Pennames:

becoming who we wish to be

         We have finished our Macbeth unit, and now we are exploring various short works in our cp lit class. As you may have noticed, I had already changed my title back because I had believed we were done with our blogs in cp lit. But nonetheless, I am happy to be here today to write on a quite enjoyable topic. As I have mentioned, we are looking at short works in our cp lit class, and today (now known as ‘last friday’) we discussed Saki and who he was in brief before reading his short work, “The Storyteller”. We talked about his choice of Penname, which was the name of a character in another author’s story, who served royal guests their champagne. Hector Munro (Saki’s real name) compared himself with his penname to a humble server and his stories to light, bubbly champagne. So, our blog question of the day was what fictional character’s name we would take as our penname. I don’t know whether you are aware, but being an author, I long ago chose a penname for myself. I think I won’t post it here on the off chance that someone from the wide internet world is able to connect it to me and figure out my true identity; for to the blogging world I must remain Vivi, and I think I don’t want Vivi even connected to my penname. I do have several false names to go under, don't I? If my true identity were revealed to the internet world, I would, of course, have to release the ninjas, and I don’t think anyone wants that. Except the ninjas. And I, being as I am one of my own ninjas. (Spirals off on many random references to intricate inside jokes from many years past...)

       But anyways, CP Lit. Saki. Right. What I can tell you is that my real penname is not taken from a fictional character (actually it is one of my middle names as the first name and a last name I found on the internet and modernized (that should be vague enough (I’m nesting parentheses again))), and the prompt asks us to chose a fictional character’s name like Saki did. I personally would be worried that this might be considered plagiarism, and so I would never, in reality, do this. But, if I were pressed to plagiarize the name of one of my favorite characters who would not only represent me but also my writing style, though this is a very difficult choice, I would have to probably go with good old Luna Lovegood. I am, in case you could not properly discern from my remarks regarding ninjas, a little odd, much like Luna. I am a Ravenclaw through and through, and I love learning and knowledge, and I even try my hand at riddles, though to be fully frank, I probably would have ended up being eaten by Gollum in the fateful battle of wits recently (well, the first was a year or so ago now, for the first, already) portrayed in film. But I admire Luna’s attitude in life, and in many ways it’s like my own. Also, I think she simply has a lovely-sounding name. Luna. That’s just pretty. And who wouldn’t love to be a Lovegood? It has such a nice sound to it, and it represents me and my writing style decently. I write fantasy, and once in a while I dabble in mystery and even sometimes dystopia (more accurately, I have about 2,000 words of a single dystopian novel started, so not much, really, but enough to count) and also I have one sci fi-fantasy short story (“completed” (in dire need of serious revision, but rough draft-finished) at about 5,000 words). But I think Luna is a fantastical and rather spontaneous person, like my writing. She is smart and perhaps eloquent. I can imagine her over-using nested parentheses as well. I relate to her character and in some ways aspire to emulate her, and I think she works as a symbol for my writing, more or less. In the quirky, colorful lands beyond the violet mist, we hope we can avoid plagiarizing when we remind you all to not worry: You’re just as sane as I am, Harry. (Thank you J. K. Rowling for not suing me, you and J. R. R. Tolkien are both awesome.)

Side-note: please bear with we of the violet mist, we are presently expieriencing some technical difficulties with our font.