Meme!: What's in a Name?

[betterthanaplan]

Because a) real life is already irritating me today and I haven't even gone into work yet, b) I love this meme, and c) we haven't done it since May 2018. It's real simple! Just:

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

Feel free to reach back to old journals and NPC ones, I say. The more journal names the better!

Comments

[betterthanaplan]

In Haven, season two, when trapped in a building being attacked by aggressive plants, the following exchange occurs:

Duke: Tell me that you have a plan.
Audrey: Why would I need a plan? I've got you.
Duke: That's true. *offers her alcohol*

Then, a scene or two later, after he tackles Audrey out of the way of a root trying to attack her like a snake:

Duke: Guess I am better than a plan.

(They also maybe needed to plan things so much more. But it still makes for a great journal name. . . .)

Nina Argentum | Alluka (& Nanika) Zoldyck | Cait Sith

[sith_said]

ALAS my usernames aren't super exciting right now, but here's those currently on the island:

Nina Argentum | bookbeltof_love

It's literally just the name of her ultimate weapon lol. But it fits her really well as she's a schoolgirl obsessed with romance and trashy novels who does believe that love is the most powerful force.

Alluka (& Nanika) Zoldyck | that_oldsaying

It's totally a reference to the old saying of 'be careful what you wish for' and all the stories that go with it because Nanika's powers are basically that taken up to eleven.

I also appreciate it because I associate it with a lot of children's books (since a lot of them have this saying as a 'moral' of the story) and Alluka's a rather childish character, even though she's grown a lot since I apped her.

Cait Sith | sith_said

It's a play on the pronunciation of his name since it's not said as Sith a la Star Wars but rather as 'Kat Shee'.

And, well, since I've mentioned this to a few people it's not a 'complete' user name either. Or a spoiler for my apping plans lol.

Rather it's part two of one, since I'll be apping in Reeve Tuesti, who made Cait, in the future (I haven't decided exactly when yet) and Reeve's journal name is he_said for the full 'he said, she said'.

And the he_said / sith_said isn't just because it amuses me but also because canonically there's times when Reeve speaks through Cait (which won't be happening at all until Reeve's on the island) and the characters don't know who is talking.

[notarockharpist]

This is the only one that really needs explaining at this point, I think and I should probably be getting ready for work anyway.

So Yasha, as I've mentioned, is basically a fallen angel and is missing a chunk of her memory. In episode 65, "Chases and Trees," the Mighty Nein already know this, as well as the fact that at one point she was known by the name "Orphanmaker." So during that episode, they were in pursuit of an entity named Obann (a fiend, but they don't know that yet) who seems to have known Yasha by that name during the period of time she can't remember.

So the name comes from two conversations during that episode: the first one where Jester, half-jokingly, suggests that maybe Yasha can't remember being a rock star, and the second from a subsequent super awkwardly flirty conversation where she tells Beau about Jester's theory and is the most adorable dork about it.

[thishouseishaunted]

Night in the Woods begins with a moody little text block about Mae's grandfather, who was into ghost stories and a big part of Mae's young life. It includes a variety of possible quotes and random facts about life in Possum Springs, her hometown, and finishes with this:

"this house is haunted"
he said
and died.

When I was deciding I really was going to app Mae, I settled on this quote for her journal name because it's spooky and evocative of her canon's general atmosphere, and because Mae herself is haunted, by what she did shortly before coming to Fandom, by her grandfather's memory, by her dying hometown, by her parents' hopes and dreams for her she doesn't think she can live up to. By her own mental illness. By the old god living in the mines under her hometown. (By the entirely likely possibility that she's actually tapped into the fourth wall and able, on occasion, to see through the universe to the forces actually acting on her life, though never with anything resembling clarity, which impacts her ability to recognize that anyone around her is actually real -- or at least as real as she is. . . .)

Also, "nightmareeyes" was already taken. ;D

[outofherdepths]

I liked this because it's a double play on words. Lucy is out of her depths, literally, because she's a mermaid on land and her home beneath sea is far away. (And boy does she miss the warmth of her island waters like whoa).

But also figuratively because she's complete confused by human society. It's just completely different than what she's used to and it shows, even though she's pretending to be a Perfectly Normal Human.

I was torn between this and "cake_or_depths" because this girl LOVES food (especially noodles and cake) and who doesn't love a bit of Eddie Izzard in the morning?

[notarockharpist]

Well, now I'm sad you didn't go for the Eddie Izzard reference.

[white_oleander]

IT'S THE TITLE OF THE BOOK!

MY CLEVERNESS KNOWS NO BOUNDS!!!

[my_own_advocate]

Show!Lucifer absolutely relishes devil puns, and "let's play me's advocate for a second..." is an actual line from the show.

It also sums up some of his central issues and the massive chip on his shoulder pretty well, as well as satisfying my own need for puns, so hey!

[cypher_can_fly]

Owen's username is a stealth spoiler, but since I don't think anyone here is really aching to play Anthem anytime soon...

Owen is a cypher, a kind of human sensor-meets-computer-meets-internet, and his job is to interface with the idiot lancers who fly around in robot suits outside the safe fortress walls. There's a piece of codex in the game that details why cyphers never venture outside the walls themselves, which goes like this:

"Benwick Xan, a brilliant cypher in his day, thought he could pilot a javelin whilst ignoring his own heightened awareness. Although his initial tests were encouraging, things were not so simple in the face of genuine danger.

He hired a Freelancer to escort him into the wild; they hadn't gone three steps when they were attacked by skorpions. In the heat of battle, Benwick could not focus. He found when one of the beasts attacked, his attention was split: sensing a rise in Shaper energy to the East, picking up Arcanist distress signals, noting the rise in humidity due to recent rain, and dozens of other things that did not help at this moment.

He tried to fly, but accidentally fired his cannon. He tried to fire his cannon, but instead punched a nearby rock. He had no control. Tragically, it was he and not the skorpions who killed his escort."

So here comes the spoilery part:

..

..

..

..

..

Owen spends the game talking a great game about how much he wants to be a 'lancer as well as a cypher, but the player character doesn't do much more than humor him. When the player character's old cypher and lancer friends show up, Owen winds up shoved aside. He tries to fly a 'lancer suit but, see above, fucks up badly. The resulting dressing-down he gets from his BFF - the player - finally cracks the longstanding inferiority complex he has.

And then he steals the big magical MacGuffin 'lancer suit in the finale from you, fucking you over, and running off to join the bad guys. (This also ends badly, because he still can't use the suit properly, and the bad guys burn his face when it turns out he's useless.)

... hence: Cypher can fly, a distillation both of how much he privately feels like something that can be easily discarded (hi, issues from his youth), how he tried to fix it (becoming a Freelancer as well as a cypher) and noting how he's doomed to fail.

[intotheout]

I've explained Tip's before; it's actually a quote from J.Lo in canon, but I a) love the rhythm of it and b) thought it suited her as she came in as a freshman -- she was very much journeying "into the out", leaving her family and comfort zone and entire world behind!

For some others that have come and gone since the last one of these:

deaddadsclub: "There's a club. The Dead Dads Club. And you can't be in it until you're in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss... My dad died when I was nine. George, I'm really sorry you had to join the club."

That's one of the first really empathetic and most honest things that Cristina ever said (especially to George), and her father's death is a big influence on who she is as a person and a surgeon, so. deaddadsclub it was!

imastudent:




And, you know, she was, so. (In my original app for her, which has been shelved, she was going to be a townie. And while the irony of using "imastudent" for a townie was delightful, I was going to go with "idontantic" instead. . . .)

[thatwaslucky]

I'm terrible at usernames, so when I'm at a loss I try to get something from quotes said by OT about them. So thatwaslucky was due to an almost throwaway line in TFA where Rey saves Finn and just days it was lucky, which is kind of what she'd been attributing her Force powers to before knowing she had them. If I apped we with more canon, it'd probably be something different.

seriesofbaddecisions was the same thing, and how she explains naming her Mandalorian-killing superweapon after Bo-Katan's dead pacifist dutchess sister. Oops.

overparented was the same, and how Janet describes herself after her older brother gets in trouble with the law and got disowned by their father. With him gone she had to be the good one and got alllllll the parenting.

notconflicted is because look, this is a thing I do, and really this one is really Nick's fault. When explaining to her terrible canon boyfriend how she can separate duty and her personal life, she says she's not conflicted, which actually sums her up pretty well.

gobrookeyourself is also a quote, and it means exactly what you think it does, for the dirty reasons you think it does.

throughaphase was a play on her powers. Clever!

Jaina was originally tricker_twin, because in the NJO the Yuuzhan Vong put all this emphasis on the Solo twins, with Jacen as the slayer and Jaina as the trickster, which she embraced the hell out of. But once she got out of that canon and into series after that, I sent her away to age up with a canon catchup and the new name solo_sword, since I wanted the same naming convention and she was embracing the Sword of the Jedi role now.

[sake_shinigami]

Hes a Shinigami! And he likes sake!

AGAIN, MY WIT IS LIKE SHARPENED STEEL!!