What's In a (user)Name? · 11:00pm Jul 25th, 2016
(In which I put on my most pretentious of hats)
So, I got an email asking me about my username. I figured this would be a fun little story to tell to people who are mildly curious and feel like wasting a few minutes reading where it came from. Anyways, to get to that, we need to go all the way back to my precursor name, and that means taking me back to the dark days of my high school years.
My username for accounts in days of yore originally started as Mr. Pope, as a shitty joke directed towards a friend who, in a little sketch we were coming up with, had a character refer to the Pope as Mr. Pope. I found the accidental title hilarious and used it. (Actually, my first real online username was kotorfan04, but I couldn't use that for one account for some reason. I think it involved Xbox live being awful.)
Then, I had a problem with losing the account name (again, thanks Xbox live, your shittiness drives forward progress) and needing to change it. I wanted to keep it in the pope theme and preserve the spirit of the juxtaposition. I started riffing on things associated with the Pope and stuck on his staff. It kind of sounded like the last syllable of mister, so I kept punning on it. I played with the sound of This Staff, which sounded very much like mister and tried to make it congruent with Pope without ruining it with any extra syllables, but that wasn't working, but as I was free associating, I figured that This Staff sounded like Distaff, which generally means "Of or having to do with women," and my main familiarity with the word came through the phrase Distaff Counterpart, which basically refers to female characters that exist mainly to serve as female-gendered versions of male characters.
Immediately, the idea of a female pope struck me as humorous, and that's the second I decided on my username. The two words flowed together when you said them, but they also had a contradiction in terms. It preserved the DNA of Mr. Pope but also established itself as its antithesis. It was a joke on three levels and none of them were actually funny to anyone but me. I had an online identity that was distinct, didn't divulge personal information, but it also had a soul that resonated with me, so... yeah, ever since then, I've always been Distaff Pope.
So, I suppose the moral of this story is that if you want a username you like, throw shitty injokes into Xbox Live's broken account destroying madness until something you love pops out. The second moral is that Xbox Live is awful. The third moral is that I literally can't say no to the chance to spin the most mundane of my bullshit into pretentious swill, like an even more awful version of Rumpelstiltskin.
Anyways, hope something in this drivel was amusing/informative/not awful. What are your username stories?
Alamandir was the randomly generated name of a Wood Elf Ranger/Sorcerer (if I recall correctly) I played in Neverwinter Nights 2. I never beat the game with that character, but it stuck. Before that i used the name Eram with some numbers attached, since most places have a minimum character requirement, and I believe it was the name of a demon in a book i read when I was like 8 or something.
My story is a bit more boring. My user name on FimFiction was originally my first initial and last name ( a carry over from my time in the military) and it was alright. No one seemed to mind or they didn't seem to notice. No one asked, anyway. A couple of years later, while at my second BronyCon, I was asking my friends how they came up with their convention names. They had used their Fim Fic names. When it came back around to me, I told them my con name was different from the user name. When I told them how I came up with my con name (because at the time, I was the oldest Brony I knew), they said I should change it. It just seemed to fit!
Twelve Song is just a ship name, between Capaldi's Doctor and River Song. I'm actually thinking might change it.
4112651 Implying my story is interesting. Yours was a fun read.
4112652 Hey, I like the username. And I like the ship. Wish we'd gotten a bit more of Twelve Song, although I think we all know Missy's the doctor's only real partner. They just have an open relationship.
4112644 I mean, my very first username, even before kotorfan was after my awesome squid dude in Star Wars Galaxies. Also, ask me how much we need another Star Wars Galaxies.
4112661 How much do we need a new Star Wars: Galaxies?
4112667 A lot.
Honestly, I loved the idea of an MMO that actually focused on player-interaction over scripted quests. I know EVE Online kind of does it, but EVE Online is a libertarian hellscape full of scum and treachery which requires you to basically do a second job. There was just something fun about SW:G where you could literally build a town, form a community, and have a small business going. I could go into a cantina, talk with the owner, and start jamming on the flute to buff other players and make some money. You could just be a musician or a doctor or whatever and that was a totally valid option.
4112661 Oh goodness, Missy is...yeah, you're right about that. Even I I don't really want to admit it.
4112661
Thanks!
Mine doesn't really have all that interesting of an origin. My favorite story on here is Fallout: Equestria and my favorite pony is Pinkie Pie. So I jus combined Pinkie Pie with the theme of FO:E together (Pink + Ap(ocalypse)) and changed the o to an a to make it flow better.
I often wondered the origin of your user name! The story behind it did not disappoint!
Mine came about from a different username on a site related to the powerpuff girls, and I wanted my username to be clever so I could be one of the cool kids. I was big on the color peach at the time, and I was thinking about the character Mrs.Keane, so I came up with Peachy Keane. Don't ask me how I managed to make such a magnificent punny name seeing as I'm not a particularly punny person, but I'm sure glad I came up with it. One of my better username picking moments! Anyway, I found out someone from the site had a story on FIMfiction, and I was already a fan of Pony and loved to read fan fiction, so I created an account, this time using the more straightforward, less punny name 'Peachy Keen' andddddd here I am years later devouring horse words daily!