’ll be done with this for now.