In the last few weeks, since I wrote that short rant about some of my issues with the NCMC, I’ve had a few people send me notes and asks commenting on repetition–either complaining about how some sites and authors tend to produce the same stories over and over again, or noting that I myself tend to fall into a rut on occasion, something I can be as bad about as any other author. I think everyone sort of knows what is meant by repetition here, and I’ve touched on the subject before in previous metawriting posts. Many stories in this genre can feel like they are retreading the same old ground over and over again, an endless parade of men becoming whores, twinks, bears, chubs, slobs, etc., and readers can become frustrated by the lack of “newness”, though what this newness entails is usually something difficult to describe. I want to argue here that not all forms of repetition are bad for writers, and further, some of it is simply unavoidable, and it is this form of repetition I want to discuss further.

I want to start off with a short point about something I might call “surface level” repetition–which would be the repetition of fetishes and other superficial tropes across stories. This repetition is very common–after all, how many stories have been written involving things like leather and bondage play, or involving bears, chubs, and cubs? All authors have fetishes–it would be silly to expect that authors wouldn’t repeat these sorts of things, but these kinds of similarities actually tell us very little about the stories themselves. As I’ve discussed before, fetish and character tropes are actually fairly superficial aspects of stories–what lies beneath are deeper structures largely concerning the power relations between character archetypes. Some stories are about wish fulfillment, others are about revenge, others are about masochism and self-degradation. Two stories can share a large number of surface level similarities, and yet be very different at a deeper level of story, and it is these sorts of similarities that I want to discuss. I would say that some of the asks I’ve received have been talking more about these surface level concerns than something much deeper, and I would say a writer ought to avoid falling into trope and fetish ruts whenever possible, but “deep story” repetition, what I might also call “thematic” repetition, is unavoidable, and in my opinion, is something which a strong author ought to develop over time.

When I say theme, I’m talking about the deeper, central concerns of the story and author. For example, regardless of what kinds of characters and fetishes I choose to write about, it’s highly likely that the story I end up writing is going to be a revenge fantasy–whether it’s about twinks or bears, or involves rubber transformations or no kink at all. Other authors tend to focus on other themes–Onix, I would say, writes especially about hubris and the problems men face when dealing with power they can’t completely control. Peircedskin writes about skinheads, sure–but his stories, at a deeper level, are also about ordinary men being forced into lifestyles and personas completely alien to their prior lives, and how they adjust to these new selves. These themes are present in every story, and they tend to be repeated. This deep repetition is unavoidable–it simply occurs as stories accumulate. It can also provide a better understanding of an author’s work both in general and in the particular.

I can only speak with any real authority about my own work, so I’ll start there before attempting to extrapolating anything out further. For me, thematic repetition tends to most often signalled through the repetition of setting. Pigtown, Louisiana Acres, the stories involving the Special Investigations Bureau, and City of Bears of course, are all linked up by the superficial repetition of place, and the characters who inhabit those places, but more than anything else, the stories in these settings are tied together by deeper themes. As such, it can happen that some stories in these settings are not always planned to happen there–for example, I didn’t start writing “The Wrong Side of Pigtown” intending for the bar they visit to be Pigtown–I simply realized that there was no other place that the story could take place about halfway through the story. Similarly, I only realized as I was finishing this vignette that the narrator was the ringleader of Louisiana Acres, popping up once more. These repetitions occur because particular kinds of stories tend to gravitate towards ideas and story structures these various places represent for me. For example, Louisiana Acres is about class conflict, whether the trailer park is attacking suburbanites, frat houses, or businessmen in bars. Pigtown stories are about temptation, escapism and death. SIB stories have varying settings, but the larger scope is a world filled with magic and artifacts that men attempt to wield out of hubris, and fail to control. City of Bears is about even larger questions–‘What would a world of bears look like?’; ‘Would such a world be just, or would it have it’s own systemic problems?’; ‘How do we understand the terms ‘birth’ and ‘death’ in a world without children?’. Furthermore, many stories that don’t obviously exist in any of these settings in fact do belong to one of these categories. “Rick and the Beast” and “The Power of Belief” might as well be outtakes from City of Bears, while “Mr. Drake’s Games” is an instance of Louisiana Acres situated in a cul-de-sac instead of in a trailer park.

It’s my theory that most authors function in similar ways–we begin with these larger questions and themes, and reiterate them across stories that may not, on the surface, have much to do with each other at all. The notion that writing in this genre is driven by themes, and not simply by the desire to get off, will probably be difficult for some people to swallow. I’ll admit that some writing is less idea driven than others, certainly. Newer authors in particular are less guided by these sorts of drives than more established writers, not necessarily because people who write more are more inclined to have ideas, but rather because the sheer accumulation of content forces relations to appear between stories regardless of whether the author intended to put them there or not. Even newer writers aren’t immune to thematic connections, because their writing certainly doesn’t exist within a vacuum. Authors can and often do repeat and reiterate themes from each other’s work as well. In the past, I have noted that the two biggest inspirations for me were stories written by Onix and Peircedskin. In fact, I would say that my first story, “Losing Control”, essentially reads as a mash-up of those two authors in a single story, and some of the fundamental themes of both authors are present. Thematic repetition then, is more than a single author reiterating their own thoughts into the world, it is a collective act of reiteration and amplification, taking ideas from other people and building on them, and someone else taking your work and pushing it in their own direction. A new author then, rather than being taken as some sort of clean slate, is simply borrowing and stealing thematic content, characters, settings and tropes from other authors, and generally continue to do so until they develop their own distinct viewpoint and style.

And so, we come to my real interest in this discussion. If we take seriously the notion that thematic repetition occurs at not only within an author’s own canon, but between authors as well, that means that larger collections of the work of multiple authors, particularly story collections like the NCMC or MaelstromX’s old archives, also possess these same sorts of thematic currents running through them. I’ll have more to say on this Thursday. Yes, Thursday. This is going to be a long one, but I’ll get back to porn soon enough–I think this is important.