aboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutaboutAbout

It's hard to write things like this without it feeling kind of like a circlejerk for yourself...

Ah well!

I'm Hexaaelia. (She/It, 2001/10/15, Hex for short). I'm a transfemme therian dragon with a hoard of obsolete tech and a penchant for the odd and obscure. I grew up in various suburban sattelites in Ohio, and eventually made my way to Western New York in an attempt to get away from the anti-me policies coming after my hide. I've been lucky here, with friends, with finding myself, and with goals. More lucky than I have been throughout most of my life. It has put me in a reflective mood.
And so, here we are.

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I spent the first few years of my life in an old, pre-war suburb, in an old tudor-styled house with shitty electric work and a rather small floorplan. 'Til I was 12, this was the place where I tried to figure out what the hell I was. "Boy"? Alright, sure. We'll go with it. "Human"?. Hmmm. If you insist. With my comorbidity of autism, adhd, unknown queerness and body chemistry being modified at (not my) will by doctors trying to medicate the me out of me, I was not at all too popular. Anxious, quiet, silently angry. I was not given the tools to control the form I had been given. Instead, I turned to other things to occupy myself.

I had been given a game console quite early in my life. a GameCube. To say it fascinated me would be an understatement. I was enthralled. Swallowed whole by the worlds that this little box could craft. Outset Island, Isle Delfino, The Frigate Orpheon. I was terrified. As I died the first time in Metroid Prime (That scream...) I panicked. Scrambling to the console and shutting the game off. I was not great at these games. I was terrible. And what could be hiding behind these worlds?

Those feelings motivate me even now.

With time, I got better at these games. I began to be able to go through them. Rather than treating their first areas as little places for me to visit, I actually experienced them. I began to realize there were groups of people making these things. Incredible... I want to do that!

At the same time, I began paying attention to the odd gray box sitting in the den. It intrigued me. Every so often, I'd be given the privelege to use it. The greeting of Windows XP's welcome tune always a pleasant presence. I was given a user account to play the few PC games I had acquired. But I had found something perhaps more interesting... The Internet.

Surf's Up

You're saying... There's a bunch of stuff folks just... Do on here? Others just... make stuff for free? They write things about the same games I had been losing my mind over in silence, never able to talk to others about them? There's just, others who care about this stuff to this degree, folks who are making video content just talking about games that are bad?

Damn. If I thought I was enthralled by video games...

I was still a hatchling, of course. I had to be careful on the internet, and there was a rather heavy block on a lot of content. Youtube, however, was open. and with that, came a lot. People talking about video games! People making things inspired by video games! People... Making... Video games??? Who's Kitsune² and why the fuck does this bang so damn hard? You can... represent yourself... Like this? On the internet? That's super neat- Wait, there are... older video game consoles? Many of them? All with classic, amazing games I haven't played?

With looking into older game consoles, came looking into older technology. I had found a piece of me. The internet handed me something incredible. There's so much out there! Games, Technology, Computers, all now treated as junk. I wanted to see them, to use them. To understand them. Be they Good, bad, or somewhere in between. I began hearing the term 'Cult classic' used to describe games. One that especially caught my interest was "Earthbound", a game Nintendo seemed to not care about. I was intrigued! I learned how to use emulators, and tried it out.

You are now Earthbound

What the fuck.

What the fuck.

I needed to talk about this game to somebody.

I started looking for Earthbound fan sites. There were tons. Many others loved the game. I didn't make an account, I just lurked. Reading discussion, and talk, and, wait, there's two more?!

And so, I found internet subculture. I was hooked. Obsessed. I loved seeing what others had to say from anywhere in the world. I loved making the few friends I could from the internet. My fascination with games and game consoles had grown. This old PC had started to chafe, and newer operating systems began to be required. I had to upgrade.

So I began looking, with some help I figured out how one would build a PC, and did it. An Amtek case, an intel motherboard and cpu, and one of the last ATI Radeon GPUs ever produced.

I was there. Green pastures. My own place. With my own storage, infinite space to do things.

Going Alone

At this point, my family and I had moved. A new school. A fresh start. I was still weird, but I was smarter in my weirdness., I knew how to spot those who had my same affliction: Being a dork. I put together a good group of friends, through my love of Earthbound, video games, and internet memes. I'd also begun making accounts on websites, eventually ending up with a Discord account, very early in the application's life.

I began following more creators based on my interest. I had been listening to K² for a while, but I still didn't consider myself much of a music fan. Too embarrassed to admit, even to myself, what I enjoyed listening to.

I then found A video. Wow, I really like this. Wait, it's a cover? What's the original song sound like?

...

For a second time, I had fallen into a new piece of myself. I immediately listened to the entirety of Porter Robinson's Worlds, I remember it vividly. Sitting on my bed, phone in paw, headphones in. Staring at the wall in awe.

This... Is wonderful... This... Is... I.... I need to understand this. I need to make this.

You Can Just Be A Girl

I had gone through most of my life, indeed I was making it, I now had friends, support. And was doing 'OK', however... Something... Was wrong... with me, I think.

It was the day of a student trip at my High School. We were up, bright and early, all packed onto a bus. I was early. Unusual for me. Sitting there, listening to Divinity for the nth time, watching the girls in front of me chat, a thought passed through my head that somehow never had before.

I want that. I want to be a girl.

I want to be a girl? I want to be a girl. Okay. Well. Guess that's something I'm gonna have to deal with.

Panic attacks and trying to figure out what "being a girl" meant defined that trip.

OwO

I had figured it out. The piece of myself.

It took a bit to figure it out, to feel out exactly what I was and how I was and how this worked, and what I wanted to do about it. But I had my final piece (right?)

I began to be more present on the internet as myself. As I explored the internet more, a specific subculture began to catch my eye. Furries.

It is unavoidable to run into furries on the internet, however it had never caught my attention before. Only now, laden with a newfound desire to express myself, did I understand.

I worked with a friend to design a fursona. A rabbit character. She was pink, light, and sweet. Much like me at the time.

In designing her, somewhere in my subconscious, there was a shift. I was not a human. I was a bunnygirl! Sure, I had a human form, but really, I was a rabbit.

I am embarrassed to admit how long it took for me to realize that wasn't a normal thing to think.

Let's do it.

I had been doing a lot, trying to make hacks for games I liked, learning how to talk to computers, the usual nerd things. It came up between friends that it would be fun to start a game company. One already had a name!
We figured "why the hell not?"

I picked up a game engine. Unity. I understood it almost immediately. It was that feeling again, I had found a piece of me.
I honed my skills enough to become dangerous with game engines. We began serious development on our first title, and soon realized we had no musician to compliment our skills... Hey, hold on a second....
After chewing my cheeks looking at the price tag, I bought a copy of FL studio. I had done it. Not only had I learnt the art of game creation, I was making music, too.

You again!

Life continued. I had realized I was plural, dropped much of my association with the furry community due to a messy breakup. Regardless, I continued to exist. To create and to make. Until a substantial shift happened. I lost much of what I defined myself on. It was difficult. I struggled more than I'd ever before with that sort of thing. I managed to right myself with the help of newfound friends. Inspecting what was left, grabbed a few things that I thought could still be of use. One of them, that dusty furry label I had left on the shelf for so long. And- what is this?

One of my new friends happened to not be human. Huh. That's how I view myself. They're therian. A Manadragon. Huh. You can do that? I began. Thinking.

I. Felt this. As I talked more with them, it began to make more and more sense. This was Me. This was something I was missing. I considered my new self for a while. I saw a dragon in my own reflection. Different than my Manadragon friend, but still a dragon.

I felt like I had a new superpower. I can define myself like this! I'm a furry again! I get to be INTO THIS!

My friend suggested I listened to Halley Labs (though, I had known them as Lapfox Trax). I had of course listened to Kitsune² albums released over a decade ago, but I had not stayed up to date. I obliged, and-

It was that moment all over again. I had to make this. I had to do this.

O.K. Computer!

The computer, in many forms, has underscored my entire life, from the game consoles that defined my earliest memories to the self-built PC I now write this on. Computers allowed me to connect in a time when otherwise I was incapable, robbed of the ability by combination mental illness and abuse.

The computer lead me to my drive to understand, to learn, to play and tinker. It led me to its own history, which in turn made me love it more. Dragons usually maintain hoards, and for me, that hoard is old computers. It led me, most important of all, to connect; to find creatures whom I hold dear and will hold dear my entire life.

Recently though, it's less fun. As corporate interests clash against the inherent spark of the internet to be free and wild. We watch as an absurd, beautiful landscape is rendered barren; much the same as humans are known to do. I do not wish to exist within that. I have turned further towards computing in the before. The land of Usenet and self-hosted websites. That is why this place exists.

There is always more to write. I maintain a blog on this website ideally to include more. This section was originally much longer before I took an axe to approximately 30% of it to make it a bit more digestible. I do not want to bore you with the minutiae of me, however I do want to be known. I do not think that is too much to ask.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate it.
 - Hex