Originally it started out several years ago as Kharrar. Then it got expanded to Kharrar Ethelier. And now I usually just use Ethelis

For five minutes I was a published fantasy author.

I also dabbled heavily in writing for sequential art (that's comic book writing), got close, never broke in. Not an artist, can't draw my own scripts. I used a handle that represented the writer side of me. Used it everywhere. Started focusing back on family and career, let the writing slip, and after a few years, that handle didn't seem appropriate anymore. It was still me, but the old me. Used it on lots of forums, a few game sites, funny how even an internet handle can have a lot of baggage attached to it.

I let the e-mail accounts attached to that handle die too.

My family and I moved to a new community, and I wasn't writing, and then I hit a dry spell of almost four or five years with no significant gaming. No role-playing, few online games I could share with friends. I still own all my geek possessions from when I was a gangly teen until now. (That's approaching twenty-five years ago for you young whipper snappers, and the old dogs on this forum know what I'm talking about. Now get off my lawn!)

I started to think of myself as a recovering game addict, and then it just hit me.

recoveringgeek

It was so apt, and perfectly summed up my situation.

Shortly after I adopted it, I found a local game table to join, and promptly fell of the wagon. I'm back on the sauce and couldn't be happier. I still miss writing, but Myth-Weavers has helped fill that gap for now. Career and raising kids means I'm too busy to commit to anything substantial creatively.

The handle still fits though. I'll always be a recoveringgeek, especially now as I am so much older, and various parts of the hobby pass me by. Long tale, but I figured this was the place for it.

my username is from dragonlance.
Magius, was a great war mage who was friends with some upstart knight called huma.
He sadly died by torture at the end of the legend of huma.
Nonetheless my name is good. It was either magius or raistlin majere.
Heh.

Simple, terrapins are turtles. I wuv wittle tuwtles!
However I believe my avatar reflects my personality a bit better, Demotivational-FTW!

My username is the name of a particularly badass Roman politician. Basically, the guy attempted to help the poor- and when he was opposed by the Roman Senate, used his power as tribune to SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE CITY (public works, temples, private businesses, everything) until the senate agreed to allow the popular assembly to pass Tiberius' reforms.

It was a slight bit more complicated than that, but not much more.

From the anecdote "Big fish in a little pond." Well, I'm not a big fish in any sort of pond. It was made abundantly clear in a few tournaments of MtG and Tekken/Soulcalibur, I thought I was top dog and found out quite the opposite.

I believe taking the username littlefish is my first lesson in humility. Or, as much as my addled brain can recall that is.

=)

Mine's the name of a character I have in a story I am (sporadically) writing. A major character, but not the main one. I put a lot of research into naming the "higher end" mages in the story, of which s/he's one (it's hard to assign a gender title to beings that reincarnate into either sex and can shapechange into the other with only a few minutes of inconvenience).

And I assumed it had something to do with Tanar'ri.

Nope. Not even close. It's actually a language pun of sorts.

My username comes from Megaman X on SNES. Chill Penguin was a robot working under Sigma in his first attempt to take over or something. I don't really remember. He was a lot of fun to face off against and had a fair number of ice related abilities that were just too awesome. He made ice clones of himself, shot balls of ice, slid across the screen on his stomach (while being impervious to damage at the same time) and could whip up a storm inside the room you fought him. He was by far the easiest boss in the game, but no less memorable for it. What can I say? I like penguins.