What is the history behind your username?

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

I have a bunch of them all over the internet, which tends to confuse people who are trying to figure out if they've got the same person from one platform to another.

Scarlet Cryptid: (Tapas, Instagram) This one came about because my favorite color is red, and back in high school I had a character named Scarlet. On top of that, I'm one of those people who accidentally sneaks up on everyone, and can disappear into the background in an instant, and I have vague goals of lurking in the woods like a cryptid someday and maybe inspiring my own local legend. It also seemed like an interesting, somewhat approachable 'art name', since my actual given name is so common that trying to find ANY variant of it to use as a username on most platforms is just... not happening.

Toxinfox: (Discord, Tumblr) This one's pretty simple-- I like foxes and I have an armchair fascination for poison. Plus the alliteration of the name is pleasant, and it shortens nicely to 'Tox' or 'Toxin'.

Pointy-Eared-Fiend: (Deviantart) ....Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of characters with pointy ears. Plus a lot of other usernames I tried were taken.

KhaosDaughter: (Various chat messengers and forums) I have a superhero character who goes by the alias of Nyx (Which, given her powers, makes zero sense, but I can't change it now...), but if you've ever tried to get any variation of Nyx on any platform, they are allllllll taken. But in Greek myth, Nyx was the daughter of Khaos, so... Khaos Daughter. Plus it just kind of sounds cool, and is virtually never taken.

[Lady_T_Musings]

That's a cute and funny story XD! Smoke is legit.

I chose the Lady as I thought this would be the easiest way to let folks know how I identify ( jury is out based on how many questions about my sex I've gotten over the years) and back in college I had a friend who was obsessed with fantasy and titles and Ya girl got a kick out of being called Lady over mam or Ms so I was right alongside her.

So this friend would greet me as My Lady Toyano and it always tickled my heart. The T from my username is shortened from the nickname above she fashioned from my usual nickname Toya. I still use Lady Toyano for gaming, but for my art stuff, I wanted to keep it short n sweet.

The musings came from trying to find something that encompassed me better than my old name which made my emails address epically long. One that muses about shiz sums me up poetically enough so I threw it all together and we got Lady T. Musings

[EncryptedWriting]

Sooo not necessarily this username, but this was too good not to share. It is something I thought I would take to my grave, but it is whatever.

Back when I was eight, I had an iPad. My dad had to approve and download all the games we had (i.e. angry birds, jetpack joyride, temple run, etc.). However, I wanted to dive into a TCG game that was actively interacting with other players. My dad downloaded it for me, but he told me not to give any information about myself outwards.

Welp, I didn't.

Little me had to think of a username, and to my right was an arts and crafts station in our play room. I saw glue sticks. And, then the words of my dad echoed in my ear about not sharing personal data, so I decided on the number twelve. Lo and behold, the legend of Gluesticks12 was born.

[BoomerZ]

Name I used in a couple MMOs based on my favorite character from Battlestar Galactica.

[Shady_Kuronachi]

My Hero is one of my favorite animes, and I immediately could relate to Tokoyami Fumigage. Dark Shadow was iconic, and his whole story was just... chef's kiss. Kuronachi is Japanese, and the kanji is read as "Black Blood", which is associated with a lot of things about me. I plan on passing my alias on to someone else when the time comes, so I needed some thing gender neutral. That is also the reason my avatar looks androgynous. Plus I felt that having "2cool4anyone14" (which is also my email) as my username for the rest of my life was embarrassing. Therfore, Shady Kuronachi was born.

[sourswords]

I got tired of my old username (which was before I joined Tapas, but I used a variant of it on most of my socials), which was based on a throwaway line from Scott Pilgrim (the comic, not the movie). Last August, I got serious about trying to come up with something new, mashing together words/concepts that I liked, and I basically was like "I like sour candy. I like swords. Bada bing, bada boom." It sounds less stupid than the old one, and that's what matters.

[wispysing]

A little embarrassing but...name generator. It did grow on me in the end, and I'm really liking Wisp as a nickname.

[Llyrel]

I picked "Llyrel" as my nickname when I decided to separate my gaming activity from my art stuff. I originally put came up with the name for RPG purposes, but the character I created never got much use, sooo... I decided to recycle the name for myself XD

I liked it because it was 100% "original" (as in, invented by me with no references to songs or whatever as I usually tend to do) + it was shorter and easier to pronounce compared to what I had before. Well... somewhat easier to pronounce XD it didn't occur to me until recently that most people are probably going to read it as "LIE-rel" when in my head it actually sounds like "Lee-rEl" with a stress on the E, but whatever

[BLTX]

My full name is 'Brandon Tenn Luke.' I flipped my T and L initials to spell BLT, just because as someone who's a notoriously big eater among his family, I found it kind of amusing. And then just added an X at the end because it sounded cool. Coincidentally, X is also the roman numeral for 10. And that's the history behind my nickname.

[Phantomobservant]

I have liked ghosts since I was 13, and obsessed with ghost hunting stories also I saw I never talked often and would more than likely watch things so you get an observant phantom.

[powerplantanimations]

My friends and I were going to make a CGI short series called "Power Plant".

It was about a dystopian corporation called "Power Plant" mutating plants and turning them into slaves. The plant in profile has a name (Roses :v). That was his blender model.

We changed the logo to match up with That Stick Figure Isekai's aesthetic:

I'm thinking about changing my profile to "That Mexican Stick Figure" since I'm falling in love with how Burd drew me in our Q&A:

Also to tie the branding together since everything is stick figures (I plan on making That Mexican Stick Figure my YouTube avatar as well :v) (a bit of an inside joke too since my friends expected me to have a thick accent but when they heard me for the first time they were blown away by how white I sounded).

Also going that direction since my parents are really in touch with their culture.

[TheLemmaLlama]

My current username doesn't have a long history, so Imma recount the legends of my entire username history instead

So during early days, I went by ctang15, because it was my student ID or school email or something. Simple enough.

But of course that was boring, so I wanted to change it. Being a frequent reader of TvTropes at the time, I stumbled upon the trope A.I. Is A Crapshoot, and my first thought was "heh heh, 'crap'" (I was very mature) and my second thought was "what the heck does 'crapshoot' mean anyways"? So I looked it up:

Being a quiet autistic kid who didn't get into much trouble, people would say I was organized and obedient and liked routine, and I HAAAAAATED this reputation. I was too shy to rebel against it openly, but in my head (and on the internet), I was like 'no, I'm CHAOTIC and RANDUM' and so I started going by crapsh0ot (with a zero because 'crapshoot' was taken :P)

Then later, I got into math and wanted to start a math channel, which I named TheLemmaLlama (a 'lemma' is basically an oddly specific theorem that has no interest or use beyond proving a more interesting theorem, and it sounds kind of like 'llama') I'm no longer interesting in being a math youtuber, but I still think the handle is neat, so I've decided to keep it

[kitschensyngk]

I've had my username for most of the time I've been online.

Don't ever let them tell you that the internet has everything but the kitchen sink.

[LackofCoffee]

It started back when I was studying at Univeristy. One day counted how many cups of coffee I was drinking daily and was horrified (it was around 10 cups). So I completely cut off coffee and caffeine for three months, and that's when I started this username.

Nowadays I do drink coffee again, but I have a strict 2 per day limit (but I always want more)

[BlueDragon]

My favorite color is blue and my favorite fantasy creature has always been dragons.

I am...very basic XD XD

[ShidoDraws]

I don't actually know to explain this since my current username wasn't really decided until 2019, but I was still definitely called Shido back in 2014. I used my real name before so I combined Shido with my real last name, Thao. I was ShidoThao for 5 years and afterwards I finally decided on a different username, ShidoDraws since a lot of people pronounces my last name wrong so I tried to make it easier for people to remember since I wanted to create a brand-like name. Though people tend to call me Shiro, yet another issue I have come across doesn't help that there's another artist name Shiro who makes NSFW stuff so whenever people look up my work they might see some interesting content that isn't mine.

Anyway, the Draws part is actually inspired by Jazza's old username Draw with Jazza and of course RossDraws as well. They both inspired me a lot and some day I wanna inspire others too just like them, maybe not though. I'll probably just stick to being a nobody that draws epic cute anime girls.

Shido was a name I thought was cool sounding, like a hero name. Plus it seemed like a rare name that people don't use as much so I picked it just to sound cool.

[sodathecoda]

Formerly I used Sozdatelniza(Russian for She-Creator) as my username. However, I noticed it's too long and may be too hard to remember, so I changed it with a username generator. And this is how I got my bizzare username.

[rumpenstiltzkin]

I got mine when I was in my early 20s i think, its a mix of the childrens story rumpelstilzkin and the mooogle stiltzkin, i liked both so the name stuck with me and i been wanting to change it forever caus it sounds like a stupid name and noone can ever spell it so im not easy to find but i guess im to attached to it

I been wanting to go back to my old username Alven (meaning the elf in swedish) but I guess i just been stuck with rumpenstiltzkin for so long it feels weird to change.

[padduwu]

That's easy It's my Nickname (Paddy) + uwu (because I use uwu unironically >:3 )
I used to go be Paddoof (Paddy + Bidoof my favorite Pokemon)

[TheDoublekey]

Oh, this is a pretty funny one. Basically, back when I was in middle school, I really badly wanted to become a youtuber like Pewdiepie, but I had to come up with a cool name, a name which stood out. I wasn't able to find any and, at a certain point, I also remember opting for "TheCobra260" or something like that. That stuff was far too edgy and didn't reflect how I actually am so, for a period of time I just kept thinking.

Then, one day, I came up all of a sudden with the name "Doublekey". I don't know why precisely and how, but my brain just told me "Hey, what about Doublekey? It sounds cool, doesn't it?". I thought it was quite a creative name so, in the end, I decided to keep it. Later on, I also gave this name to a main character of mine (he was the protagonist of my Pokemon fan series. It's a long story, maybe one day I'll tell it). So, yeah, unfortunately there's not much of an origin story, I just kinda came up with it along the way and thought it sounded cool and mysterious at the same time. A youtuber named Doublekey who made animations and played games, to me, seemed quite a cool idea.