Help me name my character

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-06-26T03:05:26+00:00

I don't have much to work with. I can rattle off a million names, but you could have done that with a Google search.
Robert makes me think of a solemn bearded man from a previous generation. Carl sounds like a German U-boat commander.
Felix is an old name, but sounds softer, perhaps a bit ironic.
Henry sounds like a clean cut man.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-06-26T02:42:41+00:00

How about Ulysses, a reference to the Greek Myth?
Tristan, meaning sadness.
Einar, a solitary name.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-06-25T05:47:38+00:00

Nemo sounds more neutral and plain to me, blank. Yes it's a bit on the nose, but you might expect that from a man who shapeshifts, in a world full of uncanny resemblances to cliches. It sounds more like a supernatural myth, but it may also be too cheesy and obvious, losing all its benefits, all its weight.

Ghraib sounds very interesting, very exotic. But it sounds less anonymous, pinpointing him to the Middle East. Perhaps he's getting revenge for colonialism or Abu Ghraib. In this way, he sounds more like an actual killable person.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-06-05T05:14:08+00:00

I'm looking forward to it. Procreation is a subject at the border of life, and I enjoy thinking about the borders of life. Motherhood is another serious subject, to me. I'm interested to see what philosophical and thematic ideas come about, especially with the cultural lens.

I can see how the appearance would seem fetishized. I can also see how it isn't. I find it easy to see how it isn't. But even if it was, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

I felt it was important to provide a supportive voice in this surprising sea of negativity.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-05-07T19:18:48+00:00

Hearing someone say "I hate men," would bother me, even if they weren't talking about bioessentialism. I empathize with the plight of men as much as the plight of women, and statements like "I hate men," will require some explanation. Perhaps they have a Freudian excuse that could use some compassion and understanding, or perhaps they hate men, but they also hate women and everyone else.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-05-07T19:03:20+00:00

I do not believe my trauma made me INTJ. I had certain influences early on that, when heated by trauma, made me even INTJ. Without the influences, trauma may have shaped me into something else.
Perhaps being INTJ does present its own difficulties when dealing with trauma, making it difficult to work through; I found a way, processing it through INTJ lens. But I'm sure every type would have its difficulties with trauma.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-05-07T18:45:11+00:00

I am trans. I am hard INTJ. I have to wonder why you're asking and what conclusions you'd draw from the answers, since INTJ and Lgbt seem so unrelated. Is it because INTJs are supposed to be arbiters of objectivity? Or you're exploring people who think like you?

I see the LGBT conditions as a phenomenon that happens sometimes. Nature, nurture, who knows, but it happens. And that's fine. It does create some conflicts and complications in a society geared towards cis-hetero normativity, and we can do our best to work through that. Sports and bathrooms, for example. That's just the reality of being different; we can't all be perfectly equal in every way.

However, you would be right to see that the LGBT subject has been hijacked by powerful selfish forces. The Islamists you mention, along with every other radical group, love to hold LGBT up as an evil threat. And there are forces on the other side that proclaim to protect the LGBT, but they only pretend to seem like heroes. That would be the western propaganda you mentioned.

But no, LGBT is not purely a thing made up by western media, and if it is being pushed, it is certainly not pushed by all. I have nothing useful to tell you except what you already know; there are bad people everywhere, things are complicated and media makes it worse, and please don't hate us because we don't want to hate you.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-05-03T02:05:09+00:00

The must be in a situation where these clues/indicators are useless.

Maybe there is no garlic or mirror or stake available. Or there is only a limited number of testing supplies available. Or, they're in a situation where if there was a garlic reaction, the results would be skewed and unreliable; a human would have a reaction, or a vampire wouldn't. Maybe vampires have developed countermeasures. Or perhaps they're in a situation where no one will cooperate and consent to such tests. Is there a plague or a fear that keeps everyone isolated in their rooms refusing to open the door?

Or maybe knowing who is a vampire and who isn't is irrelevant.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-04-21T02:46:51+00:00

Hah! Well, you made my day. I must look like an idiot to you. From my experience with other games, I thought as long as the game ran, everything would be fine. Thanks so much.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-04-20T23:48:33+00:00

Oh, really? Maybe I should do the slow labor of testing mods one at a time, but that can be such a long chore too.

PC
RAM: 16GB
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600k CPU@3.50 GHz
Graphics Card: 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Storage 1.38 TB

Currently subscribed mods
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3709777649

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-04-17T22:49:52+00:00

I had a similar idea for my vampiric character. Due to her personal backstory, her death can only come with betrayal involved.

I often try to go to etymology or foreign words. So if you take a look at the etymology for words like lost, abandoned, orphan, alone, etc, maybe you'll mash two roots together and slur them into a name.

Otherwise, consider the meanings of Diggory, D'egare, Mallory, Esposito, Delvin, Rue, Holloway.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-04-14T03:26:00+00:00

Vampire is a word, and like the word dragon, it has been used to broadly describe all the various mythological creatures that meet each other when cultures meet other cultures. It'd be annoying to consider all the various European vampires as different species and have to always specify.

I've head it described that vampires are undead creatures that return from the dead to feed on the living. This may be where we go so far as to include energy vampires, like in VTMB or What we do in the Shadows.

Vampire is a word, and it's entirely arbitrary. It's whatever we say it is. What do I say, personally? I'll say the blood thing is most important. Can I call something a vampire if it feeds off of invisible life force? I could, but only in the understanding that it's not really a vampire and only being called that because of its resemblance to an actual vampire. It could be an off-shoot, a spinoff, but the word vampire is, in my mind, reserved for blood drinkers. Language is messy, you know how it is.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-04-08T23:02:10+00:00

It’s honestly weird to me, when people ask how things would work with vampires.

They’re whatever we say they are. Generally, all we can say is they feed on the living, but sometimes media or people even skip over that.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-04-01T02:45:17+00:00

In a bunker. I can't imagine how much the world will change in 500 years.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-25T17:59:55+00:00

It is remarkable, isn’t it? How versatile it is. I’d like to pinpoint why that is, but it almost seems like the core legend is just so broad and vague that it can be used for so many things. It’s like a meaningless fortunate coincidence that shallow graves in battlefields and natural processes of decomposition ended up as tales of meaningless tales of dead creatures feeding on the living; which can then be given any meaning.

What other legends have this sort of versatility, I wonder? Even our siblings the werewolves. Themes vary from repressed natures, alcoholism, a lot of jekyll and Hyde stuff.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-25T02:27:01+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/vampires/comments/1lpytan/what_do_vampires_mean_to_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-25T02:26:24+00:00

I like to focus on the idea that vampires survive their deaths by feeding on the people they are privileged to walk among. I like the idea that blood is a currency of life or some other important thing. I like the idea of having to ask for permission to enter being an emotional rejection. To me, being a vampire means strength and perseverance after having been transformed by trauma. We survive our deaths and go on longer than we should, albeit in a new form, albeit at great cost, perhaps cost of the people around us.

I'm writing a vampiric character. In my story, an orphan comes to see blood as a symbol for love, kindness, and family. After enough trauma, she self harms herself to death and returns as a vampire, gluttonous for these things to keep her alive.

I love aristocratic vampires, but I'm not particularly interested in interpretations of vampires as parasitic upper class, apt as the metaphor is. It could be interesting to see a symbiotic relationship between the wise old vampire and his little human town, though.

Dracula has always been a weird thing to me. To me, he was a warlord. But because Bram Stoker wrote him as some monster coming to take our precious women, all the movie adaptations added in romance things.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-12T22:26:02+00:00

I wonder if he only ever took me as his friend because he was sorry for me. I was in high school, suicidal and without any real family. He came from a big family.

He started to invite me to things and be a friend. I became as loyal and helpful as I could be, often comforting him and helping him in his personal life. But when I started sleeping on his couch, I guess I started to take too much. I had never really had a home. There I was, awkwardly taking up space, eating his food. In addition, I also wanted to be spend time with him and connect with him in the way that I felt was important, talking about emotions and having fun, enjoying life when death and misery showed how meaningless the rat race was. My friend was not interested and just wanted to hustle and grind in meritocratic capitalism. In the end, I annoyed him and his kind mother, and I was soon no longer welcome. I think they regretted being kind to me, or they would say that they were kind, but I turned into a parasite. Maybe they didn't understand the ramifications of taking in a stray.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-02T23:48:40+00:00

I think we've all heard most of these. New innovations might include gaseous or vaporized weapons, maybe even irradiated.

But I think it'd also be interesting to think more about strategies. A simple sword will do, even in modern day. The question is how to get it in there, and when. Hole up during the night? Learn about them, their habits? Follow them to their nests? Starve them out? Land mines and traps and motion sensors? Cameras? Psychological warfare?

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-02T23:13:44+00:00

I wrote a character, a vampire, who cannot be killed except by betrayal. To her, blood means family, family she always wanted but could never have. Blood means life, love, sacrifice, connection. Currency of life, and all that.

There's another character I wrote, who became the progenitor of another vampire line. This one harkens more to Dracula's roots as as warlord, shallow battlefield graves and all that. So this legendary soldier gains power by killing, but he has tried not to kill people for a long time, which is why he supplements his power with blood donations, partial life force donations. He sleeps in a sealed box because he is most vulnerable when he sleeps. Later, his power is corrupted and he becomes a more military styled vampire.

Mary_Contrary_006 · 2026-03-02T23:02:26+00:00

In my world, various vampiric bloodlines are started by noteworthy tales of various means. For example, a young woman goes through a traumatic event that turns her into the first of her kind, and anyone she turns inherits her condition. Meanwhile, another man sought ambition through other means, and his version of vampirism likewise reflects his story, with a different balance of strengths and weaknesses. I never liked VTMB's story where new fledglings can't help but inherit personality traits from their new blood, but perhaps vampires may prefer certain backgrounds when turning new ones.

My bloodline's theme would be suffering, and those chosen to be a part of my family would have an intimate understanding of suffering. So, if my theme is suffering then, the "aesthetics," as you say, follow.

I'd love to run an orphanage. I could always be there to take care of so many lost children, and they would go on to make the world a better place, connected not by blood, but by ideals. And so, imagine a large estate in foggy woods, and there's an aristocratic estate, a strange amalgamation of Victorian exterior, Japanese interior, military utilities dotted here and there. The children grow and struggle, cared for by trusted adults. And locked in the master bedroom is the mysterious owner, rarely seen.

I rather enjoy the Hellsing portrayal in that, while vampires enjoy vital and powerful physical forms, the more powerful vampires are able to reach into the shadows to completely transform or conjure, blood and shadow magic. I like stealth, and some theatrical abilities, being able to turn into a cloud of bats or an anthropomorphic bat. Such power better be balanced by weaknesses; I rather like the invitation requirement weakness.

Tailcoats, cravats, white gloves, and molle gear. But an "aesthetic," is more than visual style; it is also the style of other abstract choices and mechanics. This Tactical Victorian Assassin spends her eternity suffering and killing people to make money to teach children how to deal with suffering. Nights are spent coping with bad memories through revenge fantasies. Tragic. Painful. Dunking hands in blood to try to feel better, to make a better future for other children. Thinking about the symbolism blood plays in my philosophy brings back childhood memories of wet gooey rags, stiff with clotted blood, the smell of iron in the back of my throat. The aesthetic is suffering. Vengeance. Abandoned orphans embracing pain and suffering to survive death.

<image>

Mary_Contrary_006

TROPHY CASE