by i am insane » Thu Dec 08, 2022 5:02 am
A big part of it, I think is just that it was a labour of love. The forum was a forum, of course, but the website? It's only in retrospect I realized this, but the work he must have put into it. He had stories, pictures, introductions, general information, links, and all of it personalized... part of the reason it was so vivid in my mind is that website helped explain to me what SW even was.
Beyond that, it really was cozier; everyone knew everybody. Someone made a comic, I remember, that was just someone going to a 'convention' starring all the big names of the time. I think it probably felt more... 'secret', honestly. If you got there, you got there for a reason, you know? You saw King Kong, or Honey We Shrunk Ourselves or whatever sparked it for you, and you looked for it, even if you didn't realize why yet. Hell, even when it was up, searching just 'Minimizers' would get you some car related things and maybe it'd be on the first page of results. You had to look, specifically, for shrunken women, and then you would find it, and then you would find out that you're not alone, that there's others like you, that you're welcome in this place that's just for you and those like you.
On Twitter, click on a couple NSFW anime girl related pages and you'll hit probably GTS content on accident. The fact that fetishes are so much more accepted is great, but (and this might just be the perspective of someone who got there already knowing about it and your interests), there's a sort of... 'no longer lost, no longer alone' vibe you can't get on something so... public, when things outside the norm are this much more acceptable than it was back then. I think it's a feeling, a sort of relief, that only comes from things being worse, so that relief is that much better, if that makes sense.
A big part of it, I think is just that it was a labour of love. The forum was a forum, of course, but the website? It's only in retrospect I realized this, but the [i]work[/i] he must have put into it. He had stories, pictures, introductions, general information, links, and all of it personalized... part of the reason it was so vivid in my mind is that website helped explain to me what SW even [i]was[/i].
Beyond that, it really was cozier; everyone knew everybody. Someone made a comic, I remember, that was just someone going to a 'convention' starring all the big names of the time. I think it probably felt more... 'secret', honestly. If you got there, you got there for a [i]reason[/i], you know? You saw King Kong, or Honey We Shrunk Ourselves or whatever sparked it for you, and you [i]looked[/i] for it, even if you didn't realize why yet. Hell, even when it was up, searching just 'Minimizers' would get you some car related things and maybe it'd be on the first page of results. You had to look, [i]specifically[/i], for shrunken women, and then you would find it, and then you would find out that you're not alone, that there's others like you, that you're [i]welcome[/i] in this place that's just for you and those like you.
On Twitter, click on a couple NSFW anime girl related pages and you'll hit probably GTS content on accident. The fact that fetishes are so much more accepted is great, but (and this might just be the perspective of someone who got there already knowing about it and your interests), there's a sort of... 'no longer lost, no longer alone' vibe you can't get on something so... public, when things outside the norm are this much more acceptable than it was back then. I think it's a feeling, a sort of relief, that only comes from things being [i]worse[/i], so that relief is that much [i]better[/i], if that makes sense.