What's your MGSF story?

[Kestrel]

There was a thread like this one on Pricey's revival board, but I have more hope for this one seeing the traction we've had going on in the past week.

Mine's kind of a sob story. I first joined MGSF in 2010, when I was just 12. I wasn't active and just lurked, but came back in 2012 as Kestrel around the time the MGO2 servers were shutting down to try to find some of the friends I had made on the game. I didn't find any, but I made new ones on the boards. My dad kicked me out only a few months after I joined back up, and that's when I started GRU with Crab. I really can't overstate just how helpful the site was in keeping me together during a very difficult time in my life. I know I was a dumb teenager back then, but I sincerely miss the days when I would come home from school and stay up all night talking to friends.

In 2015 my mom's boyfriend kicked me out of the house the day I graduated from highschool, and I spent a long time drifting around the east coast when I was 17. My activity on the site started to dwindle after that. I joined the Marine Corps the next year after getting bored with being homeless, and only came back on occasion to check on the boards. I think it was around this time all the smaller orgs started falling apart. I'm not really sure what made me leave the forums for good, I can't really remember.

Since then, I spent 6 tumultuous years in the Marine Corps as an artillery tech. I spent a lot time in Japan, went to places like Korea, Australia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Deployed to Syria in 2018, and came back stateside in 2021. Completely missed the whole COVID thing. I got out in 2022 as a Corporal after a long battle with pretty serious injury that saw me dropped out of EOD school. I was pretty disillusioned with the military and government as a whole by that time anyway, and wanted out. I got married, no kids, thank God. In these past few years I've lived in California, Minnesota, and most recently Wyoming. Been working a lot of odd jobs mostly centered around automotive mechanics and construction. I'm in a pretty big historical fencing club here, and run marksmanship classes to teach people how to shoot on the side whenever I can. I work on project cars as a hobby and make some extra money as the neighborhood gearhead. I may be moving again soon, maybe somewhere down South this time. Life isn't great, but it's okay, and that's all I can really ask for right now.

I'd really like to hear how life has been for the rest of you. It's been a long, long time.

[Jassassino]

I've just began fencing recently actually, Kestrel. I spoke briefly about it in the Fitness thread, but I'm aiming to (hopefully) work in fight scene and stage combat choreography one day. Honestly a wonderful sport which I only joined out of necessity initially, but have found it to be a phenomenal time, filled with great (albeit very posh lmao) people.

I signed up to troll Max, who told me his account name was Granin (lmao) along with a friend I went to school with at the time. We must have been about 14? But I ended up making really good friends with a lot of people, finding a place to experiment (and fundamentally a reason to) learn a lot of photoshop/GIMP principles and graphic design tutorials through making signatures and memes, and that kept me around. Those of you who saw me around probably saw me with a new signature most months (something I both love and hate - I always found new random inspiration from games, TV or film, and always had a new graphic set, but also never had an iconic sig/avatar because of that!).

Shortly after joining, MGR was announced and I desperately wanted to play the cool ninja hack 'n' slash, so I binged the franchise over the summer. I remember it being a beautiful day one day, friends were going to the beach- I was late because I was playing MGS2 and so engrossed lmao. (Yeah I was on this board for about 2 years without playing a single MGS game except the demo of MGS2 lmao)

Roll on the era of MGSF where we all went absolutely crazy for Mafia. That kept me hooked. Honestly cared little for what Org I was in after NCR (I loved FO:NV lmao) but still loved all the drama with Philosophers and Foxhound which I joined after.

Not to mention the FH podcasts and game nights. DrEd and Gene were always great chat for both. Kept me around even longer and suddenly I'm an MGS stan one day.

[Bread]

Honestly, I wouldn't even consider myself a diehard Metal Gear fan. I like the series sure, but I joined in 2008 off the back of a 2 week obsession with MGS4 that disappeared as quickly as it started. I was joining a lot of forums around that time for a variety of games and other interests I had, but the community at MGSF felt a little more communal than most other forums I was a member of. Felt less like talking to enigmatic, faceless strangers and more like talking to actual people that I would talk to IRL.

Honestly, I was probably suckered in by Gene when he offered me my first Org invite with Foxhound. The idea of super secret, exclusive clubs that rivalled the other super secret, exclusive clubs appealed to me a lot back then.

[Wayno]

I joined MGSF as I was playing Portable Ops and was looking for people to play with online. I stuck around as MPO died as I was active on a Football Manager forum that was dying and wanted an active community to be part of.

One of my first interactions on the board was with Gary, G.J.V. looking to clone / trade Black Genome soldiers with great stats. Fucking miss that guy. Although I didn't join Dead Cell at the time Gary was one of the main reasons I stuck around. The MPO section didn't see many of the forum characters come in so his interaction kept me there. Thanks Gary.

[Aragorn]

Think I just searched something about MGS Ground Zeroes and the forums popped up. Someone said something that I viciously disagreed with so I just hit that registration button and started spreading around like the disease from Prototype. Several orgs, drama, character arcs and Mafia games later - life got too busy and I just kind of left the boards. Checked on it one day and it was gone.

Life went pretty crazy since and I live a starkly different life now; but MGSF was pretty formative in general. Met a lot of people, and it was my gateway to thinking about the world in a more involved way than before in terms of principles, beliefs and politics. I'll always owe it for that.

[Suede]

Mine is pretty boring. It was 2014 and I was in my mid-20s just bored looking for a new forum to post on after taking a break from them for a year or so. Ground Zeroes was about to be released so I thought I'd find an MGS forum. I found MGSF, posted for a few weeks, but was starting to lose interest a little until I got an org invite from Diamond Dogs. Then I started talking with people, making friends and then there was a lot of drama, I was hooked after that lmao.

[Aragorn]

Diamond Dogs and Shadow Moses was so drama intensive and I don't even remember why. Like I remember most people in it being chill people individually.

[Shyne-Bryght]

Joined 06 at the mature age of 16.

Got into the org thing early and ended up getting asked to help out set up an org, loved the inside group aspect but also the competitive/politics side but took it way too seriously at first.

Majorly loved doing forum graphics, sigs, avatars, and it was a great outlet just creating stuff that people requested.

After an active few years, dropped off and came back sporadically, always wishing I was more active and involved. I do regret not making the most of the time and people around the forum, did come away with some good familiarity with people and kinda still feel like that now, just wish my memory served better and I could jump back into references and humour, but it's still nice to see people from that period of my young life. It was a special time.

[black king]

I had moved towns when I was about 11. My best friend from childhood and I both loved MGS so he suggested we start a Metal Gear website. He got one from Invisionfree we called Metal Gear Fanzone. It didn't really take off and so we went to join another website where my friend knew a guy who helped him with MGFZ's skins. That site was called Metal Gear Solid Forums. It wasn't the one where I met all of you though. It was a different one I thought would remain only in my memories until I found a link to it in the wayback machine. A different MGSF if you wanna see. The old Invisionfree forums were so snazzy. It had some drama go on between its two admins and, like I would with the later orgs on the actual MGSF, I took internet drama seriously. The drama led to the root admin banning the other one and locking the site down. Both admins made new sites and I joined the not forum locking one. 

I was aware of our old MGSF at this point, but hadn't joined. Seemed like the largest forum ever with how many members it had. Then I saw the old root admin from the other MGSF had joined Pricey's and was wanting to affiliate with him to increase his site traffic. I saw it as my duty to prevent that so I joined up on MGSF in 2006 at the age of 12 to tell Pricey not to affiliate. Of course, being undercover from my old admin I needed a new forum name. I saw a username named Red Queen and decided to do that style username. Black was one of my favorite colors and I liked chess, so I picked black king. 

Eventually I fell out of their drama and I think their sites shut down. I stuck around Pricey's MGSF just to have a forum home and made a bunch of polls and such to increase my post count because post count is a big deal. Applied for Dead Cell saying that I thouhgt it was cool and I'd be honored to join one of MGSF's oldest orgs. Got a PM from Red Queen with a lecture on how MGC was actually older   Didn't get in.

Even on the old MGSF at that point I'd always felt more tolerated than liked on the forums. Then I got an invite from NINJA to be a founding member of an org. I accepted so I could finally be in a cool kids club. This guy believed in me and gave me a reason to stick around besides the love for MGS and the hype for MGS4; a game I wouldn't be bale to play anyway on account of going green for Xbox.

That org would eventually be TSF and I'd get a new green button beneath my username. TSF, like all new orgs, got its hazing. Mostly from MGC, DC, and Red Queen in particular it seemed. Eventually got this legendary thread out of it. The org business and the friends I made on MGSF kept me coming back. A lot of you played a decent role in some of who I am today since I was on the younger side on those early days. Especially your humor and references. I've used some of those in real life. 

In short, I got involved in forums to keep up with a friend after a long move, got sucked into some drama, and stayed by making new online friends in my new house.

[BULUPTAX]

I joined MGSF in around 2010 or 2011 but didn't really become super active until late 2012/early 2013 when I was 17, about to turn 18. I was in my last year of high school and I spent a lot of time on the forums instead of studying for the HSC (High School Certificate)

Man it was an embarrassing time to look back on, I feel like I was a massive cringe lord who pushed people away and got into arguments about silly things. I remember getting into senseless arguments with people like Freeman over trivial subjects that I can't really remember. I think I even got into an argument with Gene at one point over My Little Pony which was fucking stupid of me. Gene, if you remember what it was about, I'm sorry and I harbour no ill will towards you.
I became a recluse who mostly just chatted with my pals in GRU and was slightly hostile with everyone else bar a few exceptions. I remember Null saying "that's possibly the stupidest thing I've read on this site" to something I said, but I can't remember what it was but I still cringe about it to this day.
I also remember refusing to tell most people what my username meant.

I'm pretty sure I've matured a lot since then, and anyone reading this who I've been an asshole to in the past, I'm so sorry.

But enough of bashing myself. Life is pretty ok on my end these days. I live with my girlfriend in Sydney's inner west, we have 2 cats, I work in live audio making ok money but nothing great. And my free time is mostly spent gaming and watching movies