MFGG was a huge part of my childhood and my early teenage years, and before I even had Game Maker I'd assemble level layouts out of spritesheets and print out recolors of enemy sprites done in MS Paint.
After I joined the forums (around 2009, but I lurked for years) it was a huge part of my daily routine, I came home from school and hopped onto MFGG every night. It was something I looked forward to all day, and I vividly remember the split and the discourse and sense of unbelonging that kinda followed onto Minus World in the wake of it happening.

I'm posting this through the STUNGUN account tho, and we're not one person, we're a team, so I'm speaking for my own experiences. But three of us were MFGGers in the past, and that's where we met in the first place.

This is an absolutely amazing writeup, thank you so much for posting it.