Going Niche (Complete Story) [Bonus Material Added 8/29/23]

[Ripped]

@TQuintA, thanks for raising the authorship bar...probably so high I'll never reach it (bastard ).

[DawnFire98]

 

@TQuintA, thanks for raising the authorship bar...probably so high I'll never reach it (bastard ).

Haha, I kind of feel the same. But it inspires and motivates me to, on one hand, get better in my writing, but moreso, to just do my own thing.

[ploder4]

Damn!  What a story... what an ending.  Very well balanced.  Gavin maintained his humbleness despite the fact that he may have had the power to continue to change the world.  All he wants to do is to finish out his life the way he wants and in this case, it's not much. 

[msclbldr]

Thank you, TQuintA

[Jockstudboy]

Wow, thank you so much for making the past several weeks so enjoyable! This story speaks for itself in so many ways and also connects with so much of our present. 

As I sit here writing this with misty eyes, I also want to thank you for challenging us to think and feel. When an artist can do that it is a sign of a wonderful gift we were privileged to share. 

Take care and many thanks. 

[Ro20316]

5 hours ago, TQuintA said:

I had made it.

            It was my last day as a pleasure boy.  My last session. 

After so many years and so many things Gavin has earned his freedom. He can life whatever he has left on his life with the person he loves the most, someone he met in that dire world and made it more bearable. Both Gavins deverses happiness. Hell! All those boys deserve happiness. It's a cruel world they live in and they are surviving but with everything happening maybe things will be more fair to them.

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What a story man. I thank you for this. There is a time when a writter comes and do an incredible good job on a  story. All of you deserve recognition. 

Thank you!

[citizenies]

Bravo and Thank you for this gem ~ gonna read it from the start again

[jwood]

Wow, what an amazing story!

A dystopian universe somewhat similar to our capitalistic society (in that the elite care more about money and looks than intelligence and character, elected officials want change only if it affects or enriches them, the media wants to inject themselves into the story instead of striving for objectivity, and upward mobility is practically impossible for those with no inheritance), and somewhat different (in that there are substances that can turn men into mountains of muscle with equine-sized genitalia and a test that can calculate one's growth potential).  The characters were all interesting and sympathetic, the dialogue was filled with emotion, and the flows between humor and drama were seamless.  Even when I was sure of what was going to happen next, I was always surprised by a sudden twist and never bored by any of the action.

I found myself concocting and battling with all the possible scenarios, the thought that Nile/Gavin would end up immobile, the possibility of someone else overdosing on the purple stuff, thoughts about some of the men who lost in previous rounds, even daydreams about what I would do if I could be with a pleasure boy or maybe even more than one at the same time.  (How much was the hourly rate, by the way?  I must have missed that, but I bet it was probably a paycheck or two!)  Though I might be a bit sad to not find out one of Slate's final mind-blowing measurements, I am happy for his incredible transformation and growth, both physically and emotionally.  I am also happy to see the love the Gavins still had for each other after everything they went through.

I could go on and on, because that's what a well-crafted story can do to the reader, so I just want to thank you, TQuintA, for another amazing piece of your art.  I look forward to coming back to this story, plus others you have written or may write in the future!

[Mdlftr]

The Epilogue!!!

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   I stopped him.  “I think a big change is starting.  But for that change to come, there will be upheavals.  I’m talking protests, riots, maybe even civil war.  Blood in the streets.  I’m an old man.  I just want to marry Gavin, get a dog and a cat, and spend the rest of my life reading.  I think I’ve earned that.”

            “Change can’t happen without people like you,” Adam said.  “And you’re one of a kind.”

            “I may have been needed to get things started, but I could’ve done nothing without people like you, Quentin, and Olivia.  I’m more than happy to hand the torch to you guys.  I’ll help the cause in the future, of course.  But I’m not going to be at its epicenter.”  I flexed my pecs.  “I’m too big a target.”

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COMES THE REVOLUTION!!! 

                                                

 

Wonderful story - deep meaning, lots of muscles and sex, and  enticing characters!

 

TQuintA does it again!

[TQuintA]

Thank you to all of my readers.  Your feedback continues to be incredibly flattering.

 

I especially want to thank you because, with my ongoing medical issues, I didn’t think I’d actually finish this story.  I wrote at an accelerated pace in part because I could hear a clock ticking loudly over my head the whole time.

 

Whenever I finish a story on this site, I like to give little snippets about behind the scenes stuff.

 

There are a lot of things that I scrapped or changed along the way with this story.  Perhaps the most noteworthy changed tidbit is the names.  You may have noticed that there were a lot of four-letter names in this story: Nile, Onyx, Vera, Tina, Emil, Tony, Adam, Hawk, Fred, etc.  This was not an accident.  When I first started prewriting this, I wanted everyone who wasn’t Colorado/Gavin to have a four-letter name to make Colorado stand out (with twice as many letters).  This was supposed to be an unconscious indication to the reader that Colorado was different--I also originally planned not to reveal his real name until I revealed Nile's.  The characters who don’t have four-letter names originally did.  Krakatoa was originally Etna, Slate was originally Mica, Triton was originally Eros, Edward was originally Eddy, Jiminy was originally Jimi, Olivia was originally Jade, etc...  I was also wrong about how the volcano Pelée is spelled; in my original notes, he was Pele.  As I wrote the first part, I realized that I no longer liked this idea, so I changed a bunch of the names.  I debated heavily whether Tony should become Anthony the same way Eddy had become Edward.  But Tony just felt like a Tony, so Tony he stayed.  I changed just enough names to hide the four-letter thing.  I liked the names Mica and Etna so much that I gave those names to minor characters.  I even managed to sneak in an Apus reference, another name I liked that I chose to cut.

 

Another major thing I changed was the rules of the third round.  Originally, I was going to make the rules of the third round involve the characters being isolated from each other so they could no longer work together or pace themselves off each other.  This would happen as Nile was going through withdrawal from the green menace, and I had originally planned on giving him a case of the muscle crazies at the same time.  I basically planned on making his life a living hell, likely inspired by my own isolation and medical issues.  During this original third round, despite the rules forbidding it, Slate, Krakatoa, and Onyx were each going to sneak into Nile’s room at least once.  I changed the rules of the third round  because this rule felt needlessly contrived, it was too much of a bummer for me to write, and the interactions between the characters was part of the story’s appeal.

 

A lot of small details were originally much darker until I lightened them up a little bit.  Raptor (Crow in my first notes) originally died from the purple stuff.  Trying to lose the weight, he rode the stationary bikes so hard that his heart exploded.  That’s why the house got rid of the bikes.  This story beat was too dark, so I just ruined his life instead, letting him stay alive.  Canonically, he’s still alive.  Also, Tony’s dark fetish originally involved a lot of rape-play.  I cut this because 1.) the gun thing was dark enough, 2.) the dubious nature of consent in this story was already making me uncomfortable, and 3.) I didn’t know how to tread that line between Tony being a sadistic nightmare and a person expressing a safe, healthy, consensual role play scenario.  As dark as this story currently gets, it used to get so much darker.

There are also some thematic/symbolic elements I had fun with.  When I dropped the four-letter name thing, I added a very minor character named Adige because the Adige River flows through Verona, Italy, and I wrote my Master's thesis on Romeo and Juliet, and there were some Romeo and Juliet vibes in this story.   In fact, I worked in a bunch of small, insignificant Romeo and Juliet references.  Feel free to search for them.  There are fewer than ten over the 125,000-word story.  The zinnias were also an intentional symbol.  According to a source about flower symbolism I found through the library of the college where I teach, the zinnia represents long-enduring romance, romance that has had to survive significant trials.  Perfect for my Gavins, right?  The same source said that zinnias have no scent, which royally pissed me off because it gave me less sensory imagery to play with.

There are some things I never wrote and never planned to write, such as the lyrics to the song Gavin wrote for Gavin.  I wanted the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks: anything I wrote would fall flat.  Trust me, I suck at writing love poetry.  That’s not self-denigration; I have tried many times and never fully succeeded.  I can write romantic dialogue, not romantic poetry.  

 

I also introduced the fact that Tony had a gun to be an annoyance to my readers.  Yes, I was trying to annoy you, and I know from some readers’ DMs that I succeeded with some of you.  I kept teasing the readers with gunplay or even armed revolution, planning never to—pun intended—pull the trigger.  I also knew many of my readers would be familiar with the trope of Chekhov’s gun, and I wanted to fuck with their minds a little.  It wasn’t just out of cruel pleasure on my part, though that did appeal to me.  It was also a way of getting observant readers to feel that implied threat of violence Nile and his fellow pleasure boys lived with daily.

 

I also never planned on writing the Gavins’ wedding because—and I’m not joking—I wanted to respect their privacy.  I know they’re fictional characters I created, but I’d put them through enough.  They deserve their happily ever after in peace.  In fact, I suspect they eloped the second I stopped writing them.  Yes, they started to feel like real people to me.  Yes, I’ve talked about that in therapy.

 

I know I’m the Monarch of Prewriting, but this story especially took a lot of prewriting.  I had to make an Excel spreadsheet to keep things organized, especially the increasing sizes of four characters.  When drafting, I usually had my handwritten notes close at hand as well as three or four internet tabs, Microsoft Word, and Excel all open at the same time.

 

This was a strange writing experience, and I’m glad y’all enjoyed.