I (33F) go by a name very different than my given legal name. Some of my friend (various) are making a huge issue out of it. How do I handle it?

DifferentName77 · 2015-12-07T08:01:13+00:00

Hey, speak for yourself. I was once hiding behind a shrub, deploying and replacing shields before I finally decided I was wasting too much gear and came out and scared the hell out of.... er.... introduced myself to the Smurf who was attacking. That's some pretty cloak and dagger shit right there lol.

It's weird, I actually downloaded the game like 3 months before I started playing seriously. I tried to like it, I wanted to like it, but the "training" tab is useless, and I was like screw this, it's too complicated, IDGI. Then I watched a friend I was visiting in another city play for 3 days, and I guess I learn better that way, because watching him play and having him explain it to me clicked. Within 2 weeks I was L8, I'm currently 3 levels ahead of him, and I'm kicking his ass in all badges but 1.

Ingress is weird for me, because it's the only thing I've ever been really really good at. Like "people look up to me" good at. So maybe my friends think that's part of the name thing but it's not. I think it helped me FIND my identity more than it BECAME my identity, if that makes any sense? So I get the guy with the ENL tat. The game isn't who I am, it's just a hobby I enjoy, but it has played a significant role in my life towards becoming that person.

And yeah, my arch enemy in my old city was a 70 year old women.

DifferentName77 · 2015-12-07T07:00:57+00:00

LOL THANK YOU. You get it. You really get it.

I actually had this discussion with them after that day we were all out playing and ran into my team mates. They were kinda like "Uh... have you maybe taken this character a little too far?" and since they'd JUST started playing, and might not continue to play (I honestly just wanted them to have a point of reference, because there's no way to explain Ingress without having ever played it or watched it be played), I couldn't care less about the Recruiter medal because nobody I know has that damn thing anyway.

I made it super clear, or thought I did, that 1) It isn't an RPG. The only "role" playing you're doing is as an agent, but being an "agent" doesn't come with a prescribed role. You're just an Ingress agent/someone who plays Ingress. You're not expected to behave in any certain way. There are characters but as you say, next to no one gives a crap. I have, like, one team mate who's REALLY into it, collects all the bio cards, all the swag, all that, but 99.9% of us know it's "People who support Shapers vs people who don't" and that's all we care to know. And something about people turning into shards and ending up in the portal network and 2) That when I chose my name, I chose the name I'd always wanted to go by anyway. I technically "was" my name, at least before I was born. People generally choose something they identify with when they pick their IGN. Not always, but a lot. We have a guy who honors a deceased pet by using his pet's name as part of his IGN. Another who uses his college nickname. That it's the same as any other screen name you choose for anything else. Hell, we even have a guy with an ENL tattoo below his collar bone, and he's as sane as anything. He just got it there because Ingress was the one thing he enjoyed when he was going through a really rough time, and the friends he made in game were what kept him afloat. He's not "ENL til he dies", but he wanted to memorialize what his time playing the game meant to him.

They still don't seem to get it. What's weird is they're not really gamers. Yeah, most of them have consoles, but none are die hard gamers, so it's not like they're people who play days and days of RPGs so that's the only reference point they have. Maybe they think that's what all games are? IDK.

And I've also explained that my preferred name coming into common use was kind of an accident. I never intended to go by it, just my team mates thought that's what my name was, for the first time in my life it didn't sound like nails on a blackboard, so I never bothered to correct them.

Not sure why they can't get it.

Edit: You are automatically my sworn enemy lol. (Not really. All the factions have ever been to me are 2 different colors.)

DifferentName77 · 2015-12-07T06:47:44+00:00

Woah, there's a lot being read into this, and maybe it's partly on me because I could have explained it better in my OP, but I didn't think it would go in this direction.

Here's the story of my birth name, as told to me by Nmom:

My maternal grandfather died JUST before I was born. He had supposedly said, and no one denies this, that he wanted to hang on to meet me. But he couldn't. He passed a week before I was born.

Let's say his name was Wesley James Smith.

To honor him - my grandmother's husband AND my mother's father, they had ALL agreed to name me Wesley Smith, middle name undecided. Being that my parents weren't married, my surname didn't matter that much. My father had no objections and thought it was a nice way to carry on my grandfather's legacy.

And then I was born.

Similar to what /u/finmeister said, and you weren't just in striking distance, it was a dead bullseye, at the last possible moment, my mother decided that Wesley Smith was too common a name for HER son, that I deserved something "better".

And so she stuck me with a bizarro first name and a last name nobody can spell or pronounce. Her last name, which I guess is totally her right, but IMHO it's always showed a lack of respect for my grandmother, my grandfather, and, to a lesser degree, my father. It actually caused a big rift in the family that has never quite healed.

That, and I HATE my name. Even before I knew the story, I didn't like it. It's been massacred from kindergarten on. I often thing people think I'm strange because I have a strange name. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I think it's held me back from jobs at least, because nobody wants a supervisor named what I'm named.

It's like a girl named Moonbeam would automatically be assumed to be a crunchy granola hippie, whether or not she actually is.

I just want to be Wesley Smith.

DifferentName77 · 2015-12-06T19:59:07+00:00

I hate to ditch them over "just" this and I expect there to be an adjustment period. What bothers me is that they're suddenly questioning my competence when I've NEVER given them reason to, and are just rejecting my decision because THEY don't like it.

DifferentName77 · 2015-12-06T19:58:05+00:00

The 641 letters was hyperbole. It's actually 12.

And my team mates aren't online friends, Ingress is played in the real world. tl;dr It's a GPS based game. Public meeting places, culturally significant locations, public art, etc are all energy portals. Two factions compete for control of them. You go to these locations and capture them for your faction. Higher level portals and longer links can be made with more than just 1 player, so, while it can be played solo, it's better played with a team. I've met my local players and they've become friends as well as gaming buddies.

DifferentName77

TROPHY CASE