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

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

People who have multiple journals don't surprise me, but it's certainly not an automatic assumption that I make.

And since the name was something sufficiently Western and non-dramatic that nobody would have blinked twice at seeing it in a local phone book, and the book, while critically well-regarded, wasn't the sort of thing that this predominantly nerdy-male crowd was rushing out to buy, I initially had a lot of the established regulars mansplaining to newbie-me about how I didn't have to use my real name here

Ha! You know, it's really interesting to hear about fannish activity when the internet was just starting up and it was much more locally focused.