meme: what's in a name?

[begmetwice.livejournal.com]

Hello, one and all. I'm in the office by myself today and figured that this might be a good meme to throw out there with the newbies coming in tomorrow -- plus, we just had AU kiddos and dead people and graduation guests! Tons of usernames to explain!

Plus, we haven't done it since March of last year!

Tell us about your character's LJ name, what it means and how you decided on it?

(It is not a complex meme. Sometimes simplicity is just fine.)

Comments

[ultimatehottie.livejournal.com]

Johnny is from the Ultimate Universe, has fire powers, and thinks very highly of himself. IT WORKS ON MULTIPLE LEVELA. TWO OF THEM.

[sciclone]

sciclone is because she likes science, she's a clone, and sometimes puns are irresistible. So that's a simple one.

not_every_mage is a phrase that crops up a few times in Dragon Age II. Once, a pro-Chantry character is saying there may be some good mages left, that they aren't all violent abominations like Anders. (I'm paraphrasing.) The other, it's part of a conversation on how neither guards nor mages can be trusted entirely. I liked it for Anders' journal name because he's not the same as every other mage in Thedas -- in good ways or in bad.

not_a_moonie is ... a username I'll change if I ever think of anything better, tbh. But the idea is that Saga's slang for people from Wreath is "moonies." Alana's from Landfall proper, so she's not a moonie. It also seemed fitting for an alien's journal name to have a space reference in it.

And bitten_notshy is because Jack's whole thing with Sebastien involved getting bitten, and he is not in the least shy in any sense. Plus, I liked the idea of riffing on a saying. Now he's a werewolf ... and still not shy.

[that_oldsaying]

This one is totally a reference to 'be careful what you wish for' since that's basically Nanika's entire thing and I couldn't figure out a way to condense the saying itself into a proper-looking username.

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

notaweenie Kinda sorta came from canon. A bully kept calling Barry a weenie until Barry poked him on a certain nerve cluster that made the bully temporarily blind. Barry can be kind of a dick at times.

fracknotfrak - There was an episode in Longmire where the local reservation was protesting against the fracking practices of the company where Vic's husband worked.



The meta amused me.

wandering_stone Was a bit of a mish-mash. In canon she was mistaken as a god by the Egyptians. Coyote still calls her that on a regular basis. However Jones thinks of herself as simply a stone/rock. So. Wandering Stone. Unfortunately notarobot was already taken. Still thinking of changing that someday.

buzzkillcaptain is from a long line of user names I registered for Dipper. He was called "Captain Buzzkill" in an episode. I also have dipper_pines, dr_funtimez, mystery_twin. All of which are nicknames or references for Dipper. .

[traded4an-oz.livejournal.com]

traded4an_oz: When Jesse is in post-rehab group therapy at the end of S3, his group leader asks him what would make him happy -- not what'll make him money, but what'll make him happy -- as far as an occupation. (Jesse has lied and says he works at a laundromat...which is true, except that he's making meth in a secret lab under the laundromat.) Jesse says that he'd like to work with his hands, and elaborates:

Jesse: I took this vo-tech class in high school, woodworking. I took a lot of vo-tech classes, because it was just big jerk-off, but this one time I had this teacher by the name of...mister...Mr. Pike. I guess he was like a Marine or something before he got old. He was hard-hearing. My project for his class was to make this wooden box. You know, like a small -- just like a...like a box, you know, to put stuff in. So I wanted to get the thing done as fast as possible. I figured I could cut classes for the rest of the semester and he couldn't flunk me as long as I, you know, made the thing. So I finished it in a couple days. And it looked pretty lame, but it worked. You know, for putting in or whatnot. So when I showed it to Mr. Pike for my grade, he looked at it and said, "Is that the best you can do?" At first I thought to myself, "Hell yeah, bitch. Now give me a D and shut up so I can go blaze one with my boys." I don't know. Maybe it was the way he said it, but...it was like he wasn't exactly saying it sucked. He was just asking me honestly, "Is that all you got?" And for some reason, I thought to myself, "Yeah, man, I can do better." So I started from scratch. I made another, then another. And by the end of the semester, by like box number five, I had built this thing. You should have seen it. It was insane. I mean, I built it out of Peruvian walnut with inlaid zebrawood. It was fitted with pegas, no screws. I sanded it for days, until it was smooth as glass. Then I rubbed all the wood with tung oil so it was rich and dark. It even smelled good. You know, you put nose in it and breathed in, it was...it was perfect.

Group Leader: What happened to the box?

Jesse Pinkman: I -- I gave it to my mom.

Group Leader: Nice. You know what I'm gonna say, don't you? It's never too late. They have art co-ops that offer classes, adult extension program at the University....

Jesse: You know, I didn't give the box to my mom. I traded it for an ounce of weed.

And that's one of those moments that makes me really, really love Jesse -- more than just as the very cute boy who cries and that the dad from Malcom in the Middle yells at, you know? It's just such a perfect metaphor for how Jesse feels about himself, about how willing he is to push himself, and how susceptible he is to the pressure of his peers/the call of drugs.

ANYWAY. The others are less long.

begmetwice: Comes from this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq1YpT6pYfw). Goddammit I don't really like Cumberbatch on his own, but he is mesmerizing with my girl. (Also, all the eyefucking. All of it. Those two. All day.)

likes_ducklings: From this exchange (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPVxPkW3084)!

Flynn Rider: Ah, there it is! The Snuggly Duckling. Don't worry, very quaint place, perfect for you. Don't want you scaring and giving up on this whole endeavor, now do we?
Rapunzel: Well...I do like ducklings!
Flynn Rider: YAY!

pasunereveuse: Bastardized French (I mean, it could be right but it's been a solid ten years since I spoke the language with any sort of regularity beyond, "Oh! I know what they're saying in Home Alone II!") for "not a dreamer." Dual meanings, here -- Celia's very practical and not especially dreamy, but also the fans of the Night Circus are called rêveurs (and I gave Celia the feminine form in her username), and she won't be a rêveuse -- she's part of the Circus herself.

notmysupervisor: It's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEwlW5sHQ4Q) her (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1XEAZ34qYc) catchphrase (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIaTIxi9LfA)!

[justlurkinghere]

justlurkinghere is because Derek's entire purpose in season one of Teen Wolf seemed to be lurking in the background. Nbd.

imafuturist was from the show where Tony was trying to explain his philosophy on things. Also, I had to come up with something different enough from not_ironmaiden and hoorayimrich

dwarvenswagger is what happens when you listen to Uptown Funk and Turn Down For What while reading Tolkien. Yeah.

worstofalltime is a phrase Wash uses a lot! Kind of. It's actually 'That was the worst [blank] ever. Of all time.'

[seveninchmotto]

smilestopscars: Quoth Ava the firebug, Ezra Sagishi is nothing but time-stoppingly, heart-rendingly, sent-straight-from-temptation gorgeous. Good cheekbones, dark hair with deep russet tones, amber-golden eyes that look lined in kohl, and a smile that actually does stop traffic. I've seen it happen. Twice.
Sadly, 'smilestopstraffic' is two characters too long, so I rephrased. (You can also cut up 'smilestopscars' into 'smile stop scars' which, while not very grammatical, still vaguely touches on what Ezra keeps hidden from view behind his easy-going nature. And that's enough to amuse me.)

seveninchmotto: "I do not understand how you humans can walk in shoes that are that tall." "It's my motto," said Isabelle, with a sultry smile. "'Nothing less than seven inches.'" Meliorn gazed at her stonily. "I'm talking about my heels," she said. "It's a pun. You know? A play on —"
Izzy likes high heels and using her sexuality like a weapon. And also making dirty jokes. One of my fave usernames, especially considering I didn't give it very much thought since she was just a PW NPC at that point.

breakfastlover: "So the Kid said something about breakfast." "Uh, well he must be fucking drunk 'cause I don't cook no fucking breakfast." "... I wasn't taking about you cooking it. He just said you like breakfast food. And we were gonna swing by IHOP on the wa–– Okay! Uh, good talk. Um, y'know, I'll be outside with the rest of the breakfast lovers of the world."
Mike backtracks like whoa and still ends up failing at talking to Brooke, who still later on becomes his love interest. (Brooke's PW journal was, of course, breakfastliker.) I like the username because it's silly, but still also reminds me of a good character moment of Mike's.

electrocynic: Her cape name's Electroclash, and she's cynical. Sometimes I am not very creative.

whenshewasnice: "She used to be so nice!"
Because this is Envy when she was nice. I also have whenshewasnt for after she becomes Envy, but we'll see if I actually make the switch.

everyonestype: "Oh, and FYI? I'm everyone's type."
Jackson is so full of himself, oh my god.

vanillajello: Kate really likes vanilla pudding cups.

[traded4an-oz.livejournal.com]

I've actually been reading Ezra's username as "smiles top scars," which is also true! (At least, for me. Smiling > getting banged up.) SO MANY LAYERS.

[boneyard_girl]

boneyard_girl is because the trailer-area where the carnival members live is called the bone yard, and having been born on the midway, the carnival is in Ada's blood and bones.

[goforthe_optics]

goforthe_optics: Okay, so in gameplay terms, as an engineer, one of Tali's skills in ME2 and ME3 is to deploy combat drones, which basically look like flying globes of light that can distract enemies and also zap them and knock a couple of bars off their shield health. She happened to name her combat drone Chatika vas Paus (who is TOTALLY A MORE AWESOME DRONE THAN GLYPH, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, LIARA), and will occasionally be heard in the background during battles yelling things like "Nothing's faster than Chatika vas Paus!" or "Go for the optics, Chatika! Go for the optics!"

Which is completely a Baldur's Gate reference, yes. Bioware loves self-referential in-joke stuff. (I see you there in the Leviathan DLC, ship named the MSV Kirkwall.)

The underscore is where it is because every other version of this username was already taken or purged, and I didn't feel like buying a rename token.

Not even kidding, though, if it weren't both super unwieldy and too long for LJ to accept, I would have gone for "emergencyinductionport."


(I couldn't find a link to the good gifset that isn't blocked on the network here.)

filleauloup: I'll spare you the long quote version of this by now, but Éponine has an awesome scene where she's confronting her father and his gang in this amazing, heartbreaking plan of mixed-up motivations that involves both preventing them from robbing Valjean and keeping Marius and Cosette apart. When her father calls her a bitch, she starts laughing in this half-unhinged way and says she can't be the daughter of a dog because she's the daughter of a wolf ("je ne suis pas la fille au chien, puisque je suis la fille au loup"). I love that scene and that line, and I think it's a great reference to how she's got a completely screwed up sense of morality because of how she was raised.

wildandbrave: I wanted Cosette to have a username in French, that was a direct quote from the book, to match Éponine's, but I couldn't find anything succinct enough that would work and wouldn't look really weird, like "faroucheetbrave" would have. Wanting to use that particular quote came from how I have a big chip on my shoulder about people blowing Cosette off about being fragile and useless compared to Éponine because SCREW YOU PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT A COMPETITION AND THEY'RE BOTH AWESOME.

*ahem*

So I went with an English translation of it instead.

tombeparterre: Okay, so I totally failed at doing anything with Gavroche and Fantine during the Field of Dreams plot, but I'm not going to let that stop me from rambling about this username anyway.

The musical gets a lot of things about Gavroche wrong: his age, for one, because he's supposed to be about 12 or 13, not 9, but this is what you get when Boublil and Schönberg got the idea to turn Les Misérables into a musical while watching a production of Oliver!, I guess. They didn't get it wrong, though, that he was killed by the Guard while taking ammunition off dead soldiers, and that he was singing to taunt them at the time.

He sings a lot during the book, but in this particular scene he was singing a really sarcastic song about how his crappy lot in life was all to blame on the Enlightenment: Je suis tombé par terre, c'est la faute à Voltaire, le nez dans le ruisseau, c'est la faute à Rousseau. (I fell to the earth because of Voltaire, my nose in the gutter because of Rousseau.) It's actually a lot longer than that: there are several verses, which were used almost verbatim in the 1980 French concept album so yeah, you can actually sing it to the tune of "Little People" even though "Little People" is kind of twee and awful in comparison.

Anyway, given that they're both, you know, incredibly unfortunate, "fell to earth" (even if it looks more like "fall to earth" because I can't use accents in LJ names, but eh, whatever, it still works) was an appropriate journal name. Too bad I never actually used it . . .

[necroslacker]

necroslacker: I was lazy on this one but I love the username still. Sam's described as both as slacker and a necromancer so I just smushed the two words together.

halfbad: I used the first book's title for Nathan's username but it works to describe him too. Half of him is Black Witch, half is White Witch so he thinks there's a good half and a bad half inside him.

nimeni: I picked this up after it was purged and became available. Nimeni, in Romanian (according to the book), means nobody which is his name.

flickofawrist: In Flick's canon, he's described as an incredible thief and pickpocket. With just a flick of the wrist, he can lift your valuables. flickofthewrist was a little too long so I shortened it up and I love it.

kirked: This is another one I picked up after it was purged because...IDK. I wasn't really fond of his previous username and let's be honest, he goes out and Kirks a lot of people, whether they be female or male, human or not human. He leaves his mark.

[bestatmystery]

I like to make usernames from character quotes. 99.9% of my usernames will come from there.

• bestatmystery: She's the self-declared mystery master! She actually quotes this in "Murder She Writes", which is available to buy but not for free, so I can't link directly to where she says it, but dammit, SHE IS, and the other mystery kids of Tackleford all acknowledge it.
• locointhecoco: Oddly enough, this was Pinkie referring to somepony else. She does later talk bout being totally "coco-loco", though, so she's at least moderately self-aware. . . .
  NPC: herrocktorate: When Maud visits Pinkie in canon, it's because she's about to go on a long research trip for "her rocktorate" in rock studies. Maud likes rocks.
• tigerundercover: Not a direct quote, but the best sounding variation on the "would you see a tiger and want to cover it up?" thing that Erik says to Raven when he tells her he finds her beautiful as her true-blue self. (And that relationship turns out to be pretty gd fucked up, but it's still a REALLY SWEET MOMENT, okay?)
  NPCs: gothisgroove: Because it amuses me terribly that Charles Xavier spends a good chunk of First Class calling things "groovy" and hitting on people.
• vdistinctive: It's a thing he says. A lot. And it's way easier to turn into a username than "Dammit, Hardison", "I've dated a lot of [fill in profession]", or "You never know when you're going to have to fight [in a specific type of situation/a specific sort of creature]". Boy has a lot of catchphrases.
  NPCs: hitorgrift: she's the daughter of a hitter and a grifter. She does both. And it sounds neat 'cause it sounds like "hit or miss". La!
• 14andseven: This one actually isn't a quote (which is weird!). Roland's canon states that becoming a full fledged master bard takes 21 years (and I'm paraphrasing this): 7 learning, 7 practicing, and 7 playing. At the time of canon, Roland has been playing the guitar for 14 years, so he's just starting his final seven. 14 and seven. Tada!
  NPCs: darkdoesntknock: Roland's magical angelish friend. It's pointed out to Roland in canon when he's all paranoid that the person who wants into his friend Rebecca's apartment might be from the Dark that "dark probably wouldn't knock". And this is true. Evan is totally Light. And knocks.
• lovemykilt: "ilovemykilt" was taken.
  NPCs: hasafirstname: AU kid! Who has a first name! While Priestly pretends he doesn't. It's not complicated.

[nookiepowered]

Liiiike I even have anyone who hasn't already been explained or isn't painfully obvious, but:

nookiepowered: It's a Kenzi complaint, while moving a heavy piece of stolen furniture with Bo. "Not everyone here is a nookie-powered Amazon."

needsaparrot: Xander: "I might need a parrot." / Willow: "Huh?" / Xander: "Well, to go with the eyepatch, to really complete the look."

callmemavy: Falls into the obvious category probably, but also her dad actually does call her Mavy-wavy when he's trying to sweet-talk her.

Former characters and alternate journals in far too much detail here .

Bonus stupid meta: Bo is actually writing her name in this icon.

[thegreywaren.livejournal.com]

thegreywaren: Ronan's name is simple. He's a greywaren in canon so I just stuck the word 'the' at the beginning and voila! Nice and simple but I like it despite that. It makes me happy.

[not_every_mage]

I thought his user name was a random Dragon Age reference for the longest time.

[seeks_truth]

seeks_truth is pretty simple on the surface: Cassandra's a Seeker of Truth. At first I thought it was too simple (some of y'all have suggested some play on 'disgusted_noise') but then I realized that's Cass in a nutshell: to the point.

And looking for the truth in a myriad of ways-- it becomes part of her job as the Right Hand of the Divine and the Inquisition later (though lmao Leliana what were you thinking letting Cass run an interrogation) and she is perennially in search of the truth in all things, as she wishes to act honestly and honorably. So. Not so lazy after all. In retrospect.

doesnotkneel is a reference to several things; Ed is often (sometimes self-)described as someone who does not kneel, in various places. There's the monologue from the cinematic trailer for ACIV (which is often attributed to Edward but imo seems to come from some random sailor instead) which refers to some who have woken up and 'choose to stand, not to kneel'. Likewise, in another trailer, Edward announces that he will 'bend my knee to no man'.

Those are the heroic references. The usage of some form of that description that made me want to use it, though, is from the novelization, where Edward picks a fight with some nobles who were harassing a girl at the tavern. They demand he kneel for them, he proclaims that he 'does not kneel' to anyone (paraphrased, I don't have the book here) and they promptly slam his face into the floor, after which his future wife has to burst in and save him from the nobles and himself.

Which is the most Edward thing ever so I had to use it.

fjordicswagger I have no idea how I came up with. It was a weird chain of thoughts starting with 'god, she's got swagger', then thinking randomly of the parrot sketch due to Tamsin's 'dying and then coming back' powers, and then realizing that she's uber uber Nordic even in terms of mythology and the parrot's pining for the fjords and I think I'm funny, basically.

saddeserthermit is entirely Fry's fault by proxy, since her Anakin frequently referred to Obi-Wan as 'deciding to run off to passive-aggressively be a sad desert hermit' or something like it in threads with Atton. Which snuck into our email conversations about me apping Obi-Wan and whoops there was an account.

suitablyheroic is the only straight-up quote one I actually have this time around, which is new for me. It's quintessentially Atton, though: during the finale of his game, the Lost Jedi minus Exile get it into their heads they want to attack the super-powerful evil Sith Lady. He tries to talk them out of it, they won't budge, and instead the entire crew shows up to Evil Sith Lady to spit heroic one-liners.

They each take their turn spitting out stuff like "And I stand with her!" "And so do all the Jedi!" all bombastically heroic-- and then Atton wanders in, sounding like he just shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets, "And now I come in, saying something suitably heroic."