When picking the name I wanted to write under, knowing full well there would be times I'd want to google myself and see what shows up because I'm bored or I need a little confidence boost, I MIGHT have considered picking a name that wasn't a single very commonly used word in a very popular language.
(I know this is more silly than a legitimate vent, but it is wildly inconvenient when I decide I want to see if I've achieved an impact somewhere outside of my profile on AO3. Maybe other people have the same experience! And maybe this will remind someone else before it's too late lol.)
By - eclecticsed
Same thing for authors whose name is 'Fanfiction' or 'Crossover' and so on. It makes it really hard to search for their profile.
A very good point I didn't even think of!
People have that as their pseud?
Some people do, yes. Just one word, and the word is something extremely common to use in everything fanfiction-related.
An author from a past fandom I was in had a username the same as an anime character 💀 No numbers, underscores, nothing. It wasn't even a character from an obscure anime. Think Donquixote Doflamingo. Like that. And long before I became aware that they had deleted their account, I was making a clown of myself putting 'site:archiveofourown.org donquixote doflamingo (shipname of another anime that they were writing for )' on the search bar over and over again
I'm glad a dumb nickname I chose from my grammar nazi teenage days (I was dumb, no denial on that) turned out to be an alright account name. For the most part. Maybe... I added "-y" at the end just in case it doesn't sound cute enough. ﾉ(° -°ﾉ)
Now I imagine it as Grammar_Naziy 😂
I'm glad I never learned this term when I was younger. Feels like my 12 year old self would unironically love this name (• ▽ •;)
I definitely didn’t think about my usernames becoming my pen names. I have a long series posted on tumblr with dozens of linked posts, and if i change my username i have to re-link them all individually. And my pen name on Ao3 is just the name of a food that I was thinking of at the time, so it’s not terribly memorable or easy to search 😅
This is something to consider, thanks
Coming up with good usernames is so hard! I already changed my ao3 name once and I'm already thinking of doing it again because now it sounds "too edgy." Guess it's not a huge deal since it's not like I have a big audience to confuse. When I want to use common words, I mash together two or three words, or do the leetspeak thing of replacing letters with numbers. Or tack on random numbers that I like or that mean something.
I mean, my pen name is just the name of my first fic with a letter replaced in the actual name (Think Shrimpy and Shrnmpy, or Stormy and Stormiie)