I found “Nifty” pretty soon after joining the Internet back in the late 1990s, and started devouring the transgender stories over a long-distance dial-up connection. I would open several stories in separate browser windows, disconnect and read off-line. There were quite a few good stories there, but separating the wheat from the chaff was nearly impossible in those nearly endless chronological directory listings. Personally I also enjoyed several stories from the lesbian category, but the gay category was a pretty massive personal turn-off. Since that was mostly about inserting a penis into any and all available holes, often with “unwilling” participants.

I am surprised at how long “Nifty” has survived from its origins in the dark ages of BBS into the current times of nicely presented (a.k.a. formatted) reading materials. Bridging the gap from the BBS world, then came “FictionMania” and “Crystal's StorySite” that display some metadata for search and pre-selection but still present the story itself mostly as a plain text file. Then we got fully formatted story sites like “Stardust” (sadly disappeared after Bob Arnold suddenly died) and our very own “BigCloset TopShelf”.

Ever since I found Stardust and BigCloset I pretty much abandoned the former sites. For me, the main reason is the predominant focus on the physical sex acts that [deliberately] exclude the healthy relationship aspects. What they call “love” is often nothing more than animalistic lust, carnal sex and frankly plain and simple abuse and exploitation for the benefit of the perpetrator.

But as we used to say way back in high school: Exceptions confirm the rule. Even among all that dirt and grime, there were a few precious gems. Those that stuck in my mind are the “Joe Bates Saga”, where a misconfigured radio transmitter for airplane navigation alters the DNA from XY to XX and changes the exposed person from male to female in about 24 hours. (Kind of reminds me of how the microwave oven was “invented” or discovered.) The multi-part story follows the crew from their “spontaneous” transformation through the discovery of the cause to the experimental use for witness protection. (I just noticed that the chapter listing order is all messed up.) The other gem I remember is “Duty, Honor, Country (a 253 KB text file) about the creation of a very elite special squad made from small and delicate bodied soldiers. These soldiers learn to present as delicate damsels in distress but are extremely deadly and effective in darker than a black hole black operations. There was also a sequel where this squad went on a space shuttle mission to a private space station that was holding all the governments hostage with threats of nuclear and/or kinetic energy strikes. They were able to neutralize the megalomaniac, but lost one of their members in space. I can not find that story in the directory listing, since I do not remember the exact title or file name. This was supposed to be a trilogy of stories, but I never found the last part of a very interesting and riveting plot.