I’m excited to announce that I’m collaborating on a new venture in homoerotic wrestling fiction! The quick version of the announcement is that I’ve partnered with my long time collaborator, AR, to publish a pro-wrestling-turns-erotic serial, pairing his gorgeous wrestling graphics with my penchant for prose. The Heels & Heroes series explores the fictional world in which the Global Wrestling League recruits the best pro wrestling talent from around the world to produce classic, high production value pro wrestling drama week after week for a globally televised audience. What happens in the ring is already boundary-obliterating stuff, but the series also explores what’s in the heads, in the locker rooms, and behind the curtains. And as you might imagine if you’ve ever read a word I’ve written before anywhere, erotic domination and sexual gratification are the raison d’être and raison de faire underlying everything that makes wrestling so compelling (as far as I’m concerned). For $5 a month, subscribers get access to weekly updates including graphics and text documenting the global superstars of wrestling battling it out, scheming and scrapping, preening and plotting, and putting their beautiful bodies on the line for glory and a shot at gold. Back-Stage-Pass holders ($10/month) get additional exclusives, including even more magnificently crafted images of the action, even more pros-in-private NSFW graphics, and exclusive access to polls and future storyboards to weigh in on what happens to whom, and just how raunchy these hard-bodied gladiators are going to get.
Now, for the longer version of the announcement, I want to share a little bit of how fun this has been to work on and world-build for the past 12 months. First of all, I want to acknowledge that there is already a lot of incredible homoerotic wrestling art (graphic and text) out there. AR and I spent a ton of time, including several start-overs, multiple recasts, and literally hundreds of hours brainstorming, storyboarding, rendering graphics and writing and rewriting text, most of it focused on trying to create something novel and engaging. I think we’ve landed on a sweet spot that adds something creative and constructive for a homoerotic wrestling audience that likes to read. If I had my way, this would be 90%+ AR’s graphic art on showcase. The guy’s ability to convey narrative with nothing but a graphic blows my mind daily. However, if AR had his way, this would be 90%+ my written words, getting into and getting stoked hard by inside-out/outside-in details that only omniscient point-of-view fiction can provide. We’ve basically had to arm-wrestle over striking a balance that captures the best of what our unique collaboration has to offer.
Homoerotic wrestling in serial format has long been on my wish list. I’ve had three different potential producers of homoerotic wrestling videos approach me over the past 16 years to ask what I thought would be something fresh that a new company could provide to claim a novel niche in the (already saturated) market. Every time, I’ve said what I think is missing is plot. Of course, there’s some sensational storytelling happening within a lot of homoerotic wrestling videos (not in all of them, of course, but in a lot). But the nature and scale of how homoerotic wrestling is produced has just not permitted the world-building and story telling that can come from a serial format, with the plots of matches stitched tightly together, extending suspense and intrigue beyond the bounds of any one-off video. I’ve had established producers explain it to me, and I totally get it. They hire talent and film batches of matches a few times a year. Pulling off a multi-video, multiple match story arc like BG East’s Contract Series is wicked challenging to do for many reasons, including having reliable access to wrestlers committed to come back for multiple shoots. It’s just an entirely different beast to craft pro wrestling drama in a small shop format than, say, a mainstream pro wrestling federation employing wrestlers for one or more shows a week, where they can light slow burns and explosive feuds, where shocking betrayals have the context of multi-match histories, where wrestlers can be ranked and what happens in one match shapes the starting point for another match that will take place in the near future. I still think there’s more room to build on clever narrative like the Contract, or Grudge Match 6, or cocky heel partners in Tag Team Torture 19 turning on each other after a stunning loss. But one of the itches we’re scratching with Heels & Heroes is week-to-week, match-to-match development of the narrative, even tracking the drama and personalities after the cameras are off and wounds need licking (yum).
I’ve confessed many times over the years that I’m a bad capitalist. So, this is my first time marketing something having to do with my labor for monetary compensation (as far as writing about homoerotic wrestling). Honestly, I don’t think I’d be attempting this now if this weren’t a collaboration with someone I trust and whose creativity inspires me the way AR’s does. We really don’t have a business plan here, or strong sense of the tastes and demands of the market. What we do have is a lot of creativity and enthusiasm, and a product that delights us and turns us on. Anything we earn from Heels & Heroes will serve to offset some technical costs of continuing our creative endeavors, and keep us accountable to continuing to build the H&H world that we’ve grown to enjoy so much.
Check out teasers on the Heels_and_Heroes IG account, and if you’re interested in checking out the hot, sweaty, high impact, erotically charged pro wrestling universe of the Global Wrestling Ring, find us on Patreon!
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