I wish we had such busy and lengthy discussions on fun things. Like imagine we had a shared mc world we just all commented on and such. That would be fun.
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Aww man. After having the skeleton of a story in my head for about three years now I finally got up the motivation to start fleshing it out over the past several days. Still a ton of work to do before it goes from story concept to story but, I wanted to post it here. Please come back gss!
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Well, Mr. Heru Kane, I put in all kinds of rimming in my latest chapter of Lexington, just for you, and you didn’t even bother to leave a comment. Shame shame shame… 
@Mafisto hehe. So I started reading it, and liked it, and then got distracted and when i came back I aw something about it being edited. Then I couldn’t find it.
I was gonna reread it again as the concept was brilliant.
It would be a tremenous shame if this site went down permanently. I’m still a little unsure on the details of what led to this, but wish you all the best in figuring this out @Corin.
I like the fact that we’re able to to comment on each others stories, so I’d be against removing that feature. Maybe making it so you have to log in to view the stories in the first place? Or a more strict approval system for the stories. For the record, I’m not in favour of stories involving mind control of anyone under 18, so some tighter restrictions there might be welcome.
I agree that legal action is not likely because it’s such a slippery slope. If they go after this site, then what about MCStories.com or all the stories on Tumblr and Deviantart? If they do anything, they’ll be more likely to ask you to just take the site down rather than jumping straight to involving anything from the legal system.
I’ll respect the final decision, but I hope this forum at least remains so if we post our stories on another site, we can still discuss them with each other here. Hoping the site comes back though.
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Martin,
I support your decision to shut the site down for a while to stop the anons from making a mess of things. You’ve always been a fair and reasonable person in the few encounters I’ve had with you, so I’m going to trust you on the way to handle the site. I hope that you will take the steps to make the site compliant with whatever laws you need to and bring the site back once the site is. The community on the site has been a really nice one to be a part of and the recent stories have been amazing to read and inspired me to work on things to submit. I hope the site will come back.
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Oh man, this same argument has been going on across three guys running this site now, it’s never going to go away. I’d link to my Apologia from years and years ago on this subject, but it’s currently stuck in the archives.
I think Martin is absolutely right, from a moral perspective. Every story on this site is, at heart, a rape story. There’s no real moral reason why reading a mind control story about a sexually mature 16 year old is out of bounds, while reading a mind control story about a sexually mature 30 year old is fine. Both are reprehensible. Furthermore, literature is rife with examples of questionable sex! It’s all over the place, both historically and presently. Writing a story doesn’t mean you condone its reality.
I mean, this doesn’t even get into the challenge of transformations where age regression/progression is involved. If you regress an adult into the physical equivalent of a young teen, is that ok? If you reduce a 30 year old’s mind to the development of a baby without changing his body, is that ok? If you age up a 16 year old character before any sex has occurred, but they have the same mental states, is that ok? I can construct a reductio ad absurdum for any rule you feel like making, that would let me post a questionable story within the wording of the rules. At the end of the day, the only thing that will work is a strong, central moderator with a clear vision of what they want on this site–and honestly, Martin does this extremely well.
Besides, you all do realize that if an authority wanted to bring the legal hammer down on this site, nothing is going to stop them, right? If an authority comes along that wants this site off the internet, it will be gone–it isn’t going to matter if there’s underage characters or not. They’ll come up with whatever pretext they feel like to justify the result they want.
Martin runs the greatest risk running this site no matter what, because he’s the one who faces the most consequences if something goes awry. It should be up to him what level of risk he’s willing to take on, and if this is the level of risk he’s comfortable with, then that’s his choice. In turn, it’s your choice whether you want to take on the risk of interacting with the site he runs. Don’t feel comfortable with his choices? Then go elsewhere. Make your own site! It would be nice to have more options anyway.
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11037 adding on once you have a clear written rule down, that makes it a lot easier for people to chose for themselves if they want to use this site, btw :-p a story with an explicit 16yo is an outlier on here, so maybe people can understand why this is causing fuss now rather than anytime in the site’s recent past.
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This is 11037, posted a bit a couple years back on the forums but can’t figure out how to log in on mobile lol.
Um… yeah I understand its Martin’s site that he’s worked hard on, but shutting the site down to pressure users who are uncomfortable seems a bit much. They voiced they were uncomfortable (And I can agree with Martin that the story’s comments aren’t the best place to discuss it, and maybe even they should log in for discussion’s sake.), you disagreed, then tempers elevated (To be fair I cannot get the full context however because someone deleted a lot of the original comments from the story in question so I don’t have a full picture.)
It’s not the first subject to be extremely controversial here that’s gotten people cross with Martin and viceversa (This one about underage characters, another story about raceplay/racism and another one about politics.). GSS is “your ball” to use as you please but if you’re really intending to “take it and go home” maybe consider archiving the stories here, freeze future submissions and call it a day? Or at least let people grab their stories for a week and then close it so everyone can migrate to mcstories.
Again I get it’s your site but it’s populated by stories from 100s of creators and read by many more people. The only reason this discussion could get dozens of replies and takes and go on for days is because there IS something that’s not agreed upon by a sizable enough amount of people. They thought it went against what the site is for and tried to report that, perhaps not through the correct channels or in the correct tone. But discussing the definition of pedophilia and “US Puritanism” is taking one peripheral detail and blowing it out of proportion: some readers saw a story with a 16 y/o and thought it doesn’t belong on this site. The rules aren’t clear about if it belongs on this site. The thread we were directed to skirts around this issue and waffles about cultural relativism/legality/definitions/personal anecdotes. We should be having a discussion simply about what age is OK for this site, that’s what everyone’s in arms about!
But I hope you can take some time and look at this issue with fresh eyes.
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So we have a series of posts where actual members of this community had a nice exchange where although they were taken aback by Martin’s move, they respected his work and rules and pretty much all agreed that the risks were trivial although some felt they might reduce their exposure. Then suddenly a “new voice” joins the conversation, who happens to be a an anonymous guest expressing himself the same way as previous anonymous guests, with the same key points: acting as if a large group wanted to ban those stories when that’s not the case, and trying to paint Martin’s closing the site as pressure on dissenting voices. It’s really a big coincidence that those exact ideas come all from anonymous guests. All the others (which is still a very tiny group) expressed only that they might have felt uncomfortable at times but trusted Martin, and did not feel pressured or steamrolled by him. They saw that the only remedy if they ffelt too uncomfortable was to leave the site, not trying to make Martin go against his principles or making him feel guilt/shame about them. Some even praised him for defending their stories.
I think it’s getting rather obvious what’s going on here.
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11037: The discussion about the age, and acting like all that’s needed is a clear rule, is silly. Making it clear will not end discussion - for the moderators. And you are speaking like as if you’re some kind of mediator who’s spoken to both sides. You haven’t, clearly. There was a lot of concern expressed about the risks of visiting the site if it even has characters below a certain age. To reassure those people, the rule doesn’t have to be clear; it has to be what they think it should be.
Everyone not currently keeping the moderators (in particular Martin) in mind when they make suggestions or comments should start doing so immediately.
Besides all that, have any of you interacted with Martin? As if he’s going to delete everything. Authors will be able to get their stories back at the very least.
Give him some time to stop thinking about all of this and live his life. He needs some drama free time without getting shit on by anon and non-anon users alike.
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Sorry to see that this has happened.
Thanks for all your hard work, @Corin. I hope the site comes back.
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Personally, I don’t believe 11037’s intentions were bad. At worst, I think they’ve fallen prey to cognitive bias. Of course, it’s possible that they’re a concern troll or similar, but I’m not comfortable jumping to that conclusion yet. I do agree with people that a simple definition of what age is allowable won’t change anything, because that decision has largely already been made. Legally speaking, I think we’re a hell of a lot safer with a hard line of 18, and I’d personally be a lot more comfortable with that. But our current rules are in line with other sites, one of which I contribute to, and this doesn’t come as news to me.
I do agree with 11037 on one significant point, though. Martin’s shutting down the site and leaving the post he did is very much a form of pressure, or it can at least be seen that way. What I see when I read that is: “I don’t care what anyone else thinks, we’re doing things my way, and if you don’t like my way, I’ll take the whole fucking site down and you can all fuck off.” Hell, he even posted a message to that effect in one of these threads not long before taking the site down. If that’s going to be his attitude, then why open it up for discussion at all?
I love this site, I love the ability to get feedback on my stories, and most especially the ability to interact with my fans. But I have to say, Martin, that your entire reaction to this has me questioning whether I want to continue to contribute here. I understand wanting to step away, but stepping away means not looking at your computer for a weekend. I have a lot harder of a time justifying contributing my stories to a site that gets taken down without notice because the owner is in a snit. If that’s going to be your reaction, Martin, I will take my stories somewhere more reliable.
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Great post. I agree completely. I am very grateful to Martin for everything he has done for this site and for our community in general, but I don’t see the point of posting on a site that can just go down at any moment because Martin gets into an argument and wants to prove a point.
I understand everyone’s frustrations, but I wouldn’t be so harsh as to say “I’m never coming back.” Martin seems to have been affected by the buzz this topic has generated. I don’t blame him for becoming upset, he is still a human being, after all. And he’s been having to deal with everyone and everything. Some things including terrible name calling and judgments, etc. one person called him the “furor” for Christ’s sake. Come on, he’s from Germany, that’s a terrible thing to say. I don’t blame him for snapping a bit. Whether or not anybody agrees with the action taken, he is the owner of the site, it is his right to pull the plug any day any time. I thought it was very nice of him to keep discussion allowed here. We are not completely in the dark, and we’re given an outlet to discuss the future of the site. The community is still here. I was much happier to find this forum still here than have the whole thing vanished like it never existed. Anyway that’s what I have to say so far.
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I agree with casslaframboise which should be no surprise if you read my previous comments. It’s easy to criticize and judge. If I’m reacting so strongly to this whole topic it’s because I myself have often been in the position where I invest a lot of time and energy into something just to have it taken completely for granted. I empathize with Martin. If he doesn’t reopen the site I would understand. I would be sad, because it’s not like there’s dozens of site like this one competing with it and we have the luxury of evaluating the owner’s behavior and choose the one who behaves the most like we think he should.
That said, I respect anyone’s decision to remove their stories from here because they think there’s a risk of the site periodically being down at the owner’s whim or be targeted by lawful authorities.
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First of all, I had avoided to access the forum after the site was closed down, as I just didn’t want to get affected even further by all this commotion. So I’ve just read most of what has been written here for the first time, now that site has been reopened.
I would be dishonest to you and myself if I would not admit that my decision to close GSS down was made out of defiance at least to a certain degree.
If someone tells me that he’s afraid that he might get into legal trouble because of my site, I can’t help but feeling a bit pressured. "Comply or it’s your fault if I get into trouble’.
Yes that kind of thing is known to cause defiance.
Also most people seem to forget that I’ve put an enormous amount of work into this site. So if I would shut it down, I am the person who’d see the biggest chunk of his life-time going to waste - together with Hugh, of course, who also invested an incredible amount of work and time into GSS before I took over.
Yes, we’re carrying all the authors’ work, and I have to take care of their work and respect it. And I was always willing to do that.
I had already sent the database export to Hugh, so if I had decided never to look back at the site, Hugh would have been able to upload that file somewhere so all the stories would be accessible.
I even shared the whole source code of the site with him, so if someone intended to take over the site, he could have done it.
To anyone telling me that I’m acting like an arbitrary ruler shutting the site down on a whim just because I’m pissed… Yes, you’re right.
Imagine somebody is dumping his shit into your garden and then goes around complaining that it’s stinking in your house. Ask yourself how you’d react.
It’s my site, my house, my castle. You’re all visitors here, I really appreciate you visiting me, I’ll try to be the best host I can be, but you still have to adhere to my rules, you can’t tell me what to do in my own house and most of all, you don’t have any claim on me that I have to keep it opened forever for your benefit.
After letting out this rant, I want to explicitly thank everyone who supported me and my position in those days and make me realize, that I’d hurt the wrong group of people by shutting down GSS. Of course I knew that before, I just needed to hear it again, I guess.
To all those who think I’m just a drama queen who wanted to get pampered a bit… You might be right as well. I’m just a human being and sometimes emotions get the better of us. And then we need to hear that people do care.
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A house isn’t much without its furniture, Martin, and threatening to burn the whole thing down when the furniture isn’t yours isn’t a good look at all.
^ I’m sorry if that came off as agitating. Don’t think me ungrateful for the time and effort you’ve spent maintaining the site when you picked it up from Hugh. I’m just having a hard time reconciling all this and wanting to continue using the site. Given your last comment, you probably don’t care what an anon thinks or does but that’s the long and the short of it. Hope you’re feeling better, at the very least.
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