#and he deadpans 'i'm older than china'

[mjjune]

for the oc name ask game: danny!

Ah, yes, the ever-elusive 5000 year old vampire from somewhere ambiguous in Asia. How did that guy get named Danny?

Well, long story, so I'll put it under the cut~

So when I first invented Danny, in 2019, I actually shopped him around a bit and did some roleplaying with him—this was back when I was still actively doing forum rps, which I haven't done since then—and originally, he was from a specific dynasty in China. So, I began looking up ancient Chinese-based names. Even if I never used it in the rp itself, I thought I would have it for my own backstory of him.

I don't remember the specifics, but I came across an old surname Lu and I was going through Chinese characters for his given name that had to do with sun/dawn meanings (because a vampire with a sun name is fun) and one of those characters, if pronounced in today's version of Mandarin using Pinyin, was spelled "Dan."

This of course would be pronounced with a long "a" sound like "don", but regardless, he was called Dan for a while. Over time, I found that his closest companions called him Danny.

Even though he changed a LOT between the rp and actually writing avof, the name Danny stuck and I couldn't wrap my head around changing it. That's just... who he is. Regardless of his thousands of other identities he's taken on, Danny is the one he considers the closest to him and only people who really know him use it.

PLEASE NOTE—Danny is not Chinese in AVOF. This original form of Danny was very different, he wasn't genderqueer, he was a hell of a lot younger, the vampire lore as different, he was from a specific Chinese historical time period, and he was actually quite bitter in an Old and Tired™ kinda way. Other than basic physical features and some sarcasm, there is nothing similar between them, but this is where the name Danny came from.