what's in a name, or: why i deadnamed vriska serket (Patreon)

(this is a LOT of rambling about names)

in the last update, we saw vriska pre-transition, and while i don't think this has rubbed anyone the wrong way, really, i would like to have it down here just in case, and i'm trying to write more in the new year, so i'm gonna hop on this chance to elaborate on a position of mine! it's a position that i think is pretty unique amongst writers and trans people alike, and it's one i think i could advocate for especially well 

a lot of trans people just kind of want to be done with their deadnames, and this is not a position i'm going to argue against. right now, it's especially common to outright reject acknowledgement of deadnames. people will talk around them, become openly uncomfortable with people who share that deadname - especially other trans people who chose that deadname for themselves, something i see quite often, and generally speaking, just want it gone, don't have it influence a character - it's a dead name, it doesn't matter. 

vast error has a really cool way of handling this - characters who are shown pretransition have their names hidden, they are not shown at all. jentha also makes a note of their names "sucking", which is VERY funny. like, girl........

if that's the way you feel, i'm not here to argue against it. but let's talk about the flipside of that coin. 

i don't like my deadname at all. it's just not who i am - i'm victoria. but it is undeniably unique. there is a real chance that i was the only person in the whole world who had it as a first name. it's frequently mispronounced, and the way people mispronounce it is similar enough to a pop culture character that i shudder when someone reaches for that reference. the source material is unwatchable to me, not that it's a thing i think i'd like without that context anyway. it's also a name of a historical figure - not a huge one, but one with a lot of influence in niche fields i find myself in by virtue of exploring a lot of ideas. (shout out to anyone who's ever rotated a 3d object) 

in this sense, a name becomes an expectation, a way of saying "here is what is expected of you". naturally, as a proud parent-disappointer, these expectations do not match reality. but having those expectations put upon you can change how you see the world, too. this might not really make a lot of sense - a lot of names are normal, things that exist solely as names unto themselves. 

names like john, mary, peter - a lot of american names are biblical in origin, but because biblical names are so common, you may not think of them as such. in eternal september, the name mary is pointed in this way. it's a biblical name. in an update released on the feast of the epiphany, 12 days after christmas, she was visited by three magi, bearing gifts for her progeny. i picked the name marietta for her because mary was the most popular name in the year she was born, but that connection and all its implications are born of it being a biblical name.

i feel generally the same about the name "dave strider" - one of dave's defining arc symbols is that of the broken sword, and he alchemizes the deringer, a sword which will cut the ring from a ruler's hand. this is a lord of the rings reference, a reference to aragorn, the rightful king whose throne was taken, whose broken sword is fixed when it comes time for him to rule. i fully believe this would not be the story dave has if his name was not strider. 

and so we come to vriska. let's take a look at the name given - mygale. first off, the red herrings: there's a couple of brands that use this name, in particular for race cars, which is cool. i think. i don't know anything about racing. there's also a novel about sexual abuse, which isn't strictly out of line with the way vriska is written in bdth, but i have not read it and don't want to commit to reading something i'm pretty sure i would not enjoy and would not meaningfully get something out of just to confirm this. so that's a red herring too.

but as far as real basis goes, this is the french word for tarantula, which makes it an obvious choice for vriska, being a spider! but its origin is in greek - it actually means shrew in greek, which is also an obvious choice, tying back to vriska's position as a difficult woman and endless characters and fans whose interactions with vriska involve attempts to tame her. 

the real kicker, the reason i commited to this, is that of a scientific name. mygalomorphs are a defunct way of classifying spiders. this is covered by mygale just being the french word for tarantulas, of course, but the two categorizations are mygalomorphae for tarantulas, and for spiders that aren't mygalomorphs, well. that's araneomorphs, baby. 

with this knowledge, you can contextualize mygale, used as vriska's given name, as a sort of "male-gendered" version of the name aranea. of course, you could write this off with a lot of things - trolls have different ideas of gender, troll names are the first syllables a lusus says in proximity to a chosen grub, but notably, i don't care. there are times where i think conveying an idea is more important than the lore. i think this on any day ending in y. 

all this to say, i think a trans character's deadname can inform a lot of what is expected of them, and is a thing that can be interacted with beyond its capacity to just be discarded, since as burning down the house repeatedly hits, that which we claim to have discarded and moved on from oft have a terrible way of showing up once more, and i try not to leave paint on the palette when it comes to juicing everything i can for meaning.

(screenshot: a list of names from 2012 tabletop roleplaying game world of dungeons)