Getting to know you!

[rheasilvia]

Since I don't know half of you half as well as I should like,* I thought I'd try a "getting to know you"-question!

How did you choose your LJ username?For me, it all started with the fact that I am title- and pseudonym-impaired. Right from the start, the name I used in fandom was my real name: Sylvia. When I migrated from mailing lists to LJ, I

Comments

[rheasilvia]

You have the perfect pseud! I have always loved it. I had no idea your husband came up with it. What an enabler. ;-)

Look, matching icons. :-)

[japanimecrazed]

I picked japanimecrazed for my AOL email address back when I was ten years old and just beginning my anime obsession. I used that email and that name for all my personal internet stuff. I'm horribly embarrassed by it now, but not enough to go to the trouble of changing it and getting used to a new pseud.

[rheasilvia]

Ah, I see! That explains why - in defiance of your LJ name - you never seemed particularly anime crazed to me. Of course, it's hard to tell with these things. ;-)

I don't think you need to be embarrassed, though! In a way, the name is a historical monument to the beginnings of your fannishness. Wear it with pride! :-)

[grimmsical]

I used to be "grimm psyke" as an...unfortunate mishap of middle school. My current one is a portmanteau of "grimm" and "whimsical." Everyone knows me as grimm now, though, so I am a wee bit stuck with it (branding, I guess.) But in general, for things other than writing, I change usernames like I change pants.

[rheasilvia]

Oooh, now I am curious as to the details of that unfortunate mishap... *g*

I've always liked your LJ name portmanteau. It has a nice ring to it, and the melding of those two terms is very evocative! Was there any particular reason for choosing those two terms in particular?

Branding is good! Though I'm sure if you really wanted a change, it wouldn't be a problem, either... the readers would find you. :-)

[grimmsical]

Haha well my friend was pestering me to make an AIM account, so I told her to make me one and she asked me what I wanted the sn to be so I told her, "grimm psyche" and she, well, you can tell where she went wrong. I took rather a tongue-in-cheek liking for it after a while though.

Mostly I wanted a single-word screenname (and to get rid of the misspelling), and I like fairytales. I'm not sure that my writing is very whimsical though. XD

I suppose they would! But I like the amount of readers I have right now, for the moment. Been kind of a wallflower with my writing lately anyway...

[rheasilvia]

LOL! That is rather unfortunate - although it could just as well have been a deliberate misspelling. In her shoes, that's probably what I would have claimed. *g*

Hmm, I couldn't say - whimsy is in the eye of the beholder, really. ;-)

[regann]

Regann started out as a character in a set of horribly self-indulgent, thinly-veiled self-insert stories that my friend wrote back when I was in high-school where our characters did hilariously cliche Mary Sue-ish things. THANK GOODNESS the internet didn't exist then and no one ever read those stories but us. So a few years later, I needed an internet name and I started using "Regann Foxx" -- the character's name. Then I shortened it to just "regann" because it was unique enough that I was able to get it everywhere. (Except tumblr, lol.)

[rheasilvia]

That's a neat story! Was there any particular reason why the character was called Regann, or was it merely that you and your friend liked the sound of it?

To me, your username always sounded very regal, and of course very Shakespearan. :-)

BTW, I also wrote embarrassing self-insert stories before the advent of the internet. Some of them with a friend. Maybe everyone did...? I think - I hope! - that I wouldn't have published them anyway, but thank goodness there was never any temptation.

[regann]

I named the character Regann because I had once had a dance teacher by that name and loved it for some unknown reason. I got to name the character because she was the sassy sidekick which is clearly the role I was born to play in life, lol.

I didn't even realize it was Shakespearean until I started using it on the internet. :)

Yeah, I think it's just part of the 'make believe' spectrum of self-exploration. Who doesn't want to imagine themselves as awesome like that? It's just when people post them on the internet and then people criticize their legitimate self-expression. Sometimes things need to be taken for what they are.

[rheasilvia]

I agree entirely, there's nothing wrong with writing Mary Sues per se - writing them can be a lot of fun, and freeing in some ways. But since they are rarely good in terms of fiction, and readers will of course not relate to the self-insert character the same way the author does, it is perhaps better this kind of story remains private drawerfic. :-)

[geekslave]

I consider myself to be a pretty big geek and I love films. Initially, I wanted the name FilmGeek, but that was taken (and at the time I hadn't figured out that I could have added numbers to use it.) So then I wanted GeekLover, or GeekLove, and those were taken, too. I think I just randomly came up with slave and that one was available. I've always thought about changing it, but now that I have a ton of new LJ friends and am writing more, I don't want the hassle of trying acclimate people to my new name.

Stacey

[rheasilvia]

Yay for proud geeks! :-)

So many usernames are born from the necessity of finding something that wasn't already taken... we should start a club. ;-) And I feel you on the hassle of changing names! Though I also find that fandom names grow on you over time. At least that's been my experience.*

* (It took me a while to get used to rheasilvia because I was still disappointed I couldn't be sylvia. But when I had to choose a Dreamwidth name, I *could* have gotten sylvia, but stuck with rheasilvia instead. Of course, I did get Sylvia for AO3, because that's a fic archive rather than a blog, and I've always signed my fic as Sylvia.)