Llydia

Haha! That's a great laugh, thank you for sharing, Basilisk!

Thank you so much!

I missed hearing about the impromptu Ustream chat today until it was well underway, so all those great screenshots at the beginning are new to me. Thank you again!

Those are rather clever, Steelclaw! But these especially...

Hah! These ideas are great! Definitely something I'd pay money for. Especially these two...

Thank you for the notes!

Thank you for the notes! Always a great preview when I miss the chats live, and a good review for the parts missed when something was said too quickly.

Oooh, the downfall of Steelclaw AV was leaked on the Ustream chat...

"Gemesis: Steelclaw AV is easy to beat. Just wait him out, and he'll eventually delete himself."

Dark_Respite - That is very generous of your to allow us so many nicknames for you. For the longest time I knew you only as Samuraiko from your videos. It was while doing the trivia contest during Real World Hero 2010 that I learned many of your alias. From the Community Coffee chat frenzy is how I learned to call you D_R, since it was quick to type. Whatever name you go as, your video work is phenomenal!


BashfulBanshee - Sounds more and more like a Global Rename token would sell well in the Paragon Market.


Arcanaville - Arcana Country Safari... While a mouthful for a forum or global name, that does sound like an interesting destination. If you ever open it up, let us know!


Redlynne - Note to self: Do not anger Sidhe Bang or withhold any information about her lost family.

Thank you very much for this week's notes, Von Krieger!

The acceptance and support is one of the fantastic standard-setting points of the City of Heroes community. Thanks for sharing you story that makes up part of why it is so great!

Now, get working on those 28mm models of Arachnos Soldiers. I want to see pictures, please!

And the stories continue! This has become the highlight of my week. Thank you everyone!



Coolio - Even better than what I was going to say, thank you for locating that post from Avatea!


rsclark - Good question. My answer probably is from too much thinking. When I don't know someone, I'll use 'him'/'her' based on their character. But in those infrequent cases that I team with someone multiple times in a short period, I like to address them more as the player than the character if I can do so correctly. The reason it ended up being a big deal in my story for this tread was when people still addressed me as 'him' because they thought I was faking the female persona. I then did too much thinking about their reaction, then over-reacted in turn. Looking at it that way, I'm really, really lucky things ended so happily on all fronts.


Dante - Hmmm, not a bad idea at all. If you would like that strongly an option to change your global name after you've used the one rename included, try posting a suggestion in the Beta forums for it to be added to the Paragon Market. If they put some limiters on in, say a twelve month cooldown between each global rename purchase, it could be a great addition to the game.


Gorgar - If your global name works well enough for you, no reason I can see that it has to be your main. About half the people I met do match their mains, and half the people like myself have their global name be something else. If it works for you, that's the important part.


BeyondReach - Names really are funny things. Maybe that's part of their appeal. I hope sometime I'll get to team with Within Reach once they get blueside, which will probably be before I get an alt to Vigilante. I keep meaning to do so, but get distracted by new character concepts to roll up instead.


Redlynne - Very clever. One of those characters that the bad guys know exactly who they are facing without her having to say a word because of the sound her attacks make. ;-> Does her backstory include tie-ins to the CoH version of Tuatha de Dannan?


BrandX - Ah. So to them it was just easier to recognize you as they already knew you. Sounds good!


Tenzhi - Yeah, misspelling is common. I'm guilty of it, and am grateful most people generously pass it off as typing too fast.

Everyone's stories have made this thread dozens of times better than just my announcement. Thank you so much for sharing!

I'm also going to work on pronouncing people's names correctly, as it's obviously an important facet of identity for a lot of people. Okay, I don't have a headset so you'll never hear me actually say it correctly, but I'm thinking it as I write!



This got loooooong! But I really wanted to reply to everyone, so please indulge me.


Snowzone - I think a Welsh pronunciation of Llydia would be pretty.


Supernumiphone - If you are happy with the way people identify you, or at least don't care enough to change it, that sounds good enough for me.


Judgement_Dave - Ah, pity! I would have liked to read your alternate lyrics.


Biscuits_EU - Good luck reclaiming @Biscuits. And it's nice that if it's really wanted, even RL names can be changed to what suits best.


Nyx - Similar to how you are fine as long as people can reach you via friend, global, or some other form, IRL I usually tell people they can call me whatever they want as long as it will get my attention. (The unspoken understanding that I will not respond to insults.) I wonder why I care so much more about my online names? Probably because online there are fewer points of interaction.


Shazzie - It's great that Shaz is very much you. How fun to have a nickname of your own creation; most are ones that others create for us.


mousedroid - Because of power proliferations with i21, I'll be rerolling a beloved plant/emp Rosette Briar as a plant/poison. She too is over level 20 so rather than delete the old she will be renamed Mender Perennial with a new backstory and costume.

FYI, to change your global name log into the game and go to Menu > Chat Handle (X). If you only get your name and an Okay button, you no longer have a rename token available.


Samuel_Tow - Sounds like one of my other online names. It was originally created during 5 minutes "pick a name already so we can start" PnP character creation. The source of my favorite smiley face ;-> is her familiar, a miniature dragon.


Angry_Angel - I'm flattered that you read all my ramblings and responded to the good parts to make them look even better.

Have fun fleshing out the rest of Una's backstory! I'm certainly interested in reading more. Yep, most people post their character information in the Roleplaying forum or a wiki. I usually keep my character information in .txt notes, thought I filled out one completely for Zenitheon. While the character is retired, I am still most proud of that backstory/concept. It'd be nice to hear what you think of her since your bio of Exotica had some similar themes.

Tangent: I am trying not to be envious of your badge count. Wow!

When you decide if you like "Are uh" or "Air uh" better, please let me know so I can get it right. Until then, I'll stick with the "Are uh" version of Ara.


Winterminal - Sounds familiar. I tried once to write/play a male alt and it just felt very, very odd. Female characters only for me now. I have a few character designs that use the male or huge model, but they are embodiments of abstracts rather than male characters.

If you decide to go with a naming theme or new global name, just remember to sleep on it first. One of my friends commented that she has been sleeping on a new global name for four years. My response was when she did come up with a new global name to still sleep on it one more night. It's like Infinity vs. Infinity-plus-one...


Adeon Hawkwood - Sounds like you found a unique name the same way I did with how "Llydia Verety" (with quotes) only brings up this thread in a Google search. ;->


Lycanus - Being an entrepreneur is a mountainous amount of work and dedication. I wish you well in your business as Thrythlind, and enjoyment in your CoH playtime as Lycanus.


Beastyle - Another name that now makes me think of The New Alphabet Song! "A is for Aisle. B is for Bdellium. C is for Czar, and if you see him would you mind telling 'em? / Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second. Aisle? / Yeah, you know, like a theater aisle. / Bdellium? / Bdellium - It's a gum-like tree resin. Starts with a silent B. / Czar? / Czar, you know, like a Russian czar. C-Z-A-R. Look, you know, I figure everyone's tired of Apple, Ball, and Cat. Figured we could try something a little more advanced. I mean, these people are advanced, right? / <approving cheers>"

Tangent - Anyone else have names that relate to that song? Any Qat out there? "Q is for Qat. / Hey, hey, hey, hold on. I know how to spell 'cat' and it does not start with a Q. / Well this is a different kind of 'cat'. This is Q-A-T, qat. It's a type of evergreen shrub. You see it's a perfect Scrabble word because it's a Q with no U, and there aren't too many of those. / You have entirely too much time on your hands." Haha!


Rangle M. Down - It's good that you could reclaim a character back into your active repertoire. And yes, I would have misspelled 'repertoire' if not for dictionary.com correcting me. Most of my misspelled names are deliberate, like Lunar Flaire, but I wonder from time to time if eventually I'll have to rename one because its spelling was unintentionally erroneous.


Haetron - Happy Forum Poster would match your avatar perfectly!


Electric-Knight - Sadly no. I lost touch with Lydia's family, but a sibling keeps in contact with them.

Like you, my forum name and global names were different at first. Then I merged them together since only about a dozen people interact with me more beyond a week at a time and I wanted it to be easier for them.

My professional career also deals with a lot of names. I quickly learned to ask the other person to spell their name as every day a new spelling was introduced to me.


SuperBull - Nice to know I'm not the only one to make a change after six years!


Memphis_Bill - You boggle my mind with that many characters. However do you keep track of all those names, designs, and concepts? No wonder people get confused when you get called by a variety of identities. Yet you seem to handle it well if it amuses you.


newchemicals - You saw it happen? And here I thought I had been all sneaky-like.


Aggelakis - That's a sad reason for a rename, but I'm glad you were able to do so to separate your identity. The 6-slotted A-named character is pretty impressive!


Vexen777 - Ouch. I feel for you. While the forum names could be easily changed I did so for the same reason. I was really grateful when time and Global Ignore alleviated that problem.


Nyx - Yeah, English is rotten in that respect. A perfectly good name one day becomes ruined because a random remark gets mob mentality behind it and no longer represents what was originally intended.


FourSpeed - Frivolous names are some of the characters I get most excited to create, yet annoy me in the end as they tend to go nowhere. Miss Bee Havior is still only level 5. I guess I'm one of those people who have to have a backstory I can sink myself into when I play.


Organica - As with Biscuits_EU, good luck reclaiming Shinobu for your fire/kin controller. Who knows? You just might get to some day. Do you have screenshots of your costumes for Black Unicorn? That name captivates me.


Lady_of_Ysgard - Like with Aggelakis, it's annoying to discover a name has another common meaning than you intended. Abnormal Isotope is a great rename, though.


Starflier - I'm all for choosing renames that you like better.


BeyondReach - Beyond Reach becoming Within Reach is very symbolic. Will you still have the name Beyond Reach as part of the ID description so people can identify him? Good luck trying to get Kurran and Solomon.

Your story about a last name that gets mispronounced all the time sounds really familiar. The only difference is that I grew up learning from my parents the habit of correcting the error as part of an introduction. As I got older, I realized people were understandably confused. Not only did we pronounce the second letter of vowel pairs, distant branches of the family had different ways they pronounced the surname.


Desi_Nova - I think it's great when a name that is thwarted for already being claimed morphs into something unique.


Chaos Creator - One of the reasons the CoH community is so great is when people share their best knowledge on a topic. Thank you!


Redlynne - I remember learning to pronounce your name in your post at What's In a Name? thread. Yep, I had it wrong before. I think it was the double N that through me off, but I know better now!

PS Ms Terry is brilliant, and "Trust your Ms Givings!" is hilarious.


Muon_Neutrino - APoD is my favorite place online outside of CoH. Their images and educational blurbs fascinate me, and usually my desktop image reflect my most recent favorite like it does currently. Also I enjoy astronomy/astrophysics documentaries during my non-fictional video time. My #1 recommendation so far for 2011 is Wonders of the Solar System. Something about astronomy excites and awes me at the same time. Hope that you too always find companionship in the stars!


BrandX - "About time", eh? Still, I'm glad you were able to change it because of your own decision and then had the validation after.


Johnstone - Ah! So that's how I had a rename token; I must have picked it up as a server glitch compensation without needing to use it at the time.

I like that you had an epic, in-character reason for your rename Becca Blue, similar to BeyondReach.


MaestroMavius - You remind me of another related question: Have you (meaning anyone in the CoH game) ever used the science pack to change a character's gender? Is it when you renamed a character? If so, why?

I have, but it's been when a character represents a group, such as my elementals where each costume slot is a different element. Also on characters that have an animal companion, because wolves just don't look right to me on the female base.



Final Tangent - Ms Dynexus is once more Dynexus, as she was always meant to be. Yes, it was a bit expensive for two letters to be added, then removed. But it resulted in a bigger change for the better and a great conversation with all of you. Thank you for making it well worth it, everyone!

Chaos Creator - Short, simple... it works!

Judgement_Dave - Now that EU_Damz has got you started, you can join Steelclaw in creating alternate lyrics to songs.

MaestroMavius - Well, at least I got one thing right with Yydr. Most of my alts are aliens.

Nyx - Good policy. I also try to address people by the gender of the character currently logged in unless I know the player personally.

EU_Damz - Hm, I can understand your confusion. Mostly this is an FYI announcement for the dozen or so people who actually know me as Yydr. I meant it that I didn't expect anyone to read the rest, that was purely self-indulgent rant, mostly about my own faults.

In fact, if there anything more to impart it is the recommendation to be well rested and fed before making any decision as important as your name.

Still, this is a discussion board. How about I add a question to the topic:


Have you ever changed a character name? Your global name? Any other names (besides from marriage)? What lead to the decision, and did you like the result?

Also, do you have difficulty getting people to pronounce your name(s) correctly? If so, how do you react?

Old name: Yydr
New name: Llydia

Reason - short version: Too much thinking and too little sleep.



Up for discussion: Have you ever changed a character name? Your global name? Your forum name? Any other names (besides from marriage)? What lead to the decision, and did you like the result?

Also, do you have difficulty getting people to pronounce your name(s) correctly? If so, how do you react?



Reason - long version: A ramble to entertain myself. I don't really expect anyone else to read further.

Mostly I blame Comicsluvr's thread What's In a Name? It got me thinking of why I care about my character names. A lot of thinking. That much thinking can be dangerous.

It lead to me realizing that while I had let it slide for years, it bothered me that my main, Dynexus, was usually referred to as a 'he'. As was I! I gave into an impulse and paid for a rename token to make her Ms Dynexus. "There!" I thought, "Now there can be no question to her, and I, being female." How disappointing when there was no change. The same proportion of references were he. When I bemoaned that neither my character nor I were referred to as 'she', a player remarked that they thought I was faking it.

Faking it? While we are still the minority, female gamers are hardly a rarity anymore.

I decided to run a silent experiment while I teamed. As people joined, I tried to guess from their global names if their players were male or female, then learn the answer from observing how people referred to themselves. Turns out I got it wrong most of the time. Even other characters I saw with 'Ms' in the character name were dubious as many were parodies. And what about characters that were horrendously disproportional with little modesty? Hard to think of that player as female. In the end I, too, was guilty of assuming someone was male unless another player consistently referred to a third player as she/female.

Before I had arrived at that conclusion, however, I decided to take more drastic measures. If people couldn't tell that Yydr was female then I would choose something more traditional. Something obvious that no man would claim. I can't remember how many names I considered. Probably hundreds. Normally I try to avoid any name that is close to myself or people I have know for internet security purposes. I like it best when I invent a name that gets zero search results in Google. That gets harder every year. After some deliberation I suspended that rule to choose Lydia. Besides, I have liked the name Lydia since a girl a few doors down and a few years older was a good influence and friend to me as a teenager.

Except that there were already several variations of Lydia on the forums, and I still had a craving to be unique. I'd like to claim that I came up with Llydia as a tribute to the double-Y of Yydr. But the truth is that variation was inspired by The New Alphabet song. Specifically how the part "L is for llama. / Hey wait a second, what's so special about llama? / Well, you know, it starts with two l's. / What's the second one for? / I don't know. Maybe to give the first one moral support." made me laugh.

Thus I settled on the full name of Llydia Verety (meaning: "Noble" and "Truth"), though I doubt Verety will be used much beyond this post.

So after psyching myself up to it, I changed my global name at 4 am. Honestly I was a bit surprised that going from @Yydr to @Llydia worked. I thought my name defaulted to @Dynexus when global names were first introduced and I had used my one-time change to make it @Yydr. Wasn't going to complain that somehow I had picked up an extra global rename token in the intervening years.

Yes, when I woke up later in the day something like buyer's remorse kicked in as I worried that maybe I could have come up with a better name. Thankfully that didn't last. In fact, the longer I have been Llydia, the more thrilled I become.

Some pros of Yydr:
- Unique
- Short (a big plus when sending myself in-game emails)
- Familiar
- Aged (it has become rare to see people misspell it as Yddr, Ydrr, etc)

Biggest downside of Yydr:
- No one could say it correctly more than two times in a row, even when instructed that Yydr is pronounced "yɪh-dər" which rhythms with "bidder"

Some pros of Llydia:
- Easier spelling (people have commented that Yydr was hard for them to type)
- Feminine
- Common pronunciation of "LID-ee-ah"
- It is more 'me'
- I smile big every time I see my new name


Thus far the City Of Heroes community members that have noticed the change have been very supportive. Thank you for encouraging the decision to be more myself!

Finally got my second level 50 tonight.

Kudos to SHEOUL for leading us on a clear-all version of a timed wolf mission in Portal Corp. We were having so much fun the ding was completely missed. Wasn't sure at first if it was 50 because I hadn't gotten around to visiting a trainer all night and had three levels to claim. A bit surreal compared to the careful planning that went into getting Dynexus to level 50 on a Hamidon raid.

Freedom, I present for your welcome and approval: Healing Hopes, level 50 Empathy/Radiation Defender!

Thank you very much for the highlights, Von Krieger! I missed this week due to a service project, so it is great to have your notes to catch up with.

Aaaaaaaaand, I didn't got home even close to soon enough to join. Glad to hear that it went well!

My condolences, LSK. * hug * May your evening bring you comfort.

I, too, have a family activity that night. Of course, if it ends early I'll hop on and join in to support you, Dr. T.

Zwillinger is such a tease...



Thanks for the fun time on test today! It's always fun getting to run around with you and then hang out for a bit afterwards.

I look forward to adding my lists to yours when FREEDOM is on live as intended. (aka After the major post-release bugs are cleaned out. )