Hewwo! You can call me MF if you want, I never know what name to use online tbh. I think the most people call me Bumpy. It's not that I like being called Bumpy specifically, but that was the joke display name that stuck for whatever reason! :)

I'm transmasc. I'm autistic. I'm otherkin.

I believe in inclusion, I don't believe in strictly defending the borders of labels. I believe in personal autonomy, and the right to self-definition. I want my framework for understanding the world to make sense, to be accurate, and to be aligned with my values.

I believe in queer joy, I believe in loving one another, I am T4T. :-)

I'll put more here later when I'm more focused... Goonight, and Goobye!

The Details

The Internet and Me: Web 1.0

I remember being little, sitting in our living room at the office chair (not yet named a "computer chair"), waiting for the dial up to complete so I could have my mom type random words into the browser and add ".com" at the end to see where we'd end up.

My mom (who was a web designer at the time) made a website for me while I watched. I remember directing her on which clip art cat images to add. She made a loading screen for the site where a gif of a black cat running stayed on the screen until the next page had finished loading.

I would sit next to my mom on the computer while she played Myst and Riven (still my favorite games! And one of my biggest artistic inspirations). Sometimes she would let me play and I would just walk around in the game, and think that the trees on Myst Island were the most realistic trees imaginable.

The Internet and Me: Neopets Era

When I was a little older, now moved from the north east, to the west, back to the north east, and then down to the south east (with plenty of moving around in each of those locations in between), I joined Neopets! My first pet was a red Wocky (I liked cats), but I must have had at least a dozen Neopets accounts. I always wanted a baby Kougra, but I never got any baby pets.

I wanted to win the Neopets site spotlight sooo bad. I learned how to use basic HTML and CSS from my attempts to make a pet site that could win (and customizing my user lookup, shop front, and my many, many failed guilds). I would usually give up when I got to the part where I would actually have to write content for the site, or when I would see another pet site with a layout I liked more than whatever I was doing. Not much has changed since then. If you're reading this, it means I actually am adding content to this site instead of getting bored after styling it and giving up! Hopefully!

I wanted to make a Neopets related site outside of Neopets like JellyNeo, and I made tons and tons of half-finished Freewebs websites attempting to do just that, with generally unimpressive results.

I half-made and abandoned lots of little point and click, HTML-based sites on Dreamweaver on my mom's computer.

Got into anime via a friend at the time's older sister's VHS tapes. Back then when I wanted to get fan content centered around anime or manga I liked, I would find personal websites, Geocities etc., by googling things like "Slayers characters", and it would usually come up with someone's web 1.0 fan page that usually summarized the characters and plot and maybe had a gallery of images (perfect for an autistic child with a special interest).

Discovered Homestar Runner! That site shaped my sense of humor to this day, and also provided inspiration for all the fun, creative ways to add easter eggs to content, and take advantage of the web format. :)

The Internet and Me: Kong Studios Era

When I was 10, or maybe 11, back when iTunes used to give you a selection of free music videos to watch (this was before Youtube was popular, and it was the only way I knew how to watch music videos by myself), I found the music video for Feel Good Inc. I was obsessed with Gorillaz for a long time after that. I was totally spellbound by their Kong Studios point and click site(s). I still want to capture the feeling of creeping through Kong Studios' rooms & hallways.
The Car Park, the Basement, the Back End, the Studio (really everywhere) all captured my imagination in a way that's persisted until the present, and it completely changed how I saw the potential of things like styrofoam cups, old refrigerators, concrete walls, etc. etc. artistically. I also have to credit Jamie Hewlett's art for showing me as a kid that it's much more fun to draw people with "imperfections" than it is for me to draw lots of perfectly conventionally attractive people like I had been up until that point.

99 Rooms [content warning: brief depiction of suicide at 2:38-2:45, jumpscare at 3:11-3:18], Myst, Riven, Kong Studios, 99 Rooms, the Claridryl point and click all have beautiful ambient noise in common. I don't know if it was around this time, but it probably was, that I started to be fascinated by ambient humming, footsteps, rumbling, water noises, crackling, etc.

I only played Myst Uru Online once or twice. There were people there, but Uru still had such a huge, open, lonely vibe, especially if you were playing the non-MMO version, which is what I mostly did. You can tell it was meant to be multiplayer, the single-player version feels empty, and your 3rd person character (the only 3rd person Myst game!) is dwarfed by huge, spacious natural and man-made structures.