DE: Tell me what's my name

[bjornwilde]

First, let me say I read some wonderful stories with yesterday's DE. Y'all are awesome.

Now onto the topic, we've talked about the meaning behind our journal names before but what about the other names you thought of for yourself or your pup? Have you ever switched the journal name? If so, why and what was the old one?

Comments

[not_my_sandbox]

Amascut's is the only pup journal that I have changed, from one that referred to a Garbage song that referred to headcanon that had been refuted, to a Doctor Who quote that is much more generic but much more awesome. I am sort of in love with the name death_gone_mad

I won't go through all my name changes, because I like my long disjointed history of profiles just like it is. Disjointed and riddled with identity problems. :D

[yakalskovich]

I suspect I will have to change Katrina Crane's journal name eventually. She's never_lost_faith after a Cleolinda tweet about the fact that we don't know if she is dead or alive.

As soon as canon comes down on either side of that particular fence, I will have to change the journal name -- I should have thought of that when I made her journal, actually.

For Hannibal, I actually have doc_lecter, which was the old user name of the original Hopkins!Hannibal on LJ, but Saph suggested I should use the other one to make clear it's a new mun with a semi-different pup.-

[aberrantangels]

When I copied my extant pups from LJ to DW, I took advantage of the longer character count for four usernames: good_or_awesome became forgoodorforawesome, max_a_mercer became maxwell_a_mercer, and ringo2omoshiro became ringo_to_omoshiro. I changed Hiro from katana_hacker to hiroaki_protagonist because reasons; I'm sure they seemed like good ones, maybe they actually were, but I can't remember them anymore.

[kd7sov]

I could just put "N/A" here, or not answer at all (as I've done more than once in the past), but there are some interesting things that go into that that I kind of want to examine.

So, let me start with clarity. Apart from Frederic, and the Spock journal I never actually used, I have never considered a different name for a journal than I ended up using. The reasons for this, I believe, are twofold.

The first fold is what I call my superpower. The first username I seriously consider, for whatever purpose, will be unavailable. Often, though not always, this extends beyond the first one, enabling me to suggest a number of usernames if I know the character well enough.

Second is related to some of the reasons I don't like Abrams' Trek reboot: basically, each entity is and only is itself. Which is to say, part of my mental definition of Captain Kirk includes that he is played by William Shatner. (Which is not to say Chris Pine is bad, he's just not Kirk to me, no matter what the script and makeup say.) And, for instance, Iroh allows for both Mako and Greg Baldwin, as long as the latter sounds enough like the former, so there's some wiggle room.

Thing is, it gets complicated with journal RP. Everyone's got a bunch of different icons, and some of them are the same face for different characters and some of them are different faces for the same characters and there's a bunch of different people with their own journals and their own interpretations of the same character and... And it's a bit distressing if I think about it too much. So mostly I just leave it at "[character] is [username], and [other username] is also [character] but they're a different continuity". (Oddly, applying multiverse logic to it does help.) So no, I don't change names.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The only one of mine I can think of who got a change of journal name, or made me consider one, was Adrian Shephard. When I created him at LJ, I seem to recall that journal names referencing HECU were all used up, so I went for a quote from the G-Man about how people who adapt and survive in horrible situations remind him of himself. 'remindmeofmyself' was too long, so Shephard got 'remindmeof_me', but when we came to DW I switched him to the name I'd originally wanted, hecu_marine.

[damncompass]

Joshua, Mark, and Val are my first choices for their journals.

Funny note about Val's: At the time I made her journal the first time, I didn't know that we even -had- an Ender, user name third_wiggin. For a while, all the Wiggins in the bar were something_wiggin. I just thought that was cool.

Funny note about Joshua's: There's a line in a deleted scene in the first episode he's in where Claudia goes to Artie, "Now shut up and see the damn compass!" I hadn't see the deleted scene when I came up with the journal name. Go me?

Helena's... I don't like at all. At some point, if I come up with something better, I'll probably change it, but for now, I wanted something that would work for either Victorian!Helena or Modern!Helena and that was just what fit.

Fantine's was just me playing around with underscores. dreamedadream was what I originally wanted, but it was taken. Frankly, I think I like the underscores better.

My journal is quinby. I've had that on both LJ and DW for ages. It's who I am. *shrug*

[vance_prime]

Back on LJ, Alyx's username was a_mere_child, which is a quote from the G-Man's description of her in Episode 2: "I acted in the face of objections that she was a mere child and of no practical use to anyone." Since that has conclusively been proven not to be the case, I decided it was time to change her username when I moved over to DW. In canon the Combine refer to Alyx as "Vance Subprime," but since the other Vance is no longer with us, she was promoted to vance_prime.

[bjornwilde]

Jessica, Andrea, and Brimstone all had obvious journal names (to me) and each was readily available.

Anton was a bit of work as I knew I wanted to use something like music diviner. Phonomancer was my first pick but of course that was taken for David Kohl from Phonogram. Looking at Greek roots, I found that 'melo' meant song and so I was set.

Thalia used to be Agiochos which is an epithet shared by both Zeus and Athena and means Aegis bearer. Once I moved Thalia to DW and through canon, I decided it didn't fit her anymore. Thinking about the Hunters, I realized there were like Pan's Lost Boys and so I thought of Lost Girl but of course the TV show had already claimed that, so I went with the Greek translation, chameno_koritsi.

Val used to be Val von Doom, which I of course would hear in my head as "Val von DOOOoooooOOOOooooom". As fun as that was, it didn't seem to fit her as she's grown so I shifted to time_dancer which is what she calls her power to move through time and space.

Quinlan took a little doing. I was tempted to go with something like "Jedi in Darkness", which is the title of his Omnibus, or something like "Psychometric" in reference to his psychometric abilities but I felt those just focused so small parts of his whole. Then, for some reason, I linked him with The Dude from The Big Lebowski and the_force_abides was the logical next step.

With Mulan, I had no clue what to use for a journal name until I came across an old journal I had made for Big Barda and it fit Mulan's nature perfectly, i.e. woman_of_valor.

Whops, forgot Hank. His first journal name was "To Be Proud" as a reflection of Raven's andproud but I realized it was too narrow a focus. Then I remembered Raven's line, "This is you Hank, no more hiding" once she sees him furry for the first time and realized that was perfect. He doesn't really become himself until he is forced to stop hiding.

[bbq_platypus]

I've always wished I'd come up with a better user name for Jim. Occasionally I've toyed with changing his username to something like "play_chess_screw," but I'm not quite sure about that name, either.

Caius originally went by fakeskoomajunkie. Decided that was a bit too on the nose, and went with oldsugartooth based on something one of the people at the South Wall Cornerclub calls him.

Kane's was originally peacethroughpower - which is one of Nod's many religious slogans/mantras/litanies. I decided, for reasons I don't entirely recall, to change it to closesecond after one of his lines from Tiberian Sun. ("No, I'm not God, but I'm a close second"). I think it might have been so I can have a separate account for NPCs on any hypothetical future OOMs involving Kane.

None of my current pups had any other screennames, if I recall correctly. Among now-inactive pups, during the switch over from LJ, Borgel went from oldcountryuncle.livejournal.com to fromtheoldcountry, which is what I always wanted it to be to begin with.

[minkhollow]

Cata and Sam's LJ-side journals were post_whitewash and doesnotmiss, respectively. In the former case, it was just the first thing that sprang to mind, and I'd considered changing it before the move to DW; in the latter, I couldn't get the specific canon line I was after on LJ, and snapped it up when we moved.

[inlovewithwords]

Mine: on LJ it was flytrue--a reference to Zoe's line at the end of Firefly ("she's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true").

Tavi: I've cycled through gaiusoctavian, tavar_of_alera, and now this one (student-of-impossibility). I actually like this one, finally, as it is both descriptive and not just his name.

I've never directly changed a Lois journal username. On LJ I had a journal name I meant to use for Superman: Earth One continuity Lois. Perry cuts a paragraph from her article; she complains that it was her favorite; he says that's why he's cutting it, and that she's too in love with the words.

When I moved to DW I found myself liking the username so much I summarily appropriated it for myself.