Category: Uncategorized

City of Bears: Lovers and Strangers (Part 1)

Yes, you read that title right! This is a new “City of Bears” story. However, it is not a continuation of the previous arcs I was writing–I’m going to be trying something new with this instead. If you’d like to know more about the process and thought behind it, you can find out more in the metawriting post from yesterday.

No one ever believes they’re going to change again. They settle into something, into someone, into themselves, and everything just feels exactly how it should be. In the happiest times they can remember experiencing, they ask themselves, “How could I ever turn my back on this? How could I ever possibly want things to be different?” Memories deepen and grow, their entire life forming and calcifying, even as everything else fades away into distant impossibility. Everything before this was just a wan faximile of happiness; no, this is the real thing, this is true. But truth is slippery, and no matter what anyone in the city tells themselves, love is just a stranger in waiting. Life can feel stone certain for the longest time, until a moment when it cracks, and then you don’t seem to know anything at all anymore. You don’t know yourself, you don’t know the person you swear you’ve loved for years. The world is suddenly new, and as terrifying as it is, it’s a rush–and a rush everyone craves, whether they deny it or not.

Wyatt had tried to deny it for as long as he could, when it first happened, but he knew–everyone knows–that denial couldn’t stop it. Changing wasn’t something you could stop. There’s that sudden, self-shattering moment, and after that, all one can do is watch the entire facade crumble away as something else rises to replace it. He got into a fight with his cub, Carter, one evening, a few days after it happened, when he misremembered how long they had been together. Carter insisted that their ten year anniversary was coming up–he wanted to plan an extra special night with his daddy at a deluxe hotel downtown–but Wyatt told him it had only been six, and to him, it felt like six–it was six. They fell out of sync rapidly after that, and Wyatt had to confess what had happened. He had met someone, and he was changing–and soon, he would have to leave.

The look on his cub’s face, when he’d told him that, was gut wrenching. He wanted to protect the boy, he’d sworn he’d always be there for him, that he’d always be his daddy. Wyatt had believed it, too–he’d always told himself, when the time came, that surely it would be Carter who would change, not him. His cub was flighty and fickle, he could never seem to settle on anything for very long, before growing tired of it and moving onto something else. He had different facial hair every week, and different colored hair every other day, it seemed, but no matter what changed on the surface, Wyatt had always been able to know it was him…but looking at him then, he realized he didn’t know him anymore–not like he had. But he wasn’t supposed to be the one to change! His boy would find someone, and he would have this grand epiphany, and Wyatt would help him change, with a tear in his eye of course, but happy to have had his cub for as long as he did–but neither of them had imagined it like this, fighting over memories, Wyatt leaving Carter in tears, abandoning him and running across town to Levi’s apartment so he can feel safe, so he can feel like everything is going to just be alright in the arms of his daddy.

His daddy–what a fucking surprise that had been. Wyatt–white haired, three hundred pounds, claiming to be sixty-six (even though everyone knew that age was all a matter of state of mind) he had found himself a daddy. Levi was middle aged, salt and pepper, mostly muscle, smelled like the worksite he spent his days at, and when he and Wyatt had started chatting in that bar that night, the last thing Wyatt had imagined might happen was Levi leading him into the backroom, reducing him to some slender, twenty something muscle cub before fucking his brains out onto the floor, into a massive puddle of cum larger than any he’d ever seen before in his life. He’d sworn it would be a one time thing when he’d gone home, back to his usual self after the night’s fun, but the change was already stirring in him. He knew it, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Levi had done the right thing–he’d told Wyatt to turn right back around and go sort things out with his cub, properly. Wyatt, unsure of himself for the first time in what felt like ages, asked Levi to come along, to help him out, to justify it all somehow, but Levi refused. “This is between the two of you,” he said, “Sort your things out together, find whatever closure you can, and the next time you come here, you’d best be ready to move in and move on, got it?”

Wyatt agreed, and returned home, where he found Carter at the kitchen table, crying. When Carter looked at him, as he came into the room, the confusion in his eyes was unexpected, but Wyatt discovered, a bit later, what had been so odd to his cub. After all, Wyatt doubted Carter had ever seen his daddy with color in his hair, but when he looked in the mirror, about half of the color had returned to him, his hairline pushing an inch forward. He looked to be in his fifties now, and the change was accelerating, and it hurt to see it right there in front of him. He did love Carter still, but his heart was aching for Levi all the same, a constant, total desire with no roots, but more force than Wyatt could ever hope to resist. They had, at most, a couple of days, but more than likely, by tomorrow, he’d be someone new–a stranger to them both.

Metawriting: City of Bears

I haven’t done one of these in quite a while, and I know some of what I will write below has been said in asks off and on, but this would be a very good time to address it. Most likely, the number one question I get from readers is about City of Bears–or more precisely, when City of Bears is coming back. It turns out I finally have a short answer for all of you! The answer is tomorrow!

Just in time for Christmas, right?

I have a long answer too, however, and it has a lot of important caveats to it, before you all get carried away. Really, I just want to soften the blow a bit–if you were looking for a continuation of the story I was telling before, from “Big Bears on Campus” through “Rising Powers”, I’m sorry to say that this isn’t what you will be getting, and I want to take a moment to talk about why, and why “City of Bears” means so much to me, and why it has taken me so long to get back to it–after all, it’s been five years now since that November where I hammered out 60,000 words as quickly as I could, but when I stopped and looked at what I was doing, and where the story seemed to be heading, I couldn’t help but feel a creeping dissatisfaction, and one I couldn’t quite explain, even to myself. So I sat on it, planned on continuing it later, and then eventually shelved it along with many other unfinished stories of mine. I knew that there was more to tell, and more to write, but what I had written then wasn’t what I needed it to be.

There were a few false restarts along the way. I tried on occasion to pick up where I’d left off, but I’d lost the thread of the story–or rather, the way I had initially planned the story developing was no longer the direction that I wanted to see it go. Tristan’s magical hold on the world was always intended to be temporary, in one sense or another. I never really could imagine a scenario, when I started plotting things out, where he won–it just didn’t seem to make sense any other way. It didn’t necessarily mean that the world was put back the way it had been, but the entire notion seemed too outlandish to really be sustainable. As I’ve written before, in various replies to asks on the topic, the question of what a queer future looks like is one which is very difficult to try and answer, especially within a hetero framework, because the future, for heteroculture, is always defined within generations of progeny–but as queers, that framework crumbles to bits very quickly, for obvious reasons.

My original plotting tried to address this conundrum in a few different ways, but none of them really felt satisfying or thought through. It seemed to me that City of Bears might actually be a dystopia of sorts, a society predicated on its own end, or one which required a parasitic relationship with a society outside of itself in order to bring in new bodies to sustain it. I tried various ways of conceiving it as a world that I might want to use, but none of them felt authentic–in part because I didn’t want to try and explain how something like the City of Bears could exist. But an origin story is, by necessity, the creation of a world. By rooting the narrative in our own world, I had necessitated, in some ways, the need to explain how it could function as one.

So I sat on it. I considered the possibility that it might just be a dead story, and that I’d never continue it. I considered the possibility that I was overthinking everything a bit too much, as an excuse to foster writer’s block. But I kept writing other stories, and as I did, a few other building blocks fell into place. I managed to separate out and distinguish between setting and world, and decided, firmly, that I much preferred to use the former. Pigtown, as I’ve written before, is a setting. The same with Louisiana Acres. These settings recur, but they are never the same. Pigtown isn’t one bar, in one city–it exists anywhere, potentially. It can be anywhere, and confront anyone–as a dive bar in the country, as a seedy sex club, as your friendly neighborhood pub with a suspicious curtain in the back, as a corruptive neighborhood spreading through the city. Pigtown is all of those things and none of them, because it is just the set piece to the actual story itself. It took me a while, but I realized, at last, that City of Bears didn’t need to be some world I had to build. It too, could be a setting of sorts–and when I had that realization, I felt like I was awash in possibility.

Still, it took me a while to work up the nerve to actually sit down and write something using it, in part because I wasn’t quite sure how to translate all of my ideas from before into a different framework, but a few important qualities stood out to me. City of Bears is, fundamentally, about identity and change–especially in the later entries. What would it be like to exist in a place where, from day to day, you might not even be the same person, with the same memories and desires, as you were the day before? If identity was rendered so fragile, then what would it even be like to exist as an agent in those sorts of circumstances, where a puff of the wrong cigar, or wrong turn around a corner could send you spiralling into some entirely new life? Those were the stories I found exciting. But beyond that, City of Bears has always been, to me, about imagining the possibilities, and the hope, of a queer community utterly divorced from the cishet social structure we all find ourselves in. It wouldn’t be a utopia by any means, but it would be radically different–and that is something I have always longed to see.

And so, last week, the kernel of a story came to me, and I wrote it, and here it is. I’m really fond of it–it feels new to me in a way a lot of my writing doesn’t. It might be a bit confusing, and for that I apologize–I’m not a fan of explaining the rules of a world in story–I’d rather just show them in action, and this story is as much about introducing the mechanics of the setting, to you, the readers, and as a way for me to test out some ideas. In any case, this is just a short story, meant to be self-contained, and next year I hope to write more using the setting. There are some characters and conflicts and stories from the first run of the series that I definitely want to revisit–but what those stories might look like I don’t know, as of yet. Like everything else, I’ll figure it out as I go along.

In any case, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed all the stories this year, and thanks again to everyone who supported me on Patreon–especially through the tumult of the last month. As I wrote earlier, given that Patreon isn’t rolling out the fee changes after all, I won’t be changing the cost of any of my reward tiers–that said, as of right now, I’m just about $20 shy of the seven hundred dollar mark, which would mean content seven days a week for all of you! If that’s something you’d like to see, and you don’t already support me, you can find more details here.

Marv’s Doghouse (Part 6)

Benji had a great time on the walk–smelling, peeing, looking for squirrels. Everything felt normal. Everything felt right, for the moment. The doubts were beginning to recede, and Benji could tell that they would be gone before too much longer. They walked for about half an hour, and were coming back around to the cul-de-sac where they lived, and where some of Marv’s neighbors were finally up. Benji was excited to meet some new people, and he dragged Marv over to a young man getting the mail, and Master seemed a bit…aggravated at being made to interact with them, but they liked Benji, and that’s all he really cared about. They kept walking, and were almost back to the house, when he smelled someone, whipped his head around, and looked back at a house across the way.

He smelled someone.

Someone…someone he knew, someone he knew well. The doubts welled back up, suddenly, and while Marv was focused on unlatching the gate, Benji took off, yanking the leash from his grip and sprinting after the smell. He couldn’t see the person until he got closer, but it was a woman heading down to get the newspaper–and he…he knew her. He knew her because…because he was married to her!

With that. Ben felt himself, his real self, come roaring back, and leapt onto her, knocking her down, licking her face while she screamed, and he barked at her, tried to tell her, tried to focus on himself, tried to remember what he’d looked like…but it was so hard! She shoved him off him and tried to run for the door of the house, and before he could follow her, Marv had come sprinting after him, caught his leash, and yanked him back hard enough to make him yelp.

She screamed at him, and Marv apologized profusely while Ben kept barking his head off, thinking about her, about his life with her, and he could…feel it happening, could feel his old body pushing out, but it wasn’t fast enough. Marv dragged him back to the gate, and the woman, shaken, went back inside the house, and then he was back in the yard, back with Marv–and back with that damn doghouse.

Still, it was coming faster now, he could feel hands starting to form from his paws, he could feel the hair pulling back in, his human senses returning. Marv was growling and shouting at him, dragging him across the yard to the doghouse by the leash while Ben fought and crawled back away from it, but to no avail.

“Well I’ll give you credit, boy–you got spunk!” Marv said, grabbing Ben and planting him in front of the doghouse, his nose close to the old wood, smelling the stink of it. “Plenty ‘o spunk. Well don’t worry–we’ll break you of that right quick in another couple of days–figured it was too early to have you out and about.”

“You fucking bastard!” Ben managed to cry through a misshapened mouth, “She’ll know, she’ll remember me! She…she has to!”

“Benji–you’re already gone from that world, trust me. There’s no trace of you anywhere. She wouldn’t recognize you even if you got to her–you’re mine now, you’re my pup, and this is going to be so much easier for you if you just relax and accept that, trust me.”

“I’m not going to be your fucking dog, you fucker, you can’t fucking do this to me!” Ben shouted, but the words were already losing substance. He was losing, he could feel his body shifting back, losing track of his humanity, losing track of himself.

“Now now, you aren’t going to be my dog all the time, boy. I’ll let you be human on occasion, when I have some friends around who like playing with a pupslave–but as far as you’ll know, soon enough, you’ll have always been a dog. Yeah–you’ll think you’re a dog who can turn into a human! How about that? Now, though, I think you need the alpha of the pack to remind you who the fuck’s in charge around here, boy.”

Marv undid the front of his jeans, hauled out his cock, and shoved his cock into Ben’s hole, making him howl and try and claw himself away, but…but he wanted this, didn’t he? He loved playing with Master–loved pleasing Master. He could feel his own cock start throbbing underneath him, in the grass, and after a couple of minutes he stopped struggling and let Master have his way with him. He’d…he’d been a bad dog, running off like that, he realized. The funny thing was…he couldn’t even remember why he’d done that. There’d been…been a smell, or something, but the only smell that mattered was his house. Well, that and his Master, but they were the same smell, really. It was the smell of where he belonged. By the time Marv came, Ben had faded away again, and Benji was in control, and he felt…terrible about disobeying his master like that, for letting the doubts take control of him like that. When Master told him he’d have to spend a few days staked out here, with his doghouse, he…he knew it was the best thing to do, but the doubts swirled up again, but before they could do anything, the stake was driven into the earth, and the chain was set up, connected to his collar, and there was nowhere he could go.

The doubts came back a few times, but never as strong as that first time. Benji could keep them away–all he needed to do was take a nice nap in his doghouse, and when he woke up, the doubts were further and further away, until at last…they weren’t there at all. He was just Benji, just his Master’s dog, and that was all he ever wanted to be.

Marv’s Doghouse (Part 5)

“Yeah, who’s a good boy?” Marv said, a bit out of breath, “You are, you’re a real good dog, ‘n I can already tell we’re gonna be real happy together, you and me.” He drove in deep, and came, filling Ben’s tailhole with his load, and Ben could feel it inside him, hot and sticky…but more than that. It felt…final. He felt complete, somehow, in a way he’d never felt before. His master slipped his cock out of him, and Ben, panting a bit, turned around and started licking the shaft clean while his Master praised him and scratched him between the ears…but he was feeling exhausted all of a sudden, and Marv could see it in his now doggy eyes. “Alright boy–that’s enough play for now. You need to take a nice long rest. Go on–get in your doghouse.”

Ben turned, and saw the doghouse–his doghouse–across the yard, but when he did…he also felt a pang of fear. There was something wrong with it, wasn’t there? He could smell it from here, across the yard, the same scent he’d noticed…carrying it in? He hadn’t been carrying anything, had he? He was a dog, after all, dog’s didn’t carry things…

“Go on! Get in there,” Marv said, and slapped Ben on the ass, sending him off to the doghouse, and the closer he got…the more comfortable it seemed. He went inside, a bit hesitant, but the scent…it was so powerful here, especially on his now much stronger nose. He was safe here–this was his home. Why…why would he want to be anywhere else? He padded around a moment in a circle, and then plopped down, and he was asleep in less than a minute. Marv checked on him a couple times, making sure his new pup was settling in properly, and then went inside for dinner. They’d play again tomorrow, for sure, but for now, it was best to just let the magic work.

***

“Benji! Benji, come on boy, time for breakfast!”

Ben lifted his head blearily, looking around himself. Where…was he?

“Benji!”

Something was wrong–something was wrong with him. The space was too small, or he was too…too big. In a bit of a panic, he pushed his way through the doorway in front of him, squeezing through until he popped through and into the long grass, where in the morning daylight, he could see better what was wrong with him.

Something was wrong with his body–he looked down at his front legs, disturbed to see not fur covering them, but instead he saw…flesh. Just pale flesh! Flesh like his master’s flesh, but that…he wasn’t supposed to have that, right? He was a dog! He…he was supposed to be a dog, wasn’t he? Some of him was a dog–he still had his paws, mostly, at the end of two fleshy arms and legs, and his cock was right…the fur covering his body in haphazard patches.

“Looks like someone’s having a bit of an identity crisis,” the voice said–master’s voice said, and Benji looked up at him, panting, and whined, wondering what he should do–trying to figure out what he was supposed to be. He could…remember one thing–he could remember being human, couldn’t he? Or had it just been a dream? It seemed so real, but that couldn’t be right, could it–no, of course it couldn’t! He was a dog! Just a dog, nothing more–something was wrong with him, but Master would help him out, wouldn’t he? He looked up at his Master looming over him, and he seemed…so much more colorful than he usually did, and he couldn’t quite smell his as well as he should. It was still happening, he was changing more–how did he stop it?

“Now now, boy, calm down,” Marv said, crouching down beside him in the grass, petting his back. “You know what you are boy–just relax. You’re mine, ain’t ya? You’re my pup–you’re Benji. Focus on that–think about your fur, about that bushy tail of yours, about walking around on all fours, all your favorite smells…Just focus, and everything will be alright.”

Being close to Master helped him relax some, and if Master thought he could do it…then Benji knew he could. He focused, thought about it, about his body–his real body, about being a dog. He pushed those other thoughts away as best he could. He wasn’t a person, he knew that! No, he was a pup, just like Master said. Slowly, he felt his body start to shift back, the fur filling back in, his legs changing back until he had to shift from sitting in his ass, to lying in the grass like he enjoyed doing in the afternoons, just smelling the air while Master was at work, waiting for him to get home so they could play.

“Good boy!” Marv said, scritching Benji behind the ears, and he barked in excitement. He was doing it! This was right–he knew it was right. It had to be, because it…it felt right. Sure, there was a piece of him trying to tell him he was wrong, that something…something was wrong, about Marv, about this house, but that voice didn’t seem like someone Benji should trust. No–better to just trust Master, and if Master thought he was doing right, then that meant he was. After a couple of minutes, he was back to normal, and after licking Master’s face for a bit, thanking him for helping him sort everything out in his head, he followed Master onto the patio, where he had a long drink from his bowl and ate his breakfast like a good dog, because he was a good dog, wasn’t he?

There was still doubt, and that, confused him. There shouldn’t be…doubt. He wanted to tell his master somehow, but he didn’t know how to even begin to communicate what he was feeling. Still, when Master suggested a walk around the neighborhood, Benji wasn’t about to object to that. He loved walks! He barked and barked while Master went inside and got his leash and collar–Benji could barely believe he hadn’t been wearing his collar the whole time! That alone made him feel better, with it around his neck. Marv hooked the leash to it, once it was on, and then they left by the gate and started off on their walk.

Patreon Fee Update

Hey all! This morning, Patreon announced that, contrary to their statement last week, they aren’t going to be going through with those fee changes they announced, which I discussed in the post I put up earlier. Since the fees won’t be taking affect, I won’t be lowering my two tier levels, as previously announced–they will be remaining at $5 and $10 dollars respectively. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Thanks again for your support as always.

Marv’s Doghouse (Part 4)

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, boy?”

His heart froze, and he looked over his shoulder at Marv, who had returned to the patio carrying…a metal dog bowl.

“What the fuck did I say? I told you to sit, and stay, isn’t that right?”

The shame that welled up in Ben’s was as inexplicable as it was powerful, but he had to get out, he had to get help. He kept batting at the latch, close to getting it open, so close.

“Stop that, and come here.”

Ben’s body froze. He fought it, he fought it as hard as he could, but there was nothing he could do. He fell back down onto his hands and knees, head down, and crawled back over to the patio, where he saw Marv had come back out with another can of beer–and a dog bowl. “That’s a bad dog–a very bad dog!” he said, scolding Ben, and the shame ripped through him. Why had he done that? He should have never done that, he shouldn’t have even thought about it! What was wrong with him? He looked up at Marv and heard himself let off a pitiful whine of apology, tried to say something else, but his mouth…he couldn’t quite get it to work right. What came out of his mouth…it didn’t sound like words at all. “Now, drink your beer, boy,” Marv said, set the bowl down and poured the can into it, “While I get those stupid clothes off of you–I don’t think you’ll be needing them anymore, do you?”

Ben stared down at the bowl, confused, and went to try and pick it up with one of his hands…only to realize that what he still considered to be a hand wasn’t one–not anymore. The fingers had shrunken down considerably, and his thumb had pulled away from the rest of his fingers, higher up on his wrist. The nails on each finger had grown, and were all turning black, like…claws. He took one paw and brought it to his face as best he could and felt it–the snout pushing out from his smaller head, the hair growing in all over. He…he was turning into a dog.

“Go on boy, drink already.”

Ben instinctively pushed his head to the surface of the beer, and started lapping it up. He didn’t know how he knew to do it, he just…knew. Just like how he knew Marv was…his Master, and that this backyard was his home, and that…and that he was a dog. He pushed back against that, as hard as he could. He wasn’t a dog, he was a person! A human! His name was Ben, and he wasn’t some mutt, he was Marv’s neighbor, and he had to get out of here, somehow. Marv, meanwhile, had taken out a knife and started cutting away Ben’s clothes from work, tearing them off his body, and he could see that the changes, which had begun slowly, were now accelerating. Ben’s back legs were narrowing and growing shorter–without realizing it, Ben had gone from being on his hands and knees, to being on his front and back paws–all four legs now fully raised. “Yeah, now that’s a handsome lookin’ pup right there. I’ve really missing having one around, you know, but no normal dog is really satisfying, once you’ve had a special one in your life, like my uncle made. Smarter than any normal mutt, loyal, completely obedient, and willing to do anything–absolutely anything for their master’s pleasure, right boy?”

He felt Marv grab…something. Something attached to him, right above his ass. It took him a moment to realize it was his fledgling tail, just starting to grow in–now a few inches long, mostly nude, but with hair rapidly filling in. He gave a yelp, when he felt a finger probe into his ass, and tried to pull away, but Marv wrapped his other arm around his hips, and hauled him back.

“Now now, boy–you want this as much as I do. This is a mutt’s ultimate service for their master–now hold still!”

Ben heard Marv unzip the fly of his jeans, and a moment later something much larger than a finger pressed against his hole–it was Marv’s cock. But while the disgust was still there, it was quickly eclipsed by something else…he was happy. Thrilled, really. Eager. His master slid into his tail hole, and Ben gave a yip, eager for his Master to fill him up, eager to serve him.

“Yeah, that’s a good boy–you’re a good boy, aren’t you? You won’t be trying to escape ever again, I can promise you that–you’re going to be on a very tight leash, not that you’d want it any other way, right mutt?”

The hair was spreading faster now, filling in all over Ben’s body. On his front legs (his arms he tried to tell himself, but that wasn’t right! They were legs, weren’t they?) the hair was a light golden tan, all the way down to his new paws, and looking back, looking up at his master, his handsome master fucking his tail hole, he could see that over his back, in a saddle, the fur was black. He’d seen dogs like this, like him, before–one of his next door neighbors when he was a kid, who’d been a police officer, had had one. He was becoming a german shepherd. His tail kept growing longer, the hair on it filling out and turning bushy. Marv…Master…he was close. Ben could sense it, and it was getting him excited as well, the heat in his own crotch increasing as his cock, the last human part of him, began to shift. The skin turned into a bright red, and it shrank somewhat–the head becoming narrow and flared, a furry sheath growing up over his balls and the shaft, though he was much, much too horny for it to slide in at the moment. His master–his master was fucking him, and he loved it when his Master fucked him, it was the greatest feeling a pup like him could feel, and he loved it.

How did you learn how to create an image in your writing?

Becoming a better writer, no matter what you’re trying to get better at, eventually comes down to two things.

1) Read a lot of stuff, and when you read it, don’t read passively. Stop and think about why it works, and how it works.

2) Practice. Write a lot, as much as you can.

There’s no real shortcut, especially when you’re asking about a massive topic like creating imagery.