I wish we had a “make this series invisible” button just like we can make tags invisible. While I don’t really want to make tags not show up on this site there are some series that I would be much happier not seeing if I could. Especially the ones that make me angry.
Which series would that be?
The effort to implement hiding certain series for certain users would be substantial. I’m not sure how many people would use that. Even the “tag hiding” is not used much (and many people seem to misunderstand it for its exact opposite).
Straight Town. I don’t want to see it. At all.
That said yeah, okay, if it takes you lots of programming and work then I wouldn’t expect you to do it.
Honestly, I haven’t read that story. It’s not my cup of tea. I’ve just read the comments and Wesley’s “metawriting”
I can’t really relate to what he’s telling us in his metawriting, I’m just not wired that way I guess. But it’s obvious from the comments, that there are about as many people hating the series as there are praising it. So it’s certainly very controversial.
I understand why you don’t like it, and I guess I will also never read it myself. I just hope you can live with it being published on GSS…
One easy way to filter out this and similar stories would be to create a special tag, for example “Wesley’s self-chastising” and then you could simply filter out that tag.
Well I wish I didn’t have to accept it being in this site, but I’m not the owner, you are.
I read his meta thoughts and I’m even more mad now then I was. So that’s something.
I just thing its super sad that basically gay hating stories are being posted here. It would be one thing if bad things happebed but in the end the gay guy one, but he doesnt seem to be going that way.
(Perfect example, the werewolf story. In the first the boyfriend goes gay to straight but in the sequel the gays foght back and he is freed. That’s cool.)
As I said its just sad.
But as there is nothing I can do I will have to grit my teeth in annoyance.
Actually I’ve just been discussing that with Wesley on Discord.
I can understand you, and for me I simply don’t read that kind of story. Because I can’t stomach them. There are many stories describing something I despise, and if that happens, I just stop reading or watching. That’s why I don’t like slasher or splatter movies at all. And I also never watch a gay movie, where the protagonist is hated by his peers and cast out by his parents - even though they can be greatly filmed and emotional tragedies, but it’s just not something I want to take, especially since I know it’s just the sad truth that this is happening every day.
Anyway, just do it like me, and look away… People are different, and also what they see as fascinating. After all, most of my friends don’t get what I find so hot about stories where people are turned into dumb sex slaves…
It still seems rediculus to have a story where the straight guy wins being posted on a site for gay fetish stories. Very rediculus.
But as the point of this thread, asking for a way to hide a series, is as close to difficult as to be impossible I’m gonna stop here.
You can simply filter out the tag “anti-porn” which Wesley explicitly invented for this kind of story.
And Heru, I really understand where you’re coming from. I really do.
But only because I hate war and mass slaughter, I will not ban stories about war and mass slaughter.
The fact that there is an anti-porn tag is hilarious. This is a porn site. (Looking at this post post the amused tone of voice might be missing when one reads this - so I am just syaing, this sentence is said with amusement in my tone.)
Using it to remove the story from my sight is a solution, not a good one, but a solution.
I honestly don’t think the war thing fits. If I wrote a story about soldiers being mind controlled for gay sex in war time, it works. But if I wrote a story about war as its own thing, it doesn’t. Heck even if I wrote an epic love story of two soldiers it wouldn’t fit unless one of them was changed.
You have made your decision and all I can say is please rethink it.
That, and if another blatent story like this one was posted I’m gonna comment my opinion on how it doesn’t fit.
As as note. Im fully fine with a gay guy temporarily being made straight for a chapter or two. I just want that in the end the gay guy becomes gay again and defeats the evil who made him straight.
Oh. By the way. I want to be clear about something. I am in no way upset, angry, or annoyed at you Martin. You do a fantastic job on this site. So yeah nothing negative towards you.
Also, as another main point, I am also not calling Wesley anything negative either. He clearly has a history of writing completely fine (if not to my taste) gay porn. So there is nothing problematic there. (I say this cause sometimes we have had trolls here in the past, I have no thought that he is one of them. I want to make that clear).
I just think this particular story is somewhat different from the others. But nothing of what I am saying is negative towards real people.
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Heru, banning a story because it I don’t like what it’s about is just not my way. I also had a very hard time banning those political stories some weeks ago, and I’ve only done this because I don’t want this site to become a battlefield for political fights.
Wesley’s story has mind control and is about gay men, so it fulfills the criteria for publishing a story on GSS. And I don’t see it as anti-gay propaganda, just because it features a person who is aggressively anti-gay and might even win at the end. To qualify for propaganda, you don’t induce disgust and revulsion against what you want to promote. And I’m also quite sure that Wesley is not a person to write or even support anti-gay propaganda.
This response is not to dwell and harp on things but rather to share my thoughts in a conversational format.
I don’t think the issue here is 'because I don’t like it" but rather on matter of theme. This site is a gay mind control (broad sense here) fetish website. So stories here have to fit that theme. Gay stories without mind control don’t fit, even if they are awesome epic romances that span hundreds of pages and are awesome. Mind control stories on its own don’t fit here unless they have some sort of gay theme.
To me, at the essential core of matters, is the idea that Gay is an okay, right, natural thing. That the ‘force’ of gayness is where things end.
The idea that a story can have a gay character but by the end said character is totally straight goes against that. Yes, he started at gay, but the ‘gay theme’ was taken over and made into a ‘straight theme’.
Another point I think that is important is that this is a fetish porn site. Porn. I really don’t think that an epic gay romance with mind control naturally fits here if there is no sex and such. I mean said story might be awesome. Might be the best in all the land. But does it really fit here. I am not sure about that.
So yeah. I don’t think banning such things is being random or just making your dislike on a topic known. I think there are some good reasons to make sure this site keeps its focus on its very purpose.
I don’t have a problem with gay-to-straight stories. In fact, it’s an angle I enjoy and I’ve considered writing stories with that theme in the past.
I don’t think the argument that it is inappropriate for this site really holds weight when you stop and think about it. Fundamentally, in a gay-to-straight story, a gay guy is being hypnotized/mind controlled and transformed into something else, right?
How is that any different from stories where the gay guy gets turned into, for instance, a mindless automaton? I’ve written several stories where in the end at least one character ends up a helpless slave with no thoughts or will of their own. They exist only to serve their master. Can you even say they’re a gay guy at that point? What about stories (not my cup of tea) where men are hypnotized to act like animals?
I don’t see the difference, and I welcome gay-to-straight stories as simply another approach to the genre. Ultimately if its men being mind controlled, I don’t think there’s a problem. And I appreciate Martin’s open-minded position.
I DEFINITELY don’t perceive that type of story as being ‘gay hating’ in any way.
As has already been said, if you don’t like a particular story, don’t read it. Just ignore it. People should be free to write what they want (within reason), and you as the reader should be free to say “this is stupid” and move on.
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There are a lot of types of S&M. The one we see most often on this site is the eroticizing of shame and humiliation. But, the eroticism of despair, hatred, and existential horror is just as valid if significantly rarer a fetish. It’s not personally my thing.
I don’t think anyone here doesn’t understand where you are coming from Heru. We have all had to deal with oppression and self loathing at some point in our lives and it’s true that gay to straight stories bring up a lot of that emotion and pain. But, I disagree with bringing the stories down because of that.
For one thing, this is a fantasy medium. No one was hurt in the production of the stories and participation is not mandatory. The story was clearly marked not just in the tags but in the author’s note in the beginning of the first story. You aren’t required to read it and it existing isn’t hurting anyone.
For another thing, the story certainly isn’t pushing heteronormativity or gay to straight conversions. It’s a horror piece in some ways. It’s challenging to read because of how much it hurts to see these people go through this. For the people who read it as non erotic, it’s more of a philosophic piece on the nature of being gay in a small town for many americans. For the masochistic , it’s an erotic dive into the realm of self hatred and despair.
Anyway you spin it, Wesley’s writing isn’t trying to convert gays or push a conservative rhetoric. I’ve been around a long time and Wesley has been posting on this site as long as I’ve been coming. He tends to write stories that don’t have happy endings and that’s not really my fetish.
He talks about the nature of TF writing in one of his metawritings, in which he outlines two main types of stories; wish fullfillment stories and self destructive stories. He typically writes self destructive stories, ones in which the main character is taken from a position of power and ends in losing everything and there’s nothing wrong with that.
EDIT: Here’s a link to the article I mentioned: Metawriting: Some Fundamentals of the MC/TF Genre
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