Hey all,

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted any new story or chapter. The longest hiatus I’ve had since I started writing these tales, in fact. I previously stated that I’d be shifting gears towards non-bondage stories and leaving the bondage stuff to one-shots, which is still my goal… kind of.

Some of you may be familiar with DeviantArt writer BoundZenith33. He’s a fellow bondage enthusiast I discovered through his older Link-centric Breath of the Wild fics, and we’ve been following each other for years.

His biggest project by far, however, is an ongoing superhero saga called Midland City Heroes, or MCH. This is an original series taking place in the distant future, consisting of several different stories that form one serialized arc… as well as containing a prominent amount of bondage. It’s as much a bondage series as it is a narrative-driven one. He’s just finished the first “phase” of the series, and he’s preparing for a new phase with new (and returning) characters within the universe.

That’s where I come in! A few years ago, he asked me if I wanted to create my own original character for MCH, whose development I could contribute to however I pleased. What started as a humble character profile since evolved into an entire sprawling, multi-part story for this new OC of mine. I’ve been spending this year plotting a series of tales revolving around my new character in Zenith’s MCH universe, and soon I’ll be ready to start officially writing the very first one!

If all goes according to schedule, I’ll have the first story ready to go sometime in June or July. After that, more stories in this universe with this character will be posted over the months, depending on what my schedule allows for and how Zenith wants to progress the rest of his epic universe (since there’s much more going on than just what I’m contributing!). Like Zenith, I’ll be incorporating major bondage sequences throughout my series while also telling a legitimate story, one that has ties to the larger MCH but mostly stands on its own. Think what peak Marvel used to be pre-2020.

With that said, I’ll hopefully have more details to share once I begin writing Story 1 in earnest. In the meantime, if you wanna see what BoundZenith’s Midland City Heroes saga is all about, here’s a link to the entire collection:

https://www.deviantart.com/boundzen.....nd-city-heroes

A while ago, I said I'd be staying away from FurAffinity for the time being. Well, call it the holiday spirit, but I'm considering dipping my toe back in. I've just made a couple posts along with text from already-finished stories that were yet to be uploaded here. If there's interest in seeing more of them, I'll oblige. If not, I'll leave things as they are.

Recently, FurAffinity was hijacked and forced to shut down for a day while the issue was sorted out. This is the latest of many security problems the site has faced since I joined over five years ago. And given how abnormal this *should* be and yet how often it’s been happening to FurAffinity specifically, I no longer feel safe on the site.

Which is why I’m taking an indefinite hiatus from FurAffinity. I’m not going to delete anything I’ve already posted, but I won’t be uploading any new material here for the foreseeable future, and I won’t be checking in on the site in any other capacity. I’m sorry to those who like my stuff and are only on FurAffinity, but until I have confidence in its staff to actually keep its website safe, I don’t feel like I can be here. I don't know when or if I'll come back, but I'm stepping away for now.

But if you want to keep up with what I post, I of course still have DeviantArt and now Archive of Our Own. In fact, my current Shira tale is about to have its third chapter uploaded. If you want to keep up with me on either of those sites, here are the links to my profile pages:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTopTier
https://www.deviantart.com/thetoptier

Hey all! I just finished fully drafting my upcoming Ice Age Shira bondage fic! I'll be taking a couple of days away from it (yes, I mean it this time), but expect the first chapter to be uploaded by the end of the month at the very latest! :D

Hey all!

Hope everyone's had a great summer! I certainly did, especially with the rest that I was finally allowed after Sonic '06 was finished. But I've got the itch to write new bondage material back, and here's what I have planned for the rest of 2023:

As I've already stated, Lop from Star Wars: Visions is up next. I just finished planning out the whole story, so I should have the first chapter uploaded within the next two weeks. If you don't know who Lop is and you have Disney+, you can get completely caught up with her story just through the roughly 20-minute short Lop and Ochō, which is part of the Star Wars: Vision anthology series.

Assuming I finish that story with enough time left in the year, 2023 should also see at least the start of a fanfic for Bolt from Bolt. It'll be my first feral bondage fic in a few years, so I'm excited for that! Feral bondage seems to have seen a bit of an increase in recent years, and yet Bolt hasn't "enjoyed" that boost yet. Time we fix that!

I've also been in talks with another writer to have brand new OCs of mine, completely conceived by me from the ground up, featured in some of their upcoming writing. That's all I can say for now, but I look forward to seeing that come to fruition!

I recently stated that I'll be searching for additional places to post my fanfics. Several of you recommended Archive of Our Own, and I went ahead and got an account that's currently active!

https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTopTier

I've uploaded my first three stories already, and I have to say this really is a very user-friendly system so far! It's easy to handle, allows for direct copying and pasting with formats intact, and it even lets me date the stories and chapters manually so they match the very first uploads.

Thank you to all who pointed me in this direction! Especially GalacticHarbinger on DeviantArt for the awesome and thorough recommendation! This is looking like a keeper for sure, and I'll slowly get the rest of my stories up there in due time. :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! :-D :-D :-D

Hello! Just wanted to give you an update as to what the future of my page is likely going to look like for the time being. Now, first off, I'm not putting a stop to writing stories here! Not at all! I am, however, going to be dialing back the speed at which I write them. The main reason being that I've recently gotten the inspiration to start writing fiction in my "real life" under my "real name". A lot of that actually has to do with writing these bondage tales and me discovering my passion for writing fully fleshed-out stories! So thank you to everyone who's given me encouragement, as you've helped boost that passion! :D I've started outlining a few potential novels or novellas, and am looking into potential means of getting them published (which won't be for a good while, naturally, but best to plan ahead!).

So as you'd imagine, this will cut into the time I would've taken to write these stories here tremendously. I'm not quite sure when I'll get to my next fic. My guess is in a couple of months, when I find a good place to take a break with the other works. Also, I sadly can't promote any of my potential novels through my "TheTopTier" persona. I've said it before, but I really want to keep these interests of mine unknown in my real life.

But it won't just be the time spent on writing bondage that will be altered. My fics have gotten much, much longer over time, with my longest being fourteen chapters, and my second-longest being eleven. Going forward, I want to put in the effort to not have them go on for that long. Don't get me wrong, I won't be cutting out the drama or storytelling that I feel have made my bondage fics distinct and several of you have said you enjoy! But with my latest Renamon anthology, I think I became more adept at writing stories that are more condensed while still having the heart and soul I want. I also look back on my earlier work and, while I recognize that they're not as well-written, I like how much easier those stories are to go through. I think I want my stories going forward to fall in between that earlier stuff and what I've been putting out more recently ... Plus, this way I'll hopefully be able to put out more than one finished story per year and still do all the real-life writing I want to do!

Lastly, in between writing my novels and writing my fanfics, I'm considering doing some re-writes of older stories to get them up to the same quality of the later ones. There are some things I could have done better, including giving more stories proper conclusions or adding a few more flourishes in between the bondage scenes. The old versions wouldn't be deleted, but I won't look at them as the "definitive" versions. Just something I'm thinking about trying when I feel like it.

So there, that's basically where my head is at. We'll see how this new approach turns out. Like I said, my next story will probably start in a few months, though don't hold me to that. Don't hold me to who the next subject is either, although right now it's very likely going to be a male human. ;) Believe it or not, I only have two fics with that kind of subject, and one of them had him share some of his bondage time with a female! XD

My great dA friend Hybrid-XXX did me the incredible honor of creating a high-quality pic of Jenna bondage based on my Balto fic! Go check it out and show it the love it deserves!

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44327546/

And to read the story this came from, go here for Part 1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36541051/

It's a couple years old, but hopefully to your liking if you haven't read it already!

Back with another one of these! As always, these are just my own personal opinions, and I have no problem with anyone who disagrees with any of them. If you want to read my previous two journals on this topic, I've linked them at the bottom of this one.

Let's not waste any more time and get right to it!



Love for the hogtie.

Since my last BTAP journal, I've come to really love hogties on human and anthro characters. I already enjoyed them fine, and even thought they were the ideal way to bind a few specific characters. But over time, that specific few has grown much broader. While it's not the method that I always prefer over over a non-hogtie, I love it!

A hogtie forces the characters' legs into a bent position, which I think is the most attractive for bound legs. No matter what they do to get more comfortable, that strain is as persistent as the sting of the ropes or the stifling of the gag. It also gives both the legs and arms one more thing they have to fight against, as they pull against the rope hogtying the two sets of limbs together. Watching them strain themselves fighting that hogtie rope with all their might, stretching it and forcing the ropes even deeper into their wrists and ankles, makes for some very appealing struggling! Seeing them roll from side-to-side and crawl along the floor is great too, and they have even less they can do with their inability to stand up at all. Their legs are rendered so useless, yet they still look so good in that hogtie! I think my favorite "length" for a hogtie rope is one that lets their knees bend 90 degrees at most. This gives them a little flexibility to look good struggling, but clearly not enough for it to help them.

I have yet to write a hogtie for a non-feral character, but I've definitely got several in mind! ;)



Why rip the gag off so soon?

How many times have you seen this: we open a scene with our first look at a character bound and gagged. We get a moment to see them struggle and muffle, before the captor shows up ... and almost immediately rips off their gag to talk to them.

Stop that!

As grateful as I am to get any gag time at all, it's still so annoying to constantly see a character lose that gag almost as soon as we see them with it! Those captors just have to talk with their captives the first chance they get, don't they, even though part of the point of a gag is to not let that happen. I get why this happens in some instances, like when a captor needs to do some interrogating and was just using the gag for security until they show up. But a lot of times the conversation is so pointless that there was no need to make it two-sided by removing the gag. Worse, they usually don't even put the gag back on when they're done! Why?! It's the most annoying when the captor says, "If I remove the gag, will you promise to keep quiet?" Um, there's a very easy way to make sure they keep quiet. Dare I say, painfully obvious. Well, rest assured that when I'm writing the story, when a gag goes on a character, it stays on for a good long while!



Gag talk is best when totally incoherent.

Keeping on the topic of gags for a bit, there are many instances, especially in bondage literature, when a gag is effective at stifling speech and lowering its volume, but it's still very clear what the character or characters are saying. I can enjoy this if the words are coherent only every once in a while, but for me, gags are at their best when they completely nullify pretty much any form of verbal communication. My happy medium is when they make varied enough sounds to make it clear they're trying to say something, but the sound is far too garbled to actually understand what they're saying. I use this approach all the time in my stories, to a point of having gag translations in the description for those who want it!

Part of the thrill of gags is that they strip away one of a captive's essential tools, as opposed to when they can still use that essential tool, just with a bit more difficulty. This is especially true if there are other gagged captives that would find it a huge help to be able to talk to each other, or if they urgently need to tell their captor something but are not heard out. Having even the simplest of dialogues be reduced to a bunch of "Mmmph"s and "Mmrrnn"s piles onto the distress and how lovely the sound is. Is it the most realistic? No, but I've already stated my thoughts on "selective realism" in my second BTAP journal, and I also don't think it's too far from reality to be totally implausible.



I hate hypnosis.

Well, to clarify, I hate hypnosis in bondage. And I absolutely hate how often it's used with snake-coil bondage! Obviously this goes back to Kaa from The Jungle Book, and boy does that make me resent that character purely out of pettiness.

Why do I hate hypnosis so much? Well, a substantial part of the enjoyment of bondage is the character's expressions and attempted resistance in the face of complete helplessness. Hypnosis, by its nature, completely takes all of that away. Once a character has fallen under the hypnotist's spell, they make no attempt to struggle, their eyes just have that blank, swirling look, and they usually come to involuntarily enjoy their bondage. Where's the fun in that? How does that do anything other than devalue the entire scenario? You might as well just have some lifeless doll be your captive in that case. I want my captives to be physically restrained, not mentally restrained. I wouldn't be so bitter had such a huge proportion of fan-made snake bondage specifically not been riddled with hypnosis. I've lost count of how many times a wonderful, superb piece of snake coil art, or a perfectly-written story, has been ruined for me by this decision. It was part of my need to write The Princess and the Python, to show that you could have thorough, prolonged snake bondage without destroying the captive's mind.

If you like hypnosis, nothing against you at all. I just personally want it out of my bondage.



When bondage is fan service by accident.

Obviously my bondage work, and the bondage work of almost everyone I follow on DeviantArt and FurAffinity, is intended to appeal to bondage fans who get a kick out of this stuff. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing to see, and I get excited whenever I see such work that caters to my tastes. But strangely enough, I've come to realize that I get even more excited by bondage scenes in work that was never meant to cater or pander to us. I'm talking about all the cartoons and movies we grew up with as kids that feature bondage with as seemingly innocent intent as possible. The Aladdin drowning scene, Supergirl wrapped up in Unity's tentacles, the countless scenes of classic damsels like Daphne or Penny Gadget. Hell, a while ago, I was shown pages from a few Thea Stilton books that feature characters bound and gagged, complete with certain words like "muffled" and "struggled" being highlighted with big, colorful font, and I was just as thrilled to see them as I usually am to see a bondage fic that was wholly meant to have the bondage "appeal" to me!

I think this happens because I developed my love of bondage by seeing it through this kind of media throughout childhood. It's what I know it best from and how my tastes for it developed, so it's where I have the most appreciation for it. To a point where even if there's a fanfic or fan art of a character bound and gagged made by someone whose intention wasn't to make that the point of their work, it's exciting to accidentally stumble across. Of course, the more emphasis and detail is put into these scenes, the better. There's a beauty in a writer just happening to bring the story to such a point solely because it made sense to them, as well as the animators creating a scene that's iconic to bondage fans not because it was supposed to be, but because it was just a really well-done scene that happened to feature prominent bondage.

Of course, sometimes there's debate as to whether a scene's bondage appeal was actually unintentional, or whether it was some bondage fans in the writers' room sneaking their fetish in. Totally Spies, I'm looking at you. Many have speculated that there are too many instances of bondage for it to be a coincidence. But even that can be great because it's still disguised enough for those not looking for it to not think too hard about it. But come on, does anyone think that Thea Stilton of all things was trying to sneak something like that in? It definitely depends on the material, but in general, thoroughly-detailed bondage is excellent to see in work that's supposed to make bondage fans happy, but it's even better in work that's not.

https://www.deviantart.com/thetopti.....es-1-808881989

https://www.deviantart.com/thetopti.....es-2-830554614

Just updated Ice-Cold Jealousy with an edit: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42604848/

I've updated the image for Slithering Seduction with a new manip! https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42369189/

Web of Alliances

Slithering Seduction

Ice-Cold Jealousy

Parasitic Relationships

Of Bridges and Bandages

Reap What You Sow, Part 1

Reap What You Sow, Part 2



I'll leave you all with that.

So, it's been two months since I finished my last story, and as I've stated, a ton has happened in my life since then. This would make my upcoming story, an "anthology" of oneshot Renamon bondage scenarios, hard enough to plan out and get going. But making it harder is how I've had to do some research on a show I have very fuzzy memories towards to get an idea of how I'll be portraying it in this fic.

But just to give you some sort of update, it's been coming along. I've done most of the major research I needed to, refreshing my memories of Digimon Tamers, and now have five setups for the anthology established, with one more in mind I've yet to solidify. I hope to have the drafting process for the first entry started fairly soon, and needless to say I'll be looking forward to treating our vixen Digimon to the kinds of scenes she's been long overdue for!

After months of countless applications, multiple interviews, and so much rejection, among the rest of my tasks in my final semester ... I landed a job!

Without going into detail, I'll be working for a mid-sized news organization, working on research and writing for various stories. It's not the best paying position, but it is a position, one that lets me apply something I love in a professional setting.

I appreciate all of the support I've received from everyone I've told of my efforts these past several months. This has been one of the more stressful periods in recent memory, for how much I had to do and how uncertain I was in what I would do once college was over. But while life certainly won't be slowing down, it's reassuring to know I have something in store going forward.

As for how this will affect my writing here, I really don't know. I can definitely say things will be slowing down, but I have no intentions of stopping it. Just bear with me as I adjust to the changes that are sure to come from this. Especially with how the state of the world seems to finally be recovering, leaving it even more uncertain what's to come.

Anyway, just wanted to share that news. Hope everyone else is doing okay out there! :D

I'm back home! It was a very relaxing vacation away, and a fun way to spend my birthday! Thanks for all the well-wishes! :D

And enjoy a new chapter as well! ;)

In a few hours, my family and I will be driving out of state for a week-long vacation, partially for Spring Break and partially to celebrate my birthday tomorrow. We've quarantined for weeks and have received negative test results for COVID, in addition to be assured that the house we're renting has been scrubbed down and sanitized thoroughly.

However, the place we're staying in will not have WiFi. We'll be solely using phone data to connect to the internet, but won't be going online too much. So I'll be a bit absent in this coming week, from now until Sunday. I'll still be writing on my laptop, but won't be able to publish the next chapter until I return.

Hope you all understand, and have a great week yourselves! :D

Sorry in advance for not being very active this coming week. Classes started again, I'm applying for jobs now, and I want to make sure I can get at least one more chapter uploaded by the end of the month.

So, it occurred to me that it's been a while since I posted an invite link to my bondage Discord server, All-In-Distress:

https://discord.gg/kggejpmNeD

If you like bondage of any kind and want to connect with others who do too, then come on down! :D

To anyone who runs a Discord server: any tips on getting either more members or more activity on there? I've go a solid thing going, but I feel like the growth is kind of stunted.

I'm off to enjoy the holiday. Hopefully you all can do.

Because if the Grinch taught us anything, it's that nothing can truly steal Christmas. Not even a virus.

Happy Holidays to all.

Popping in real quick to say Happy Thanksgiving! I've used this week to focus on precious family life, and hope you all can do the same!

Edit: The request deadline has now passed, so I won't be accepting any more.

Okay, so last year, I sort of implied that I may stop doing bondage manip requests. However, that was a little bit of a preemptive statement, as I was drained at the time from a variety of things, including the manips.

Now, in the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving, I'm ready to give thanks to all the watchers I've accumulated by doing it again.

The rules will be pretty much the same as they've been:

- You can make requests from now until November 1. I won't accept any after.
- Please make all requests in the comment section of this journal. If they're made elsewhere, including Notes, I will ignore them.
- One request per person, at least for now.
- They'll be done in order of who made the request first (first come, first serve).
- You can get as specific as you want regarding the binding, gagging, positioning, original image, etc., but I can only promise to try my best to
make it happen.
- No live-action characters.
- I will only accept requests that I deem SFW.

I can't tell when I'll actually start making them, but it'll probably be around Thanksgiving Week then at a comfortable pace through the remainder of the year.

Hit me with your best ideas, and I'll see what I can do with them! :D

The edits I just uploaded were made over a year ago. And while I wouldn't call my manip skills superb now, hoo boy do I cringe looking at some of these. O_o