Hey! I'm Trey Briggs and I'm the creator, lead writer, and programmer for Studio Wolfless.
A fiction, art, and game site aimed at a Black audience, made by a Black American woman with no time on her hands. We tell stories, we make games, we have a good time. Most of the work here is by Trey Briggs and Kokab ZD, with supporting work from illustrator Victor Costa on a few titles, and with supporting and original work by Freemechanism. You'll see a few more faces here and there, but this is a small corner of the world dedicated to stories I want to tell or want to showcase.
So much of Studio Wolfless is me (Trey) and my stories/ideas. This is something I've had to come to peace with over time (a bitch is too broke to change that with any urgency, honestly). I'm not a natural leader and I didn't make a great boss when I was trying to be one. So my stories and ideas are at the forefront of this and probably always will be. I'm good with that now.
What you'll find here are the polished versions of my stories, Freemechanism's stories, and Kokab ZD's stories (if she feels so inclined). You'll find the work that Kokab and I have done together over the years and the work that we'll continue to do into the foreseeable future. You'll find amazing works of art and dedication to color theory from Victor Costa, an artist I've worked with for years and trust to draw my stories. You'll find Black gal ranting and raving about media that I love, about things I find interesting, etc etc etc. You'll find Black characters of all kinds in stories where them being Black isn't the point of their part in the story.
The plan is to have a place I can publish my stories and grow an audience that is not just a social media feed. To invite creatives I trust and care about to do the same on a platform they can freely express themselves on. And to make interesting stories that are aimed at Black audiences first. Everyone is invited, for sure. But my priority with this site (my target market, you could say) is to bring my type of stories to Black people.
My writing tends to be darker in nature (I started as a transgressive horror writer and landed on paranormal horror, dark romance, and speculative fiction). But there are some softer gems here and there, especially as we flesh out our games.
We use our trigger warnings graciously - please pay attention to the ratings and trigger boxes that come on every main story page. It's important to me that we tell the stories we want to tell, but also that our audience understands what a story could impose on them. I want to call this out ESPECIALLY for my paranormal horror and dark romance titles. They can be heavy on the violence side and do not shy away from various forms of trauma. With that being said, I don't currently have any stories that cover sexual abuse or nonconsensual sexual acts. I don't plan on having any.
Bunni and Bosque goes into some really visual sex scenes. Vicious and Start With Smoke have violent acts in them. Astor the Immortal starts with a literal drowning and is full of plenty of types of devastation and dramatic discoveries and ... yeah, you get it. I do not write soft stories, though I will hopefully have some on the site soon from authors who can do it justice.
If you are less interested in heavy stories, Potion by Freemechanism is an amazing title if you are looking for Black love in an interesting world that is not our own, but feels familiar. Kira's Coffee is a game focused around helping a young woman rebuild her life and handles it through love and self-reflection. While Rando has many heavy elements, it is more on the chaotic energy side than the dark side.
There's going to be something for you here, someday. And more and more and more.
A Few Notes
While we're lovers of all types of books and media, the stories on Studio Wolfless are not centered around racial trauma. It's just not our thing. We make stories that often have violence and dark themes, to be clear. But we avoid stories dealing with any type of racial trauma, etc. There is enough of that out there. Our horror, our fantasy, etc, it's focused on telling complicated stories about complicated characters, but race doesn't play into it. That is not to say that race is never discussed or examined, but it is never the main point.
Our games are still in development. We've been working on Rando for three years and recently started the Studio Wolfless Character Creator. We'll have open betas for both when the time comes. Start With Smoke has a visual novel version that will come out sometime this year.
In general, we workin', hun.
Around three years ago, I failed (miserably / spectacularly) to make Studio Wolfless a thing. Even with three full-time jobs (don't ask) and three clients with more work than I could handle (don't ask), I went into debt. The burnout was vile, ugly, and unplanned. One day I just ... couldn't. Couldn't afford it, couldn't figure it out, couldn't think. I spent more money than I will ever make to keep Studio Wolfless going. I cried more than I will ever feel again. And, hey, I got the unique (but not rare) experience of watching my dreams crumble around me. All this happened without Studio Wolfless releasing even half of what we worked on. It turns out you still have to have time to make the art you worked to be able to make!
Something snapped and I thought that my love for making characters in all their forms was dead. I closed the Patreon, I closed my writing tools in a drawer, and I kept my imagination to myself.
It's been chaotic. It's been peaceful.
But maybe I learned something bigger than the pain of failure. I spent the last few years rebuilding myself as a creative human being in a world that is losing the need for that. And I worked my corpo jobs to try and afford a life where I ... where I ...
Well! We're here because I don't want anything else. I want to make stories, I want to make games. Every tale in my head will end up somewhere. Anywhere. Machines can do it faster, but I don't do it for acknowledgment or glory or to brag about how much I've made. It's part of me. I am simply the girl who writes.
Anyway. Studio Wolfless is now launched all over again, it's moving, it's breathing. Here you are on my custom html/css/js site, sitting on my shoddy code, reading my unedited words. We'll keep going. And it'll go slowwwww. It'll move along with its aging creator, with contributors and paid artists/writers/whatever comes next. But most of all, it will live on as a hub for the little stories in my head that have cherished me even when I thought I failed them.
For my audience, my Black girl weirdos and Blerds and lovers of oddness. Lovers of dark stories, of immortality and family lines and horror. To my lovers of complicated narratives, games with Black hair and moisturized skin, and Black characters from the beginning to the end. Hey! I'm just a Black woman trying to make things for us that we get to enjoy at face value. You're not tagged on, hun. Here, you're it.
I hope you find something good here, you know? If you don't get anything else from me, I hope you find something good.
- Trey Briggs (the writer)