Subject: That often backfires on me.
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Posted on: 2013-06-13 00:02:00 UTC

Probably because I use actual names, but still.

For example, I once wanted to play out in my head how a realistic self-insert would act if she (I) was dropped into Middle-earth. I very quickly got awkward with using my real name, and it wouldn't mean anything to anyone there anyway, so I tried to find some sort of placeholder. I used Alasse (add the umlaut) because I'd read something that used it recently and I liked that it meant 'joy' (or something like that. The fic was probably Daughter of Time, which is fantastic).

It's been three years now, and Alasse has branched out into her own character (and is probably a bit of a Sue, depending on the version, but since the Sueish parts will never make it to paper, that's fine). She has a reason for the name-change to Alasse, and has two to three aliases (Joy Moonland, Alice DeLuna, and Jay Winchester, the last of which we will not go into beyond 'attempting to play out a realistic-ish Winchester sister'). So...backfiring, in a way, but it worked out. (As to why 'Moonland' and 'DeLuna'--guess where she eventually settled down? That's right, Ithilien. I adore the descriptions of it in the books.)

Another, somewhat more recent version of this (and one that's actually on paper) is that of Secondus (...I think I've got the right spelling...) He's this character who suddenly ended up in the story when I was only expecting to have one (and a blogger, but the blogger was originally not separate from the first character). My father joked that I could call him Secondus, I think because he was the second main character and I had no name for him, so I started using it in my notes (he got his first real scene yesterday, hurrah!) and now I'm trying to think of a way for it to be his screenname (he also finally got a real name. Which is a bit of a placeholder, actually. Knowing me, it'll grow on me too, and he'll end up being Yoni in RL and Secondus online.)

Honestly, your way is probably a good deal more sensible, in terms of being sure that the name you choose fits and is what you want; the way I do it, it becomes rather difficult to change (Anna did manage to become Nannette, though. But I believe Nannette will eventually be changed as well, as it seems rather awkward to me...albeit quite a pretty name). Perhaps I should try using letters sometime, rather than names ...although I do also use a system that looks kind of like this: (soldier boy)/(red)/___(ellon).

~DF

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