No, not annoying, just….sigh….hard to talk about.

No, there’s no new chapters or anything on the immediate horizon. While I know there’s a future for that story, and those characters, somewhere, I feel like I’ve lost the thread on what that looks like, especially after the chunk I wrote for NaNoWriMo a few years back. 

I touched on some of my worries about that story, and others like it, a couple of weeks back, in an ask I answered about politics in my writing. Looking at City of Bears in particular, something I’ve always said, and always thought, was that the series itself was *never* meant be become as large as it got. It fact, that first series was just meant to be a string of silly, off hand vignettes inspired by a few drawings I’d seen online, and some of the stupid observations around my college campus. 

That said, it grew. It was somewhere around the eighth episode of Big Bears on Campus that I started to really feel like there was something bigger there that I wanted to explore, and honestly, I’ve always felt like I kind of butchered it relentlessly every step of the way. It’s a good story! Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t regret writing it, but the person who wrote it, and the person I am now don’t…line up well in terms of skill, or vision.

I’ve batted around the idea of rebooting the whole thing a few times, but it’s such a massive undertaking, that even thinking about it is difficult, especially given the rapid pace that I have to generate writing. Still, that’s just praxis, really–the truth is, if I knew what I wanted the story to be, I’d write it, but I don’t know what it is.

The central issue I run into, when I do sit down and think about it, is the question of whether the City of Bears story I want to tell treats the setting as something static, or dynamic. That probably seems a bit strange, so I’ll try and explain. The first three chunks of City of Bears treat the setting as something dynamic–that is, it’s an origin story, describing how the city developed through the actions of Tristan et. al. and the setting is very fluid. But when I hit the third arc, something really fundamental shifted in the story. It wasn’t about the city changing anymore–everyone was essentially changed. Now, it was a story about people actually having to learn how to exist in that new world, while grappling with the remnants of the old one at the same time. It was a lot more complex, and a lot harder to write, but it yielded a lot of writing that I’m proud of. 

I’d like to explore the setting more, that much I know. What needs to happen most, I think, is that I have to just break the scab off, and get back into it. It’s become such a monster to me, because I’ve never known how to “resolve” any of it, especially given where the story last left us. But I’ve come to wonder if these sorts of things really need a resolution, or consistency. Certainly Pigtown isn’t consistent, and all of those stories make sense together. I think City of Bears needs to become something more like that.

So, long story short, yes, there will be more. No, I’m not sure when there will be more, but I’d like it to be soon. Whatever I produce, I doubt it’s going to be a direct continuation of the story, but it will probably pick a few of the characters and delve a bit deeper into the issues arising from the setting itself. Beyond those vague notions, I honestly don’t know.

Whatever, have some more I guess.

Ah yes. You, objective. Me, emotional. I mean, you certainly *seem* emotionally stable and well balanced.

I mean, you’re just the person who is still sending me asks about this, the person including at least one ad hominem in every message. You seem incredibly detached from this emotionally, absolutely unaffected by this entire conversation. That’s probably why you haven’t actually bothered replying to any of the arguments I’ve laid out–because you’re just too rational to deal with any of this silly, emotional, philosophy. You could probably walk away, and never think about this ever again, if you wanted to–but it seems that you don’t want to.

Why is that?

I mean, why do you care so much about this? See, we keep coming back to this question, Anon. Why does this claim–that wage labor (i.e. “jobs”) is a fundamental part of, and was created by, the Capitalist economic system–bothers you so much, that we still need to have this conversation a week later? Still, since you mention dictionaries…

Here’s Merriam Webster: “A regular remunerative position.” – that is, regular labor for a regular wage or payment.

Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary: “anything one has to do…spec. a paid position of employment.”

Google’s built in dictionary: “a paid position of regular employment.”

etc. etc.

I am using the definition of the word you find in a dictionary–what the fuck are you using?

I would argue that the two terms, “job” and “occupation”, have different senses myself, that an occupation is a broader scope term than job. That is, I could say that one of my current occupations is writing erotica, but I wouldn’t say that writing erotica is one of my jobs. A job, in my mind, implies a social relationship with an employer. I suppose you could say that I am self-employed in some sense, but even that term implies, to me, a more formal relationship between a person their work. In any case, though, my point stands. You aren’t taking any real issue with my argument, you just think I’m using words wrong. At this point, you just want to have an argument over definitions, which isn’t interesting to anyone.

My main beef with wish fulfillment is that, at a fundamental level, stories which rely on it generally lack conflict, and I think that conflict is a necessary component for stories to be good. That probably sounds super harsh, since wish granting is kind of your “thing”, but you do a really good job with it, or at least, as good a job as can be done with it.

The issue, with a bit more detail given, is that stories are composed of a protagonist, and that protagonist in generally pursuing something, a desire or goal or what have you. Something puts obstacles in the protagonists way, usually some kind of antagonist, but in a wish fulfillment story, the antagonist usually doesn’t even appear. The stories, especially bad ones, tend to just read as “Character A wanted to be X, and he became X, the end.” There’s no room to develop a story there, all we have is a description of a change. For the most part, wish fulfillment is just window dressing around a description of a change, in order to avoid doing the harder work of constructing a conflict to make the change meaningful.

But beyond that, I also just don’t find it to be all that arousing at all. My stories, at their cold, dreary black hearts, aren’t about people getting what they want–they’re about people getting what they deserve. Punishment, as opposed to reward. My approach has it’s own problems, of course, and can be just as empty of conflict if done poorly. Mostly, it’s a question of motivation–I’m still granting wishes, it’s just the wishes of people who hate Character A instead.

In the end, yeah, I think wish fulfillment is a lot more popular, and there is a ton of it. I’d probably be more successful if I used it more often, but whenever I’ve written them in the past, usually for a commission, they just bore me to tears. I usually just openly reject them now, if people request them, because I have so little interest in writing them.

Thanks, I appreciate that, and I totally get the backhanded frustration too.

I get the feeling that I’m stuck in a rut almost all the time, honestly. I mean, especially after doing this for as long as I have, at the constant clip I work, the stories can tend to feel like they’re all blending together into a single mass. I rely pretty heavily, on my regular commissioners to force me out of my comfort zone and into subject matter I haven’t done much with. For example, I had a really great time writing “Idolized”–I really need to do more stuff with orcs, even if I find them to be a bit frustrating as far as subject matter is concerned (along with a lot of other fantasy themed topics). I’m also really happy with “Manning Up”, and that too, is a commissioned piece. 

So trust me, I get it, and I’m sorry. I do my best to force myself to vary things up as best I can, but I have my favorites, and my tropes, and my crutches just like most writers do. Thanks, in any case, for sticking with me! I’m glad that I can please you 1/5 of the time, at least, and that you get a good amount of enjoyment out of it.