>>1953 Now that you mention it, it's a bit hard for me to explain why I like shotas since they produce lots of different feelings on me. On the one hand, it is characteristics such as their almost perfect beauty, their extreme innocence (or naivety), the way their personalities vary from shy and serious to cheerful and carefree (passing through many other points), and a general attitude that radiates cuteness that makes me fall in love with them and want to treasure them like one who treasures a poem or a work of art. For me, shota is like a delicate flower that irradiates beauty, but whose fragility forces you to appreciate if from a safe distance because even the slightest careless touch could wither it. They're like small puppies that run and play freely, but must be supervised to prevent anything or anyone from hurting them. They're little angels who live happily in the clear sky while mortals like us can only observe them from afar. And then there's the other side. A dark side, which almost seems to have been intentionally created to contrast the desire to preserve beauty, which longs to see those little souls succumb to their most carnal desires and be consumed by their own lust. A desire to see their innocence fade as they explore their bodies and discover sensations they have never experienced before, to see their minds lose themselves in the midst of a pleasure they are unable to describe but only want more of. It is a dark desire to corrupt such pure beings, to reduce them to my level and replace their innocent games with carnal pleasures, to want to deflower their immaculate bodies and make them surrender to their most basic instincts. A horrible desire that clashes with the desire to protect them described above and creates mixed feelings. A demon who wants to corrupt little angels, and yet does not dare to do it himself, for destroying such beauty is too great a sin even for him. A demon who chooses to make the angels the ones to corrupt themselves while he encourages them from afar and enjoys the spectacle. Those are the feelings that shotas produce on me.

>>1962 I can definitely understand the appeal from that standpoint. >in the midst of a pleasure they are unable to describe but only want more of. This is such a great way of describing things, anon. When they blindly wander into that feeling, not knowing they can't turn back. The first moment when innocence starts to burn away, and gets replaced with something darker, like a file being overwritten. It's all so...sweet, in a twisted way.

>>1953 For me, the appeal is the same as a mom or a teenage girl who enjoys watching cute cat and dog videos on the internet. Their personalities and overall adorable presence remind me of my youth. Days where it was okay to run around nude, where it was okay to sleep and bath with other boys who were family or friends, going outside without parent supervision, when you were learning things for the first time not through being told but by experience. It's something I can't have - but it's an all too familiar feeling since I remember and cherish those experiences. I only visit the SFW threads and usually read shounen and seinen manga - although there is a purity to casual and artistic nudity. What good stories with shota protagonists represent for me are inner desires to see the world with that youthful optimism. Everything was an adventure and everything small was just a smaller version of something big! It's a little disappointing to see a lack of variety in storytelling with shotas (i.e. no shota equivalent of CGDCT) but it's not the worst thing in the world. I can only hope one day these topics won't be as taboo as they are now and people can have civil discussions on the matter.