This entry is inspired in part by the thread on Character Names on the writer's forum.

NOTE: This entry is now outdated, my account name at the time of original posting had been slicersv. This had also been back when I was still hiding from myself. All entries which predate "To Be, Or Not To Be" technically predate my coming out to myself, though there's an interesting progression, reading them back over...

My most commonly used internet moniker is actually the name of one of my oldest characters who's still on speaking terms with me.

He first appeared in a story written for a state proficiency tests writing prompt, the prompt wished for us to write a story about a treasure hunt. Slicer and his older brother Viniece were born, at the time, they had no surname and the presence of any other siblings was not mentioned either for or against.

Then, in an old story I wrote a long time ago, I had a family with the surname Vinesley, and three siblings, their parents named the eldest child Viniece Cloud, a boy, the second, another boy, Slicer Steele, and the third, a girl, Yulanaia Rudai... that's where the moniker comes from, btw, that second child... The oddity of their names definitely played a big part in their identities, though the poor girl didn't live very long in the original story, but then I wrote a side story later in which the brothers went back in time and rescued her, but left a dummy in her place so that the past version of themselves still thought her dead, in order to avoid a time paradox... Ah, those were some fun little romps, the original two Searth stories and my myriads of short little side stories.

Too bad the original Searth: The Ceasing Planet is long forgotten and lost to the sands of time... aka, physical copies destroyed in a house fire, digital copy, by a virus. My mind, is, of course, very hazy on the details of what it remembers of the story. I might re-write them someday... It's been a project on my back burner for some years now. I still have both the original novella version of Searth 2, and the mini-trilogy version that was published in my high school's magazine as a three-part feature story, however. Physical copies only... bound book for the novella version, the three magazine issues for the mini-trilogy version. The only differences were that the novella was originally only split into titled chapters, the mini-trilogy was further divided into titled parts, with little micro-poems for each parts intro and outtro. If I ever do my rewrites they'll be done as full novels, with titled parts and micro-poems for part intros and outtros, and untitled chapters. I also have plans for a third "main" Searth story, but it's going to wait for the rewrites, if I ever do any of it. I also have a distant descendant who wants to start a second series even further into the future...

Interesting bit about those stories, I created a man-made organism for them that was asexual and reproduced by absorbing a male and female of any sexed organisms and then cell-splitting. The resulting eggs would then be forcibly put in the womb of the absorbed female, whose form the organism would adopt until its young matured, when hatched, the new organism would have characteristics from all three "parents"... One of my characters in Searth 1 was a "carrier" of this organism, but had been able to regain conscious control. The brothers sister was also "eaten" by one of these, as the brothers put it.

Transgender fiction? I don't think I'd classify that as such, though it was a fun little creature to create, and certainly calls traditional gender roles into question somewhat, since the creature had self-awareness and intelligence comparable to our own, but didn't really "get" the concept of gender. For it, it just took whatever form was most convenient for what it needed to do. Usually either hunt and eat, or reproduce. It may have been self-aware, but being born in a lab, and then escaping into the wild, tends to limit what you consider to be important. Especially since humans had pretty well devolved into hunt and eat, or reproduce, as well, by the time Searth 1 took place. Cannibalism was rampant in the story.

Did I mention these stories were post-apocalyptic? IIRC, I set the first one for sometime in the 3000s.