About

I am a software developer by day. By night, I like to play video games, play/compose music, and dabble in art. My music and art skills generally aren’t at the level that I feel comfortable posting online yet. My main instrument is a Prophet XL, a hardware synthesizer. I also like to use a MIDI Fighter for percussion patches. I like synth pop, industrial music, and anything synth-heavy.

I learned how to program through game development. I want to get back into this, but time and motivation are sometimes challenging to find, especially with a full-time job.

I am a member of the furry fandom. My fursona is a wolf. When finding my species I did a lot of introspection and even looked through a field guide of canids. I ultimately settled on a wolf not because of physical qualities or personality, but simply because it felt right.

Name Origin

My name came from the word “metallic.” Why metallic? One simple reason is that I have grey fur, like metal. But it also has a deeper meaning.

Since I was 3 I wanted to create video games. However, I never knew how they were really made (just some vague notion of programming), and neither did my parents or anyone else I knew.

When I was 11, I had access to the internet and found the program Game Maker. It was exactly what I was looking for. I was really fortunate to come across this in the early 2000’s, where resources for kids who want to make games did not seem to be common.

Later, I discovered and joined the official forum at the time. There were also others around my age. They had websites, sometimes named as if there were a company behind it. That inspired me to create a personal website that I named “Metallic Cube Entertainment”, which I later renamed to just “Metalllic Entertainment.” I can’t remember where I came up with this name; I only remember creating the logo in MS Paint.

I also developed an interest in RPGs around the same time. I played Wizardry 8 and created Teikus, a character who was an anthro wolf, whom I started to envision as a self-insert. My first tabletop roleplaying game was Ironclaw (first edition), and I created Teikus as my character. That character felt really personal to me; an expression of my true self.

Around the same time I discovered the furry fandom. My relation to the furry fandom is complex and I could go on a long tangent about it. The gist is that unfortunately I waited a long time before actually deciding to join. After finally working through some personal issues and joined, I needed a name. I felt “Teikus” was good for a fantasy setting but didn’t feel right to me to use in the fandom. After brainstorming I came up with the name “Talik”, which comes from “Metallic Entertainment”, my roots from when I made games as a kid. I kept “Teikus” as the “birth name”, leaving it open to interpretation.

For the last name, I initially came up with “Autumnleaf” after seeing vivid yellow leaves on a drive, but then adopted “Fireleaf” after reading the Noss Saga (fursona has no relation the lore, I just thought the word was cool).

I’m not bringing back Metallic Entertainment since I view it as past chapter of my life and wasn’t a real company to begin with. Instead, I’m creating this personal website.

This Website

I’m frustrated with the general social media situation and decided to launch my own website. The release of the .nexus TLD inspired me to make a central hub for myself, one that isn’t held hostage by a corporation driving the product into the ground for profit.

I created the theme myself to get more familiar with CSS and to call the website my own. I’m not completely satisfied with it but it is good enough for now. The website uses Nginx, which directs requests to an upstream server which can serve static files generated by 11ty.

If this were the 90’s I’d slap a big “Under Construction” banner at the top. I’m still figuring out what I want here and deciding if I want to host a blog.