#more variety for loli characters now!! itoko no ko is already a great example. tomboy loli for the win!!!

[offbeat-manga-ships]

i'm not a shotacon, but i like oneeshota so can i still answer? (((im one of those guys who likes it because of my childhood infatuations with older women and one or two particular down bad moments that i still havent been able to forget lol) (PLUS the unconventional aspect of younger lil dude x older gorgeous af woman (tho how i wish they varied a lil bit more in the oneesan chr designs... sigh..) & the fact of how a shta is a smaller guy (i like size difference when the woman is bigger) & because they are like a "boy character who hasnt reached manhood yet" so to speak. it's a bit like they're closer to genderlessness (conceptually ofc) and as a nonbinary person who loathed my own puberty this appeals to me. going back a bit to the boyhood/manhood dychotomy there is also the fact that there is something a bit more freeing in boyhood and restrictive in manhood not only gender-wise but in general behaviors. a lot of times this is also the primed place to see naked displays of emotion that are threading the line of innocence and an interest in romance etc which i think it's interesting))

SORRY all this to say that my in to being into it was misaki and aoi from kaichou wa maid-sama. for those who don't know, misaki is the protagonist and aoi is the crossdressing shota character.

they start on the rocks i think and then get pretty close.

this was right in a crucial moment for me because not only was i a tween going through puberty but also, while i had been watching anime my whole life, this was the time i was starting to get serious about it lol so i started watching shoujo too and realized i was falling hard for the female characters. that happened even more for the girls in shoujo than the ones in shounen and that basically informed my media consuming patterns to this day (tho i like material both aimed at girls and boys). it was kinda funny how much i was into the girls and not always into the romances of the shoujo shows. misaki was a special one to me because like

look at her bruh. this is who she is. someone who enjoys crossdressing once in a while. a girl who is strong and likes to be cool and she is so so dreamy. this was ALSO the time i was beginning to read manga so naturally i took up maid-sama. i read a lot of volumes and misaki and aoi got closer and closer, and to my elation it even seemed like he was starting to take a particular liking to her in that tsundere girly shota way and i fell HARD for them. i then started looking up content about them online and i found out that HE ACTUALLY CONFESSES at some point. even though that did make me happy for a moment (i wasn't delusional and i would get more aoi/misaki stuff).. i realized that i would only get this until i had to see misaki turn him down. because for as much as i loved them, the male lead, usui, was still a thing that existed. combining this breaking my 12 year old heart with the fact that i was noticing that i really didn't like how usui "made" misaki appear as

(like, you know how a guy in shoujo makes a cool&strong girl be like, right? the ending of maid-sama the anime was truly a warning of things to come:

— i realized i was a bit too hurt to continue reading maid-sama and i haven't finished to this day haha

after a while, (i don't really remember how much time) i found kimi no neiro [MAL / AL / MU], an ACTUAL crossdressing (genderfluid? transfem? :D) shota x princely older taller girl shoujo manga and that made me remember SO Much of misaki and aoi that i keep kimi no neiro close to my heart to this day (and also because i like the manga itself, even though it's definitely not perfect and i so dearly wish it was longer)

Dear shotacons, i have a good question for you guys: What was your "Shotacon awakening"?

(Aka: Wich was the first shota/Shota-leaning character that made you realize that you were a shotacon?)

For me it was Marulk from Made in Abyss, at first i thought he was a girl and i was like "Oh, she has such a cute design! I wonder if she will be a part of the main cast" and after i found out he was a boy and the rest of the story i automatically fell in love with him (Platonically, he was a cutie patootie in my eyes), i remember i even made an oc just so he could feel "less lonely"