I remember I was doing a lot of site jumping a looong while back: I believe I was following various affiliated links between different Pokemon sites, and I somehow ended up on 'Charms that way. I didn't think much of it at the time, though, but that's the first time I had any sort of contact with the site.
Then, I found myself back to this very site in a similar fashion, and I decided to poke around on some of the links on the sidebar. Which led me to the TCM. And I had so much fun playing around with that, oh dear lord, you have no idea how thrilled I was. I've always been a sucker for doll makers and avatar makers, but the TCM was... somewhat different. I wasn't dressing up a character so much as I was making a virtual ID card of a sort. And it was Pokemon! The card backgrounds, though few and limited at the time, were super cool, but what really got me were the trainer sprites.
With a bit more digging, I found the trainer sprite submission thread. And.... well, I had no clue how forums worked. All I knew was how to make an account on a website, and I thought the submission thread was the only thing I could really use as a member of the site. So 100% of my first two weeks of the site was me making a fool of myself, posting stupid things, acting pretty immature, but somehow never outfight breaking any rules (or rather, never got warned for any rulebreaking I might have done, unlike some of my other friends who have gotten warned and even banned during my first year here. I was just another face in the crowd of n00bs, after all.) Then I discovered the other bits of the site and forums, though I continued to act n00bishly for another good while. THEN I found the IRC chatroom, and became the resident football courtesy of former-admin Nemesis. And now... I guess the rest of history?
tl;dr found 'Charms by link hopping, joined because of the TCM and spriter community, stayed because the rest of the community was pretty goddamn awesome as well.
