trollxzibit | Names, Handles, and More: The Meme

Hirune is a name of Basque origin, meaning "trinity", which relates to her symbol and hints at her religious leanings. Kysely is a Kyrgz surname denoting a person with a sour disposition.

One of the meanings for her symbol is ether, which historically was what they thought was between the celestial bodies before they found out it was vacuum, so I felt it evoked her interest in astronomy as well as her lofty ideals.

Her trolltag is fairly straightforward; she is an austere astronomer! (I JUST LIKE THE WORD AUSTERE, Lemony Snicket taught it to me)

So anyway I spent a lot of time furiously googling while putting my application together, yesssss

FURIOUS GOOGLING hurray! And... that's an interesting surname meaning. I wonder how the first Kysely felt about it.

~~~I will start~~~ ...or not start, since Carly beat me to it XD

Pherae's theme can basically be summed up as "sun-Artemis."

I initially actually nabbed her symbol from the symbol for the element of "Earth" in W.I.T.C.H. ...hi I'm a dork... before I confirmed that it was actually a real astrological symbol for the sun. I also knew that I enjoy playing both wilderness-y-type characters and "guilt ridden sweetheart"-type characters, and I went from there.

Name:
"Pherae" is short for Pheraea, one of Artemis' titles, and it translates to "of the beasts" -- a reference to her obsession with wildlife biology.
"Elapha" is likewise short for Elaphaea, another Artemis title, this time translating to "of the deer" -- a reference to her lusus.

Trolltag:
tenderAgrotera is a combination of Agrotera, once more shamelessly ganked from ancient Greek titles for Artemis. This one means "Huntress" or "of the Hunt." Tender is...well, that part's pretty self-explanatory, but basically it contrasts the aloof cruelty of Artemis with Pherae's gentle, helpful personality.

Symbol:
Astrological symbol for the sun, as stated. The justification is that, on Alternia, night, rather than day, is when most of the population is awake, so sun and moon are swapped. GET IT I'M BASICALLY A GENIUS.

----

Bonus round! Epibat Delfin, "dead moirail extraordinaire," info:

Epibat was the "moon-Apollo" to Pherae's "sun-Artemis." Thus, his symbol was the astrological symbol for the moon (just a simple crescent moon, lol).

"Epibat" is short for Epibaterius, a title of Apollo referring to him as god "of sacrifices on disembarkation."
...Yeah. Yeah, I did that on purpose. :c
"Delfin" is short for/a bastardization of another Apollo title, Delphinius, meaning "of the dolphins" ...because he had a dolphin lusus.

Edited 2012-10-11 04:34 (UTC)

nikkal's general motif is the moon rabbit, so i wanted her name and stuff to reflect it :> her first name is the name of a goddess in canaanite mythology, who was married to the moon god yarikh. her last name is from a genus of brush rabbit (sylvilagus bachmani cerrosensis god why do i remember that)

as for her trolltag: she always goes barefoot because she becomes RIDICULOUSLY CLUMSY whenever she wears shoes hgdjdsa also gibbous is a lunar phase, they don't... really... go togethhegfrhje but i liked how it sounded so :T

and her symbol is called "black moon lilith", in which it refers to a hypothetical second moon of earth! and nik has a fascination with alternia's pink moon, i.e. the one we know next to nothing about, i.e. its "second moon". that actually was completely unintentional but it worked out in the end, lmfao.

Cheriour is actually a human kid version of a clockwork angel by the name of, you guessed it, Cheriour. Cheriour is, in lore, "A "terrible angel" charged with punishment of crime and the pursuit of criminals. ". Unlike most angels, his name doesn't actually translate to anything, which sucks a lot because I love name meanings like that. OH WELL.

Leclair is a common French last name, and stems from the word clair, which means "light" or "bright". It also has a badass family crest, yo.

His chumhandle is empyreanChroniker, which is just a big fancy way of saying "heavenly clock", which is a biiiggg reference to the origin of his character, a literal clockwork angel.

His symbol is a clock. Because he likes clocks. I don't see how I need to elaborate this. :Ic

Okay so Donny was originally made for another RP like four-ish years ago and back then I was really bad with making names that didn't have redundant meanings. At its very simplest, Donovan's given name meant "dark" kind of roughly-ish but it wasn't until later that I decided to give him a sorta justice!!!!! schtick. This was reflected through his surname, Arcans, a bastardization of a Dutch surname that meant "ruler of the law". Basically at that point he had the morals of a particularly vicious paladin and let's face it he'd be a bit of a despot if he were in control of anything.

And then I decided to imagine him as a teenager for the sake of Scribs, which gave me the chance to play around with the idea of a judgmental douchebag during that teenager phase. And so Donny became a douchebag who baited people into reacting to things and has a hatred for like 90% of humanity.

His chumhandle, celestialCavalier basically came from that ye olde paladin-esque concept, but it also lends itself well to his occasional thoughts of superiority and moral-high-ground-iness (celestial, srsly), as well as his self-assured douchebaggery (cavalier is synonymous with both knights kind of and being arrogant) and yeah.

And his symbol is the symbol for the goddess Juno because of an association that existed between Donovan and the name in another RP wherein I sort of solidified his character so yeah. But if it were something more mundane like the average hamsteak human child it would be something like a shitty anime sword or a troll face or something like that.

Pallas still <3/<>s you, Juno.

If there was a scratched version of Scrib where he was the Ancestor, do you think he'd be a lot more like that original concept?

Definitely. Around the time of the ye olde scribs drabble meme, I actually wrote out a confrontation between a scratched-swap between Donovan and his Guardian. He was pretty much a badass chief of police who expected the worst from people and positively fucking hated his charge's optimism towards humanity because bluh bluh its wrong bluh. But even in spite of that, he's still the same douchebag with a heart of gold (bronze might be a bit more accurate...), it's just buried under heaps of lineface.

Durian is a strongly odorous fruit with a hard, prickly outside "shell" kind of thing, and people seem to have a hard time agreeing on a flavor description.

Agripa is a shortened version of Agrippa or Agrippae, which has popped up in history several times, notably with Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, for whom the Agrippan method of numerology is named.

Symbol: Caltrap, a small and cheap weapon made of nails wrapped on themselves in such a way that a point is always sticking up to injure anyone who steps on it. It's more of a defensive and sabotaging weapon than anything aggressive or offensive.

defensiveAlchemist
defensive: He's a prickly guy who will (sometimes) fight if attacked, but prefers to lay traps and snares and get his enemies to hurt themselves... and if he thinks he's being criticized, he gets irritated and tries to criticize whoever he's talking to.
alchemist: Thanks to me reading up on his namesake (and ancestor), I decided that in addition to divination, Durian is also into cooking and truth-seeking, so the philosophy of alchemy is important to him.

--TEAL DEER BACKSTORY--

Durian is something like the third character concept I had for Scrib! I really like randomized character generation, it comes from my love of tabletop games and dice. So I checked the in-game trolls to see what colors were sparse, and saw that orange and green were empty.

I figured I'd go with green, and opened up a book on the metaphysical associations of rocks to see if anythign struck me. I liked the description of Malachite I saw, and I started doing research. Apparently Malachite is named after the mallow plant, which conveniently is six letters long, and I took it as a sign that there should be a greenblood named Mallow. Malachite and the mallow plant: green, soft, really absorbant, with a copper theme somehow, and associated with new ideas. I wanted a character who was into numerology, and I noticed how F - O - X were all associated with 6. So I was going to have a fox lusus and a theme to go with 6, and tie in tetrahedrons somehow...

And then I hit "random symbol" on symbols.com a bunch of times, and came up with caltrap and something about caltraps as a symbol struck me. I dropped the soft green theme, and looked around for green and prickly (like a caltrap) instead. I might have gone with some kind of cactus, if I stayed with a greenblood, but as the new concept developed I wanted to go with more of a yellow blood, into traps and sitting to analyze and a bit of a tsundere. I was actually thinking of having a yellow-blooded female, with GLaDOS as my headcanon voice, and that's where the punctuating when angry idea came in. "You don't even care, DO you. You monster." That kind of thing. Overall apathetic and defensive and prickly.

I had about two pieces of newsprint with scribbled notes all over the place, details from my ~extensive~ Google research into foxes and rocks and military tactics, and from that I had a list of possible names. "Mallow," "Cheval," "Tetran," "Cucooh," "Durian," "Glados," and "Vulpes." And I sat in a numerology site, plugging in names to see if any of the pairs would make a good numerological combination that fit with the concepts I had so far. I finally started testing variations of Agrippa to see if any of them worked, and finally I got the 11-6-5 combination that suited the concept.

I opened up Ash's Guide to RPG Personality & Background and rolled things up for him. Motivated by learning mysteries, gaining approval, and chaos. Cynical worldview, mainly honest with people, a bit prone to rash decisions, paranoid about clear danger, flexible with new ideas and passive aggressive with disagreements, needy with emotions, modest in tone, talkative (which i decided tied to his chaos motivation, and he became a gossip), and fond of traditional cultural norms. He'd be crude and direct in flirting, and have a mean-spirited sense of humor. Lots of pieces that I slowly would fit together into a picture.

And... I mean slowly. I was really into the idea of the game, and I sat on the app for a few days after most of us applied, slowly drawing connections between the symbolism concept and the randomly rolled rpg character ideas. I spent at least eight hours looking at art websites (like Dresden Codak's sideblog!) for ideas on designing characters, to see if drawing Durian would give me a better sense of who he was. I figured he would have lots of triangles in his facial features, a face shaped a little like an upsidedown oujia board (divination) and a bushy ponytail to resemble a fox's tail (since apparently foxes are named for their tails!) Even the idea for his vest came from a really, really roughly doodled military coat with triangular lapels.

Finally, once the apps were starting to go in and I realized the spaces were getting REALLY limited, I started to make quick decisions. His blood color should be a variation off those numbers (1165) in some way, and the other part would be letters. I tried every combo of ff, 11 and 65 to see where they all ended up on the spectrum, and liked the 1165-- blue best. So now he was a blueblood. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It gave him an excuse for his unfulfilled emotional neediness (entitlement faintly reminiscient of Eridan), an ancestor likely to have lived a long, philosophical life, and being nobility would give him more reason to like the culture that gives him that status. And so on!

Edited (just the one edit because symbol wasn't in bold...) 2012-10-11 05:13 (UTC)

...that is so cool.

I just really love randomized tables and overlapping symbolism. *^* It's a fucking addiction. The problem is getting me to actually MAKE the characters and DO something with them.

I love character creation too (I've been known to just up and stat out characters that I have no reason to ever play), but I hardly ever randomize it...I'm too much of a control freak when it comes to ~my vision~ for that. So it's really neat to see how this all came together, and how much research and fiddling you did. I was especially impressed with the effort that you put into numerology.

It IS good to have a folder of characters for a bunch of characters, just in case you get invited to a game by surprise. I've been caught offguard by that two or three times, and had to borrow characters.

Heh, well, I never trust myself to come up with a good concept from the start. I'm a bit prone to anxiety! Randomization takes the ~responsibility of choice~ out of my metaphorical hands, so then it feels like I'm just making sense of what someone else told me to do. That's just about saying "how do all these elements work together? What things seem related?"

re: Numberology, (blush?!) The numbers tie in sneakily all over the place because that's the kind of thing I feel clever for. I'm glad it's appreciated! Hopefully I'll go and compile the numbers for all the other characters sometime (in the CR chart, probably) and find excuses for Durian to reference them.

Well, what's neat about the randomization -- and this isn't something I'd really thought about until now -- is that it forces you out of your comfort-zone, characterization-wise. In roleplay, I have certain "types" (most prominently: "prettiest princess of social primary" and the aforementioned "sweet, gentle, guilty" types of which Pherae is one) who are very much so easy-mode for me, and I often drift towards them instinctively (though they're of course not the only types I've played). Randomization can guarantee that you don't just stick with that easy-mode.

...and wow, I just looked up Pherae's numbers on this site, and 6-9-6 fits her stupidly well.

Yep! A lot of the time I get characters where there's some traits that are "easy mode" and other things that are harder to wrap my head around. There's still the challenge of PLAYING the character well, which is tough, with the characters not in my comfort zone, especially with higher-speed games like tabletop stuff or IM stuff.

As to numerology...
you 5ee
it i5 the 5imple5t mo5t Elegant 5y5tem
it 5peak5 volume5 of Truth
;)

holy fucking balls thats awesome and im jelly

Let me be your RPG resource dealer. Stuff like this can be fun~

bookmarked the hell outta that. the majority of the characters i've made in the past few forevers have always been to fill a particular role or whatever, so having a fun and random way to wing it is pretty much incredibly neat. :D

CAN I JUST SAY that created characters like that out of the blue is simply one of the best ways and funnest ways to do so? It really is amazing to see how you went through it, and I really need to try more of it sometime because I often get my best characters from doing random elements than planning beforehand.

But ahhh, this really is very cool! Thanks for sharing. :D

Late reply, but yes! It's like connect the dots and constellations: a bunch of details that then you draw the connections between. Some quirky characters can come up that way, especially since there's a good chance they'll have some contradictions to them. :D

Kal's general theme thing started off as voodoo... especially the petro loa from Haitian Vodou. His very original concept was going to focus mostly on Kalfu with some influences from some others. He's drifted way waaaay far away from all that over time lsdjf but yeah that's where he started

Kalfour is from Kalfu and Carrefour, both names for a satan figure who watches the crossroads of the world and allows evil things into it. Samedi is from Baron Samedi who is basically death.

His symbol is the moon because Kalfu is associated with the moon lskdflj Trufax, I originally planned for his symbol to be a waxing crescent cause that's my favorite phase, but the person who did my original icons reversed the colors and I didn't notice until she'd finished them all adsklf so he ended up with a waning gibbous instead. His highblood symbol from before he flipped off the handle is a waning crescent!

His chumhandle... lakjsdf I just threw together I really didn't know what to do with it. I knew I wanted to include Medium because he makes kind of a Big Deal about the fact that these are his powers because of course he is a lowblood. And then restless... I have no idea where I got that from originally it's been a long time since I decided restlessMedium was gonna be his handle lsdjflkj It works though because... yes he... doesn't sleep well...!!

As an aside, he has explosivekind because Kalfu likes gunpowder aldf and his fetch modus is pandora because the site I read when I first started researching compared Kalfu letting chaos into the world to Pandora opening the box. So there u go 8>c

So... did his clothing start when he made a wardrobifier explode?

sobbing I wish it was something like that but no no his clothing is a deliberate choice that he goes really really far out of his way to achieve

cause he really likes colors

which is to say, he would gut someone just to see the exact hue of blood that fell out of them... lsdj But he's also in extraordinarily tight control of himself so wearing colorful clothing is literally the only indulgence he ever allows himself ever....... so there's that

whoops this is probably more words then you wanted ljsdlfj deadcat

It was wishful thinking, really.

Oh. Guts to see their colors. It just... never occurred to him to ask for a bloodslide or something? Kal...

Man did you even see my info dump? I love words, lots and lots of words.

no no no if he's gonna see someone's color he has to be sure so there has to be lots and lots of it!!

.....................Kal is a mess news at eleven

but yes I did +__+ it was fab tldr about characters is great

My gosh Kal, that is overkill! Literally. Painfully literally. For the dead person. If you kept them alive they would pump MORE blood for you to see.

...Such a mess.

So yeah I don't mind rolling around in piles of words about things. Browsing everything on here has been great fun!

Name: Perrix Seiyos is just a really long, divided bastardization of Perseus that I thought sounded neato. He takes a lot of inspiration from Perseus's legend, as the dude was basically history's first loot whore - he got himself all decked out in top tier gear so that he could kill a raid boss, then later did it again and married the chick he rescued in the process.

Trolltag: callouslyStalwart isn't anything too fancy - he'll remain loyal and defend you to the death all while actually not giving any kind of shit about you. He's just doing it to win points and because that's what heroes do. He's also kind of a tank.

Symbol: Despite being a legendary figure with a constellation, even, Perseus has never really had a generally-accepted symbol. The authors of the One Hundred Year Star-Diary decided to make symbols for all of the constellations that lacked them, so I snagged that because I'm uncreative and wanted to keep going with the Perseus motif. The symbol is actually pretty representative of Perrix, too, I suppose. It's really fancy but doesn't really mean anything.

Most everything about Zurahe is related to her symbol- Lyra, the lyre, one of the minor constellations. I picked Lyra because its primary star is Vega, one of the corners of the Summer Triangle- the two other stars which belong to two avian constellations, Cygnus (the swan) and Aquila (the eagle). Lyra itself was once thought to be a lyre carried by vulture or an eagle- and Zurahe's lusii are a mated pair of rather large birds of prey.

Zurahe's first name comes from 'the Lyre of Zurah', which is what the constellation was called by the Persian poet, Hafiz. Her surname, Cadens, comes from the fact that, as it was thought to be carried by an eagle or a vulture, it was sometimes called Aquila or Vultur Cadens. However it's also a play on the word 'cadence' pertaining to her overall musical theme.

The 'blackout' in her handle refers to military operations, where lights are shut off in order to hide from enemies- though I fudge that in alternian miltary it's probably used to assassinate enemy camps under cover of darkness- and an 'etude' is a brief, often complex piece of music usually used for practice. In other words, it's implied that she practices to wreck people's shit.

Oh, I really like how you looked to constellations for your naming convention -- it ties in so nicely with canon. Also, I made the "cadence" (or possibly also "cadenza," fwiw) connection with her name, but I didn't know there was an additional, constellation connection there, and naturally I was curious where "Zurahe" came from.

/rolls around in this thread
it is making all my "creep on other people's characters" dreams come truuuue~

I knew off the bat that I wanted her to have archery as one of her main fixations so I built up her info about that. :v

Name: I knew I wanted to give the one-syllable first name + 6-7 letter last name convention a go. I also decided I wanted to use a unisex sort of name and I chose Shea. It's a derivative of Séaghdha and means admirable (fitting with Shea's desire to be a coolkid hipster) and also hawklike, which is an intentional reference to Hawkeye (Of the avengers, who is...An archer). Her last name Lister, finds its--if the internet is right--origins from the Gaelic Mac an Fleisdeir which translated means "son of the arrow-maker". Also her whole name has a bit of the Gaelic in it, which I chose to reference the movie Brave, which takes place in the Scottish highlands and has an archer for a main character. It was going to be that or try for Welsh (inventors of the English longbow). Finally, and this is more because I thought it was hilarious with her coolkid nature, her name sounds pretty close to the phrase "A-Lister".

Chumhandle: I wanted to stick with the DNA convention and I knew that I wanted archer to be incorporated. This was probably one of the harder parts when I was building her character but the one with the least amount of work behind it. I eventually decided on the word "ataraxic" because it means "Of or pertaining to ataraxia" which means generally calming and tranquil. Of course in reference to her laid-back nature. However it can also mean a drug that calms. ...Going to to show that sometimes she does things because they sound cool and doesn't actually get the full meaning.

Symbol: With Shea's archery theme, arrows were the most obvious choice. Symbolically arrows have been used to represent direction, swiftness, wit and also as a symbol of war, but also of peace depending on its orientation and position. In Native American symbolism, crossed arrows are a symbol of friendship, reflecting her generally chill nature. Or you could argue that maybe the fact that they're downward facing (whereas the Native American symbol is often depicted with upwards pointed arrows) alludes to her being more opportunistic when it comes to the offensive as this is reminiscent of how arrows would be pointing if one was shooting from the high-ground, AKA: an advantageous positon. :) Also because her color association is green (which in itself was a choice in that archery in recent times seems to usually be associated with nature or the natural world), there's also the reference pun to Green Arrow.

The orientation of the arrows in her symbol form an "x", which is often used as a variable that is unknown (ex: Person x in a situation), which alludes slightly with her aspect of Void which of course in canon seems to give its heroes the ability to hide under the radar so to speak, obscuring their actions and making their position unknowable. The X can also be considered a saltire (AKA: St. Andrew's cross), which is a pretty common symbol (Also seen on the Scottish flag, again an oblique reference to Brave) universally.

Edited 2012-10-12 00:46 (UTC)

Name:

Phylus is actually a trollified version of Phylum, or part of the logical order of Biological classifications. When talking with Sig (whose initial design I used to create off of), she had mentioned the idea that Phylus was supposed to be a part of a group of Meerkat lusii-trolls who all stuck together in a sort of group. I wanted to use something not immediately recognizable as OH IT'S A GROUP while still having a lot of meaning to me, personally. As for his last name, Inatta: I wanted to use the scientific name for Meerkat, or Suricata suricatta to inspire the last name as a reference to his lusus. I don't actually remember where the In- came from, though I think it was just because I wanted a harsher sound to balance out the last part, which comes straight from suricatta.

For reference, his brothers and sisters all share the same last name, but their first names are: Laifee, Dahmin, Kinden, Phylus (that's me!), Calass, Oreden, Fahmle, Genzus, Spezes. Quality naming indeed.

Trolltag:

careeringCartographer is essentially a callback to the fact that Phylus is a very jumpy, jittery troll -- he would scamper and run away from anything that might hurt him, hence the word careering, which means "to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction". Cartographer relates to the fact that Phylus loves making maps -- that's the official name for the practice or science of making maps. I also wanted to stick to the CATG version found in the comic, because I have a lot of fun with challenges like that.

Basically I had fun in my dictionary.

Symbol:

The Eye of Providence is actually used on the dollar bill and for a lot of Templar meanings -- it is the all-seeing eye. Initially, when I designed him, I thought about using Seer as his class; I wanted his mapmaking to have a meaning -- and of course, when you make maps you can 'see' where you are going and how to get there, which is a good thing for the all-seeing eye to have! But as the Heir I also think that's pretty accurate, as Heirs are generally the people who have to have the foresight to fix the mistakes of their predecessors, and as such need to have pretty good forward thinking. With all of his adventuring and mapmaking it made sense to give him a symbol that represented being able to see indefinitely, as well as something a little mystic because Phylus is not a normal troll in any sense of the word and would generally count as a little bit of a troll cultist, the way he holes up with his friends and family and rarely leaves unless it's necessary.

Edited 2012-10-12 01:01 (UTC)

Komesh's primary theme is that of silver, (and also through its associations, the moon heheheh), but of silver that's been mishandled and tarnished.

Silver, especially in alchemy, can stand for things like purity, clarity, awareness and vision, intuition and inner wisdom, subtle strength, focus, single-minded purpose, persistence, contemplation, artistry, and reflection. It's also the highest conductive metal for electricity.

With silver's ties to the moon, it's given associations with tides, cycles and emotional changeability. It's also supposed to be psychicly strong.

Komesh has that focus, purpose and persistence, and artistry. He's very conductive of emotions (instead of electricity) which is a psychic strength and could be considered to muddily reflect them back. Which is where the "tarnishing" comes in. That means he lacks the clarity, intuition and knowledge, and when he throws back reflections, throws back distorted ones. His strength is brittle and unbending, instead of malleable and subtle like the metal. He's also a mutant, making him "impure" (by troll standards.) Now, with work and the right balance ~~quick, who has a sun/gold theme~~, he could achieve most of the other qualities; they're what he could grow into.

Name: Komesh (Tatar: Kömeş) is a word for silver, which can also mean lord or prince in other languages, which is pretty straightforward.

Afonos is Greek for "without a voice" which is both straightforward and not. In Komesh, it primarily refers to his muteness, but could also be referred to his status--he would be doomed to be silenced by culling. In his ancestor's case, the Maritime Enforcer had his political voice silenced as well.

Symbol: his symbol, seen in the icon, is one of the various alchemical symbols for silver. Also simple, and reflected in the shape of his horns. ~~The one I liked the most~~.

Trolltag: absentUltima-- "ultima" is the last syllable of a word, but it's close to ultimate--basically, it's Komesh advertising his muteness and his lacking of what trolls would consider the best traits. He was very little when he chose it, and regrets it to this day.

Other misc. facts: He wears silver jewelry, specifically 4 anklets and 7 earrings, which together make up the atomic number for silver--47.

He also wears them in groups of 4, 3, or 1, which is... well, I couldn't help the reference, okay.

Penguindad is probably the only thing that doesn't have a specific association with silver or the moon (that I've found.) I just really like killer penguins.

Edited 2012-10-12 04:41 (UTC)

sun-theme you say~

...okay so Pherae's sun-connection is not nearly as strong as Komesh's silver one (though it did inform how I named her ancestor, "Beastmistress Heliadae"), but I still felt that I had to comment. ;D

ohoho sun-theme~

Their interactions could prove very interesting. :D

I guess Pherae brings all the moon-associated highbloods to the yard?

Yes, this should be very interesting. :3

Kappy actually started out as an expy of another OC I had! Though he's since snowballed into an entirely different character of his own now. But in his original design he more closely resembled said child OC -- he was 5 sweeps, for starters, and he had a more maroon red colour instead of the bright red I gave him here. Those were things I adjusted for scribs since all the trolls had to at least be 7 sweeps. His blood colour I changed mostly for aesthetic reasons ~~and failed to realize it's really bright until much later whoops~~.

A lot of his design was deliberately meant to be ironic, which now just keeps happening without me really trying because scribs has somehow ended up making his life irony in motion pretty much. The original session he was made for was also built with a lot of chess metaphors and motifs -- Kappy himself is based off the pawn, smallest and most often sacrificed pieces in chess. It's still there because I feed off character despair. Once I decided on his interests -- botany, herbalism and cooking -- I started building around them and thus why Kappy is pretty much a hippie.

Name: Kaprao is Thai for holy basil, a herb with many, many medicinal properties and religious connotations in Hinduism. Considered good for helping adapt to stress and used as a remedy for a variety of maladies in various forms! The plant also symbolizes purity, happiness, harmony and good luck, and is also used as a symbol of protection.

I am an awful person, yes.

Ocimum is directly lifted from the scientific name for basil plants! I was kind of out of ideas at the time.

Trolltag: passiveSampler is pretty self-explanatory. Kappy is a pretty passive person who tends to endure through problems rather than actually do anything, hoping eventually they'll stop kicking him sooner or later. Sampler as in he samples plants for their medicinal (or lack thereof) properties.

Symbol: His symbol is the one used in botany to denote "very poisonous" plants. And a lot of the plants he keeps are hideously poisonous to some degree and he has a disgustingly ridiculous resistance to poison himself. It's also one of the symbols that can be used for "checkmate" in chess. It also vaguely resembles one of his favourite flowers, which was an unintentional bonus.

Edited 2012-10-12 06:25 (UTC)

Name: Ria and Ira. Lin and I sat over these names quite a while, we wanted names that are similar, anagrams at best, and they had to be short, so the finding was harder than the picking.
Ira tends to be a masculine name, actually. Means watchful. Is also, in Italian, the word for "wrath".
Ria is short for Maria. Which is "love" or "beloved".
Now Ira isn't actually particularly wrathful or anything, but she is the one who will remember old grudges forever, where Ria will just... fly off the handle and scream and flip a table and cry but... she'll forget all about it in less than an hour.

Bonus round: Aria was a bit arbitrarilly picked because that's one name the twins' names would work together to make.

..Lin found the last name, so I don't quite recall what that was about, but I did some quick googling. Because the 'half of-' theme is not something we got tired of easily.

Chumhandle: shortened down to CD and DC. Again with the matching sets, it was kind of a must. Now because Ira and Ria are both pretty big on the experiments, cooking/baking/chemistry/general science/making stuff, we wanted their hobbies in it but we wanted there to be some awareness of their split nature that'd show in the handles. So after some hours of throwing a thesaurus around the room we have disjoinedCulinarian and chemistDichotomy.

Symbol: ...I can't actually remember where we found those and I'm too lazy to work back through the chatlog BUT I do believe we worked backwards from picking Aria's symbol which would be

________
________
________

and split that up into two halves.

There you go.

Name: Sparks Castele-- with the pseudonym Paul-- was kind of a joke to begin with. I wanted a name that sounded like a child star, and for a while I kept calling him 'Sparky' as a joke in my head. I then looked at some famous stage names and how you get nicknames like 'Bing' Crosby so... Sparks came to mind. But instead of it being a fake name, I figured Boss/Sawyer wanted him to be a star from the start, so. He gave him the title Sparks to define the kid. Decide everything for him. Castele is an offshoot of the more recognized last name Castle. It's a very regal sounding name and kinda old world. I figured since celebrities are more or less the modern day royalty, it worked for him. Paul was really random and just a boring name. I originally wanted Sparks to think up other names and give a new one to each person, but never really implemented that. Most people just don't know his name at all, and that sort of works, too.

Chumhandle: misterArchimime is pretty straight forward. An archimime is sort of a hired jester for funerals. He speaks for the living and deceased. I figured Sparks picked it because it's a cool name and archetype (tacking 'mister' on at the front since, due to his font color, many folks assume he's a chick at first), but... that it might come into play later? I don't now. I haven't yet figured out entirely how I want it to go, just at some point I want it to make total, obnoxious sense.

Symbol: Sparks' symbol, which I still need to fully design, is a domino mask. Obviously, this makes sense for him since it's attached to masquerades and those are a form of theatre in and of themselves. Very regal, prissy, whatever. But domino masks are also used on super heroes (ala Batman's Robin) and I figure there is a hero within him. He just has to let it out.

Uh, also-- canekind as a callback to old, pleasing gentleman who had canes and would sing in the rain, whatever. That's all I got. Not very indepth shit here.

EVERYTHING IS DELIGHTS; no worries about how "in-depth" or not you are. c:

♥

Names, Handles, and More: The Meme

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PHERAE ELAPHA

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TEAL DEER CROSSING

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Re: TEAL DEER CROSSING

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PERRIX SEIYOS

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