#I’m also watching one called soteli!

[herbaklava]

I ADORE Pakistani drama shows!!!

[one-that-had-to]

Name Meta (Vol. 2)

Some more meta about the reasons (or lack thereof) for various characters having their names.

The Soldiers So Far

The soldiers are a hodgepodge of serious and joke names. It’s a bit of a mess, honestly.

Marc-Édouard Picard: First name from Marc-Édouard Vlasic, a hockey player. Last name suggested by Squeaker, and while I’m not yet 100 percent sure I think it’s amusing enough to keep. Picard is also the only member of Strike-One to have a name not randomly generated by the game.

Lera Ferresol: I didn’t have any particular goal in mind when looking for a first name for Lera, I just wanted something short that sounded cool. Skimming through behindthename a few times I eventually settled on Lera, which is ultimately derived from the Latin valere, which means “to be strong.” For a name almost entirely randomly selected, it fits her very well. Her last name is something I crafted on my own with some bad Latin skills. A mash of ferō meaning “to bear, to carry” and sol meaning “the sun.” In her own canon, she can magically summon a light source.

Tomáš Horák: Like Tatiana, I wanted her Czech crew member to have a name that was noticeably different from the rest. In my very first drafts, I called him Matěj, but I had a few doubts about it. Eventually I decided to rename him Tomáš after a hockey player, Tomáš Hertl. I still wasn’t too sure of the name then, but at this point it’s stuck around long enough for me to like it. His last name I believe I just googled for a list of common Czech surnames again and picked one I thought sounded nice.

Violince: Violince exists entirely because of her pun name. I was watching a Shadowrun campaign and had the idea for a musician-turned-decker with the name Violince. That’s it entirely.

Archie Williams: I was writing a scene and needed a name, so I pulled up a video of someone playing XCOM 2 and just grabbed one of the names from there. It wasn’t supposed to make it this far, but sort of like Tomáš, it’s stuck it’s place in my mind. His first name was selected from a list of popular first names in New Zealand.

Eva Santiago: Like Williams, I was mid writing a scene and needed a name, but this time I was binge watching Brooklyn 99 as I was doing so. And so Amy Santiago is immortalized in my writing. Also like Williams and Tomáš, it was always just supposed to be a filler name that’s now stuck. Her first name was suggested by Bat, which is a Gears of war reference I think?

Robyn Labanc: I had the concept for a Reaper prankster character with no other idea of who she might be. So I went into the character generator, generated a few characters, and eventually got one with the first name Robyn. She looked cool, and I liked the sound of her first name, so I figured that was that. And then the second I backed out of the character creator I realized I had to change her last name to Labanc, once again, after a hockey player. But also to make her name sound like “robbing the bank” because that was just perfect for her character.

Elvis Pernal: At the same time I was generating Robyn, I also needed to generate her friend, the ghost hunter Templar. Again I just generated characters until I found a guy that looked cool, I was much less concerned about his name. I think at first I settled on someone named Jules and called it a day. As I continued generating characters to eventually get to Robyn, I got a character named Elvis. Elvis is a much funnier name for a gag character, so I said goodbye to Jules and made Elvis the Templar character. I can’t remember if Pernal was Jules original last name or if it came with Elvis, but it was also randomly generated.

Soote Degrir: Soote started out as Kato, just a name incidental everything else in an early draft of Taint Not Thy Mind. I never had any plans to do anything more with her than that. Somehow she got brought up and I decided to give her some traits like an actual character. I was also reminded that there is one single instance in game where the Spokesman is referred to as Cato, and that was much too close for my liking, even if the two would likely never be mentioned in the same fic, much less the same chapter. Squeaker pulled the list of Skirmisher names from the game and after inspecting it for a while I was leaning towards “Sote.” But I wasn’t happy with that alone, I decided to bastardize it to “Soote” because I am a nerd and would think of Canterbury Tales every time she came up.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

It’s a bit ironic since Soote is anything but sweet. Kato might her callsign just as a meta-joke, I haven’t decided yet.

For her last name, I once again just looked at the list of options and sort of gravitated towards Degrir. Once I went to go make her in game, the first Skirmisher I spawned had the last name Degrir, so I figured it was destiny.

All of the rest of the soldiers that you may find in either the Strike-One page or the Avenger Crew page have all been completely randomly generated by the game as of the time of this writing.