A Note On Pseudonyms

[redbrunja]

 nimblnymph  was commenting about sexism in language, and it got me thinking about usernames. Specifically, (and I know I have people on my flist who do this and I don't mean to be insulting, this is totally just my opinion) how much I hate it when people use some part of a character's name in their username.

You know.

Mrs_Hatake

I_heart_hakkai.

Anything with Snape or Severus.

Even more subtle references: blooming_sakura or whatever cause me to twitch.

First, I always wonder how long you are going to like that character enough that you want them to be the most visible part of how you present yourself online. Secondly, I make the assumption that you are fourteen and feel the need to wave around your fictional boyfriend or (also fairly common) your OTP like a banner. I also (despite knowing really excellent writers who do this, and often aren't writing about the character referenced in their handle) assume that your fanfic is not worth my time.

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nods* This is why I felt comfortable getting tattoos with fannish elements, for instance, which is the sort of thing I've often seen non-fans, or even adult fans who think of themselves as older and wiser than the underage crowd, often criticize as being inherently a bad idea. Part of it is that they're subtle -- it's not like I'm copying book covers or character portraits or anything more obviously recognizable, the stuff I've had done are pieces that people who aren't fannish themselves are extremely unlikely to even recognize the connection; part of it is that the the fandom influence is largely a matter of form and symbolism, and there's a lot of hidden personal meaning underlying the designs, so there's a lot more thought and deep significance to me than something like "I like this series so I'm gonna get the logo inked!" -- they're really more about me than they are about the fandoms I took their outward form from. And, well, the outward forms were chosen in the first place because I find them beautiful in and of themselves, even aside from the fannish aspects -- I love calligraphy of all sorts, not just the geeky Tolkien runes; I love swirling, organic, Art Nouveau-ish floral designs, and already had a ridiculous amount of clothing, jewelry, and home dec items with leafy vine designs long before I ever even heard of Saiyuki. So the chances that I'm going to wake up one day and hate both the designs and the fannish source material that were part of their inspiration are just vanishingly small...considering that the most extreme case, Tolkien, I've loved for over three decades and first read when I was so young that I literally do not even remember a time before I knew those stories, that fannish material is just so utterly intertwined with my whole life that it's clearly not going anywhere.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I admit to being one of the people whose instinctive response to fannish tattoos is 'don't do that' but I have to say that it would be really cool to have something fannish tie into something that is already a motif in your own life, as with the leafy vine designs. (And your hip tattoo is awesome, fyi - I take it it healed up nicely?)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the bad rap fannish tattoos get is that some of the folks who are the loudest about getting them, and getting really visible/blatantly recognizable designs, often seem to be younger fans; that particular mix of age/maturity, trend following, and attention-seeking behavior all combines to make it look like there are higher odds there that they might wind up regretting it a few years down the line. Someone who's outside of an age/subculture demographic where ink is particularly trendy, and plays things closer to the vest, is probably less likely to influence the perception of "fannish tattoos = kids with bad ideas", because you're a lot less likely to randomly see or hear about their work -- they're getting it done for themselves, after all, not to fit in with a crowd or gather attention. (It's sort of the fannish-specific subset of one of the amusing flaws in logic from folks who get really judgemental about tats and piercings in general -- for all that they sneer at folks with work they can see, they clearly have NO IDEA how many people outside of their biker/dumb kid/etc. stereotypes of Trashy Modded People are going about with tons of mods that are completely hidden under their usual everyday clothes...)

And thanks, yep, it was kind of slow going due to the location but the vines healed up beautifully -- I get a ton of compliments any time it's warm enough for me to go out in clothing and footwear that let them show. It's funny, really, while that's the second piece I had done, the general idea of something fluid and botanical twisting around a leg was my very first tattoo idea, more than ten years ago; but I ended up getting my second idea done first, because as much as I sketched away I could never quite come up with a design and placement that felt quite right. When the youkai-vine idea hit me years later, it finally fell into place; it felt right in a way the earlier sketches had never managed, because they didn't have that extra symbolic weight to go along with the aesthetics. (Not that I think there's anything at all wrong with someone who has ink done purely because they find it beautiful, but it's become clear to me that I need meaning as well as aesthetics to be content with a design.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I definitely think that who is being loud about their tats is a factor - as you say, the ones who are loudest about them are very likely to be the ones who regret is ten years down the road.

Whereas, you rarely hear about the subetly fandom-y tats that aren't shouted about.

And I actually agree about needing that extra level of meaning to a tatoo, not just 'oh, so pretty!'