I like the concept of liminal spaces, standing on a threshold between two states. I feel like it's something that applies to my life and my identity. From wikipedia:
My modus operandi with usernames is to go for some combination of size/amount+animal. Like, littlepygmylion was my deviantart username from way back when, and it was the first named account I'd ever made. I think I picked it as an attempt at aping common username styles at the time, but I'm not certain. I used it again when I joined up on some homestuck forum thing. Some place that hosts a butt ton of fan adventures? I dunno. tinyhydra was similarly chosen just because it sounds like a "username" to me, and you need one of those to join websites. I'm terrible at naming things, and especially bad at applying labels to myself.
Mine is a fan/rp name. Sive is an Irish name and was the wife of Finn MacCool, one of the country's legendary heroes (Irish King Arthur). Ambrai is the last name of the central family in the Ruins of Ambrai series by Melanie Rawn. When I started role playing in MUDs around 97 this was the character I made. I ended up keeping it because that's what a lot of people online know me as. I've been using it for almost 20 years now. It's almost never taken on a new site. The few times I've found it taken is because I signed up and then forgot. If you want to find me on a service search for this name and you'll probably find me.
Oh yea. I was happy seeing yours starting in 91. When these memes go round Tumblr I feel old. *shakes raised cane* in my day we had to telnet into a game using our 28.8 modem. But we were happy about it.
This username is just the meaning of/long form of Anise which is the name of both one of my OCs and potentially my own name in the future. I hate my birth name and do not go by it aside from with family and for professional purposes. I go by an internet nickname among most people I interact with day to day but I'd really like a 'real' name again, and I like Anise, so I might go for it. Off this site I go by a nickname that's just a shortened form of a character name I used first in Everquest and then in World of Warcraft.
Mine was originally for an rp two or three years ago, for a character that does not have a canonical last name. Since we were assuming she was likely Swedish, this seemed to fit well especially given her personality(Alska means love in Swedish). I've used this for a handful of other things, but nothing I visit frequently anymore.
copy-pasting from an old thread ... :P About ten years ago (almost to the day, actually [editor's note: April 26] ...weird), I signed up on BZPower.com, a Bionicle fanforum. I really liked the female character Gali, and I was twelve, so I came up with the mouthful "KanohiKaukauNuva-GaliNuva". Why did I think this was a good idea? Fuck if I know. I'd already come up with a far better name for my damn Hotmail account. ("FallenRemnant". yeah I was an angsty teen yep uh huh. also it was a book reference.) It was quickly (and kindly) pointed out by the denizens of the forum that this... was a bit of a mouthful. Being a smart twelve-year-old, I saw their point, and shortened it to "KKN_GN". This stuck for some time. In the fall, I made some really good friends on the forum, and they started referring to me as "KKN", to save on typing. I was cool with this. We then moved to instant messaging, and in the extraordinarily rapid-fire chats we had, I morphed into "Kay", which I thought was a fine name. (There are still people who call me Kay. Usually, depending on the milieu, I will instinctively answer to it. Names are weird.) I discovered Phantom of the Opera around the same time, and really got into it as I entered my teens. This was not only because I adored the story, but also because I discovered I was capable of singing all the high notes. By the time I was 15, I had fairly definitively decided I would be going into professional classical singing, and I wanted an online alias that aligned with this in some subtle fashion - so I stole the "lotta" from "Carlotta", and became "Kaylotta". I've used it since, and almost exclusively, though I am very open with my real name and it's easily linked. When "Kaylotta" is taken, I usually use "Inyalin". This comes from my brief Tolkien fanaticism, where I dove into Quenya, and came up with my own Elvish name - Inyalinda Quenósanwë, meaning "woman of the beautiful voice // speaks thoughts".
When I was a Very Small, I had a Chinese-Australian friend (raised speaking exclusively English) who would practise writing her Chinese characters during class. She gave everyone Chinese nicknames as she learnt words, so I, for various reasons, was 'White Cloud', or 'Bai Yun'. Which was my username for a lot of things for a very long time, and is still (although horribly misspelt) my email address. A few years later I was obsessed with A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which there is a fungus called Medusoid Mycelium. I, being still Very Small, didn't make the connection that mycelium was a part of a mushroom and not a word that the author made up, so I decided Mycelia was a Cool Name. It's now my 'professional' username on places where I want to sound relatively cool and not be connected to my weaboo past. Haemoheretic is one of the pesterchum handles for my four fantrolls. I liked that one the most so I coopted it for things in places where Mycelia was taken or didn't work for various reasons. And finally, a confession: there is a Something Awful Forums member (specifically, a mod for the pets subforum) named LITERALLY A BIRD, whose username I adored so much I stole it for here.
@Wiwaxia your pic looks like a dragon tribble. I logically know that it is not a dragon tribble and yet...
OKAY since I'm really loving all of these stories, and I've got some time, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna reply to EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU. <3 @Lazarae That's some pretty cool reasoning! Also, forever laughing because SO MANY LAZARUS-ES. All of the Lazarus-es. All of them. @littlepinkbeast Hehehe, tiny pink haired avatars, that's fun! I've never been able to settle on one common-looking avatar thing to use, other than they've consistently had green eyes which is totally not influenced by Harry Potter @whimsicalobservant I gotta admit, the Homestuck naming scheme is one of my favorites. Right up with the Warriors naming scheme. It helps that it's pretty much specifically formulated to work for usernames! Kite Winter is pretty cool too, especially for that symbolism :U @Fish butt omfg I'm cry, that's the BEST name progression ever. I've always kind of wondered why you chose to be a fish butt! Heheheh. @WithAnH Ahhh yeah I think I can guess. Good ol' spelling variations. I know them all too well--my full name has at least two, maybe three different spellings, and my irl nickname has at least four spellings. And somehow, without fail, people NEVER get it right. @Emma In middle school I had like, three friends named Emma :'D I've always thought it was a pretty name! ... I'm curious though, how would Emsz be pronounced? Just like... the plural of the letter M, or...? :U @TwoBrokenMirrors Hahaha, oh man, I used to have a bunch of Neopets accounts too but I don't remember the usernames for most of them, other than drag0n202 which had absolutely zero significance to me other than I liked dragons, lol. I get what you mean about the usernames being different "hats" though! And the reasoning behind TwoBrokenMirrors is super cool o3o @Elaienar Ooooh! I remember doing that similar to an Avatar character I once made and then promptly forgot about. Toying with name meanings is fun, lol. Starsea could totally be a kickass name all on its own, though. @Deresto oh no help I'm laughing way harder than I should be at Danu. I don't even know why it's funny, just that it issss. @littlemissCodeless Heh, well your inability to code gave you a pretty sweet username. Idk if it's just me but it kinda has a sassy tone to it, almost? Hooray for the Homestuck username format tho :D @swirlingflight ooooooooh :U I've always wanted to fly, too, which is why bats are one of my favorite animals, I think. Still, Swirlingflight has a really cool ring to it! @Exohedron Well, personally I think you succeeded in the Pretentious-yet-nonsensical thing, lol. I do agree that it sounds cool though! @Void Ain't nothin' wrong with that. It's a fitting username, and Void does have some pretty cool connotations! @Wiwaxia huh, that's a spiffy little invertebrate! I'm assuming, because of the extensive research you seem to have done on them, you really like the little guys? Can I ask what it is that you like so much about them, or is it just the whole thing that you like? :U @Morven Well it's a pretty darn cool name! Sounds like it could be the name of a powerful witch or queen or something! That's kinda funny about the emails, though. Hope none of them have been too personal! :0 @pixels Pixels as precious cinnamon roll: CONFIRMED. Heh, would the Agent_florida thing by any chance be a reference to RvB? It's been a while since I've watched the series but I seem to remember the line... but maybe I'm remembering wrong, lol. That happens a lot. I'm forever laughing at buttholewhisperer, though. XDD @wixbloom Whoa, that's some pretty rad symbolism there! sorry I'm an English major and have a Thing for symbolism, haha I've been kind of wondering for a while where Wixbloom came from, and I am not disappoint :'D Aaaand I think I'll split here and tackle page two in a separate post because this is HELLA LONG I'm sorry
The name is the avatar plus a distinguishing letter. The photo was taken by a neighbor a few hundred feet from my house. I like them.
Yup. Moment of silence for the only fandom on the internet where I was ever called a cunt to my face. *pours one out for my homies*
@a tiny mushroom Sometimes simple is best! @liminal That's some fun symbolism, and also a really cool word! You go, challenge those social classifications! :'D @tinyhydra I'm... not positive, but littlepygmylion is sort of ringing a bell in the back of my mind? Hm. I'm gonna have to go check to see if I've seen you around before! But that's a really fun naming scheme, lol. Have you ever had any usernames involving large animals instead of small ones? @siveambrai Oooh, sweet! I'm kind of surprised by how many people have usernames taken from RP characters, actually. For me it's always been the other way around! Also gonna second Wixbloom about Finn MacCool being an amazing hero name. @Aniseed Anise is a really pretty name! Best of luck with getting your name changed! I'm right there with you on the "hating the birth name" thing though. I've never liked mine, everrrrr. @Alska Another RP character username! It's pretty sweet, and with a pretty sweet meaning lol. ... I have to apologize, though, because I keep misreading it as Alaska lmao @Kaylotta Ahahah oh man that is a mouthful of a username. I like the end result, though! It's got a fun ring to it, lol. @(Not) Literally A Bird Well, for the record, Mycelia is a pretty Cool Name. The username you have now is pretty amusing, though, even if it was inspired by someone else! @jpronghorn Whoa! You've got pronghorns that go that close to your house? That's awesome! I like pronghorns too, lol, they're pretty awesome. Though needless to say I don't live anywhere that they'd get that close, heh.
Gonna join in on the RP handle train here - "Nai" is short for "Nailo" which was DND Book Elven for "nightbreeze" which 13 year old me thought was really cool. It's just kind of stuck. "Starcrossedsky," in addition to being a cool celestial surface meaning, is actually a complex reference to my favorite Kingdom Hearts character. "Starcrossed" meaning fated for tragedy (as in starcrossed lovers), and "sky" from the name of the main character, Sora, equals Xion, the character derived from Sora who was erased from everyone's memories and basically has the Most Upsetting Story Of All Time. The only other handle I use regularly is "flamesfanned" when starcrossedsky won't fit the character limit, and that's a reference to an AU of a Tales of the Abyss character. Who is also my baby. They're all my babies.
@raginghearts It's like the plural of M, so sort of emsssss or emzzzz, depending on whether you like an s or a z sound :)
@raginghearts, I wasn't very active on deviantart, so I dunno if that's me you're thinking of. On the MSPA forums whose name escapes me atm, I was littlepygmylioness, and had a bunch of comments on a variety of fan adventures. I was embarrassingly active on one of the Vriska trash bin threads, as well as something called Heartstuck maybe? Some lesbian dating sim staring Kanaya? And some bloodswap where all the personalities were dictated by user suggestion. My explosives enthusiast greenblooded Vriska got in, if I recall correctly, but not my professional wrestler/politician blueblooded Terezi, which made me sad cause I thought it was kind of clever at the time. As for the naming thing, the only other usernames I can recall are smallishdog and tenthousandcrabs, so. No. Nothing big. Huh, weird.
