MTGNexus

When I was a kid I loved Mega Man. I must've played every single Mega Man game at least a dozen times each. And I also loved to draw. So I would spend a ton of time creating Robot Masters. My favorite that I designed was Guard Man. When I first got an email address (way back when AOL came on discs) I needed a name, so I used my favorite Robot Master that I designed, except that I took out the space. I've kept the name for all of my usernames since.

@ All You Fine Folks

What lovely responses! You have sated the curiosity of a very bored man, and for that I am eternally grateful!
(I also feel a little less silly for naming myself after my brand of cigarettes considering all the various methodologies mentioned. I may write a wee little essay on this at some point, it tickles my inner academic!) Keep it up! You all are national treasures, wherever it is you reside!

TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Howdy all,

I've recently developed a ravenous curiosity as to the origin and intention behind our usernames/pseudonyms. No obligation, but if anyone cares to volunteer the reasoning behind why they choose to go by what they do, I'd love to hear/read it!

Mines a character from my favourite series of books, Malazan book of the Fallen. The character isn't particularly bad ass or deadly, frankly he gets a pretty rough run through the series, which is saying a lot because the series is fairly violent and grim in places, but I've always liked the character and feel affinity for the sort of person he is, so this has ended up being my handle for most internet things.

I needed something edgy and appropriate for an Industrial music chat room I was in. And since my personality often comes off as very cold an uncaring, cryogenic seemed appropriate. So I just dropped the -ic and made it a proper noun.

In my pre-cryogen days as youthful teen I went by Mattimeo as a MUD player (showing my age to all you whippersnappers with your online video games).

TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑

3 years ago

@ All You Fine Folks

What lovely responses! You have sated the curiosity of a very bored man, and for that I am eternally grateful!
(I also feel a little less silly for naming myself after my brand of cigarettes considering all the various methodologies mentioned. I may write a wee little essay on this at some point, it tickles my inner academic!) Keep it up! You all are national treasures, wherever it is you reside!

My original name everyone knew me by in ye olde days, Xenphire, was something I made up in early high school. Xen was taken from the alien world of Xen from the first Half-Life game, the "fire" sound with ph was meant to be a cross between Sephiroth and fire.

Kelzam here is an anagram of Malzek, which was a name I came up with for my Warlock on World of Warcraft a while back. "Mal-" for it's meaning of "bad" and I just kinda added "-zek" to the end after stringing some characters together finding something that fit well, phonetically speaking. When I started playing Wildstar, my first character was also named Malzek. Eventually I switched my main character to be another one that I had named Kelzam, as an anagram and to have similar characters to help my guild remember it was me. After that, I got to be pretty well known in the community for my design skills in player housing after winning a lot of community contests, becoming friends with several of the game's developers and my character being used in the game's update's trailer before it shut down, I decided to just switch over to using Kelzam fully wherever I could since "Xenphire" had a lot of negative associated with it from when I was a %$#% teenager 15 years ago and made some not great decisions when I founded MTGS, and either old fogeys never forget or enough people have come and gone that the name didn't hold much meaning to anyone or myself anymore, anyway.

cryogen wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I needed something edgy and appropriate for an Industrial music chat room I was in. And since my personality often comes off as very cold an uncaring, cryogenic seemed appropriate. So I just dropped the -ic and made it a proper noun.

In my pre-cryogen days as youthful teen I went by Mattimeo as a MUD player (showing my age to all you whippersnappers with your online video games).

You are likely to be eaten by a grue

I honestly don't remember why i chose this name....

I didn't choose this name, actually.

When I was younger, I visited my brother at his college, and to keep me busy he plopped me down in front of this game called StarCraft. Since he didn't want me messing up the stats on his account, he created a throwaway account called "bobthefunny."

I then kept it.

Oddly enough, despite how ordinary sounding it is... I very rarely run into issues with other people having it. I have only run into a taken username on twitter so far, since I didn't bother to make an account there for ages.

Back in 2003 I really liked to play Jedi Knight Academy multiplayer, IDK what my original name was but there was some RP clan that used ranks and titles from the japanese edo-era, I could join if I picked a japanese name. I picked Nataku, cause I figured it sounded japanese (probably doesn't, but you know... I was 13). Didn't stay in that clan long, but the name always sticked around. 8 years later when I started playing Swtor, I decided to change it to Not-A-Cube, because I figured it sounded the same. I've been using either nataku or not-a-cube for 17 years now.

So if you didn't get by reading this, I'm a big star wars fan (old EU though, not the really the latest stuff)

and @toctheyounger, Toc is a badass, his journey through the books is amazing.

I just really %$#% love dragons.

Dragonlover

It's fun to find out Cryo is a fellow old person and MUDer. Learn something new everyday.

I'm old so this is my 3rd generation nick. About 15 years ago I was trying to come up with a name for a Hag D&D character so I figured it needed to be somewhat simplistic, plus I like to use adjectives for nicks because they are not often used online. Lifeless in particular comes from a throw away song lyric by a band I like where they refer to someone as "lifeless, the middleman". It stuck in my head and I've used it ever since.

materpillar wrote: ↑

3 years ago

TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Howdy all,

I've recently developed a ravenous curiosity as to the origin and intention behind our usernames/pseudonyms. No obligation, but if anyone cares to volunteer the reasoning behind why they choose to go by what they do, I'd love to hear/read it!

Caterpillars are my favorite animal. As in, I like the larva stage of butterflies more than I like butterflies. When I was in 5th or 6th grade (like 2 decades ago yikes) I was trying to sign up for some email or online video game. I don't recall which one and but "caterpillar" was taken, so a friend just recommended changing the "C" to an "M". Thus, materpillar. I was 10, so very deep stuff. Everyone always pronounces it wrong though, everyone thinks its MASTER-pillar.

Caterpillar is just a fun word to say. Materpillar just rolls off the tongue in a somewhat pleasing fashion so I've never felt particularly inclined to change it.

Caterpillars are just the best pets by the way. They're very entertaining to watch eat and immensely pretty. They require basically zero maintenance. Kids love them. Then, in a couple of weeks they cocoon up and fly away. Besides, I mean look at this guy. He's adorable!
image.png

My parents have some pretty extensive flower gardens that have a good section set aside for monarch and black swallow tail butterflies/caterpillars. It brings me great pleasure every summer to see a bunch of caterpillars eating the plants up.

Funny you should have that opinion, I always despised them when I was growing up because they ate all the plants on my parents' farm and it was always my job to cut mold, remove insect damage, or otherwise cull dying plants. I mean, I'll concede they're very pretty in a strictly academic sense, but in practical terms, they eat monstrous amounts of money/time and I've never been able to get over that residual resentment.

TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Funny you should have that opinion, I always despised them when I was growing up because they ate all the plants on my parents' farm and it was always my job to cut mold, remove insect damage, or otherwise cull dying plants. I mean, I'll concede they're very pretty in a strictly academic sense, but in practical terms, they eat monstrous amounts of money/time and I've never been able to get over that residual resentment.

If caterpillars are eating your crops then you have every right to want them all dead. I have also acquired larvas in various food stuffs and I have no enjoyment in relation to those guys. I'm a fan of the brightly colored non-pest variety. Love me some monarch caterpillars. I believe they eat only milkweed and thus aren't a pest at all.
My favorite pokemon is wurmple.

I came up with this name when I used to play WoW, for my main, a Blood Elf Priest. (What else right?). I did a fair bit of theorycrafting with that name, so I adopted it as my go-to whenever I needed a name for forums, D&D, etc. Also I think it's a pretty great Elf name that rolls off the tongue* and is completely unique, as far as I'm aware; I've never run into any instance of it being used anywhere else.

*Hint: "Mill-ee-oar" to get it rolling off; most people default to "My-lee-or", understandably, but the extra stress on the first syllable stops it flowing nicely.

Dragonlover wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I just really %$#% love dragons.

Dragonlover

I laughed

Lifeless wrote: ↑

3 years ago

It's fun to find out Cryo is a fellow old person and MUDer. Learn something new everyday.

I genuinely miss playing them.

not-a-cube wrote: ↑

3 years ago

and @toctheyounger, Toc is a badass, his journey through the books is amazing.

I agree, I guess my thought was he's no Conan or Elric of Melnibone (that accolade goes to Karsa Orlong I guess), and he goes through more than his fair share of suffering, in both his first life, his second life and his existence in the pantheon. At least he's one of the few characters that gets a pretty happy ending.

cryogen wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I genuinely miss playing them.

Same. In highschool a buddy and I actually worked for a while on our own CircleMUD. We actually had quite a bit of content. I don't really remember why we stopped but I'm sure it involved chasing girls, World of Darkness, or Command and Conquer.

Lifeless wrote: ↑

3 years ago

cryogen wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I genuinely miss playing them.

Same. In highschool a buddy and I actually worked for a while on our own CircleMUD. We actually had quite a bit of content. I don't really remember why we stopped but I'm sure it involved chasing girls, World of Darkness, or Command and Conquer.

Chasing girls who play both WoD and C&C lol

Lifeless wrote: ↑

3 years ago

cryogen wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I genuinely miss playing them.

Same. In highschool a buddy and I actually worked for a while on our own CircleMUD. We actually had quite a bit of content. I don't really remember why we stopped but I'm sure it involved chasing girls, World of Darkness, or Command and Conquer.

Hey, I did CircleMUDs also. A friend was techy enough that he was on good terms with whomever ran the IT at our high school and secretly installed one of the base servers onto the school computer, so our group basically had our own private MUD to mess around with.

Every few years I wonder if I could teach myself enough coding to do the same thing at home, just for nostalgia sake.

We did the same thing at school except we hosted a BBS and an FTP site for pirated music. Until we got caught for excessive bandwidth that is. Didn't even get suspended, got to love the 90's.

My whole immediate family calls me "Benjameen" instead of my given name and when I don't get enough sleep I get pretty angry bear-like. Besides, the alliteration of benjameenbear was too good to pass up.

Username - Kyoki, Sanity's Eclipse

I always liked Japanese history growing up, and Kamigawa (despite not being a terribly high-powered block) is still a favorite of mine due to the world, historical tie-in, and just flavor, situation, etc.

I've also always like exploring psychology, mindfulness, perception, etc. Something like that.

@TheAmericanSpirit: thanks for bringing this topic to the fore. It's been really interesting to hear people's stories.

Anyway, mine's not too crazy. Back when the OG Xbox was the new hot thing, me and two friends split the cost of one. We played Halo: CE a lot. I just randomly chose 'Phantom' for my name. When Halo 2 came around and I had to pick a gamertag for XBL, Phantom immediately came to mind. Naturally, it was taken. I was a pharmacy technician at the time, so I just put an 'Rx' in front of it. I'm a pharmacist now so it still fits.

Fun fact, if I hadn't played the original Metal Gear Solid, I probably wouldn't have worked as a pharmacy tech, and thus never became a pharmacist. I owe the trajectory of my adult life to Hideo Kojima, apparently.

Mine comes from a high school Spanish exercise. It was something about rowing down a river, seeing various rainforest animals, and shouting for help. Most of them were things like jaguars where it might actually be justified, but the idea of shouting for help because you saw a tortoise was funny to me.

My MTGS username was Weebo, which came from an old video game called Magi Nation. Weebo was a little mushroom creature that didn't do much aside from healing early on but picked up a couple of powerful offensive abilities at higher levels. It was one of my favorites when I played the game as a kid. My avatar on here is a fiery variant of it from the associated card game. I changed it because weeb picked up a different connotation on the internet and there's another user in the EDH community (including MTGS) who uses Weebos.

I remember where the name came from but not why i picked it, I had just started reading the Percy Jackson series, and I went with Hermes both because it was short and easy to find an avatar i like, this was when i joined over at sally.

SocorroTortoise wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Mine comes from a high school Spanish exercise. It was something about rowing down a river, seeing various rainforest animals, and shouting for help. Most of them were things like jaguars where it might actually be justified, but the idea of shouting for help because you saw a tortoise was funny to me.

My MTGS username was Weebo, which came from an old video game called Magi Nation. Weebo was a little mushroom creature that didn't do much aside from healing early on but picked up a couple of powerful offensive abilities at higher levels. It was one of my favorites when I played the game as a kid. My avatar on here is a fiery variant of it from the associated card game. I changed it because weeb picked up a different connotation on the internet and there's another user in the EDH community (including MTGS) who uses Weebos.

I am so glad I don't have to try and tell the two of you apart anymore.